Ilisidi Incorporates the East into the Aishidi’tat and Serves as Regent

Ilisidi’s incorporation of the East into the Aishidi’tat and her long regency joined a politically distinct region to the wider polity without making her a passive partner in its government. She remained an independent power in Shejidan and Malguri, maintained her own substantial bodyguard, and used the regency to pursue concerns that included environmental protection, human presence, and the unsettled west coast.

The East and the wider polity

The Eastern Association, headed by Malguri from the time of the War of the Landing, had remained geographically and politically apart from the west. The continental divide and storms of the Eastern Ocean reinforced that separation. Its small clans and three cultures had united with the West in response to the threat from the heavens, but the Easterners otherwise continued their own ways of hunting, fishing, and making crafts. Unlike the rest of the Aishidi’tat, the East had not developed a broad guild system.

The Assassins’ Guild was the exception. It established itself in the East during the War, organizing its own training, guild hall, and operations. The Eastern Assassins’ Guild affiliated with the Guild in Shejidan, permitting some of its members to be assigned by the western organization while barring outsiders from entering. Its members gained a reputation for honesty and skill, and recruitment found support in the region’s poverty. This was a limited connection, not the absorption of the East into the guild arrangements elsewhere.

That distinction mattered in a polity whose institutions had grown through agreements across regional and clan lines. Before the Foreign Star appeared, eleven regional associations agreed to build a railroad from Shejidan to the west without going to war over the project. Aijiin, once warleaders elected for particular purposes, came to manage the alliances and practical arrangements required to build it. The Assassins’ Guild developed as a body able to protect those leaders, and later backed an aiji who held three powerful clan lords to their railroad agreement. The growing system rested not only on territory but on promises and associations that crossed it.

Ilisidi’s incorporation of the East

Ilisidi brought the East into the Aishidi’tat through her marriage to the aiji in Shejidan. She brought with her a vast territory and a political outlook she continued to express openly. Her concerns included opposition to human presence and industrial encroachment, support for the environment, and the unresolved situation along the west coast facing Mospheira. The incorporation therefore enlarged the polity while also bringing a distinct regional voice and agenda into its political life.

Ilisidi did not relinquish her own power after the union. She maintained a considerable independent bodyguard, larger than that of any other lord in either the East or the West. When she was widowed, she refused to hand her young son over to the aiji’s maternal grandfather. She also retained control of the Bujavid, made herself regent, and continued to hold Malguri firmly, even as she refused to leave Shejidan. Her authority thus operated from more than one center: she remained present in the political heart of the Aishidi’tat while preserving her command in the East.

Her position was not equivalent to acceptance as aiji in her own right. Ilisidi did not succeed in having the Aishidi’tat recognize her as aiji, but she continued to act as regent and to advance her own agenda. Her large bodyguard sustained her safety and reach across the East, even when her independent power irritated influential figures in Shejidan. The arrangement held together incorporation and autonomy in unresolved tension: the East had joined the polity, but Ilisidi did not cease to govern it through her own authority.

From Ilisidi’s rule to Valasi’s accession

Ilisidi’s son, Valasi, eventually established his own authority as aiji in Shejidan. His bid for power came when he was twenty-seven and had support from the Taibeni clan of the Padi Valley, his grandmother’s clan, as well as other northern and mountain regions. Ilisidi finally conceded as Valasi gained sufficient votes in the legislature. The transition was therefore made through political support and legislative standing, rather than by the simple disappearance of her influence.

Valasi strengthened his rule through alliances and practical settlements. His contract marriages drew regions more firmly into his hands, while the political use of marriage helped resolve several lesser wars. He also worked with Wilson-paidhi to obtain technological advances, including aviation and early television. When Valasi died unexpectedly, however, his heir was still below the age of twenty-three required to be elected aiji. The question of who could govern during that interval returned Ilisidi to the foreground.

The regency after Valasi’s death

Ilisidi returned to Shejidan with her grandson Tabini and sought election as aiji herself. She argued that the Aishidi’tat faced complex problems, including growing traffic with Mospheira, the development of industry on Crescent Island, and pollution reaching the northwest coast. She also maintained that areas incorporated after the War of the Landing remained unresolved and called for stronger negotiations with Mospheira over environmental protection.

The legislature balked at her proposals. Regional interests feared reopening parts of the postwar settlement because doing so might put their own arrangements in question. The Marid opposed Ilisidi’s approach to the west coast, while concern about the smoke affecting the Gan peoples found little support among groups that had not joined the Aishidi’tat. Ilisidi’s political program thus met resistance even as the need for a regent remained. She governed through the last of Tabini’s minority and through the final years of Wilson-paidhi’s service, supported by a Conservative coalition headed by Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini.

Her regency did not erase the contested character of her authority. It preserved continuity while the legislature’s regional interests, Tabini’s eventual rule, and Ilisidi’s own priorities remained in play. The same political skill that had kept her influential across Malguri and Shejidan also allowed her to remain a formidable actor after Valasi’s death, without making her views identical to those of the government she helped sustain.

Continuing influence

Ilisidi’s independent judgment remained useful to Tabini beyond the regency. When he grew suspicious that neither atevi nor Mospheirans had been told the truth about the situation in space, he charged Bren Cameron and Ilisidi with investigating it; he also sent Cajeiri so his son could learn about the new knowledge, understand humans, and be taught by the woman who had taught Tabini. The assignment placed Ilisidi’s established refusal to be put off with lies in service of a new political crisis.

Her later presence in the aftermath of the Assassins’ Guild’s restoration likewise connected the old question of authority to the repair of institutions. Tabini reported that the old Guildmaster had returned and that the restored leadership was interviewing members and reviewing their assignments and loyalties. Ilisidi had long wanted to see the Guild’s Council chamber, and she asked whether everyone had emerged alive. Her concern for the outcome, alongside the Guild’s renewed attention to law and internal accountability, gives the regency’s political world a wider significance: rule depended not only on holding territory or office, but on sustaining institutions capable of establishing their legitimacy.