Yeah, Critias likes teh Tir even more than *I* do, and that's saying something.
What you have in the Tir is a sort of 'paper revolution', where a bunch of factions got together and threw the bums out... and then the winning factions broke apart. The end result is that the society didn't actually change so much as the actors on stage did.
Let me start over.
Since forever, teh Tir has had a grumbly underbelly of mostly non-Elves, who hated everything about the Tir. They were sold on a place where all metas would be equal and everyone would get a fair shake to one where ELves are more equal than everyone else and the whole system is rigged. Since Elves compose the majority by *quite* a lot, and are in power, they don't see any reason to change things, so the revolution never really gets going. Oh, sure, there's a movement, but it's about as toothless as when naked protestors show up at a press conference for the Hobbit to protest the mistreatment of animals. People shake their heads, go, "Oh, those guys," and go about their business.
This goes on for a while, until a few things in the Tir upper levels change. Economic turmoil kicks in, there's a bt of a power play behind the scenes, and the Rite of Ascension gets called off. All of a sudden, John Q Elf finds that he has no way to advance in society and that the economy's starting to shrivel up and die. He goes to the Star Council, and finds out that nothing actually happens there. Discontent spreads and suddenly people start manning the rebel movement, and by 'people' I mean 'Elves'. Now, it's turning into a real threat, so the Princes do what always used to work ... hardcore crackdowns. Unfortunately, in the modern age, this doesn't work out so well and sicontent lights up. Someone in the mix breaks out the old "Rebels of teh Spire' terminology which freaks the Princes out, who assume that someone from the past has come back to swat them, and they double-down on the crackdown. Things go badly, more and more people join teh rebellion, and soon, the government is toppled and teh bad eggs are all tossed out.
Huzzah! People power!
The older rebels, however, were the discontented underclass and assumed that everyone had signed on to their idea... tear down the system, rebuild a true democracy, and give everyone equal rights. The majority, however? Oh, that wasn't the problem... society was fine as it was, it's just that the PRINCES had to go! Now the economy can get to work again, we can have proper Rites of Ascension once again, and all will be fine.
So, a real reform took place in the democratic Star Council as a lower house, where the people can actually have a voice, and new Princes were put in place. Society largely went back to just like it was ... Elves in power, the different levels of citizenry, who could own land, racism, and so on. Teh underclass were *pissed* at this betrayal, but had given up a lot of secrets by bringing the rebels into teh mix and found their leadership getting arrested and their old hiding places exposed. They had to throw out everything and start over from scratch since the entire movement was compromised.
In short, the Tir is much like it used to be, only with a friendlier face since the new Princes aren't as set in their ways as the old ones, and is more open since they learned that a closed society is a dead economy. They love tourist Nuyen and want people to visit ... but not stay.
