The TNP Wire presents: An Interview with Astarial
Astarial (left) and McMasterdonia (right) sit down for the interview
This is the first interview given by Astarial since her resignation as Pharaoh of Osiris. Many people felt a great deal of sympathy for Figs following that resignation. Some people that I have spoken to described the attacks and undermining of her government to have been brutal, unjustified, relentless, and inappropriate, while others have described them as necessary, in achieving a change of government in a region without a codified constitution.
Either way, I felt that it was appropriate that Astarial be given the opportunity to give her final say on the events which occurred within Osiris and to allow her to provide insight into a region whose government and forum has been described as closed to the public with significant political maneuvering occurring off forum and out of sight.*
The interview is intended to provide more insight into the trials and obstacles faced by Astarial in Osiris, including the final hours that led to her resignation and departure from the region. It is quite a long interview, but it is well worth the read.
*The Author is not making an argument in favour of this allegation, only pointing out that such criticisms have been made in the past.
Note: The interview was originally conducted under the name of Detective Figs, later changed to Astarial given the change of nation ownership.
The Interview:
Firstly Astarial, I want to ask how you are doing given the events of the past few months?
Much better than I was. I don’t think it’s possible to explain how horrid it is to be a GCR delegate to anybody who hasn’t been there themselves, and it’s a huge relief to finally be done with that.
If it is acceptable to you, I would like to start a bit further back in your career in Osiris and discuss some of the events that happened before the decision to dissolve the Kemetic Republic of Osiris.
Sure thing.
Osiris has been described as a coup-prone region with significant internal strife. Do you feel that there is one major reason for this?
I would say that Osiris is coup-prone because of its internal strife, and that it suffers from the latter because it was designed that way. Its entire structure, originally, was set up to put and keep a particular faction in power, to make them practically impossible to dislodge, and to encourage petty infighting among the broader membership to prevent the unification of any other would-be factions. When the central faction broke apart spectacularly, this infighting blew up into deep, bitter hostility.
How would you describe your working relationship with Cormac as his Kai Repat?
I would describe it as quite excellent, overall. I personally much prefer to play supportive roles rather than leading ones, and my primary governmental interest was and is legislative, so Kai was pretty much a perfect fit. Plus, Cormac and I get along well, and naming me as his Kai allowed me to support him to the best of my ability during and after the coup - he knew he could rely on me for anything.
Did you agree with his decision to agree to the Peace treaty with Gatesville?
No, I did not. This is one of the few things Cormac and I fundamentally disagreed on, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to win the war, straight up. I think legitimately wresting the delegacy away from TDE in a show of military power would have boosted Osiran morale and restored a sense of dignity and empowerment, whereas a peace treaty - one which many people in and outside of Osiris saw as selling out to Gatesville - did nothing of the sort. And as one of the key individuals behind developing, implementing, and tracking the UIAF mission in Osiris, we were only a few days away from seriously weakening TDE, if not removing him from the delegacy outright. Add to this the fact that both JAL and Gatesville were rapidly growing bored with and sick of Osiris and were searching for a way out as quickly as possible, and you have a situation that was rapidly becoming impossible for us to lose.
And yet we did manage to lose it. Sure, we got the delegacy back… at the cost of our integrity, our sense of self-worth, and our reliability. This is the second reason I vehemently opposed the peace treaty - if we kept its terms we would be a laughingstock, and if we broke them we would be demonstrably untrustworthy. Others in the cabinet at the time argued that a treaty signed under duress cannot be considered legally binding, but public opinion doesn’t care about legality - to friends and allies it matters only whether or not Osiris can be trusted as an ally, and by both signing the treaty and breaking it, we demonstrated that Osiris cannot.
And finally, there were numerous people throughout the coup who questioned the trustworthiness of the UIAF, and of NES in particular. The manner in which it was ended has left those questions unaddressed - there is no demonstrable rebuttal to the counterfactual assertion that the UIAF would not have switched when the time came. Moreover, some people have made the absurd claim that the Osiran government - specifically Cormac and I - secretly supported Gatesville’s coup because we had coordinated a liberation strategy with NES. It seems quite clear to me that signing the peace treaty damaged the reputations of both Osiris and the UIAF, and I was intensely frustrated by the decision to go through with it.
I don’t believe I ever outright threatened to resign if Cormac agreed to the treaty, but I certainly told him I was strongly considering it. In the end, though, I knew that Osiris needed the appearance of strength and unity, and that Cormac needed me, too much to justify resigning, and I wasn’t willing to bluff about holding that hostage just to try to get my way. He was Pharaoh, not me - my job was to advise, not command.
What happened in the 24 hour period before your decision to dissolve the Kemetic Republic that led to that agreement?
Cormac announced in a private area of the forum that owing to both good and bad events in his personal life, he felt he needed to focus his time and attention there and not on NS. He had two options for how to proceed - the first was to resign outright, triggering a special election for Pharaoh, and the second was to take a month-long leave of absence and then resign, which would leave me in power until the normally scheduled election cycle in October. He asked for input from his viziers on how they wished him to proceed, and if I recall correctly, the rough consensus at the time was that holding an election now would further destabilize the region, and should be avoided.
This thread - including the personal details Cormac disclosed - was posted to the Gameplay forum as a series of screenshots. Part of the ensuing discussion in the Cabinet channel was also posted to Gameplay, as were logs of a Skype chat between some members of Osiris. I believe these actions came following a couple other incidents in that forum which amounted to massive headaches - my memory of the specifics is a bit blurry, but fundamentally, the bullshit simply would not stop.
At some point during the screenshot leaks, based in part on the flag and pretitle silliness I had been engaging in since taking the delegacy, I began to jokingly suggest that we collectively say “fuck it”, dissolve the government, and start from scratch. I expected the response to be laughter and rejection of that as a serious possibility, but to my complete surprise, it was not. The consent of every government official online at the time was obtained, including a couple dragged on just for that purpose. There were perhaps one or two people who couldn’t be reached at the time, but with the unanimous consent of those who were present, we went for it.
Would you say it was your idea to dissolve the government? As in, were you the one advocating for it, or were you convinced that it was the right choice?
It was definitely my idea and I definitely suggested it, but I’m not sure I’d go so far as saying I advocated for it - like I said, I brought it up as a joke, in the context of “I can’t be the only one tired of all this Gameplay forum bullshit.” Once it got support from others, however, I did see it as a chance for us to do a lot of the things we all agreed needed to be done but couldn’t find the impetus to do under the old system.
After the dissolution of the KRO, what was your first priority for the new regime?
My first priority was to capitalize on the energy coming out of the change in order to promote internal activity, and to create a working legislative body to get started on critical laws. These fit very naturally together, since during the constitutional convention we’d discussed a legislature open to citizens meeting some activity criteria.
I have received some criticism for taking a bottom-up approach instead of starting by naming ministers for the various departments, and some have even claimed I only ever named viziers because I was forced into it. The latter is wholly untrue - if you look at even my very first announcement about departmental activity, I stated that viziers would be named once people started doing things, but that my priority was getting people eligible for the Deshret. As to the former, I think it’s based on a fundamental difference in approach. I’d seen Osiris’ pre-existing vizier system in action, and it did exactly the opposite of encouraging activity and fostering the growth of new members. On the contrary, it placed the entire burden of running the department on the minister alone, leading to stagnation and burnout. If I had started by naming viziers, that’s exactly the pattern that would have continued.
Were you disappointed with the response that you received from the allies of Osiris?
Overall, no - it was about what we expected, and we bear no ill will toward our allies who saw the action as invalidating mutual treaties. The government they had treated with was gone, and there were no Osirans trying to reestablish it; acknowledging those facts is not an act of hostility.
There were only two cases where I saw many people upset at the response. Rather than adopt a wait-and-see attitude and allow Osiris’ internal struggles to be resolved internally, TEP opted to outright sever relations, and TSP drafted a highly insulting statement declaring the transitional government “illegitimate” - an aggressive claim which many Osirans at the time saw as tantamount to also severing relations. I wouldn’t say Osirans were disappointed by these reactions, though. They were angry at attempted interference, and scornful at the inherent presumption of the acts. And to the best of my knowledge, neither of those relationships has been repaired.
In your opinion, did the dissolution help unite Osirans? Or do you think that it divided them further?
I don’t think the dissolution ultimately did either one. Osirans are exactly as united as they want to be - that is to say, not at all, except in the face of external criticism at which point everyone directs their contempt for one another outward for a little while.
In the final days of your government, how much was going on behind the scenes, it appeared to me that there was a lot of undermining and challenging of the Government occurring behind closed doors and very little public discussion on the subject?
Oh, quite a lot. I would hear from one person that another was maneuvering for power and couldn’t be trusted, and from the second that the first was doing the same thing, and from a third party that both were plotting together behind closed doors to wrest control of the region for themselves. This isn’t new, though - there’s pretty much not a single Osiran who doesn’t prefer to plot and scheme and backstab in the dark rather than openly and honestly voice disagreement.
Were you surprised by Lord Ravenclaw’s decision to present a draft of no confidence against your government to the Deshret?
I wouldn’t place it all on Raven - anybody familiar with his writing style can see that it was heavily edited, if not entirely drafted, by others. He was simply the scapegoat - unfortunate, but not surprising. It fits the general Osiran pattern.
Do you consider the actions taken by members of the Security Council to have been appropriate for a Security body to take in the circumstances?
Absolutely not. I found it thoroughly appalling that the supposed “Security” Council found it appropriate to threaten the delegate they were named to protect - even more so because the “logic” behind their threat was that my increase from 92 to 97 endorsements - following, I might note, a telegram campaign to do exactly that - was “highly suspicious” and indicative of some nebulous intention to commit never-explicitly-stated nefarious acts.
What is clear now, and was clear at the time, is that they perceived a rise in my endorsement count as a threat because it mechanically weakened their ability to take the region hostage, or to outright take it if they felt like it.
What was your thought process at this time? I recall that it was suggested that another plebiscite should have been held on your leadership - why did you decide against holding another vote?
I opened the first plebiscite gleefully expecting to lose, and thrilled to be able to walk away and leave Osiris to fend for itself. That... didn’t turn out quite like I had hoped, and I wasn’t going to leave things up to chance like that again.
Moreover, I was disgusted with the duplicity of that demand. Multiple people - including several on the “Security” Council - were fully aware that I was hoping to call elections as soon as possible, and planned to start them as soon as the Deshret had passed a basic criminal code and a basic bill of rights. Both of these are things I had urged it to work on from the beginning, and decent first drafts of both already existed in the old legal archives. It would have been a trivial matter to dust these off, tweak them a bit to fit, and get them passed.
But this wasn’t acceptable, because fundamentally, the issue was never about elections - it was about power and control, and proving exactly whose pocket Osiris was, and would always be, in. So a quick and easy solution was called dictatorial and demanding, supposedly something that would ensure I kept power for another year, and the only response that would be accepted as a “compromise” was me humbly surrendering and acceding to all demands made without a peep.
What was the last straw for you? What made you decide to resign?
I wouldn’t say there was a specific last straw. I saw very quickly that they were pushing for war (albeit one that painted them as the victims in the conflict), and that I had two options. I could either behave like a good little puppet and go along with every demand, or I could offer opposition on any one issue and fight a full-fledged war.
I didn’t walk away because I thought I would lose - I thought, and still think, quite the opposite. But when considering the time and effort fighting that war would require, I reflected on my broader priorities in life - graduating, grieving - and what I would gain by sticking it out - a delegacy I didn’t want, a headache of a region that never liked or wanted me - and I decided that it simply wasn’t worth my time. I have better things to do than waste time in a region of bullies.
Do you feel that Venico is the right leader to address these concerns and move Osiris into a new era of regional unity and peace?
I think Venico is immensely talented and knows how to both work with others and hold his ground where appropriate. I don’t know if anyone can bring peace and unity to Osiris without the region actually wanting that, and so far, it has demonstrated quite amply that it doesn’t… but I think Venico has as good a chance as any, and better than most. Whether they allow him to do so, of course, is a different question entirely.
What is next for you in Nationstates? Is there any future for you in Osiris after what has happened?
I see absolutely no future for me in Osiris, no, and I’m not interested whatsoever in there being one after how horrible my experience there was. I have not logged in since I resigned, and once out of the delegacy I relinquished control of the nation of Detective Figsl so that I couldn’t ever come back - that is how little I want to do with it. I am quite thrilled to be finally done.
In terms of broader involvement, I’m quite content to be bumming around in Equilism and The North Pacific for now. I considered withdrawing from TNP out of a general distaste for GCR politics, but it has become familiar and comforting and I would have regretted leaving. However, I have no intent to seek high office there - service in Equilism is plenty for me.
This interview was conducted prior to today’s events. Fortunately I was able to sit down with Astarial once again to ask her some further questions:
You said you gave Detective Figs away - were you aware at the time that this was coming? Were you told in advance?
No, I had no idea. I was as surprised as anyone. When I gave Figs to Koth, it was with the belief that as Venico’s best friend, he would be able to protect Ven and support his Pharaohship better than anyone else could have. After I gave him the password, I walked away - I haven’t been paying attention to anything that’s been going on there. And I'm glad they didn't tell me what was going to happen, since that would have put me in a pretty awkward position.
Astarial, are you confident that the announcement by Venico today will be beneficial for the community of Osiris?
I’ve no idea, to be honest. It will be interesting, that’s for sure - and I’m pleased to be sitting on the sidelines for this one, watching to see how it plays out.
Do you believe that they will be able to hold the region against the Empire?
History’s pretty solidly against them - the only permanent GCR coup has been Francos Spain in The Pacific, and that was a decade ago. But on the other hand, Empire was able to hold The East Pacific for a significant amount of time. I think it will largely depend on whose propaganda machine gets turning the fastest and pulls the largest number of supporters, and at least for now Venico has the lead on that. And on preliminary analysis, Empire has fewer friends than they did then, so they may simply find themselves outgunned.
What response would you expect from allies and friends of Osiris?
Response will, predictably, vary. Given the amount of absurdity in Osiris over the past year, though, I think it’s likely that all but the most coup-averse will stay out of yet the latest round. I’ve already seen comments on IRC to the tune of “Osiris again?”
Thanks for your time!
how did that chart ever come into existence!
