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truepennyQ: Where did Mildmay get his name from, in story? I know where his first name comes from, but where did he get the fox epithet from, and why? I'm guessing it has to do with him becoming a more established assassin, but how does that automatically equal fox?
A: Mildmay is called "the Fox" partly because his cheekbones give him a foxish look (and, of course, once the dye is stripped out, his hair is fox-colored, but nobody (except Kolkhis) knows that when they start calling him the Fox, so it's just one of those little narrative ironies). There's also a lot of folklore in Meduse associated with foxes and their cunning, their ability to evade or escape traps. Foxes are liars, and also storytellers. And like anyone who's willing to be an assassin for hire, they are amoral. It fit him.
Q: firstly, was there a reason that the Bastion didn't want Gideon back after he was captured with Mavortian von Heber and Bernard, and secondly, what was it that Gideon had on Thaddeus that he wasn't telling Mildmay about?
A: I don't know the answer to the second question--I have never been able to figure out Gideon and Thaddeus's backstory. But to answer the first question, the Bastion let the Duke of Aiaia have Gideon to make an example out of. Cementing good relations with the local leaders, etc.
Q: I was also wondering, how did you come up with the word ´annemer´ for non-magical person? Is it because the (duplicated!) ´n´ wich in various European languages is a negation? (Sidetrack There´s also that word in J.K. Rowling´s universe, where to me it sounds very negative: a blunt, snubbed and cut off sound).
A: I actually don't remember how I came up with "annemer." It probably has to do with a- being a Greek negating prefix (e.g., amnesia, aphasia, etc.), but honestly, even that is just speculation. I don't remember doing any particularly deep cogitation about it (if I did, I'd probably remember the derivation); sometimes I just reach for a word and take what presents itself. "Mikkary" was like that, too (although the pun on misery, as Felix remarks, is obvious).
Q: You use or repurpose a lot of uncommon words (for instance, "Margrave") and slang (molly, violet boy, janus). Coralines seem to be a rosary type prayer/meditation aid, although many cultures use beads or knotted string. When I google "coraline" however, I get Neil Gaiman's book, and definitions of the name (from coral! like "crystalline", I guess). Is a coraline something that exists as an object, or is it simply a word you borrowed to describe something familiar and make it foreign?
A: Yes, a coraline is a rosary. Since rosaries get their name from having originally been made of dried rose petals (unless that's an urban legend), I was looking for something that could have a similar origin: coralines, being the devotional aids of a maritime people, were originally made with coral. (And yes, magpie-like, I did lift the word itself from Neil's book.)
Q: Kept thieves don't have last names, although whores seem to (at least, Vincent does, but then he comes from what seems to be solidly middle class or higher, originally...). Are there other social classes that lack last names? Is this part of a class thing? Does Cardenio having a last name signify anything?
A: Yes, it is a class thing, the distinction between the working class and what probably gets called the criminal class, although that's a misnomer: kept-thieves and whores and pack kids, spiders and pimps and resurrectionists, sangermen and ketches and cade-skiffs. The people who make their living, legally or illegally or some of both, in Mélusine's underbelly. But of course people with surnames can end up in those places, and they may or may not choose to drop the surname, just as people without surnames have nothing to prevent them choosing to adopt one. So it's not reliable.
Cardenio is almost certainly of working class origins, so Richey is the surname he was born with.
Q: We know the specific type of gem used in the rings of several different wizards in the series, and that Felix has had two different gems in his rings. Do the gems used in a wizard's rings have any meaning attached to them?
A: Cabalines (and Troian wizards--another thing apparently communicated between the two cultures by the wizards of Cymellune, like the calendar) believe that particular gems have affinities for particular types of magic, so as a wizard becomes more skilled and more politically/socially powerful, s/he will probably buy rings to suit. Felix's silver and moonstone rings that Malkar corrupted, for instance, are better than the rose agates set in "silver" (i.e., copper under a silver wash) that were the best he could do when he first got free of Malkar (and, no, that bit of backstory never made it into the books), but they're not as attuned to his particular talents as the gold and garnet rings the Celebrants give him. I never worked out the gemology in detail, but it is not accidental that Felix's gold and garnets are so perilously close to Malkar's gold and rubies.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
A: Mildmay is called "the Fox" partly because his cheekbones give him a foxish look (and, of course, once the dye is stripped out, his hair is fox-colored, but nobody (except Kolkhis) knows that when they start calling him the Fox, so it's just one of those little narrative ironies). There's also a lot of folklore in Meduse associated with foxes and their cunning, their ability to evade or escape traps. Foxes are liars, and also storytellers. And like anyone who's willing to be an assassin for hire, they are amoral. It fit him.
Q: firstly, was there a reason that the Bastion didn't want Gideon back after he was captured with Mavortian von Heber and Bernard, and secondly, what was it that Gideon had on Thaddeus that he wasn't telling Mildmay about?
A: I don't know the answer to the second question--I have never been able to figure out Gideon and Thaddeus's backstory. But to answer the first question, the Bastion let the Duke of Aiaia have Gideon to make an example out of. Cementing good relations with the local leaders, etc.
Q: I was also wondering, how did you come up with the word ´annemer´ for non-magical person? Is it because the (duplicated!) ´n´ wich in various European languages is a negation? (Sidetrack There´s also that word in J.K. Rowling´s universe, where to me it sounds very negative: a blunt, snubbed and cut off sound).
A: I actually don't remember how I came up with "annemer." It probably has to do with a- being a Greek negating prefix (e.g., amnesia, aphasia, etc.), but honestly, even that is just speculation. I don't remember doing any particularly deep cogitation about it (if I did, I'd probably remember the derivation); sometimes I just reach for a word and take what presents itself. "Mikkary" was like that, too (although the pun on misery, as Felix remarks, is obvious).
Q: You use or repurpose a lot of uncommon words (for instance, "Margrave") and slang (molly, violet boy, janus). Coralines seem to be a rosary type prayer/meditation aid, although many cultures use beads or knotted string. When I google "coraline" however, I get Neil Gaiman's book, and definitions of the name (from coral! like "crystalline", I guess). Is a coraline something that exists as an object, or is it simply a word you borrowed to describe something familiar and make it foreign?
A: Yes, a coraline is a rosary. Since rosaries get their name from having originally been made of dried rose petals (unless that's an urban legend), I was looking for something that could have a similar origin: coralines, being the devotional aids of a maritime people, were originally made with coral. (And yes, magpie-like, I did lift the word itself from Neil's book.)
Q: Kept thieves don't have last names, although whores seem to (at least, Vincent does, but then he comes from what seems to be solidly middle class or higher, originally...). Are there other social classes that lack last names? Is this part of a class thing? Does Cardenio having a last name signify anything?
A: Yes, it is a class thing, the distinction between the working class and what probably gets called the criminal class, although that's a misnomer: kept-thieves and whores and pack kids, spiders and pimps and resurrectionists, sangermen and ketches and cade-skiffs. The people who make their living, legally or illegally or some of both, in Mélusine's underbelly. But of course people with surnames can end up in those places, and they may or may not choose to drop the surname, just as people without surnames have nothing to prevent them choosing to adopt one. So it's not reliable.
Cardenio is almost certainly of working class origins, so Richey is the surname he was born with.
Q: We know the specific type of gem used in the rings of several different wizards in the series, and that Felix has had two different gems in his rings. Do the gems used in a wizard's rings have any meaning attached to them?
A: Cabalines (and Troian wizards--another thing apparently communicated between the two cultures by the wizards of Cymellune, like the calendar) believe that particular gems have affinities for particular types of magic, so as a wizard becomes more skilled and more politically/socially powerful, s/he will probably buy rings to suit. Felix's silver and moonstone rings that Malkar corrupted, for instance, are better than the rose agates set in "silver" (i.e., copper under a silver wash) that were the best he could do when he first got free of Malkar (and, no, that bit of backstory never made it into the books), but they're not as attuned to his particular talents as the gold and garnet rings the Celebrants give him. I never worked out the gemology in detail, but it is not accidental that Felix's gold and garnets are so perilously close to Malkar's gold and rubies.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
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Annemer
Date: 2009-04-20 04:52 pm (UTC)Re: Annemer
From:Re: Annemer
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-04-20 10:16 pm (UTC) - Expandno subject
Date: 2009-04-20 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 05:57 pm (UTC)Aha! Glad to see I wasn't just being paranoid when I noticed that correlation.
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Date: 2009-04-20 06:20 pm (UTC)Why would sangermen and cade-skiffs be lumped in with kept-thieves and pack kids, especially when cade-skiffs seem to carry a certain respect even in the Mirador? I could see them as similar to garbagemen, not people who'd be invited to mingle with their social superiors but providing necessary services, unlike the "criminal classes." Becoming a cade-skiff is certainly a career; and I'm sure you know that the public executioner was often a well-respected person at many times in English history.
Also (and apologies if I should have submitted this question to the q&a entry, but it follows on from this discussion), it seems clear that being a cade-skiff involves "mysteries" as part of their duties of recovering and identifying bodies found in the Sim. What were these "mysteries", and are cade-skiffs regarded in some way as priests, or at least servants, of Cade-Cholera? Sue Lambiris
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Date: 2009-04-20 08:28 pm (UTC)This is, of course, subjective, but then it´s by sounds (among other things) I used to try to parse through poems while studying.
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Date: 2009-04-20 11:58 pm (UTC)