<snip> > > > Also, in the "Paarfi is a big liar" vein, there's the speech patterns. > > There is absolutely no way that everyone goes from talking like that to > > speaking in the way that Vlad relates their speech in only a > > handful of years (a comparitive eyeblink!). Can you imagine Sethra Lavode > > taking four paragraphs to say something when three words would do? Of > > course not. > > Who knows. People may well make allowances for Vlad's short lifespan; > they are an unusual crowd anyway - Morrolan in particular ought naturally > to speak like an Easterner. Don't I remember some comment Vlad makes about affecting the speech patterns of the nobility, regarding their insistence on longer, flowery speech than what he commonly communicates to the reader? I'm thinking of a scene at Castle Black in particular, though for the life of me I can't remember which book it's in. So maybe it's toned down a bit from TPG days, and in part Paarfi exaggerates the speech patterns, and in part Vlad just does not relate the more flowery stuff when he's talking. I don't think it's altogether unreasonable to think that Sethra really talks more like Paarfi says she does than Vlad says she does....although Sethra is a weird case of nobility/Jhereg and so her speech (and perhaps, as you say, Morollan's Eastern affected speech) might be more like Vlad's colloquial than Paarfi's rendition. But they might be the exceptions to the rule. Shawn