Peace over war

Peace over war is the book’s declared preference and a political ideal repeatedly tested by the Empress’s actions. The Blazing-World is praised for its peaceful unity under one religion, language, and government, yet the Empress secures that order at home and abroad through decrees, threats, and devastating force. The ideal therefore does not simply oppose war: it exposes the difference between peace as a chosen value and peace imposed by sovereign power.

Peace as a Principle of Order

The Empress first encounters a polity whose ministers defend few laws and one ruler as safeguards against faction. Many laws, they argue, create divisions that may grow into civil conflict; a commonwealth with several governors resembles a many-headed monster. They likewise connect a single Emperor to the worship of one God and submission to one sovereign. This account presents political unity as a means of preventing war, but it also makes peace dependent on concentrated authority rather than negotiated difference.

The religious order has its own exclusions. The priests explain that women are barred from public worship because their presence supposedly distracts men, while women pray alone at home; priests and governors are made eunuchs to prevent marriage and family influence in Church and State. The Empress’s subjects thus enjoy a formally uniform religion, but its calm public appearance rests on restricting women’s participation and controlling the private ties thought capable of disturbing government.

The Empress later recognizes that her own changes to the inherited government have unsettled the Blazing-World. She tells the Duchess that continual disputes among the Bear-men, Worm-men, Fly-men, Ape-men, Satyrs, and other groups threaten rebellion and the ruin of the state. The Duchess recommends restoring one sovereign, religion, law, and language, so that the world may again resemble a single family. She contrasts that ideal with her native world, where competing sovereigns, religions, laws, ambitions, and controversies multiply conflict. In her analysis, learning itself can produce quarrels when scholars cling to opinions or fear the disgrace of revising them; their school disputes may eventually become factional warfare.

The proposal to dissolve the learned societies sharpens the cost of this political peace. The Duchess argues that an orderly government may be better without the societies’ intelligence if their arguments perpetually breed contention. The Empress hesitates because reversing her own decrees could appear disgraceful; the Duchess instead presents correction as evidence of wisdom and goodness. Peace here requires not only a unified sovereign but also restraint on institutions and disputes that might challenge unity.

Rescue Becomes Imperial Force

The Empress’s campaign in her native country begins as an act of aid. Before her fleet approaches the enemy, she sends Fish-men and Bird-men to report the opposing force’s number, position, and formation. At night, they display Fire-stones above the air and sea, making the darkness seem ablaze and persuading those nearby that the Last Day has arrived. At daybreak, the enemy sees ships without sails, guns, or visible weapons, painted dark so that their gold cannot be recognized. The spectacle leaves the fleet frightened and unable to act.

The Empress then sends a letter to the native country’s general and commanders, identifying herself as a powerful princess who has come to help them against their enemies and asking them to declare when they want her assistance. Her offer is framed as protection, not a bargain. When the commanders delay their answer amid conflicting opinions, she grows angry and considers returning to the Blazing-World without helping. The Duchess urges patience, explaining that large councils move slowly because their members hold different opinions and compete to appear wise. This episode places deliberation and military urgency in tension: the Empress expects decisive action, while the Duchess points to the burdens of collective counsel.

When the Empress finally appears before her countrymen, she presents herself above the water in garments of light, supported by Fish-men and accompanied by Bird-men carrying Fire-stones. She declares that she has crossed from another world to assist her native country, relinquishing her own tranquillity, riches, and pleasure rather than see it destroyed. She promises to make it the most powerful nation in the world and to destroy its enemies before nightfall. The declaration joins personal loyalty and the language of rescue to an unmistakable promise of overwhelming violence.

At the ensuing battle, Fish-men carry concealed Fire-stones beneath the enemy ships, uncover and wet them at close range, and set the vessels alight; the fire reaches their powder and blows up the fleets. The Empress does not return to the Blazing-World after this victory. Instead, she continues until the other nations submit to her native country. The shift is decisive: the campaign that began as defence becomes the means of establishing a larger political dominion.

Tribute and the Limits of Pacification

The King of Esfi tells the Empress that surviving enemies still obstruct the trade of his dominions. She answers that she will burn or sink ships that refuse to pay tribute and sends neighboring maritime nations a demand to pay the king. When they refuse, she orders their ships destroyed. They eventually seek terms, but obtain only submission and tribute; the King of Esfi becomes master of the seas and, through maritime commerce, of the world.

That settlement does not end resistance. The neighboring nations later unite their forces again, resenting the extent to which tribute confines them within their own dominions. The Empress destroys the remainder of their naval power, forcing them once more to submit. Nations that can live without foreign trade, along with those whose commerce is entirely overland, still refuse tribute. She threatens to burn their towns and cities, then orders Bird-men and Worm-men to attack their smaller towns first, reserving greater destruction for continued resistance. The plan is calibrated to limit damage where possible, but its restraint is tactical: it still uses the threat of burning settlements to compel obedience.

Fire-stones laid beneath houses produce a further demonstration of power. When rain comes, the buildings burst into flame; adding water makes the fire burn more fiercely. Fear of the same fate brings the surrounding cities, nations, and kingdoms to submit to the King of Esfi. One country, which receives little rain, initially discounts the threat. The Empress exploits its annual incoming tide, ordering Fire-stones placed beneath the supports of its houses. When the tide arrives, the houses burn, the water is turned to vapor, and the country suffers both destruction and a year of barrenness before it submits. The resulting universal order is therefore secured not by reconciliation but by making resistance materially ruinous.

The Ideal and Its Contradictions

The Empress’s triumph culminates in a public spectacle for the assembled princes. At night, Fire-stones make the sea and sky appear to burn; the Bird-men lift her into the air, where she appears as bright as the sun, while the Fish-men and Bird-men answer one another in song from sea and sky. At daybreak she addresses the princes, declaring that the King of Esfi has become head monarch of the world and advising them to pay tribute so that they may live peaceably and happily. The appeal to peace follows a campaign that has made refusal dangerous, and the entertainment’s beauty helps stage the power behind the demand.

In the epilogue, the author distinguishes her creation of imagined worlds from the conquests of Alexander and Caesar. She says that her worlds are composed of the rational parts of matter, identified with the parts of her mind, and that their formation gives her more pleasure and glory than terrestrial conquest. She has made the Blazing-World peaceful by allowing it one religion, language, and government, while acknowledging that she could instead fashion a world of factions, divisions, and wars. Her stated preference is explicit: peace before war, wit before policy, and honesty before beauty.

The epilogue also leaves world-making open to readers, who may imagine themselves subjects of her created world or make worlds of their own. Yet the author refuses to usurp the Empress’s realm: because the Blazing-World already has a ruler, her dear Platonic friend, she would rather create another world for another friend than disturb that government. This closing distinction frames peace as both an imaginative and relational choice. It does not erase the violence of the Empress’s imperial expansion; instead, it sets the author’s preference for peaceful creation beside the coercive means through which the fictional world’s political order is enlarged.