On Nov 18, 2003, at 14:25 , Philip Hart wrote: > Dumb question, but is Sethra technically a noble? I can certainly > imagine > she's been knighted or whatever, but maybe titles, uhh, expire upon > death. > Or she might not have bothered. I believe I recall Vlad saying she > likes > to be announced as just SL - maybe he doesn't realize there's nothing > more > to be announced... You know, this is a very interesting question. According to _Five Hundred Years After_ (which I've just re-read after reading LoCB; I'm not some geek who remembers every tiny... detail... Well, ok, maybe I'm that too... :) ), Sethra's parentage is unknown. Now, nobility is just hereditary, or you have to earn a title (and accept it, which I'm not sure whether Sethra would or would not do), which I'm sure that Sethra has earned many, many times over. However, she does hold Dzur mountain and surrounding environs, so she must be some form of noble or other. Just because people don't choose to live & farm on Dzur mountain, you can hardly fault Sethra... :) I'd have to say that if she's been Warlord countless times, it is likely that she is a noble of some form. Speaking of all of this, and I'm not trying to get off-topic (ha! As if topic-coherence has any place in this mailing list), you'd have to wonder is she a noble in House Dzur or House Dragon? She's been called a Dragonlord by none less than Emperor Tortaalik I (in FHYA, though I forget exactly where; in the part where Tortaalik is speaking to Noima about Sethra & Aliera challenging each other daily to duels, he says something like "Are they not Dragonlords?"), and someone tell us (in _Issola_, IIRC) that she's a Dzur. She's definitely beaten enough Dzur champions to earn a place in House Dzur (though, technically, I believe the House has to CHOOSE the champions for one to defeat to be included, and it has always sounded to me like they just spontaneously start charging up the mountain on their own and are not sent up by the House), and even if she hasn't is there any doubt that she could? But, finally, does any of this matter to Sethra? Does she really care if she's a noble or not? Probably not, I would assume. I'm sure she's not so stuffy that any of this would make one teckla's hindquarters difference to her. -- Matthew S. Klahn Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc. http://www.codetek.com