Empress Theresa: Chapter Fifteen Analysis · 6:35pm May 1st, 2023
Let’s kick this pig. I guess we don’t really find out what happened to former US president Martin after all. All we know is that Martin is very sorry, and no longer has any privacy from the press hounding him day and night.
Whatever. Steve’s having breakfast when he and Theresa are summoned to talk to Blair. Blair informs them that a team of oceanographers have calculated that the ocean levels will rise due to thermal expansion. What’s causing this? Why, Theresa meddling with the Earth’s seasons, of course! It seems that eliminating the season of winter has interrupted the delicate cycle of atmospheric cooling and heating, which also regulates evaporation and precipitation in the world. Or something like that. It’s explained very poorly in the book. They also seem to fixate on the damage that will occur in coastal communities, and everything else from the end of ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ Whatever it is, it’s all Theresa’s fault!!
A lot of jargon is espoused about numbers, temperature, depth, and a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make any sense if you really think about it, rendering this problem not really a problem at all. But the characters don’t seem to realize this and decide to tackle the problems as they come. Steve hits us with the tired cliche, ‘We struggle, then we die.’ Why is Theresa married to this guy again?
Theresa’s solution to the rising water levels is to take a bunch of water out of the ocean, send it into space to freeze, use a lot of numbers and make the giant ice cubes orbit the sun to create a shower of comets. We don’t know how that solves anything, but it sure looks pretty.
Work’s done. Time to tour the British Isles. Somehow their vacation results in Steve ordering some American firefighter helmets. We get some completely bland and unnecessary narration about the design of the helmets and how Theresa gets one with a New York emblem on it to honor the firefighters who died in the 9/11 attacks. What a strange way to express remembrance. And at such an inappropriate time. Even more inappropriate is how Theresa has started a fashion trend of wearing firefighter helmets in public. Just because she wore one, now everyone else is. I’d hate to know what would happen if they saw Theresa’s ‘little black nothing’ dress. I bet Theresa is petty enough to threaten to kill every woman who wears it better than he does (which is probably every woman in existence. Seriously, look at the cover of the book again. That’s Theresa).
However, nobody can truly get in on the trend, because their helmets are not authentic. Talk about gatekeeping.
Next they go to Italy, where all they talk about are the nice people and the landmarks they visit. Also mentioned is how Theresa’s security personnel tackle some people who approach her.
When they get home, Theresa relinquishes control of her little plywood board for controlling the water spouts over to Blair. Why? So that she can give up her responsibilities and have more fun! She and Steve go to Germany next! During Oktoberfest of all times! What great fun! How long has it been since that doomsday clock started again?
The party ends when Blair calls the two of them back to work to meet with a meteorologist who announces that the winds are slowly starting back up again. It seems like giving control of the board to Blair was the right call to make, because he seems to have accomplished in a single afternoon what Theresa’s been trying for months to do. But there’s still the problem of the Earth’s changed axis tilt. It seems that with the increase in temperature, worldwide hurricanes are a threat. The solution: tilt the Earth back. But that would somehow kill a lot of people in Asia. How? They’ve had winter before, haven’t they?
I’m almost certain that the entire point of this chapter is the same as the previous one where Theresa went vacationing around Europe. It’s just to try and convince us that she’s interested in more than herself. I suspect this, because nothing that happens between the meeting with the oceanographers and the meeting with the meteorologists has any bearing on the story at all. And more pages are committed to Theresa’s vacation time than anything that seems to actually hold any weight.
Just like before, the attempt to make Theresa look like a good person fails miserably when Theresa congratulates herself for starting a meaningless trend, then believes that she’s the only one who’s truly in on it. Another point where she fails is the unwarranted assault of an Italian citizen, whose only crime was walking too close to her. An even more stunning failure is having her wear a New York fire helmet to honor the lives lost in the 9/11 attacks. Anyone at all can honor those lives lost. But it won’t make them a good person by default. And simply wearing a symbol won’t do anything to help anyone but yourself, because it’s meant to make people think that you simply feel or think the right way. It reminds me of something that Ricky Gervais said about the aftermath of a tornado in Oklahoma, ‘I feel like an idiot for not praying for them. I only sent them money.’ We will see in future chapters just what a bad person Theresa can be.
The chapter closes out with a quote from ‘King Lear’ to demonstrate more of Boutin’s effort to appear smarter than he actually is. Let’s get out of here. Next chapter’s on Wednesday.
An internet user actually wrote an alternate draft of this chapter which included an interesting twist; instead of just resigning, President Martin killed himself over the botching of the assassination attempt, aware of how bad it would make his administration look.
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That might have had some impact, I must say. But it would just probably be skimmed over just as quickly.
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True. As you've established so meticulously, Boutin has no concept of building a logical narrative or consistent world. And seeing as Theresa causes most of the world's problems in the story, the entire narrative can be summarised thus: