Peter Wiggin: Difference between revisions

In the science fiction story Ender's Game and its sequels, Peter Wiggin is Ender's (or Andrew's) older brother. Both him and Valentine are extremely intelligent, but he is considered too harsh. THe International Fleet granted a special waiver to have a "third" child: Ender.

Ender Quartet

In Ender's Game Ender is sent away in Battle School to be trained to fight the Formics. Peter, at the age of 12, convinces Valentine to use their parents' network identities (and eventually their own) to submit to the world great and influential writings under the names of Locke (Peter) and Demosthenes (Valentine). Together they keep the world united, gain respect, and are paid handsomely for their columns.

After the buggers are defeated, Peter sends his brother Ender away; Valentine joins Ender, leaving Peter the only Wiggin child left. At the end of the novel, he has united the world under the office of Hegemon and is dying from a weak heart. He communicates by ansible and tells Ender all that he has done and what he tried to do. Ender writes Hegemon and signs it Speaker for the Dead. During the 3,000-year gap between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, both Hive Queen (about the Formics) and Hegemon become holy writ and spawn a new order of Speakers. Speakers write and talk about a person's intentions and what they tried to.

In Xenocide, Ender splits into three people: himself, Young Valentine, and Young Peter. Young Peter carries a OCD cure to the world of Path (Ender's Game). In Children of the Mind, he travles to worlds with Si Wang-Mu, persuading other leaders in the Hundred Worlds that the Fleet constitutes a second xenocide. His efforts work, as the Fleet is narrowly averted.

Shadow Quartet

Orson Scott Card writes the back story to Peter's rise to power, beginning in Shadow of the Hegemon. In that story, Sister Carlotta and Bean convince Peter that the beginning of the road to peace is to accept the position of Hegemon. Peter declares himself to be the writer behind Locke and Demotheses, but says that he cannot accept it because he is too young. He takes the office of Hegemon under the pretext of uniting the world (its power has been stripped down). He does consultation work in Haiti to show his abilities. At the end of the novel, he uses his power to allow China to bloodlessly conquer India.

In Shadow Puppets, Peter invites Achilles to work for him despite the danger Peter is in. In the previous novel, Peter was the writer who exposed Achilles in the previous book and forced him to abandon his plans for conquest. Achilles moves to subvert the Hegemony and forces Peter to go up into space. Up there, Colonel Graff gets suspicions that Achilles will attempt to kill Peter and his parents when they cme back to Earth. Graff sends a dummy ship that Achilles blows up; in doing this, Achilles all but seals his doom, since will want to openly associate with him. Peter retakes the Hegemony.

Shadow of the Giant comes back to Peter's conquest to unite the world and shows his diplomatic and politiclal manuvering. He creates the Free People of Earth, a contract by all people who have ratified it. It begins slowly, but quickens when he uses Bean to swiftly defeat armies. At the very end of the novel, only the United States has not joined, but the world as a whole is united and peaceful. As previously shown in Ender's Game, Peter talks to Ender one last time before his death. This depiction is much more detailed; Peter apologizes to Ender for his behavior, and Ender seems to have forgiven him. He says, "I think I can write about you," and writes Hegemon.

Some loose ends have not been rectified, however. In Xenocide, it is revealed that the Free People of Earth collapsed soon after Peter's death and was later replaced by Starways Congress.