The Man Behind the Legend
Recent Studies on John Crichton -- A Summary
Yenethy Daryz, University of Ryvan
The approaching 300th anniversary of the Eidolon Reemergence has triggered an upsurge of interest in the figure held by popular legend to be at the heart of the period's turmoil. Be it as folk hero or bogeyman, Crichton is more likely to be remembered by the ordinary person than Emperor Staleek, Mele-on Grayza, or even High Priestess Muoma. The persistent myth of Crichton makes it difficult for the serious scholar to uncover the truth behind this controversial and fascinating historical figure, but such efforts are not without results.
There have been several new monographs on the ever-popular question of what motivated Crichton. Most of the time, Crichton was focused on the survival and welfare of his family, his friends, and himself. It has proven difficult to pinpoint the catalysts for his occasional ventures into interstellar politics, but they seem frequently to have happened by accident. Likewise, Crichton always maintained that he never asked for his knowledge of wormholes. Pak Cotsen's new look at Crichton and wormholes points out several times when Crichton's behavior contradicted this claim of disinterest. However, he maintains that despite the long-term obsession with wormholes, Crichton genuinely disliked the position of power into which the wormhole knowledge put him, and pursued his studies only because he preferred playing the game to being a game piece. Despite his discussions of contradicted claims, Cotsen is essentially abandoning the Pastem "Destroyer of Worlds" perspective of Crichton as megalomaniacal killer.
While Crichton may not have been a megalomaniac, it does still seem quite likely that he was mentally damaged, a fact which was occasionally even confirmed by Crichton himself. Before his recent tragic death, the psychohistorian and Diagnosan Arnot was writing a psychological profile of Crichton, both outlining the direct evidence and speculating on the probable results of the mental pressure applied to Crichton, both direct, such as the Aurora Chair interrogator and the possibly-apocryphal neurochip story, and indirect, such as the emotional trauma of being immersed in a totally foreign environment. Only brief outlines are known, having been shared with colleagues; it is to be hoped that Arnot's estate will soon release the unpublished paper so that the scholar's last work may be appreciated by its intended audience, and so that other psychohistorians can take up the task where Arnot left off, and not repeat his work.
After the Scarran-Peacekeeper War, Crichton sought to keep a low profile. Occasionally, he and his family, aboard the Leviathan Moya, would vanish into deep space for periods of up to a cycle. Maress Zortor has provided an unprecedented glimpse of Crichton's day-to-day life in this period in her new biography of the Leviathan Moya: his interactions with his young children, the difficulties of working as a cargo hauler, incognito visits to distant commerce planets. By study of this biography, it should be possible to put together an extensive, if perhaps not exhaustive, list of Crichton's aliases. This should help to confirm or refute some of the legends on minor planets which speak of Crichton visiting in disguise. Sadly, Moya's Pilot professed himself unable to say how Crichton came up with such names as Arthur Dent, Han Solo, and Mister Underhill. The Pilot also claimed not to clearly recall some of the more dramatic incidents, both before and after the war. While Moya is quite elderly, her Pilot is not, and it seems more likely that he is withholding information for other reasons, which is perhaps only to be expected from someone who traveled with Crichton.
John Crichton kept company with a very colorful group of characters, which has been only magnified by popular legend. Among recent studies are several exploring these figures, aided by several newly released sources. These people are collectively referred to as the "Moyans," referencing the Leviathan Moya. They have traditionally been historically elusive. Most of them, like Crichton himself, wanted to keep as low a profile and leave as few tracks as possible; many of the best-documented rose to prominence for other reasons or predeceased their comrades.
The prime example of the latter category is the Luxan Ka D'Argo, who is believed to have died on the planet Qujaga shortly before its destruction by the wormhole weapon. His son, Kleeva Ka Jothee, devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to ensuring his father's remembrance as a hero. The chief debate surrounding Ka D'Argo concerns the question of what role he did or did not play in the death of his spouse, Lo'Laan, a Sebacean woman. D'Argo was convicted of her murder. The alternate version of events, and the one favored by the mythos, holds that Lo'Laan's brother Macton killed her in concern for blood purity. No direct evidence exists for either scenario. The latest study to come out of the Luxan Historical Institute focuses on hyper-rage, and concludes that it is possible Ka D'Argo killed his spouse and was not aware of it. It offers no opinion, however, on whether that is actually what happened.
Crichton's most studied associate is of course his eventual spouse, Aeryn Sun. Her dismissal from the Peacekeepers still provides our most definitive indicator of when, exactly, Crichton arrived in this part of space. Many of the stories about Sun are already thoroughly examined; many of the rest are unproven and possibly unprovable. However, there has recently been exciting new research into Sun's Peacekeeper background. Exhaustive perusal of old Peacekeeper records reveals that not only was Sun not the product of a planned breeding, but that her parents had an emotional attachment to one another, a fact Xhalax Sun revealed to the child Aeryn in a clandestine visit to her dormitory. While Peacekeeper authorities were usually willing to overlook unusually strong attachments if they did not interfere with soldiers' efficiency, this visit, and the senior Sun's assertion that this made her daughter special, were intolerable. Xhalax Sun was given the option of killing either her lover, Talyn Lyczak, or her daughter. She chose to kill Lyczak, and went on to have a largely unremarkable career as a retrieval and termination officer. Xhalax Sun eventually failed to return from a mission pursuing the renegade Peacekeeper Bialar Crais and his Leviathan gunship. Crais, of course, is strongly associated with the Crichton legend, and it is tempting to speculate that Xhalax and Aeryn met once more, but if this is so, no record of it has been found.
The Banik Stykera Stark is remembered more for his role in the so-called Red Ocean movement than for his connection with Crichton, but the period before the Eidolon Reemergence is frequently glossed over in his biographies. Orik of the Banik Cultural Center has recently completed a survey of Crichton-related literature, to incorporate the information in his new biography. Probably the greatest contribution of this biography to the "Red Ocean" history is its revelation of the story of Stark's previous encounters with Scorpius. The Cultural Institute has pointed out with an excusably triumphant tone that there is nothing irrational about distrusting someone who used you as an experimental subject for a torture implement. Unfortunately, Orik's greatest contribution to the field of Crichton studies has been to reopen the debate over the veracity of the Shadow Depository legend by arguing that the Stykera would never have played such a key role as the legend assigns him in an act of theft.
As improbable as it might seem, Dominar Rygel XVI of Hyneria really did travel with Crichton for the last several years of the Bishan Interregnum, as he stated in his recently released autobiography. While that document has already shown itself to be not always the most reliable resource, it is a known fact that Crichton, Sun, and their children regularly visited Hyneria and stayed in the royal palace. Rygel XVI does indeed seem to be the Hynerian mentioned in some of the stories of Crichton's exploits. The task of comparing the autobiography with other sources to corroborate or invalidate all of its information has only just begun, and considering the length of the document is likely to take some time.
Dominar Rygel's autobiography, combined with recently opened Peacekeeper records, have allowed us finally to confirm the identity of the Delvian Moyan. For a long time she was known only as Zhaan, a conjecture from the name of Zhaan Sun Crichton and a handful of recorded comments from the Stykera Stark. Although some historians maintained that even this was too much of an assumption, attempts to connect the Delvian Moyan with a more concrete historical figure have centered on that name. We now know for certain that Zhaan was indeed anarchist and convicted murderer Zotoh Zhaan. This raises as many questions as it answers, as we must now reconcile the historical killer with the gentle, loving figure immortalized in legend and recalled with such fondness by her surviving shipmates, including Stark.
Even more elusive than Zhaan is the Nebari still known only as Chiana. She seems to suddenly appear in history with her arrival on Moya, a scenario rendered not totally implausible by her young age. She is closely associated with the Crichton mythos through the end of the Scarran-Peacekeeper War, at which time she accompanied Rygel XVI to Hyneria. After several relatively well-documented cycles, she left Hyneria and dropped out of sight once more. Her background remains obscure, but it is evident she did not conform to contemporary Nebari customs. Indeed, it has been popular to try to link Chiana with the Nebari resistance movement. These links remain extremely tenuous. Dominar Rygel's autobiography briefly relates one incident with Nebari which may be indicative of a Resistance role for Chiana, but which may also simply symptomize the risks of being a nonconformist Nebari.
Possibly the most problematic of the Moyans is Utu-Noranti Pralatong. While her existence is not in question, many of the stories told about her are simply too outrageous to be credited. The legends fail even to concretely establish how she came to be on board Moya. In this area, Dominar Rygel's autobiography is of no help. He provides no new information, and merely repeats some of the more improbable stories. The autobiography also contains little mention of the Interion Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis.
Recently released Peacekeeper records provide the source for an interesting new paper by Adion Jiro on the Peacekeeper Leviathan Gunship project. This confirms that Moya was one of the test subjects, and her son the prototype. Jiro proposes that Bialar Crais's driven pursuit of Moya into the Uncharted Territories was actually motivated by a desire to reclaim his pet project, rather than, as the legends maintain, desire for revenge on Crichton. The first goal was certainly more successful than the second, as multiple sources and the legends agree that Crais gained control of the infant Leviathan gunship and proceeded to roam the Uncharted Territories for two years. Jiro also poses the question of why the gunship project was abandoned, when the first prototype was so spectacularly successful in a technical sense. He suggests that it may be because Crais was the driving force behind the project; most historians still believe it was a problem of technical expertise or the lack thereof following the arrest of one of the chief Leviathan techs.
Also occasionally involved in the Crichton legends is Kalish bioloid-operative Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu. She only conclusively appears in the evidence at the time of the Katratzi incident. This has prompted some scholars to conclude that she became involved with the Moyans only in an attempt to rescue Scorpius, who was being held on Katratzi at that time, rather than earlier as some of the legends indicate. Indeed, Sikozu's life prior to her initial affiliation with Scorpius is very poorly documented.
Scorpius is known in legend as Crichton's arch-nemesis, and in history as the ambitious, ruthless, and very skilled politician given the impossible task of maintaining detente between Peacekeepers and Scarrans. It has recently been questioned that the two were in fact the same person. Ange Re'eva suggests instead that Scorpius's name was substituted into the legends by his political enemies. Several rebuttals have been published, citing variously Dominar Rygel's autobiography, Peacekeeper records, and the documented attitudes towards Scorpius of both Crichton and Stark.
Easily the most decisive recent results came from the Royal University. After decades of lobbying, the royal family was finally persuaded to permit examination of genetic samples of the father of Empress Allia. This proves beyond question that the man named John Crichton who visited the Royal Planet approximately a cycle and a half before the outbreak of the Scarran-Peacekeeper War was *not* a Sebacean, although from a closely related species. While this hearkens back to the work a hundred cycles ago, at that same university, on the actual identity of the man known as Regent John Crichton, more recent researchers did not suffer the same censorship and threats as did their predecessors. Having finally admitted that the Regent who reigned beside Empress Katralla was not the father of her child, the royal family remains firm in its claims that the actual father was the same Crichton who went on to achieve such notoriety. The recent tests only support this claim. Although answering questions about Royal Planet succession, these studies only make the history of John Crichton more puzzling. However, claims that he visited the Royal Planet at that time are now taken seriously by most historians, and further work from the Royal University is eagerly awaited.
The Royal Planet results are another blow to the Sebacean-Crichton school, this on the heels of a historiographical article pointing out that at every one of the often-cited times Crichton claimed to be or implied he was a Sebacean, he was also essaying some other deception. As compelling as it seemed two hundred cycles ago, the Sebacean-Crichton theory has now been largely discredited. Efforts to pinpoint Crichton's actual homeworld remain questionable and usually produce contradictory results. Evaran Evyra Elean Edrene Evenii, following consultation with wormhole researchers, has argued that without additional data such attempts are doomed to failure, as one of the few things upon which the physicists could agree was that wormholes can not be tracked once closed.
Crichton's association with wormholes is still accepted by the serious scholar. At the very least, surviving Peacekeeper and Scarran records show beyond doubt that he was believed to control wormholes, and all reports give him the credit or blame for the wormhole weapon demonstrated near the end of the Scarran-Peacekeeper War. The exact importance of the wormhole weapon relative to the Eidolons in ending the war is still hotly debated. Stannisso Reandve has edited sixteen arguments on the issue in a datafile entitled *In Search of Peace*, which is recommended for further study of the issue.
But all of this is the historical Crichton. His existence was not in doubt, nor was the fact that he played some role in the return of the Eidolons, nor that he had something to do with the destruction of most of two fleets with a wormhole weapon. Most controversial is the rest of Crichton's history. The single most confusing issue may be the Jocacean incident. While there is in fact historical evidence that Crichton was somehow involved in the struggle which ended with the slaughter of the Jocacean nurses, there has yet to be any satisfactory explanation of how this is possible. Many of the stories from the region known as Tormented Space have also been extremely difficult to verify. Pre-revolutionary Khurtanen may have had a visit, as at least one Leviathan did visit the planet during the correct time frame. However, it is not the case that Sun, Chiana, and Shanu inspired the women of Khurtanen to revolt, as the equality movement was verifiably in existence for some time before Moya ever entered Tormented Space.
A contentious debate which shows no sign of imminent resolution is that surrounding Crichton's alleged visit to the minor planet of Sykar in the former Uncharted Territories. The local legend, and its supporters at the University of Sykar, insist that Crichton not only visited Sykar almost four cycles before the war, but helped them gain independence from the Peacekeepers, despite the fact that Peacekeeper territory never extended to Sykar. However, the latest research to come out of Sykar actually raises a valid point. One of the most outrageous elements of the legend involves explosive Hynerian body fluid. The latest studies at the University of Sykar have shown that Hynerian ingestion of tannot root -- the primary export of Sykar and long one of its food staples -- does indeed result in explosive body fluids. Sykarian scholars have offered the challenge of explaining why their legend documented the Hynerian reaction to tannot before anyone else knew of it if the basis of the legend never actually occurred. This evidence has still not been thoroughly discussed by the historical community, but is likely to change the Sykarian debate.
One especially intriguing portion of Dominar Rygel's autobiography discusses the experience of battling Charrids on Dam-Ba-Da, mentioning in passing that Crichton was present. If this is true, it undoubtedly shows the dominar's character in a positive light. More importantly, however, it is important evidence in the Dam-Ba-Da/LoMo debate. Until now, evidence that Crichton was involved in the Dam-Ba-Da incident which destroyed a Scarran Dreadnought was limited to the fact that wormholes, and possibly a more minor form of wormhole weapon, were involved both in drawing the Dreadnought to such an unimportant planet and in destroying it, whereas there are extant visual recordings of Crichton, Ka D'Argo, Chiana, and Joolushko Hovalis embroiled in a series of mishaps on the pleasure planet of LoMo at approximately the same time as the Dreadnought was destroyed. Crichton always denied visiting Dam-Ba-Da at any time after his first cycle in the Uncharted Territories, and the distance between the two worlds is too great to be traversed so quickly, so until now many historians have attributed the Dam-Ba-Da incident to unknown agencies. With this new evidence, however, both the Dam-Ba-Da and LoMo incidents are being reevaluated. As it stands, it appears that Crichton was in two places at once, which is somewhat difficult even for a legendary figure.
The Nebari Civil War was so devastating to the civilization's informational infrastructure that few records of the Nebari Resistance have survived. Because of this, the absence of any evidence of Crichton's involvement with the resistance has not discouraged those who support the stories which suggest it. Apart from the legends, these hypotheses depend heavily on the inferred Resistance ties of the Nebari Chiana, which are also completely unsubstantiated. The "Red Ocean" Banik liberation movement has a somewhat more believable claim on Crichton's involvement, as the former Moyan Stark was a key figure in the movement, and Crichton expressed his sympathy of the movement on at least one occasion. However, Crichton was almost certainly not as involved as is suggested by some of the stories, which assert that Crichton was hopping about threatening garrisons with wormhole weaponry at times when, for example, he was known to be visiting the Eidolon Temple. The most likely explanation is that after he was involved once or twice, garrisons found it more palatable to claim to have been intimidated by the Destroyer of Worlds than to admit they were overcome by unarmed Baniks. Dominar Rygel's autobiography says little about either of these conflicts, but does assert that Crichton must have been involved somehow with "Red Ocean": "It is the only explanation for that preposterous name." Moya and her Pilot are purportedly unable to recall anything about the entire period except D'Argo Sun Crichton's early piloting lessons and Zhaan Sun Crichton's attempts to repair DRDs, and other anecdotes of similar significance. Crichton's political involvement after the Scarran-Peacekeeper war remains essentially a mystery.
To conclude on a lighter note, Dobs Kavinn is working on a textual analysis of Crichton's surviving writings, mostly a little correspondence with his children and those fragments of his journals not destroyed before his death. Kavinn's object is to determine the provenance of a small collection of verses written in Crichton's native language. Crichton was never known as a poet, but, Kavinn says, if these poems are in fact attributed to him, it would in no way change that view. "I don't even know what roses and violets are, and already I'm tired of reading about them."