On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Mark Englehart wrote: >At 10:55 PM 11/9/2003 -0500, Jag wrote: >> Vlad on the other hand has been taught to be loyal to >>Verra by his grandfather, thus giving her a measure of control over >>[him]. >> >> >>Jag > >Excuse me? Verra control Vlad? Admittedly, so far whenever she's >needed him he's answered the call, but this was because he felt his >life was threatened (Phoenix) or the world was going to be destroyed >and his friends lives were threatened (Issola). More to the point, I think Vlad has lost nearly *all* of the respect he once had for the Demon Goddess of his ancestors after seeing her being utterly fallible, in /Phoenix/. And in /Issola/, at one point he thinks she's fighting like a tag in a brothel. If that's respect, I wouldn't want to see what his contempt looks like... >Dolivar was, apparently, a rat bastard. Vlad was actually raised with >a conscience, thanks to Noish-pa; he just spent most of his life trying >to hide from it. Maybe he had a hard enough time with a smart-alecky >jhereg talking in his head that he felt he didn't need Jiminy Cricket too. >I think they put Dolivar in an Easterner so he could a). develop a >conscience, And do so quickly. I think Easterners being short-lived (or at least, developing quicker - Vlad may not die for a long while, due to, well, you know) is an important point. > and b). learn to see things from the other person's point of >view; something next to impossible for a Dragaeran who isn't a Tiassa. > Um. I think you are wildly wrong on this last point. We've seen Sethra be empathic, and gently pushing Tazendra that way (in that great scene in FHYA), and I am rather sure that there are other examples as well. Picking a couple more examples at random: How could Uttrik have forgiven Kathana, if he could not see her outrage over being slighted over something that was incredibly important to her? How could Kathana have agreed to submit to justice, if she could not see Uttrik's grief and loss? And so on. If all of the Dragaerans were truly so blind, they would seem nearly inhuman.