A Fractal of Loops

@paradoxspaceheater I just had to preserve your tags!

This is absolutely such a key thing, that I have been struggling to articulate about how the characters, especially the antagonists in Goblin Emperor they ARE A REAL TYPE OF GUY!

I would even say that this is also the reason he keeps being high handed with Maia when Maia is literally the Emperor and the Nohecherei are right there! Because he's been lashing out at Maia to deal with feeling out of control for a decade and even though the situation has changed he doesn't have a better coping mechanism to fall back on anymore (if he ever did).

When Maia et al have dinner at the ambassador's home, Maia is entranced by a piece of embroidery that is framed and behind glass. And then it struck me that the airships had to have extensive glass too for their windows (as Maia is invited to see the sunrise on the airship journey at the beginning of the book).

Modern plate glass has it's origins in the 1950s or later - the most common two methods are float glass and overflow downdraw or fusion glass. These are both post WWII and require technology I am not sure exist in that world yet. Most older hand blown methods of making plate glass would have noticeable distortions and variations in thickness that would likely have been mentioned if present. Additionally, a fleet of airships with glass windows suggests mass manufacture. Hand-blown plate glass (to my understanding) was difficult, tedious and very expensive and yet still had significant distortions. The advent of machine manufactured plate glass caused prices to drop and glass to become more ubiquitous and more regular/better quality.

Rolled plate glass was invented around 1840 and is patterned and not fully transparent, it is used architecturally, not for windows and framed art. The Fourcault process might be an option, but I don't know how well it works via steam power vs electricity (I am not expert - this is all from just a few hours of research) and there does not appear to be any electricity yet in The Goblin Emperor. So my best guess for plate glass manufacture would be something like the Machine drawn cylinder sheet method - basically you use a mold to create a even thickness cylinder of glass then cut the cylinder down the side and re-heat and flatten. Though, this process was invented in 1903 in our world so may still be too modern. There is an older similar hand-blown cylinder method but it was more prone to distortion and variations in thickness.

This is so cool, I don't know anything about glass, and now I am learning!

i do think that a nohecharis without their emperor is probably a dangerous situation for everyone. maybe they do go mad? maybe the whole "kill the nohecharei of the emperor who died" was actually totally necessary.

i don't know if you could, theoretically, become the nohecharis of a new emperor. obviously dazhis thought so. i don't think any of the conspirators actually cared about him though. did they even know?