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narcasseI’ve been sitting on a few ideas that I wanted to jot down and have finally given up on the idea of expanding on them all in long, rambly posts mostly because I could get to the point rather more succinctly without that preamble. So, in no particular order:
- It may be possible that Dietrich’s body language that conflicts with his words/actions may not entire be his own contrivance. If he’s spent that much time around Cain he might easily have learnt, subconsciously, that those gentle/comforting/friendly gestures are the norm even if you are threatening to make someone blow their own companion’s head off. Or rather while he might know intellectually that the two things don’t marry up, he’s learnt from observation that they’re a pretty good method of unsettling your opponent.
- Caterina’s dependency on Abel is actually psychological. She’s not a soldier, that isn’t her function, so it’s not as if she’s ever going to be in a situation where she’s not physically defended. She’s a Prince of the Church after all and it would be particularly undignified for her not to be surrounded by her own personal guard. Nor does she need Abel to advise her when it comes to state decisions: she’s head of AX because she can make those decisions, and make them well, by herself. Emotionally she does well enough by herself too; if she didn’t she wouldn’t have reached the position that she holds in the first place. But despite all this Abel saved her when she was very young and as a result she still believes that she needs him to be on hand should she need saving again. It’s not rational in the slightest but that sort of response to a major trauma rarely is.
- If Gyula’s title is legitimate and Hungaria has never been under Imperial control, which would have allowed the Empress to award the territory to a loyal follower, then his possession of the title may be due to his marriage to Maria. In which case Maria as Marquise of Hungaria bestowed the title of Marquis upon a Methuselah simply by the fact of marrying him.
- The Vatican prayers, stock phrases and Biblical quotes may well be the product of translation error but I can’t tell which side that will have occurred on. They certainly don’t sound much like anything formally Catholic and in the case of the Biblical quotes they make less sense that the ‘modern’ Bibles that employ phrases like “My name is Mob for we are many”. I can see what the phrases used are aiming at certainly but they’re always wide of the mark which may be the fault of Latin being translated into any other number of languages historically, then into Japanese and then into English. Though presumably there ought to be formal translations into Japanese in which case I’ll put their bizarreness down to bad translation from Japanese into English and a lack of decent editing when it comes to the story.
- It may be possible that Dietrich’s body language that conflicts with his words/actions may not entire be his own contrivance. If he’s spent that much time around Cain he might easily have learnt, subconsciously, that those gentle/comforting/friendly gestures are the norm even if you are threatening to make someone blow their own companion’s head off. Or rather while he might know intellectually that the two things don’t marry up, he’s learnt from observation that they’re a pretty good method of unsettling your opponent.
- Caterina’s dependency on Abel is actually psychological. She’s not a soldier, that isn’t her function, so it’s not as if she’s ever going to be in a situation where she’s not physically defended. She’s a Prince of the Church after all and it would be particularly undignified for her not to be surrounded by her own personal guard. Nor does she need Abel to advise her when it comes to state decisions: she’s head of AX because she can make those decisions, and make them well, by herself. Emotionally she does well enough by herself too; if she didn’t she wouldn’t have reached the position that she holds in the first place. But despite all this Abel saved her when she was very young and as a result she still believes that she needs him to be on hand should she need saving again. It’s not rational in the slightest but that sort of response to a major trauma rarely is.
- If Gyula’s title is legitimate and Hungaria has never been under Imperial control, which would have allowed the Empress to award the territory to a loyal follower, then his possession of the title may be due to his marriage to Maria. In which case Maria as Marquise of Hungaria bestowed the title of Marquis upon a Methuselah simply by the fact of marrying him.
- The Vatican prayers, stock phrases and Biblical quotes may well be the product of translation error but I can’t tell which side that will have occurred on. They certainly don’t sound much like anything formally Catholic and in the case of the Biblical quotes they make less sense that the ‘modern’ Bibles that employ phrases like “My name is Mob for we are many”. I can see what the phrases used are aiming at certainly but they’re always wide of the mark which may be the fault of Latin being translated into any other number of languages historically, then into Japanese and then into English. Though presumably there ought to be formal translations into Japanese in which case I’ll put their bizarreness down to bad translation from Japanese into English and a lack of decent editing when it comes to the story.
