Mistress Empire

Mistress Empire
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Mistress of the Empire is a fantasy novel by American writers Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts . It is the third and final book in the Empire Trilogy and was published in 1992. It was preceded by Servant of the Empire , which was published in 1990.

After rising to power, Mara of the Acoma must now face the power of the brotherhood of assassins, the spies of rival houses, and the might of the Assembly, who see her as a threat to their power.

In the last novel of the series, Mara's actions in the first two books come back to haunt her. Although revered by the general population as the Servant of the Empire, her enemies plot revenge. Mara's son and heir Ayaki is killed by the Hamoi Tong in an attempt on Mara's life. Although the tong is known for preserving the secrecy of its employers, a token of the Anasati house is found in the assassin's hiding place. With her heart set on vengeance, Mara, as leader of Clan Hadama, calls for war with Clan Ionani, of which the Anasati, led by Lord Jiro, are a member. The Assembly of Magicians, "Great Ones" tasked with protecting the Empire, forbid the war, claiming the conflict would tear the Empire apart.

Two years later, an assassin of the Hamoi Tong poses as a Midkemian trader and poisons Mara with a chocolate drink. Mara's Spy Master Arakasi ruthlessly tortures the apothecary who sold the poison in order to find an antidote, and her husband Hokanu, although ambushed by assassins, manages to survive and return with the recipe. Mara survives, but her unborn child dies, and it is discovered that Mara will be able to bear only one more child. As she recovers, Arakasi is given the task of destroying the Hamoi Tong by stealing its records.

Mara gives birth to Hokanu's daughter, who is named Kasuma, but Hokanu's reluctance to accept a girl as his heir damages the intimate connection between him and Mara. Arakasi infiltrates the tong, killing its leader and stealing the records. On delivery, it is discovered that the death of Hokanu's father, Kamatsu, had been paid for by Jiro. Mara realizes that the Great Ones forbade the war against the Anasati as a result of a centuries-long policy of keeping Tsurani culture in stagnation, as well as a fear that she will be responsible for a radical upheaval in society. Hoping to find a way to resist the Assembly, Mara commits her children to the protection of the Emperor and journeys to the heart of the Thuril Highlands and Chakaha, the city of the cho-ja, where she convinces the cho-ja to aid her. Two cho-ja mages—powerful creatures whose presence in the Empire is forbidden under the terms of an ancient treaty between the Tsurani cho-ja and the Assembly—return with her to her estates, where she immediately learns that the Emperor Ichindar has been assassinated and that all the Houses of the Empire are mobilizing for war.

Mara quickly realizes that her enemies, the Anasati foremost among them, seek to claim the Emperor's Golden Throne and that it is Jiro's intention to marry the late Emperor's daughter, Jehilia. Mara's children, trapped in the Imperial City of Kentosani, represent major threats to anyone who wishes to take the throne; in particular, because of her adoption into the Imperial Family in Servant of the Empire , Mara's twelve-year-old son, Justin, is Ichindar's closest living male relative. Allies of the Anasati are situated within immediate range of Kentosani, and although the Acoma army is able to block reinforcements, neither Mara, Hokanu, or Jiro can initiate the conflict without incurring the wrath of the Assembly. Fighting breaks out amongst other Houses, but without the involvement of the Acoma, Shinzawai, or Anasati, no definite conclusion can be reached.

Mara and Jiro are summoned to Kentosani by the Assembly; Jiro, who is several days closer, orders his allies to attack the city once he is inside, while Mara devises a way to disrupt his plans. She takes ten guards and makes her way toward Kentosani, while her oldest advisers and a large honour guard provide a distraction on the main roads. At the same time, she commands her army to attack the Anasati army, and though the Acoma are the larger force the battle is interrupted by the Great Ones, who force a withdrawal and, after questioning her Force Commander, begin to suspect her alliance with the cho-ja. They set out to find her, but in an expensive sacrifice the decoy force succeed in taunting a hot-headed Great One into destroying them all, allowing her time to avoid an Anasati ambush and enter a cho-ja hive.

Hokanu launches a mounted attack on Jiro's own honor guard, who prove ill-prepared to fight against men on horseback. Hokanu strangles Jiro, then proceeds toward Kentosani. The Great Ones, angered by Mara's new alliance, inadvertently break their treaty with the cho-ja in an attempt to kill her, and the cho-ja mages are able to transport her to the Imperial City. A marriage is hastily arranged between Justin and Jehilia, which takes place as the Great Ones try to breach wards set by the cho-ja. Justin's coronation is completed just as the Great Ones are about to break through, but, faced with a new emperor who holds the support of the temples (and the Gods), they are forced to accept Mara as Regent as well as the introduction of a new social order.

The series ends with a reunion between Mara and Kevin of Zūn, who returns to Tsuranuanni as an ambassador from The Kingdom of the Isles , unknowing that he has fathered a child, and shocked to find his son upon the Imperial Throne. Kevin and Mara, who has divorced Hokanu, quickly resume their romance.

Arakasi, Mara's Spymaster, is focused upon more in this novel: he falls in love whilst infiltrating the Hamoi Tong, and his struggle to reconcile his emotions and his profession form a running subplot.

Home / Empire′s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper

Empire′s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper

Book

Pages: 232
Illustrations: 41 illustrations

Published: February 2021

In Empire's Mistress Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez follows the life of Filipina vaudeville and film actress Isabel Rosario Cooper, who was the mistress of General Douglas MacArthur. If mentioned at all, their relationship exists only as a salacious footnote in MacArthur's biography—a failed love affair between a venerated war hero and a young woman of Filipino and American heritage. Following Cooper from the Philippines to Washington, D.C. to Hollywood, where she died penniless, Gonzalez frames her not as a tragic heroine, but as someone caught within the violent histories of U.S. imperialism. In this way, Gonzalez uses Cooper's life as a means to explore the contours of empire as experienced on the scale of personal relationships. Along the way, Gonzalez fills in the archival gaps of Cooper's life with speculative fictional interludes that both unsettle the authority of “official” archives and dislodge the established one-dimensional characterizations of her. By presenting Cooper as a complex historical subject who lived at the crossroads of American colonialism in the Philippines, Gonzalez demonstrates how intimacy and love are woven into the infrastructure of empire.

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Archival Detritus, Fabrications, Second Takes, and Other Provocations 1. This Is Not a Love Story 1 2. Death Certificate, Partial 13 3. A General and Unruly Wards 15 4. The Flower of Cathay, Excerpts 28 5. Misapprehensions 30 6. The Farm Boy and the Unbiddable Wife 32 7. The Delicate Moonbeam 48 8. "Dimples": Innocence (Colonial Kink) 49 9. Stage Presence 67 10. Letters Lost at Sea, Imagined, Excerpts 69 11. The New Filipina, Kissing 72 12. Gossip: Fiction and Nonfiction 86 13. "It Girl" Meets General 89 14. Recipe for the Douglas 93 15. The Washington Housewife, the Hollywood Hula Girl, and the Two Husbands: Reinventions 94 16. Out of Place 111 17. 1st Filipina Nurse, Geisha, Little Sergeant, Javanese Nurse, Uncredited 112 18. Lolita's Lines 127 19. Bit Parts: Racial Types, Ensemble 128 20. Caged Birds 149 21. For Future Archives, Apocrypha, and Fictions 160 22. Death Certificate, Entire 165 23. The Suicide 167 24. Last Review 170 Acknowledgments 173 Notes 177 Filmography (with Roles) 199 Bibliography 203 Index 215
Sales/Territorial Rights: World Rights and licensing

Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1400-3
/

Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4780-1186-6

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“Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez crafts a gorgeous and meticulous portrait of one of the most intriguing women of the twentieth century, Isabel Rosario Cooper. Woven out of ghosts of texts and archival fractures and gaps, Empire's Mistress is a replete mystery tale, a feminist biography, a Hollywood story, an intimate study of Philippine-U.S. relations, and a masterful work of postcolonial noir. Above all, Empire's Mistress is a haunting, by which afterlives of empire address our contemporary dilemmas about how to articulate, frame, and center unspoken lives to tell history accurately. A deeply satisfying work of exhumation, Empire's Mistress makes complex history live, and I'm grateful for Gonzalez's unflinching, refractive, and always revelatory gaze on that history.” — Gina Apostol, author of Insurrecto
“Imaginatively tracing the life of Isabel Rosario Cooper in and through the elisions and silences of the archives, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez makes a significant contribution to rethinking the process of archival research when it involves marginalized subjects whose existence appears sporadically in the historical accounts of others. A compelling read.” — Vicente L. Rafael, author of Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation
"Gonzalez’s book is part- excavation, part-celebration of Cooper, that puts the story of MacArthur and his mistress into a new context, and not necessarily in a sordid way. Gonzalez is mindful at all times that Cooper was a daughter of colonization. That is why you read this book, to see another small-scale, personal perspective of the U.S. Philippines relationship where colonial mentality is more than a massive headache." — Emil Guillermo, Philippine Inquirer
“ Empire’s Mistress is a dynamic text at the cutting edge of transdisciplinary research and will appeal to lay readers looking for a juicy noir tale and to scholars of women’s history, twentieth century US–Philippines political relations, and postcolonial and cultural studies. Gonzalez’s writing against the archival grain is a pleasure to read.” — Thea Quiray Tagle, Philippine Studies
“ Empire’s Mistress is a clever reflection of both the disjointed American imperial archive and the non-linear life Cooper had invented for herself. . . . Gonzalez not only engages in interdisciplinary analyses and methodologies to study the archive, but beautifully interweaves multiple genres—academic prose, poetry, playwriting, and art—to speculate a historical narrative that dances on the fine line between fiction and non-fiction.” — Kristin Oberiano, Western Historical Quarterly
“[Gonzalez] insists on a speculative archival reading that allows Cooper to move from being the object of the possessive to a framing that makes her a different kind of subject . . . ultimately centering and valuing the intimate knowledges formed and passed between women who experience the violence of empire.” — Rachel Yim, Women & Performance
“Gonzalez is . . . especially lively when she is highlighting her personal discovery of archival documents. . . . Her glimpses into early Manila and the colonial life of American soldiers who married Filipina women was fascinating, and the best-researched part of this tale.” — Kirby Pringle, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
“ Empire’s Mistress is a work of art—figuratively and literally—that unearths the engrossing life of Isabel Rosario Cooper. . . . It is an archetype of how archival research should be repurposed.” — Luis Zuriel P. Domingo, Sojourn
Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, author of Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i and the Philippines , and coeditor of Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai‘i , both also published by Duke University Press.
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