Since I had occasion to have a look at the Devera FAQ for the first time in a long time, I was struck by the discussion between Miklos and Devera that's reproduced there. Namely, this: '"You are fully of Faerie blood, are you not, Devera?" '"Yes."' When Brokedown Palace came out there were only a couple of Vlad books out and in the greater scheme of things that particular line didn't make an impression on me other than as an acknowledgement that we were having a conversation between a Dragaeran and an Easterner. Looking at this now, though, I have to ask - Why is it phrased this way? That is, why doesn't Miklos ask "You are an elf, are you not Devera?" For that matter, why ask at all when it ought to be fairly obvious? At the time that Brokedown Palace came out I considered it more allegory than canonical material. Now that at least some of the material in that book has entered the canon (various references to Fenario, the re-telling of Fenarr's invasion of the pepper fields, etc...) In light of that, I have to look at the quote above and wonder about it. There are two conclusions to be drawn from Miklos' question. The first is that it's possible for a person to have "partial" Faerie blood. The second is that it's difficult to tell the difference between a young Easterner and a young Dragaeran or at least between a half-breed and a full-blood. Given that Dragaeran women choose when to conceive, the number of cross-breeds between an Easterner father and a Dragaeran mother must be nearly non-existent. There are examples of Dragaeran women who are attracted to Easterners. Zerika is the primary example. A second is in Yendi, where one of Vlad's "button men" going off on a dangerous assignment tells him "Boss, if I don't make it back, my woman lives at thus-and-such street. She's got a thing for Easterners." Sexual perversion aside (if Vlad looks at it that way, then we can assume it's the general consensus) Zerika IS in love with Laszlo and might very well be foolish enough to conceive his child if she thought it was actually possible and she was ready to turn over the orb to the House of the Dragon. Do Dragaeran men also have control of their breeding? Would a Dragaeran man who raped an Easterner (these things happen in the aftermath of wars) care about such matters? Conceivably, there have been Dragaeran men who have fallen in love with Eastern women ala Zerika and Laszlo. The chances of an "accident" in such a case would much greater given the difference between the two races. You're a Dragaeran and you have a half-breed bastard but you don't have the heart to kill the child and mother. What do you do? Pretty obvious thing to do would be to ship them back East. Given the general superstitious nature of the Easterners and the differences in the cultures, it seems to me that it would be much easier for a cross-breed to make a life for himself/herself in the East than in the Empire. In the Empire, such a person would be a non-entity or realistically much worse. In the East, such a person would be treated badly, most likely, but possibly also treated with a certan amount of fear and respect due to having an enchanted origin. At the least, with multiple Eastern kingdoms and cultures to choose from, a cross-breed would have a better chance of finding a place to fit in than in the generally homogenous Empire. All that simply to justify why Miklos would first wonder about her parentage rather than her race, and also be relatively unsurprised by the fact that Devera might be a cross-breed. If it was considered something horrible in Fenario, she wouldn't answer truthfully and he, knowing that, wouldn't ask in the first place. My, what a lot of deduction from one line of one book. *heh* It does make me wonder if we'll ever get a definitive look at what happens when Dragaren culture and Eastern culture come together instead of segregating themselves >from each other.