One of the things that might be an inconsistency in the tales of Dragaera is that Vlad (and Cawti) appear to be familiar with Paarfi's works, despite the fact that /The Phoenix Guards/ seems to have been published 80 or 90 years after Vlad's current time. I belive I have found a reasonable explanation. A few weeks ago, I watched a cable show on CSPAN called "BookTV", which, as it turns out, is archived on the web: http://www.booktv.org/history/index.asp?schedid=228&segid=4079 This particular reading was by Simon Winchester on the history of the Oxford English Dictionary. I highly recommend watching it if you have Realplayer. Mr. Winchester is a very amusing speaker, full of snarky asides and humorous lexographic anecdotes, e.g. (apropos Aubrey & Maturin), one of the quotes is as follows: RETREAT is the order in which a French fleet retires before an enemy. As it is not properly a term of the British Marine, any fuller account would be entirely out of place. -- A Dictionary of Marine Terms, Faulkener (sp?), 18th Cent At any rate, one of the points that Mr. Winchester made is that the OED was not published all in one go, but rather in parts called "fascicles" (which the OED itself defines as: 2. A part, number, 'livraison' (of a work published by instalments)[1]) (as also confirmed here: http://dictionary.oed.com/about/history.html ) So for example, Volume A-Ant was published on Jan. 1 1884, but the entire work was not completed until 4 decades later. I think it not unreasonable that /The Phoenix Guards/ was being released in fascicles, and these are what Cawti and Vlad had read. After all, academics need to eat, and given the leisurely pace at which this work is being researched and written, I think it very nearly necessary to publish the parts as they become available, only to be published in combined book form when the work is finally finished. [1] And might I note that it is vaguely worrisome when the venerable OED has a misspelling...