At 12:07 PM 6/7/2002 -0400, Chris Turkel wrote: >I think part of Cawti's behavior had to do with her marriage falling >apart. Spouses do odd things during divorce (been there, done that) so I >can understand, to a point. What was frustrating was that she was in with >a group whose rebellion was doomed to failure, she had to know that, yet >she didn't try to stop them. This ties in with a lot of the problem I had with her change in Teckla. Cawti's having a political or social epiphany is perfectly in character (she was expressing more open concern for the plight of Easterners than Vlad as early as _Yendi_.) It wasn't in character for her IQ to apparently drop about fifty points. The Cawti of the earlier books was smart and aware of the world she lived in (as she could hardly help being, given the situation surrounding her partner and best friend). The Cawti of Teckla comes across as stubbornly refusing to acknowledge basic facts about her world that she's known since she was a child. It's one thing to take up a quixotic quest against impossible odds. It's another to act as if those odds don't exist. Half her conversations with Vlad come across as her ignoring (or rather, willfully choosing to ignore) the physical reality of the Cycle and the raw power at the disposal of the Empire and the noble Houses, not to mention her own personal experience with Imperial politics (or at least with people who are involved in Imperial politics). In any case, the issue of realism is, to some extent, a secondary one for me. Even if it could be shown that some real figure was a one-to-one match with Cawti's progression in her political opinions and her personal life, what it comes down to is this: I liked reading about Cawti before _Teckla_. I'm just as happy that she's faded mostly to the background now. That's not a matter of wanting her to stay as she was-- Vlad's changed quite a bit, and I still like reading about him. But Cawti's become such a prickly, intolerant, and unpleasant person (even talking to Kiera in _Orca_, she was cordial, but not warm) that I just find that the scenes with her leave me cold. Mike