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* SnarkToSnarkCombat: Saevus can't help it, he has to open every conversation with a snarky remark. Not everyone takes the bait, and sometimes the answer is violence, but some do. In particular, Ekkehard [[VitriolicBestBuds lets himself be roped into extended snark-slinging conversations]] on a regular basis.
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Changed line(s) 549 (click to see context) from:
* AntiHero: Saevus is arrogant, callous, selfish, devious and according to anyone who bothers to comment on it annoyingly devoid of any redeeming qualities. He's a FirstPersonSmartass with a criminal past and parental issues, who has found his calling in scavenging battlefields and whose first priority in life is himself. He also actively disliked the brother he [[AccidentalMurder killed accidentally]] and isn't sorry about it. When backed into a corner, he starts what amounts to possibly the biggest war in history just so neither side can get ahold of him, [[spoiler:which ends up as him stalling for time so he can {{take a third option}} and prevent both the war proper as well as bankrupt the major banks that started it, because them getting what they want would mean much more war, misery and death in the long run]]. He's also very much on the noble and helpful side [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold in the small scale things]], which bites him more often than it helps him.
to:
* AntiHero: Saevus is arrogant, callous, selfish, devious and according to anyone who bothers to comment on it annoyingly devoid of any redeeming qualities. He's a FirstPersonSmartass with a criminal past and parental issues, who has found his calling in scavenging battlefields and whose first priority in life is himself. He also actively disliked the brother he [[AccidentalMurder killed accidentally]] and isn't sorry about it. When backed into a corner, he starts what amounts to possibly the biggest war in history just so neither side can get ahold of him, [[spoiler:which ends up as him stalling for time so he can {{take a third option}} and prevent both the war proper as well as bankrupt the major banks that started it, because them getting what they want would mean much more war, misery and death in the long run]]. He's also very much on run. Even with that averted, he is aware that now the noble economy is now fucked and helpful side there will be a famine soon -- and he'd do it again, anyway, to save his own skin]]. He does, however, try to do good [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold in the small scale things]], which bites him more often than it helps him.
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* BirdsOfAFeather: Saevus and Stauracia are both opportunistic heads of their own respective scavenger crews, too stubborn to give up, put their own hides before anyone else's, snarky and surprisingly good at reading other people -- which ends up being the reason they part ways again: Stauracia accepts that Saevus needs time to rediscover who he truly is after decades of pretending to be someone else.
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* EndearinglyDorky: The reason Saevus falls in love with Saturacia is because while she's "evil, treacherous and as sharp as a rusty nail in a plank of wood" she's also fun to be around -- [[BirdsOfAFeather for him, anyway]].
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* LordErrorProne: Sister Stauracia, in her quest to prove to the world her worth as a woman that is equal to men, always ends up fumbling in some way. She is introduced stealing valuables from a battlefield Saevus owns the rights to and when told to hoof it, she convinces the local prince to make Saevus "donate" all the stock he collected from said battlefield to her "good cause" only to be ambushed and left behind by Saevus' crew in the desert. She is then hired by the Poor Sisters to [[ShippedInShackles "escort"]] Saevus to Sirupat only to be outwitted and imprisoned on his orders once there. When she escapes, Stauracia proves to be a pretty cabable commander for the Sisters' army but refuses to acknowledge defeat by numbers which makes her fall into disgrace with the Sisters. Once back on the mainland, she reassambles her own RagtagBunchOfMisfits masquerading as monks and intercepts the bounty hunters' ship carrying Saevus to rescue him and propose a partnership between her charms and his business acuity, which she then calls off nominally because his crew doesn't like her (but actually because Saevus waffles about too long with WhatIsThisFeeling). Saevus concludes that she's actually very capable and smart, just really bad at picking opportunities.
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* WhatIsThisFeeling: The last chapter is unusually introspective for Saevus. He, who usually snarks at any given opportunity, spends days saying nothing and wondering what's wrong with him and how to proceed. It's the first time in two decades he doesn't have to be on alert permanently due to being hunted by a number of powerful factions. He then realises that he has never before been allowed to be himself, only roles he made up to avoid bounty hunters.
* WildCard: It seems impossible to predict where Sister Stauracia will turn up next in her quest to prove herself and make it big in the world. She will take any opportunity or side, be it reciting sermons in the city square, scavenging battlefields for valuable items or leading an army of conquest for a major bank. The one time she decides to try an honest approach is because she falls in love with the person she's just spent weeks trying to capture, manipulate and kill for money, fame and influence. When Saevus agrees to work with her, she calls the partnership off again because he's taking too long to come to terms with everything he'd just miraculously survived.
* WorldOfJerkass: There's not a single genuinely nice person in the entire story. Everyone is out for their own gain, be it in power, money, influence or all of them together by stealing, lying, betraying, blackmailing or just plain violence. Even the people [[LivingMacGuffin Saevus]] -- himself a certified jerk -- calls his friends would leave him to die or sell him to the highest bidder if there was anything in it for them. [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold He accepts them for who they are anyway.]]
* WildCard: It seems impossible to predict where Sister Stauracia will turn up next in her quest to prove herself and make it big in the world. She will take any opportunity or side, be it reciting sermons in the city square, scavenging battlefields for valuable items or leading an army of conquest for a major bank. The one time she decides to try an honest approach is because she falls in love with the person she's just spent weeks trying to capture, manipulate and kill for money, fame and influence. When Saevus agrees to work with her, she calls the partnership off again because he's taking too long to come to terms with everything he'd just miraculously survived.
* WorldOfJerkass: There's not a single genuinely nice person in the entire story. Everyone is out for their own gain, be it in power, money, influence or all of them together by stealing, lying, betraying, blackmailing or just plain violence. Even the people [[LivingMacGuffin Saevus]] -- himself a certified jerk -- calls his friends would leave him to die or sell him to the highest bidder if there was anything in it for them. [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold He accepts them for who they are anyway.]]
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Changed line(s) 579 (click to see context) from:
* TakeAThirdOption: When faced with the decision to either not touch a LOT of money or take it and be implicated in whatever crime it presumably came from, Saevus and the guys instead throw the gold down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
to:
* TakeAThirdOption: TakeAThirdOption:
** When faced with the decision to either not touch a LOT of money or take it and be implicated in whatever crime it presumably came from, Saevus and the guys instead throw the gold down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it camefrom.from.
** When Saevus is holed up in the castle on Sirupat facing the armies of both the Poor Sisters and the Knights of Equity, neither of which are a desirable partner to work with, and the prospect that a siege would just delay the inevitable of one army winning and gaining financial monopoly over the entire hemisphere, he [[spoiler:instead offers the island of Sirupat and its gold deposits to the Great King of Sashan with his enourmous military might, bankrupting both banks and saving the world a lot of misery and bloodshed]].
** When faced with the decision to either not touch a LOT of money or take it and be implicated in whatever crime it presumably came from, Saevus and the guys instead throw the gold down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came
** When Saevus is holed up in the castle on Sirupat facing the armies of both the Poor Sisters and the Knights of Equity, neither of which are a desirable partner to work with, and the prospect that a siege would just delay the inevitable of one army winning and gaining financial monopoly over the entire hemisphere, he [[spoiler:instead offers the island of Sirupat and its gold deposits to the Great King of Sashan with his enourmous military might, bankrupting both banks and saving the world a lot of misery and bloodshed]].
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Changed line(s) 544,546 (click to see context) from:
-> "Saevus Corax. Say it after me."\\
"Isn't that the grave robber?"\\
"Battlefield salvage contractor."
"Isn't that the grave robber?"\\
"Battlefield salvage contractor."
to:
-> "Saevus Corax. Say it after me."\\
"
-> "Isn't that the graverobber?"\\
robber?"
-> "Battlefield salvage contractor."
-> "Isn't that the grave
-> "Battlefield salvage contractor."
Changed line(s) 581,583 (click to see context) from:
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Saevus:''' That one came from the heart.
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Saevus:''' That one came from the heart.
to:
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.\\
malaria.
--> '''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetestthings.\\
things.
--> '''Saevus:''' That one came from the heart.
--> '''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest
--> '''Saevus:''' That one came from the heart.
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Changed line(s) 581,582 (click to see context) from:
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.
to:
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.
malaria.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
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Changed line(s) 549,550 (click to see context) from:
* AntiHero:
--> People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I'm arrogant, callous, selfish and utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities; all, I'm sorry to say, perfectly true. I'm leaving out devious, because I happen to believe it's a virtue.
--> People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I'm arrogant, callous, selfish and utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities; all, I'm sorry to say, perfectly true. I'm leaving out devious, because I happen to believe it's a virtue.
to:
* AntiHero:
--> People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I'mAntiHero: Saevus is arrogant, callous, selfish selfish, devious and utterly according to anyone who bothers to comment on it annoyingly devoid of any redeeming qualities; all, I'm qualities. He's a FirstPersonSmartass with a criminal past and parental issues, who has found his calling in scavenging battlefields and whose first priority in life is himself. He also actively disliked the brother he [[AccidentalMurder killed accidentally]] and isn't sorry about it. When backed into a corner, he starts what amounts to say, perfectly true. I'm leaving out devious, possibly the biggest war in history just so neither side can get ahold of him, [[spoiler:which ends up as him stalling for time so he can {{take a third option}} and prevent both the war proper as well as bankrupt the major banks that started it, because I happen to believe it's a virtue.them getting what they want would mean much more war, misery and death in the long run]]. He's also very much on the noble and helpful side [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold in the small scale things]], which bites him more often than it helps him.
--> People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I'm
Changed line(s) 552 (click to see context) from:
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[spoiler:Ekkehard]] betrays Saevus no less than three times. The first time when [[spoiler:he works for and reports back to the Knights of Equity on Saevus' whereabouts, although he later claims to have been blackmailed by them]]. The second time when [[spoiler:he and Datis open the gates for the Knights to capture the castle on the promise of being made governor of Sirupat]]. And the third time when [[spoiler:he pretends to be sorry and rescues Saevus only to sell him to bounty hunters for an insane amount of money]]. Saevus [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness still cries]] when he learns of his death.
to:
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[spoiler:Ekkehard]] betrays Saevus no less than three times. The first time when [[spoiler:he works for and reports back to the Knights of Equity on Saevus' whereabouts, although he later claims to have been blackmailed by them]]. The second time when [[spoiler:he and Datis open the gates for the Knights to capture the castle on the promise of being made governor of Sirupat]]. And the third time when [[spoiler:he pretends to be sorry and rescues Saevus only to sell him to bounty hunters for an insane amount of money]]. Saevus forgives him ''anyway'' and [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness still cries]] when he learns of his death.
* {{Determinator}}: Saevus' first and foremost priority in life is his own skin and he will stop at nothing to keep it in one piece. That includes lying, cheating, occasionally killing someone and starting the biggest war in history because both parties want to use him as a puppet and then most likely kill him. Motivated yet again by staying the heck alive, he does {{take a third option}} of [[spoiler:getting the biggest military force in the world involved to squash the war ''he'' started and bankrupting both the two major banks behind said war ''and'' his own relatives, meaning no one is interested in him anymore]].
* FlatWhat: "You what?" is a favourite phrase of several characters and [[WorldOfSnark used extensively]] throughout the book[[labelnote:Note]]Fifteen times, in fact.[[/labelnote]], most often as a response at some seemingly innocuous but smartass comment from Saevus.
Changed line(s) 580,581 (click to see context) from:
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
to:
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.\\
malaria.
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.
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* AntiHero:
--> People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I'm arrogant, callous, selfish and utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities; all, I'm sorry to say, perfectly true. I'm leaving out devious, because I happen to believe it's a virtue.
--> People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I'm arrogant, callous, selfish and utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities; all, I'm sorry to say, perfectly true. I'm leaving out devious, because I happen to believe it's a virtue.
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Changed line(s) 559 (click to see context) from:
* FreudianExcuse: [[EvilChancellor Erescigal]] tries to gain Saevus' trust through a speech on how Saevus is not a fault for not being able to tell right from wrong; rather, he's a victim of circumstance, what with his domineering father and [[AccidentalMurder accidentally murdering]] his brother only to end up the only heir to a faraway country on the brink of war, betrayed by his friends. No wonder Saevus lashes out at everyone. Saevus points out how this is dishonest nonsense and there'S no excuse for playing with people the way he does.
to:
* FreudianExcuse: [[EvilChancellor Erescigal]] tries to gain Saevus' trust through a speech on how Saevus is not a at fault for not being able to tell right from wrong; rather, he's a victim of circumstance, what with his domineering father and [[AccidentalMurder accidentally murdering]] his brother only to end up the only heir to a faraway country on the brink of war, betrayed by his friends. No wonder Saevus lashes out at everyone. Saevus points out how this is dishonest nonsense and there'S there's no excuse for playing with people the way he does.does and he knows it.
* IslandBase: Saevus' crew has a sort of workshop headquarters down in the catacombs beneath a priory on the island of Ogyge. It works because the abbot and Saevus have dirt on each other and an equal percentage of Saevus' proceeds gets donated to the priory and the abbot's personal savings.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Saevus is the only battlefield salvage contractor who bothers with patching up soldiers who were left for dead on the battlefield he bought rights to. Granted, he then ''sells'' them back to their governments, but nonetheless. When the Knights of Equity are out in force to catch an unaware Saevus, one of their hirelings pulls him off the street and tells him to run as fast as he can -- and thanks for saving his life way back when.
* OffscreenKarma: When trying to recover the hundred thousand staurata Saevus and his crew had thrown down a cistern to hide it, Saevus is told that [[spoiler:Ekkehard]], who [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder betrayed him no less than three times]] had beat him to that. But then, on his way back to the mainland, [[spoiler:a storm had smashed Ekkehard's ship against a rock, everyone except the local guide had died and the gold had sunk to the bottom of the sea]].
Changed line(s) 572 (click to see context) from:
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and ''only'' living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family did not participate was they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
to:
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and ''only'' living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family simply did not participate was because they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
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* VitriolicBestBuds: Saevus and Ekkehard can't go three seconds without snarking at each other, but Ekkehard almost died because of their friendship and still came back to warn Saevus while Saevus calls Ekkehard the best friend he's ever had -- only to the reader, of course.
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Saevus:''' That one came from the heart.
--> '''Saevus:''' You, on the other hand, are no worse than a bad dose of malaria.\\
'''Ekkehard:''' You say the sweetest things.\\
'''Saevus:''' That one came from the heart.
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Trope was cut/disambiguated due to cleanup
Deleted line(s) 336,338 (click to see context) :
* ArcherArchetype:
** Ash, one of the skilled archers among the Watchers and Wolves, is a generally calm and down to earth guy who follows his own conscience and actively disregards Dom's orders to not follow him into Mireces territory, much to Dom's later gratitude.
** Sarilla, though equally skilled, is largely used to show how archers are much less effective in close quarters when a Mireces [[CareerEndingInjury cuts off several fingers on her draw hand]], making her effectively useless until she [[BackInTheSaddle receives a wooden hand]] from Rillirin.
** Ash, one of the skilled archers among the Watchers and Wolves, is a generally calm and down to earth guy who follows his own conscience and actively disregards Dom's orders to not follow him into Mireces territory, much to Dom's later gratitude.
** Sarilla, though equally skilled, is largely used to show how archers are much less effective in close quarters when a Mireces [[CareerEndingInjury cuts off several fingers on her draw hand]], making her effectively useless until she [[BackInTheSaddle receives a wooden hand]] from Rillirin.
Changed line(s) 342 (click to see context) from:
* BackInTheSaddle: After [[CareerEndingInjury losing several fingers]] in the Mireces [[DoomedHometown attack on their village]], [[ArcherArchetype Sarilla]] regains her ability to use the bow thanks to the wood-and-leather hand Rillirin makes for her out of guilt.
to:
* BackInTheSaddle: After [[CareerEndingInjury losing several fingers]] in the Mireces [[DoomedHometown attack on their village]], [[ArcherArchetype Sarilla]] Sarilla regains her ability to use the bow thanks to the wood-and-leather hand Rillirin makes for her out of guilt.
Changed line(s) 352 (click to see context) from:
* CareerEndingInjury: [[ArcherArchetype Sarilla]] loses three of the fingers on her draw hand during the [[DoomedHometown Mireces attack on her village]], rendering her unable to use the bow and thus useless to the Watchers, at least as far as she is concerned. She [[BackInTheSaddle does get better]] again after Rillirin presents her with a specially made wood-and-leather hand.
to:
* CareerEndingInjury: [[ArcherArchetype Sarilla]] Sarilla loses three of the fingers on her draw hand during the [[DoomedHometown Mireces attack on her village]], rendering her unable to use the bow and thus useless to the Watchers, at least as far as she is concerned. She [[BackInTheSaddle does get better]] again after Rillirin presents her with a specially made wood-and-leather hand.
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* FreudianExcuse: [[EvilChancellor Erescigal]] tries to gain Saevus' trust through a speech on how Saevus is not a fault for not being able to tell right from wrong; rather, he's a victim of circumstance, what with his domineering father and [[AccidentalMurder accidentally murdering]] his brother only to end up the only heir to a faraway country on the brink of war, betrayed by his friends. No wonder Saevus lashes out at everyone. Saevus points out how this is dishonest nonsense and there'S no excuse for playing with people the way he does.
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Changed line(s) 551 (click to see context) from:
* AccidentalMurder: Saevus accidentally killed his younger brother in a fencing sparring session when he was seventeen and Scynthius fifteen. Since Scynthius was {{the ace}} and better than Saevus at ''everything'', he was using a training rapier against Saevus' real one and would insist that they keep going even when Saevus was too winded to keep focus. This resulted in Saevus not keeping proper form and accidentally piercing Scynthius through the eye.
to:
* AccidentalMurder: Saevus accidentally killed his younger brother in a fencing sparring session when he was seventeen and Scynthius fifteen. Since Scynthius was {{the ace}} and better than Saevus at ''everything'', he was using a training rapier against Saevus' real one and would insist that they keep going even when Saevus was too winded to keep focus.stay focused. This resulted in Saevus not keeping proper form and accidentally piercing Scynthius through the eye.
Changed line(s) 573,574 (click to see context) from:
* ShippedInShackles: Saevus is shipped off to [[spoiler:the island kingdom of Sirupat]] in an iron collar to which his hands and feet are chained, then bound with ropes to a chair that is bolted down to the ship's deck where everyone can see him day and night. And just assure that no one can come near the ship it is outfitted with a fire-spewing siphon.
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and *only* living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family did not participate was they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and *only* living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family did not participate was they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
to:
* ShippedInShackles: Saevus is shipped off to [[spoiler:the island kingdom of Sirupat]] in an iron collar to which his hands and feet are chained, then bound with ropes to a chair that is bolted down to the ship's deck where everyone can see him day and night. And just assure to make sure that no one can come near the ship it is outfitted with a fire-spewing siphon.
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and*only* ''only'' living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family did not participate was they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and
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Changed line(s) 568 (click to see context) from:
** Saevus claims that he never cries despite all the... circumstances life has thrown at him. Then he ''does'' cry when [[spoiler:learns of his best friend Ekkehard's death]] despite the latters ChronicBackstabbingDisorder.
to:
** Saevus claims that he never cries despite all the... circumstances life has thrown at him. Then he ''does'' cry when [[spoiler:learns [[spoiler:he learns of his best friend Ekkehard's death]] despite the latters latter's ChronicBackstabbingDisorder.
Changed line(s) 570 (click to see context) from:
** Saevus uses poison to kill someone who recognized him from before he became Saevus Corax. It is treated as a bad thing by everyone who knows and shows what lengths he is willing to go to in order to hide his identity. When Stauratia calls him out on it later, Saevus points out she's also poisoned at least *two* people, so who is she to judge?
to:
** Saevus uses poison to kill someone who recognized him from before he became Saevus Corax. It is treated as a bad thing by everyone who knows and shows what lengths he is willing to go to in order to hide his identity. When Stauratia calls him out on it later, Saevus points out she's also poisoned at least *two* ''two'' people, so who is she to judge?
Changed line(s) 572 (click to see context) from:
* SchmuckBait: Someone stole all the gear Saevus and his RagtagBunchOfMisfits had stashed away beneath the priory on the island of Ogyge and replaced it with a hundred thousand staurata[[labelnote:How much money is that?]]A LOT of money.[[/labelnote]]. Saevus concludes it *has* to be schmuck bait and set up to implicate them in whatever crime it came from. Since it's too good to resist anyway, {{they take a third option}} and throw it down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
to:
* SchmuckBait: Someone stole all the gear Saevus and his RagtagBunchOfMisfits had stashed away beneath the priory on the island of Ogyge and replaced it with a hundred thousand staurata[[labelnote:How much money is that?]]A LOT of money.[[/labelnote]]. Saevus concludes it *has* ''has'' to be schmuck bait and set up to implicate them in whatever crime it came from. Since it's too good to resist anyway, {{they take they {{take a third option}} and throw it down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
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* AccidentalMurder: Saevus accidentally killed his younger brother in a fencing sparring session when he was seventeen and Scynthius fifteen. Since Scynthius was {{the ace}} and better than Saevus at ''everything'', he was using a training rapier against Saevus' real one and would insist that they keep going even when Saevus was too winded to keep focus. This resulted in Saevus not keeping proper form and accidentally piercing Scynthius through the eye.
* BagOfKidnapping: Agents of the Poor Sisters kidnap Saevus by pulling a burlap sack over his head and beating the lights out of him. The sack used to contain barley so once it finally comes off again, Saevus eyes, nose, throat and skin are so severely irritated, he can bare see or feel anything.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[spoiler:Ekkehard]] betrays Saevus no less than three times. The first time when [[spoiler:he works for and reports back to the Knights of Equity on Saevus' whereabouts, although he later claims to have been blackmailed by them]]. The second time when [[spoiler:he and Datis open the gates for the Knights to capture the castle on the promise of being made governor of Sirupat]]. And the third time when [[spoiler:he pretends to be sorry and rescues Saevus only to sell him to bounty hunters for an insane amount of money]]. Saevus [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness still cries]] when he learns of his death.
* DemandingTheirHead:
** Both his father and his brother-in-law are, independently of each other, offering a lange -- a very large -- sum of money as bounty for bringing them Saevus -- preferably alive, but the head will do as proof.
** After [[spoiler:Ekkehard and Captain Datis]] open the gates to the Knights, Saevus tests the waters with his newly assigned [[EvilChancellor advisor and chief of staff]] Erescigal by demanding to be brought the head of the former on a spike. Erescigal politely declines. So Saevus asks for the head of the latter, to which Erescigal enthusiastically agrees, letting Saevus know who's expendable and who isn't to the Knights.
* EvilChancellor: Saevus goes through a queue of escalating ones during his brief stint as the king of Sirupat:
** Artabas is a Sirupati priest and chairman of the royal privy council who's in league with the Poor Sisters, involved in [[PoisonIsEvil poisoning]] the old king and with ambitions to be the man behind the man once Saevus is crowned but with no control over the military.
** Artabas is disposed of by Vonones, minister of justice, who is in league with the Knights of Equity and is in turn disposed of by a synod of priests who declare the entiry privy council heretics [[DecapitationPresentation with extreme prejudice]].
** When the Knights finally capture the castle, Erescigal, an associate of the Knights, introduces himself as Saevus' new military advisor and chief of staff and makes it quite obvious that he will be the one writing edicts and Saevus' job will be to simply sign them from now on. He starts the procedures for enforced gold mining operations on the island, but is reasonably friendly with Saevus.
** Erescigal is then "called away" to be replaced by Becco, who locks Saevus away in a tower and doesn't even try to hide the fact that he'll have Saevus killed as soon as he's crowned and the island signed over the the Knights.
* AFatherToHisMen: Saevus genuinely cares for his RagtagBunchOfMisfits salvage crew, some of whom he recruited out of dire circumstances. Even when the Sisters are on his heels and he considers leaving everything behind, his first thought is who will care about his crew?
* KingOnHisDeathbed: The king of Sirupat is comatose and dying, no little thanks to [[PoisonIsEvil rival factions on his privy council]], and while there is exactly one living heir to the throne, whoever gets their hands on him first will have control of the enourmous gold deposits on the island. Of course, the other faction wouldn't just let that happen, which means a war said only living heir is [[TheDeterminator dead set]] on preventing.
* LivingMacGuffin: A rare case of the story being told ''by'' the living MacGuffin, namely Saevus, who by contrivances of history is the only living heir to the island kingdom of Sirupat and as such simultaneously the reincarnation of the Redeemer, the principal salvation figure of a sect of the Eternal Flame, one of the two major world religions. But this being {{low fantasy}}, the part that matters is that getting hold of Saevus means getting hold of the gold deposits on Sirupat, which whips the two major banks -- the Poor Sisters and the Knights of Equity -- into a frenzied race to capture Saevus and destroy their respective rival bank.
* NoIndoorVoice: Ekkehard shouts everything he says, which is especially egregious when he is actively trying to whisper. Justified in that he used to be a [[LargeHam comedy actor]] and is also almost constantly angry at either the circumstances or Saevus in particular.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** It's established early on that Saevus has a tendency to try to salvage what he can and help whomever he can -- as far as is reasonable in his business, anyway. Unlike other battlefield salvage contractors, he keeps a doctor around to patch up wounded soldiers left for dead on the battlefield. So when he [[PoisonIsEvil poisons]] one of those soldiers because he recognized Saevus from before he became Saevus, it's clearly serious business to him.
** Saevus claims that he never cries despite all the... circumstances life has thrown at him. Then he ''does'' cry when [[spoiler:learns of his best friend Ekkehard's death]] despite the latters ChronicBackstabbingDisorder.
* PoisonIsEvil:
** Saevus uses poison to kill someone who recognized him from before he became Saevus Corax. It is treated as a bad thing by everyone who knows and shows what lengths he is willing to go to in order to hide his identity. When Stauratia calls him out on it later, Saevus points out she's also poisoned at least *two* people, so who is she to judge?
** Saevus correctly deduces that the king of Sirupat is being poisoned by his advisors as soon as he enters the king's bed chamber. Even though he knows his poisons for a reason, Saevus considers wanting to [[spoiler:sell the kingdom to the highest bidder and cause the biggest war in history as a direct result]] to be a more deplorable reason to poison someone than his own private matters.
* SchmuckBait: Someone stole all the gear Saevus and his RagtagBunchOfMisfits had stashed away beneath the priory on the island of Ogyge and replaced it with a hundred thousand staurata[[labelnote:How much money is that?]]A LOT of money.[[/labelnote]]. Saevus concludes it *has* to be schmuck bait and set up to implicate them in whatever crime it came from. Since it's too good to resist anyway, {{they take a third option}} and throw it down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
* ShippedInShackles: Saevus is shipped off to [[spoiler:the island kingdom of Sirupat]] in an iron collar to which his hands and feet are chained, then bound with ropes to a chair that is bolted down to the ship's deck where everyone can see him day and night. And just assure that no one can come near the ship it is outfitted with a fire-spewing siphon.
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and *only* living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family did not participate was they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
* TakeAThirdOption: When faced with the decision to either not touch a LOT of money or take it and be implicated in whatever crime it presumably came from, Saevus and the guys instead throw the gold down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
* BagOfKidnapping: Agents of the Poor Sisters kidnap Saevus by pulling a burlap sack over his head and beating the lights out of him. The sack used to contain barley so once it finally comes off again, Saevus eyes, nose, throat and skin are so severely irritated, he can bare see or feel anything.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[spoiler:Ekkehard]] betrays Saevus no less than three times. The first time when [[spoiler:he works for and reports back to the Knights of Equity on Saevus' whereabouts, although he later claims to have been blackmailed by them]]. The second time when [[spoiler:he and Datis open the gates for the Knights to capture the castle on the promise of being made governor of Sirupat]]. And the third time when [[spoiler:he pretends to be sorry and rescues Saevus only to sell him to bounty hunters for an insane amount of money]]. Saevus [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness still cries]] when he learns of his death.
* DemandingTheirHead:
** Both his father and his brother-in-law are, independently of each other, offering a lange -- a very large -- sum of money as bounty for bringing them Saevus -- preferably alive, but the head will do as proof.
** After [[spoiler:Ekkehard and Captain Datis]] open the gates to the Knights, Saevus tests the waters with his newly assigned [[EvilChancellor advisor and chief of staff]] Erescigal by demanding to be brought the head of the former on a spike. Erescigal politely declines. So Saevus asks for the head of the latter, to which Erescigal enthusiastically agrees, letting Saevus know who's expendable and who isn't to the Knights.
* EvilChancellor: Saevus goes through a queue of escalating ones during his brief stint as the king of Sirupat:
** Artabas is a Sirupati priest and chairman of the royal privy council who's in league with the Poor Sisters, involved in [[PoisonIsEvil poisoning]] the old king and with ambitions to be the man behind the man once Saevus is crowned but with no control over the military.
** Artabas is disposed of by Vonones, minister of justice, who is in league with the Knights of Equity and is in turn disposed of by a synod of priests who declare the entiry privy council heretics [[DecapitationPresentation with extreme prejudice]].
** When the Knights finally capture the castle, Erescigal, an associate of the Knights, introduces himself as Saevus' new military advisor and chief of staff and makes it quite obvious that he will be the one writing edicts and Saevus' job will be to simply sign them from now on. He starts the procedures for enforced gold mining operations on the island, but is reasonably friendly with Saevus.
** Erescigal is then "called away" to be replaced by Becco, who locks Saevus away in a tower and doesn't even try to hide the fact that he'll have Saevus killed as soon as he's crowned and the island signed over the the Knights.
* AFatherToHisMen: Saevus genuinely cares for his RagtagBunchOfMisfits salvage crew, some of whom he recruited out of dire circumstances. Even when the Sisters are on his heels and he considers leaving everything behind, his first thought is who will care about his crew?
* KingOnHisDeathbed: The king of Sirupat is comatose and dying, no little thanks to [[PoisonIsEvil rival factions on his privy council]], and while there is exactly one living heir to the throne, whoever gets their hands on him first will have control of the enourmous gold deposits on the island. Of course, the other faction wouldn't just let that happen, which means a war said only living heir is [[TheDeterminator dead set]] on preventing.
* LivingMacGuffin: A rare case of the story being told ''by'' the living MacGuffin, namely Saevus, who by contrivances of history is the only living heir to the island kingdom of Sirupat and as such simultaneously the reincarnation of the Redeemer, the principal salvation figure of a sect of the Eternal Flame, one of the two major world religions. But this being {{low fantasy}}, the part that matters is that getting hold of Saevus means getting hold of the gold deposits on Sirupat, which whips the two major banks -- the Poor Sisters and the Knights of Equity -- into a frenzied race to capture Saevus and destroy their respective rival bank.
* NoIndoorVoice: Ekkehard shouts everything he says, which is especially egregious when he is actively trying to whisper. Justified in that he used to be a [[LargeHam comedy actor]] and is also almost constantly angry at either the circumstances or Saevus in particular.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** It's established early on that Saevus has a tendency to try to salvage what he can and help whomever he can -- as far as is reasonable in his business, anyway. Unlike other battlefield salvage contractors, he keeps a doctor around to patch up wounded soldiers left for dead on the battlefield. So when he [[PoisonIsEvil poisons]] one of those soldiers because he recognized Saevus from before he became Saevus, it's clearly serious business to him.
** Saevus claims that he never cries despite all the... circumstances life has thrown at him. Then he ''does'' cry when [[spoiler:learns of his best friend Ekkehard's death]] despite the latters ChronicBackstabbingDisorder.
* PoisonIsEvil:
** Saevus uses poison to kill someone who recognized him from before he became Saevus Corax. It is treated as a bad thing by everyone who knows and shows what lengths he is willing to go to in order to hide his identity. When Stauratia calls him out on it later, Saevus points out she's also poisoned at least *two* people, so who is she to judge?
** Saevus correctly deduces that the king of Sirupat is being poisoned by his advisors as soon as he enters the king's bed chamber. Even though he knows his poisons for a reason, Saevus considers wanting to [[spoiler:sell the kingdom to the highest bidder and cause the biggest war in history as a direct result]] to be a more deplorable reason to poison someone than his own private matters.
* SchmuckBait: Someone stole all the gear Saevus and his RagtagBunchOfMisfits had stashed away beneath the priory on the island of Ogyge and replaced it with a hundred thousand staurata[[labelnote:How much money is that?]]A LOT of money.[[/labelnote]]. Saevus concludes it *has* to be schmuck bait and set up to implicate them in whatever crime it came from. Since it's too good to resist anyway, {{they take a third option}} and throw it down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
* ShippedInShackles: Saevus is shipped off to [[spoiler:the island kingdom of Sirupat]] in an iron collar to which his hands and feet are chained, then bound with ropes to a chair that is bolted down to the ship's deck where everyone can see him day and night. And just assure that no one can come near the ship it is outfitted with a fire-spewing siphon.
* SuccessionCrisis: The reason why Saevus is, to the eternal displeasure of everyone including himself, the rightful and *only* living heir to the throne of Sirupat is that after gold was discovered on the island, every princeling and remote cousin came out of the woodwork to position themselves as heir, leading to everyone killing off each other in a grab for power. The only reason Saevus's family did not participate was they were too far away. Then the king's only son fell off a horse.
* TakeAThirdOption: When faced with the decision to either not touch a LOT of money or take it and be implicated in whatever crime it presumably came from, Saevus and the guys instead throw the gold down the cistern to retrieve it once they've found out where it came from.
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Added DiffLines:
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[[folder:Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead]]
-> "Saevus Corax. Say it after me."\\
"Isn't that the grave robber?"\\
"Battlefield salvage contractor."
----
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead]]
-> "Saevus Corax. Say it after me."\\
"Isn't that the grave robber?"\\
"Battlefield salvage contractor."
----
[[/folder]]
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* AgainWithFeeling: She Stamps Them Flat is ''livid'' that Felix would dare to have an actress impersonate the Hus goddess Queen of Heaven to [[FalseProphet fake a miracle]]. When he tells her to trust him, she bursts out with: "''Trust'' you. Trust ''you''."
Changed line(s) 488 (click to see context) from:
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark spaces. He gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps Them Flat. It takes her yelling and kicking at him for an extended period of time to get him to move again.
to:
* CannibalTribe: The tribe of the Cure Hardy follow a tradition where if someone under the age of thirty dies of non-infectious causes, the next of kin have the to roast and eat the heart, the brain, the liver and the bone marrow of the diceased so that they may live out their days that were tragically cut short in a roundabout way. Played for laughs when the Cure Hardy go out to war and realise they have no way of getting dead bodies back home before they go bad. They consider salting, pickling, preserving in honey and air-drying before they settle on the king nominally adopting all Cure Hardy warriors and taking it upon himself to nibble on each one that may die in battle.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark spaces. He gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps ThemFlat.Flat through a secret tunnel. It takes her yelling and kicking at him for an extended period of time to get him to move again.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark spaces. He gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps Them
* EvilFormerFriend: Carloman used to be Felix's best friend in the army. Then his sister fell in love with Felix and Carloman's attitude changed. When he caught them in the act he was surprisingly prepared for [[SymbolicMutilation karmic punishment]] and brought other mutual friends along as wingmen, [[CripplingCastration ruining Felix's life forever]].
* FictionalDocument:
** A "Translator's Note" appended to the novel proper discusses, from the point of view of an unnamed future historian, how the so-called "Felix manuscript" is questionable at best as far as trustworthyness goes as is likely to be a forgery (and a poorly done one) intended to discredit the Sashan-Echmen religious establishment between the fall of the First Robur Empire and the rise of the Second Empire.
** Felix mentions works by reknowned in-universe philosopher and play-write Saloninus, and quotes from several of them as well, works like ''Ballads'', ''Ethics'', ''Principles of Alchemy'', ''Geographical Speculations'' and ''On the Genealogy of Morals''.
** A "Translator's Note" appended to the novel proper discusses, from the point of view of an unnamed future historian, how the so-called "Felix manuscript" is questionable at best as far as trustworthyness goes as is likely to be a forgery (and a poorly done one) intended to discredit the Sashan-Echmen religious establishment between the fall of the First Robur Empire and the rise of the Second Empire.
** Felix mentions works by reknowned in-universe philosopher and play-write Saloninus, and quotes from several of them as well, works like ''Ballads'', ''Ethics'', ''Principles of Alchemy'', ''Geographical Speculations'' and ''On the Genealogy of Morals''.
* GreatBigLibraryOfEverything: The Echmen palace library is said to be the greatest library in the world and access to it is strictly regulated. Some people apply for years again and again to be granted a library pass. Felix spends ''three years'' essentially living in the library with a stolen pass and collecting the information he would need to pull off his world conquest plans and still remarks how if he hadn't been forced to act by circumstances he'd have kept going.
Deleted line(s) 507 (click to see context) :
* MirrorCharacter: to Orhan; both named Felix (by law, Orhan by choice because it means lucky, Felix tells everyone what it means), history with the Hus (Orhan kidnapped and sold into slavery by the Hus, Felix frees the Hus from slavery), foreigners sticking out like a sore thumb (Orhan, milkface, rising among the Robus ranks thanks to his skill, Felix born Robur crashing down the ranks), Robur slaughtered Orhan's people, Orhan's people slaughtered the Robur, claim falling in love only once (Orhan requitted, Felix disaster), Orhan in his fifties, Felix 26, Orhan Cowardly Lion succeeds in saving the City, Felix False Prophet fails in returning it to the Robur, both try to safe the Robur
* NeverHeardThatOneBefore: Felix is very tired of every new person that somehow happens to see him naked telling him [[CripplingCastration what's obviously missing about his anatomy]] and at one point thinks he ought to get I KNOW tattoed on his face.
* OnlyFriend: Oio is Felix's only friend, though Oio didn't want to be because [[MeaningfulName Felix means lucky]] and Oio's people believe lucky people bring misfortune to those around them. When Felix becomes a persona non grata but can't just be kicked out, Oio tells him to never speak to him again to preserve his own reputation at court but secretly does the most outrageous favors for Felix, [[VitriolicBestBuds while calling him names]].
* SacredScripture: Exploited by [[FalseProphet Felix]] when he cobbles together a sort of holy scripture from bits and pieces of already established religions so as not to seem too offensive and has it be handed to him publicly by the "Queen of Heaven" in a staged "miracle". When his new religion has already gained ground, Felix laments how piecemeal the text sounds. One evening, a young soldier approaches him with a translation of the gospel into Shasu, a language that's only ever used in writing at that point and Felix noticed how, suddenly, the cobbled together scripture suddenly sounds so much better. He declares that to be the Authorized Version and briefly pities the faithful who will now have to learn Shasu.
* SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Exploited by Felix when the Echmen fabricate a pretext to kill the Hus royal family -- with the exception of She Stamps Them Flat to use her as a puppet queen -- in order to enslave the Hus and make them build a huge wall between the Echmen territory and the other Dejauzi tribes. He convinces She Stamps Them Flat to help him [[FalseProphet pose as a prophet]], because enslaving the Hus is a most heinous thing and the two of them are the only ones who can set free them again -- on their way to world conquest.
* TakeOverTheWorld: Felix sets out to conquer the world. The reasons he gives and others' theories as to why vary between justified (what you control can't hurt you) to inverted (a war to end all wars) to zig-zagged (the Hus are his people now and [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil they've been unjustly enslaved]]) to invoked (the world belonged to the Robur, Felix is [[LastOfHisKind the last Robur]], hence the world belongs to him), but his true reason ends up being a subversion: [[spoiler:he wants to find the remaining Robur and to reconquer the City so they can return to it, [[ShaggyDogStory which does not work out as intended]].]]
Changed line(s) 529 (click to see context) from:
* UnknowinglyInLove: Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals. He does notice her feelings towards him and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual {{Anxiety Dream|s}}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he admits to not being too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]].
to:
* UnknowinglyInLove: Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals. He does notice her feelings towards him and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual {{Anxiety Dream|s}}, {{anxiety dream|s}}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he admits to not being too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]].jokes]].
* UnscrupulousHero: Felix is an UnreliableNarrator traumatised by [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer how the world has treated him so far]] and strong views about how much trouble the truth is (not) worth who wants to TakeOverTheWorld. To achieve that he is both calculating and opportunistic, [[FalseProphet cheats at every opportunity]] and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie lies even to the people doing their best to break though]] his StepfordSnarker shell... As he himself points out in the very first paragraph, the good things that happen do so in spite not because of him and he's not proud of his deeds. Despite all that, in his conquest he painstakingly plans to cause as few deaths as possible and he really doesn't like injustice and the MyCountryRightOrWrong-attitude.
* UnscrupulousHero: Felix is an UnreliableNarrator traumatised by [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer how the world has treated him so far]] and strong views about how much trouble the truth is (not) worth who wants to TakeOverTheWorld. To achieve that he is both calculating and opportunistic, [[FalseProphet cheats at every opportunity]] and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie lies even to the people doing their best to break though]] his StepfordSnarker shell... As he himself points out in the very first paragraph, the good things that happen do so in spite not because of him and he's not proud of his deeds. Despite all that, in his conquest he painstakingly plans to cause as few deaths as possible and he really doesn't like injustice and the MyCountryRightOrWrong-attitude.
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Changed line(s) 529 (click to see context) from:
* UnknowinglyInLove: Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals. He does notice her feelings towards him and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual AnxietyDream{s}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he admits to not being too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]].
to:
* UnknowinglyInLove: Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals. He does notice her feelings towards him and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual AnxietyDream{s}, {{Anxiety Dream|s}}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he admits to not being too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]].
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Changed line(s) 484,488 (click to see context) from:
* AdamAndEvePlot: Discussed very briefly when Felix meets [[ContinuityCameo Hodda]], who recognizes him as a friend of a friend of a friend and quips: "So much for [[CripplingCastration you]] and me being the parents of a new Robur race."
* AnxietyDreams: Played for laughs. Felix quickly deduces the source of his standard bad dream becoming weird as eating too many savoury dumplings. When eschewing the dumplings doesn't stop the weirdness, he visits a doctor, who reassures him that he's probably just worried about all the big things he's got on his mind; prophets, Gods and the destiny of empires and such. Relieved to be taken seriously for once, Felix is about to leave when the doctor asks if he's ''sure'' he's not the prophet, just maybe?
* ArcWords: "The worms of the earth against the lions" crops up again as it did in the first book as a metaphor for the strong and violent losing to the weak and clever. This time around, the Dejauzi are the worms and the Echmen the lions. However, She Stamps Them Flat points out that in the story, the lions started the war against the worms, while in their case, the Dejauzi started the war against the Echmen. Felix retorts that the lions ''always'' start the war because they're predators and also, the Echmen first tried to enslave the Dejauzi.
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Oio, supposedly Felix's best friend,]] is hanged offscreen at some point in the second half of the book.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark spaces and gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps Them Flat. It takes her yelling and kicking at him for an extended period of time to get him to move again.
* AnxietyDreams: Played for laughs. Felix quickly deduces the source of his standard bad dream becoming weird as eating too many savoury dumplings. When eschewing the dumplings doesn't stop the weirdness, he visits a doctor, who reassures him that he's probably just worried about all the big things he's got on his mind; prophets, Gods and the destiny of empires and such. Relieved to be taken seriously for once, Felix is about to leave when the doctor asks if he's ''sure'' he's not the prophet, just maybe?
* ArcWords: "The worms of the earth against the lions" crops up again as it did in the first book as a metaphor for the strong and violent losing to the weak and clever. This time around, the Dejauzi are the worms and the Echmen the lions. However, She Stamps Them Flat points out that in the story, the lions started the war against the worms, while in their case, the Dejauzi started the war against the Echmen. Felix retorts that the lions ''always'' start the war because they're predators and also, the Echmen first tried to enslave the Dejauzi.
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Oio, supposedly Felix's best friend,]] is hanged offscreen at some point in the second half of the book.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark spaces and gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps Them Flat. It takes her yelling and kicking at him for an extended period of time to get him to move again.
to:
* AdamAndEvePlot: Discussed very briefly when When Felix meets [[ContinuityCameo Hodda]], who recognizes him as a friend of a friend of a friend and friend, she quips: "So much for [[CripplingCastration you]] and me being the parents of a new Robur race."
* AnxietyDreams: Played forlaughs. laughs when Felix quickly deduces thinks the source of his standard bad dream becoming weird as eating is that he ate too many savoury dumplings. When eschewing the dumplings doesn't stop the weirdness, he visits a doctor, who reassures him that he's probably just worried about all the big things he's got on his mind; prophets, Gods and the destiny of empires and such. Relieved to be taken seriously for once, Felix is about to leave when the doctor asks if he's ''sure'' he's not the prophet, just maybe?
* ArcWords: "The worms of the earth against the lions" crops up again asit did in the first book as a metaphor for the strong and violent losing to the weak and clever. This time around, the Dejauzi are the worms and the Echmen the lions. However, She Stamps Them Flat points out that in the story, the lions started the war against the worms, while in their case, the Dejauzi started the war against the Echmen. Felix retorts that the lions ''always'' start the war because they're predators and also, the Echmen first tried to enslave the Dejauzi.
predators.
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Oio,supposedly Felix's best friend,]] is hanged offscreen at some point in the second half of the book.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined darkspaces and spaces. He gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps Them Flat. It takes her yelling and kicking at him for an extended period of time to get him to move again.
* AnxietyDreams: Played for
* ArcWords: "The worms of the earth against the lions" crops up again as
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Oio,
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark
Changed line(s) 490,497 (click to see context) from:
** Felix discovers that the Hus who requested him as their translator all understand and speak Echmen perfectly well but prefer for the Echmen to not know that.
** When later Felix first meets the Sashan Great King the latter brings along a translator, but Felix waves him away since he himself also speaks the Sashan language.
* ContinuityCameo: Hodda, of all people, materializes in the Echmen capital in a quest to [[ContinuityNod interest the locals in classical Robur theatre]] after the previous book ended with her absconding with the money her and Notker stole from the Imperial Treasury.
* CrystalDragonJesus: While Felix's hastily cobbled together scripture has nothing in particular to do with Christianity, and besides, the whole thing heavily relies on the Hus goddess Queen of Heaven, somehow by the time this new religion has become popular it's gained a lot in common with Christianity: temples selling absolution from sins for a reasonable fee, monks in brown habits reciting scripture on street corners, archbishops appointed by a central church institution, a holy prophet that's about as important to the faith as God himself, militant troops in white smocks and the sign of the Scroll on their chests, and by the time the book ends [[spoiler:Hodda as archbishop of Echmen]] is busy building an entire holy city.
* CurbStompBattle: Justified. When [[spoiler:the Dejauzi engage the Echmen lancers in battle for the first time]], they do so well prepared and having set a trap. It ends with twelve thousand dead [[spoiler:Echmen lancers]] and twenty-seven dead [[spoiler:Dejauzi tribesmen]]. Felix remarks how he's glad to have been far enough away to not see anything that might disturb him.
* DerailedForDetails: Inverted. Felix meets three Meshtuns who claim to have been captured by Robur and asks them to tell him how, where, when and how many Robur there were. Meshtuns love telling stories and insist on starting way back when their adventures began, leading to a very frustrated Felix interrupting them with to them irrelevant questions.
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulating their faith with his warmongering, and Felix in turn offers to lend her a book on poisons.
* FalseProphet: Oh boy. Felix exploits the sudden enslavement of the Hus by the Echmen to make himself look like a prophet chosen by the Queen of Heaven to free them and lead them to world conquest. He does that by copious amounts of research, theatre tricks, blackmailing an actress and, well, denying to be a prophet while "miracles" happen all around him -- after all, only a true prophet would be too humble to bath in the glory of being one. On the up side, his true motives do align with freeing the Hus from enslavement as a stepping stone to greater things, so there's that. Several people, both who are in on the scam and those who are not, call him out on it and he always [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie serves up some sensible reason]] on why they are mistaken. Deconstructed when the whole thing flips and even those in on the scam start believing him to be a real prophet and the aforementioned actress starts a ScamReligion based around him to spite him, leaving him with a dose of UnwantedFalseFaith and LonersWillStayAlone.
** When later Felix first meets the Sashan Great King the latter brings along a translator, but Felix waves him away since he himself also speaks the Sashan language.
* ContinuityCameo: Hodda, of all people, materializes in the Echmen capital in a quest to [[ContinuityNod interest the locals in classical Robur theatre]] after the previous book ended with her absconding with the money her and Notker stole from the Imperial Treasury.
* CrystalDragonJesus: While Felix's hastily cobbled together scripture has nothing in particular to do with Christianity, and besides, the whole thing heavily relies on the Hus goddess Queen of Heaven, somehow by the time this new religion has become popular it's gained a lot in common with Christianity: temples selling absolution from sins for a reasonable fee, monks in brown habits reciting scripture on street corners, archbishops appointed by a central church institution, a holy prophet that's about as important to the faith as God himself, militant troops in white smocks and the sign of the Scroll on their chests, and by the time the book ends [[spoiler:Hodda as archbishop of Echmen]] is busy building an entire holy city.
* CurbStompBattle: Justified. When [[spoiler:the Dejauzi engage the Echmen lancers in battle for the first time]], they do so well prepared and having set a trap. It ends with twelve thousand dead [[spoiler:Echmen lancers]] and twenty-seven dead [[spoiler:Dejauzi tribesmen]]. Felix remarks how he's glad to have been far enough away to not see anything that might disturb him.
* DerailedForDetails: Inverted. Felix meets three Meshtuns who claim to have been captured by Robur and asks them to tell him how, where, when and how many Robur there were. Meshtuns love telling stories and insist on starting way back when their adventures began, leading to a very frustrated Felix interrupting them with to them irrelevant questions.
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulating their faith with his warmongering, and Felix in turn offers to lend her a book on poisons.
* FalseProphet: Oh boy. Felix exploits the sudden enslavement of the Hus by the Echmen to make himself look like a prophet chosen by the Queen of Heaven to free them and lead them to world conquest. He does that by copious amounts of research, theatre tricks, blackmailing an actress and, well, denying to be a prophet while "miracles" happen all around him -- after all, only a true prophet would be too humble to bath in the glory of being one. On the up side, his true motives do align with freeing the Hus from enslavement as a stepping stone to greater things, so there's that. Several people, both who are in on the scam and those who are not, call him out on it and he always [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie serves up some sensible reason]] on why they are mistaken. Deconstructed when the whole thing flips and even those in on the scam start believing him to be a real prophet and the aforementioned actress starts a ScamReligion based around him to spite him, leaving him with a dose of UnwantedFalseFaith and LonersWillStayAlone.
to:
** Felix discovers that is told by the Hus who that althought they requested him as their translator all of them understand and speak Echmen perfectly well but prefer for the Echmen to not know that.
** Whenlater Felix first meets the Sashan Great King the latter brings along a translator, but Felix waves him away since he himself also speaks the Sashan language.
* ContinuityCameo:Hodda, of all people, Hodda materializes in the Echmen capital in a quest to [[ContinuityNod interest the locals in classical Robur theatre]] after the theatre]]. The previous book ended with her Hodda absconding with most of the money her and Notker stole from the Imperial Treasury.
Treasury because she wants to go and try just that.
* ContinuityNod: In ''Literature/HowToRuleAnEmpireAndGetAwayWithIt'', Hodda muses on the idea of trying to establish the Robur theatrical tradition elsewhere. The book ends with her stealing most the money her and Notker stole from the Imperial Treasury, her plan being to open a theatre in the Sashan capital. Here, she turns up in the Echmen capital instead.
* CrystalDragonJesus: While Felix's hastily cobbled together scripture has nothing in particular to do with Christianity,and besides, the whole thing heavily relies on the Hus goddess Queen of Heaven, somehow by the time this new religion has become popular it's gained a lot in common with Christianity: it: temples selling absolution from sins for a reasonable fee, monks in brown habits reciting scripture on street corners, archbishops appointed by a central church institution, a holy prophet that's about as important to the faith as God himself, militant troops in white smocks and the sign of the Scroll on their chests, and by the time the book ends [[spoiler:Hodda as archbishop of Echmen]] is busy building an entire holy city.
* CurbStompBattle:Justified. When [[spoiler:the Dejauzi engage the Echmen lancers in battle for the first time]], they do so well prepared and having set a trap. It ends with twelve thousand dead [[spoiler:Echmen lancers]] and twenty-seven dead [[spoiler:Dejauzi tribesmen]]. Felix remarks quips how he's glad to have been far enough away to not see anything that might disturb him.
* DerailedForDetails:Inverted. Felix meets three Meshtuns who claim to have been captured by Robur and asks them to tell him how, where, when and how many Robur there were. Meshtuns love telling stories and insist on starting way back when their adventures began, leading to a very frustrated Felix interrupting them with to them in their opinion irrelevant questions.
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulatingtheir faith her people with his warmongering, and Felix in turn offers to lend her a book on poisons.
* FalseProphet:Oh boy. Felix exploits the sudden enslavement of the Hus by the Echmen to make himself look like a prophet chosen by the Queen of Heaven to free them and lead them to world conquest. He does that by copious amounts of research, theatre tricks, blackmailing an actress and, well, denying and ''denying'' to be a prophet while "miracles" happen all around him -- after all, the logic: only a true prophet would be too humble to bath in the glory of being one. On the up side, his true motives do align with freeing the Hus from enslavement as a stepping stone to greater things, so there's that. Several people, both who are in on the scam and those who are not, call She Stamps Them Flat calls him out on it going too far and he always [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie serves up some sensible reason]] on why they she and everyone else who questions his motives are mistaken. Deconstructed when the whole thing flips and even those in on the scam start believing him to be a real prophet and the aforementioned actress starts a ScamReligion based around him to spite him, leaving him with [[LonersWillStayAlone no one to call a dose of UnwantedFalseFaith and LonersWillStayAlone.friend]], only followers.
** When
* ContinuityCameo:
* ContinuityNod: In ''Literature/HowToRuleAnEmpireAndGetAwayWithIt'', Hodda muses on the idea of trying to establish the Robur theatrical tradition elsewhere. The book ends with her stealing most the money her and Notker stole from the Imperial Treasury, her plan being to open a theatre in the Sashan capital. Here, she turns up in the Echmen capital instead.
* CrystalDragonJesus: While Felix's hastily cobbled together scripture has nothing in particular to do with Christianity,
* CurbStompBattle:
* DerailedForDetails:
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulating
* FalseProphet:
Changed line(s) 499 (click to see context) from:
* FirstPersonSmartass: Can't have a K. J. Parker book without one. As a translator, Felix considers it his duty to translate as thoroughly and precisely as possible but lets absolutely loose in his narration, and he's got an opinion on ''everything''. Although, his sarcasm is less biting and more melancholic compared to, say, Orhan in the first book.
to:
* FirstPersonSmartass: Can't have a K. J. Parker book without one. As a translator, Felix considers it his duty to translate as thoroughly and precisely as possible but lets absolutely loose in his narration, and he's got an opinion on ''everything''. Although, his sarcasm is less biting and more melancholic compared to, say, Orhan in the first book.narration.
Changed line(s) 501,506 (click to see context) from:
* ItsNotYouItsMe: When it dawns on Felix that She Stamps Them Flat may be in love with him, he quickly uses that to manipulate her, saying that while he cannot love her for [[CripplingCastration obvious reasons]], he still ''cares'' about her.
* LanguageBarrier: One of the Echmen lancers -- none of whom speak the local Dejauzi language -- discovers that one of the Dejauzi tribesmen understands Pirzoi, a language foreign to both of them, and thinks it's funny to claim the Dejauzi goddess Queen of Heaven is just an actress in glowing paint. Not only does it [[spoiler:start a mutiny among the Dejauzi and results in the death of the Maudit king and his brother]], it also almost gets the Echmen lancer hanged since all communication henceforth has to go through those two people.
* LastOfHisKind: After the news reaches the Robur diplomatic mission in Echmen of the conquest of the Robur Empire by a confederation of pretty much every nation and tribe they've pissed off in the past several hundred years, now determined to wipe every last Robur from the face of the earth, the Robur ambassador kills himself and the other two Robur diplomats get killed by an angry mob trying to flee the palace -- leaving only their translator, Felix, as, presumably, the last surviving Robur. Although people make him feel how rude it is of him to not also drop dead, Felix has no intention whatsoever to do so or to even feel survivor guilt -- he's too busy just staying alive in a foreign court where the only thing between him and death is the fact that the Echmen invented diplomatic immunity. Having figured his life can't get any worse, he embarks on a quest to conquer the world. Another character theorizes that Felix intends to avenge the Robur, but Felix refutes that, claiming he actually ''hates'' the Robur and what they stood for. Subverted in that the reader at that point, presumably having read the previous two books, already knows that [[ThereIsAnother there are still Robur out there]] who managed to eventually escape the siege of the City. The real question thus becomes, wether Felix will be able to find them and what he will do once he does.
* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]]. He claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of a past FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix leans into it and sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way. However, he ends up pushing them away in his oblivious [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work as planned and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sometime after having talked She Stamps Them Flat into marrying Shekelesh the Great King [[AltarDiplomacy for political reasons]] Felix returns to find them "getting on like a house on fire" and She Stamps Them Flat head over heals in love because her husband ''listens when she talks'' -- unlike some.
* MotiveMisidentification: She Stamps Them Flat reasons that Felix wants to conquer the world due to the following train of thought: the world rightfully belonged to the Robur (as far as they were concerned, anyway), Felix is [[LastOfHisKind the last Robur]], therefore the world belongs to him and he wants to be king or even god-king of the world to avenge the Robur. Felix calls it a plausible scenario, except he really hates the Robur and good riddance to them.
* LanguageBarrier: One of the Echmen lancers -- none of whom speak the local Dejauzi language -- discovers that one of the Dejauzi tribesmen understands Pirzoi, a language foreign to both of them, and thinks it's funny to claim the Dejauzi goddess Queen of Heaven is just an actress in glowing paint. Not only does it [[spoiler:start a mutiny among the Dejauzi and results in the death of the Maudit king and his brother]], it also almost gets the Echmen lancer hanged since all communication henceforth has to go through those two people.
* LastOfHisKind: After the news reaches the Robur diplomatic mission in Echmen of the conquest of the Robur Empire by a confederation of pretty much every nation and tribe they've pissed off in the past several hundred years, now determined to wipe every last Robur from the face of the earth, the Robur ambassador kills himself and the other two Robur diplomats get killed by an angry mob trying to flee the palace -- leaving only their translator, Felix, as, presumably, the last surviving Robur. Although people make him feel how rude it is of him to not also drop dead, Felix has no intention whatsoever to do so or to even feel survivor guilt -- he's too busy just staying alive in a foreign court where the only thing between him and death is the fact that the Echmen invented diplomatic immunity. Having figured his life can't get any worse, he embarks on a quest to conquer the world. Another character theorizes that Felix intends to avenge the Robur, but Felix refutes that, claiming he actually ''hates'' the Robur and what they stood for. Subverted in that the reader at that point, presumably having read the previous two books, already knows that [[ThereIsAnother there are still Robur out there]] who managed to eventually escape the siege of the City. The real question thus becomes, wether Felix will be able to find them and what he will do once he does.
* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]]. He claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of a past FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix leans into it and sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way. However, he ends up pushing them away in his oblivious [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work as planned and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sometime after having talked She Stamps Them Flat into marrying Shekelesh the Great King [[AltarDiplomacy for political reasons]] Felix returns to find them "getting on like a house on fire" and She Stamps Them Flat head over heals in love because her husband ''listens when she talks'' -- unlike some.
* MotiveMisidentification: She Stamps Them Flat reasons that Felix wants to conquer the world due to the following train of thought: the world rightfully belonged to the Robur (as far as they were concerned, anyway), Felix is [[LastOfHisKind the last Robur]], therefore the world belongs to him and he wants to be king or even god-king of the world to avenge the Robur. Felix calls it a plausible scenario, except he really hates the Robur and good riddance to them.
to:
* ItsNotYouItsMe: When it dawns on Felix that She Stamps Them Flat may be in love with him, he quickly uses that to manipulate her, saying that while he cannot love her for [[CripplingCastration obvious reasons]], he can still ''cares'' ''care'' about her.
* LanguageBarrier: One of the Echmen lancers -- none of whom speak the local Dejauzi language -- discovers that one of the Dejauzi tribesmen understands Pirzoi, a language foreign to both of them, and thinks it's funny to claim the Dejauzi goddess Queen of Heaven is just an actress in glowing paint.Not only does it [[spoiler:start That [[spoiler:starts a mutiny among the Dejauzi and results in the death of the Maudit king and his brother]], it also brother]] and almost gets the Echmen lancer hanged since all communication henceforth has to go through those now very heated two people.
* LastOfHisKind:After When the news reaches the Robur diplomatic mission in Echmen of the conquest of the Robur Empire by a confederation of pretty much every nation and tribe they've pissed off in the past several hundred years, who now are determined to wipe every last Robur from the face of the earth, the Robur ambassador kills himself and the other two all Robur diplomats get killed by an angry mob trying to flee the palace end up dead in some way -- leaving only their translator, Felix, as, presumably, the last surviving Robur. Although people make him feel how rude it is of him to not also drop dead, dead also, Felix has no intention whatsoever to do so that or to even feel survivor guilt -- he's too busy just staying alive in a foreign court where the only thing between him and death is the fact that the Echmen invented diplomatic immunity.guilt. Having figured his life can't get any worse, he embarks on a quest to conquer the world. Another character She Stamps Them Flat theorizes that Felix intends to avenge the Robur, but Felix refutes that, claiming he actually ''hates'' the Robur and what they stood for. Subverted in that the The reader at that point, presumably having read the previous two books, already knows that [[ThereIsAnother there are still Robur out there]] who managed to eventually escape the siege of the City. The real question thus becomes, wether what has become of them, will Felix will be able to find them and what he will do once if he does.
does so.
* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer hispresence more than anything else]].presence]]. He claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of a past FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that As he's got nothing to lose, Felix leans into it and sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way. However, he He ends up pushing them away in his oblivious [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, is seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. City]]. It doesn't work as planned and planned, they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living [[spoiler:living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sometime after having talked She Stamps Them Flat into marrying Shekelesh the Great King [[AltarDiplomacy for political reasons]] Felixreturns to find finds them "getting on like a house on fire" and fire". According to her, She Stamps Them Flat is head over heals in love because her husband ''listens when she talks'' -- unlike some.
* MirrorCharacter: to Orhan; both named Felix (by law, Orhan by choice because it means lucky, Felix tells everyone what it means), history with the Hus (Orhan kidnapped and sold into slavery by the Hus, Felix frees the Hus from slavery), foreigners sticking out like a sore thumb (Orhan, milkface, rising among the Robus ranks thanks to his skill, Felix born Robur crashing down the ranks), Robur slaughtered Orhan's people, Orhan's people slaughtered the Robur, claim falling in love only once (Orhan requitted, Felix disaster), Orhan in his fifties, Felix 26, Orhan Cowardly Lion succeeds in saving the City, Felix False Prophet fails in returning it to the Robur, both try to safe the Robur
* MotiveMisidentification: She Stamps Them Flat reasons that Felix wants to conquer the worlddue to the following this train of thought: the world rightfully belonged to the Robur (as far as they were concerned, anyway), Felix is [[LastOfHisKind the last Robur]], therefore the world belongs to him and he wants to be king or even god-king of the world to avenge the Robur. Felix calls it a plausible scenario, except he really hates the Robur and good riddance to them.them.
* NameThatUnfoldsLikeLotusBlossom: Hus names are whole phrases, though only two are actually named in the book due to very complicated cultural conventions on who can say whose name aloud: She Stamps Them Flat and Heaven Thunders The Truth.
* LanguageBarrier: One of the Echmen lancers -- none of whom speak the local Dejauzi language -- discovers that one of the Dejauzi tribesmen understands Pirzoi, a language foreign to both of them, and thinks it's funny to claim the Dejauzi goddess Queen of Heaven is just an actress in glowing paint.
* LastOfHisKind:
* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his
* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sometime after having talked She Stamps Them Flat into marrying Shekelesh the Great King [[AltarDiplomacy for political reasons]] Felix
* MirrorCharacter: to Orhan; both named Felix (by law, Orhan by choice because it means lucky, Felix tells everyone what it means), history with the Hus (Orhan kidnapped and sold into slavery by the Hus, Felix frees the Hus from slavery), foreigners sticking out like a sore thumb (Orhan, milkface, rising among the Robus ranks thanks to his skill, Felix born Robur crashing down the ranks), Robur slaughtered Orhan's people, Orhan's people slaughtered the Robur, claim falling in love only once (Orhan requitted, Felix disaster), Orhan in his fifties, Felix 26, Orhan Cowardly Lion succeeds in saving the City, Felix False Prophet fails in returning it to the Robur, both try to safe the Robur
* MotiveMisidentification: She Stamps Them Flat reasons that Felix wants to conquer the world
* NameThatUnfoldsLikeLotusBlossom: Hus names are whole phrases, though only two are actually named in the book due to very complicated cultural conventions on who can say whose name aloud: She Stamps Them Flat and Heaven Thunders The Truth.
Changed line(s) 508,509 (click to see context) from:
** The first time she catches him shaking like a leaf from anxiety and exhaustion after [[spoiler:just having won their first battle against the Echmen and convincing the Dejauzi kings to keep going]] and also not having slept for three days. Felix claims he's fine then immediately falls asleep.
** The second time Felix claims to be fine -- despite intense shaking while being unable to move -- he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
** The second time Felix claims to be fine -- despite intense shaking while being unable to move -- he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
to:
** The first time Once she catches him shaking like a leaf from anxiety and exhaustion after [[spoiler:just having won their first battle against the Echmen and convincing the Dejauzi kings to keep going]] and also not having slept for three days. Felix claims he's fine then immediately falls asleep.
**The second Another time Felix claims to be fine -- despite intense shaking while and being unable to move -- when he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
**
Changed line(s) 511,519 (click to see context) from:
* PerformanceAnxiety: Inverted. Felix is quite good at giving big impromptu speeches in front of many people but afterwards he visibly shakes like a leaf in the wind.
* ScamReligion: In a gamble to gain control over the Hus to achieve his plans of conquest, Felix cobbles together a false religion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as its prophet]], though he keeps the tenets and teachings of it as inoffensive as possible to make it easier for the locals to digest. So far so good. Then [[spoiler:Hodda, pissed about Felix not paying her and leaving her to die in the desert,]] decides to get back at him by proselythising about what she remembers of it and making people pay for a copy of the holy scripture. Felix is appalled about how much money people are willing to part with for faith and how fast they come around and become believers but is all too willing to roll with it as long as it's useful. When the craziness reaches the point where even those people initially in on the scam switch over to idolizing him as a real prophet, [[UnwantedFalseFaith it sort of stops being fun]].
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie: How Felix and Oio became friends. One early morning Oio bumped into Felix begging him to tell any guards that might come asking any moment that they'd spent all night together. Felix's reaction is to shrug and concoct a lie about them having played chess all night seamless and detailed enough to get Oio out of being hanged for murder.
* ShaggyDogStory: The whole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer the world, with Felix giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging from becoming king of the world to ending all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the City has since become uninhabitable due to plague and his fellow Robur still treat Felix worse than a leper.]]
* ShamingTheMob: Felix is awoken by an angry mob tentatively wanting to lynch him for being a false prophet. [[spoiler:With some help from a theatre knife and killing their spokesman]], he convinces them otherwise, then loudly shames them for [[spoiler:murdering their king]] on the words of an enemy soldier.
* StepfordSnarker: Generally, Felix tries to keep up a somewhat upbeat attitude and find humour in everything -- that humour being of the [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecating]] and dark kind. People often find him pleasant enough upon a first meeting but get increasingly more irritated with his "incurable flippancy". Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' resulting from past trauma and the fact that his life sucks and ain't going to get any better ever again, so he's resolved [[FirstPersonSmartass to find a certain kind of joy in the small things]].
--> I'm prepared to engage with the world -- at any moment my head might get bitten off by it, but that's the risk you have to take -- in order to extract a minuscule shred of something worth having. The alternative would be to curl up in a ball and never speak. That has it's attractions, believe me, but I'm not quite ready for it yet. Tomorrow, maybe.
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he says to She Stamps Them Flat.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: A significant portion of dialogue within the story is devoted to She Stamps Them Flat trying to understand Felix's motives and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie Felix making up half-truths to keep her on board]]. It's clear she's signed up for the ride but wants to understand where this is going as she is [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure responsible for her people's wellbeing]], so the conversations always end with her reluctantly doing what he wants as his plans make sense -- she just wishes he were honest about the whys.
* ScamReligion: In a gamble to gain control over the Hus to achieve his plans of conquest, Felix cobbles together a false religion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as its prophet]], though he keeps the tenets and teachings of it as inoffensive as possible to make it easier for the locals to digest. So far so good. Then [[spoiler:Hodda, pissed about Felix not paying her and leaving her to die in the desert,]] decides to get back at him by proselythising about what she remembers of it and making people pay for a copy of the holy scripture. Felix is appalled about how much money people are willing to part with for faith and how fast they come around and become believers but is all too willing to roll with it as long as it's useful. When the craziness reaches the point where even those people initially in on the scam switch over to idolizing him as a real prophet, [[UnwantedFalseFaith it sort of stops being fun]].
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie: How Felix and Oio became friends. One early morning Oio bumped into Felix begging him to tell any guards that might come asking any moment that they'd spent all night together. Felix's reaction is to shrug and concoct a lie about them having played chess all night seamless and detailed enough to get Oio out of being hanged for murder.
* ShaggyDogStory: The whole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer the world, with Felix giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging from becoming king of the world to ending all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the City has since become uninhabitable due to plague and his fellow Robur still treat Felix worse than a leper.]]
* ShamingTheMob: Felix is awoken by an angry mob tentatively wanting to lynch him for being a false prophet. [[spoiler:With some help from a theatre knife and killing their spokesman]], he convinces them otherwise, then loudly shames them for [[spoiler:murdering their king]] on the words of an enemy soldier.
* StepfordSnarker: Generally, Felix tries to keep up a somewhat upbeat attitude and find humour in everything -- that humour being of the [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecating]] and dark kind. People often find him pleasant enough upon a first meeting but get increasingly more irritated with his "incurable flippancy". Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' resulting from past trauma and the fact that his life sucks and ain't going to get any better ever again, so he's resolved [[FirstPersonSmartass to find a certain kind of joy in the small things]].
--> I'm prepared to engage with the world -- at any moment my head might get bitten off by it, but that's the risk you have to take -- in order to extract a minuscule shred of something worth having. The alternative would be to curl up in a ball and never speak. That has it's attractions, believe me, but I'm not quite ready for it yet. Tomorrow, maybe.
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he says to She Stamps Them Flat.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: A significant portion of dialogue within the story is devoted to She Stamps Them Flat trying to understand Felix's motives and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie Felix making up half-truths to keep her on board]]. It's clear she's signed up for the ride but wants to understand where this is going as she is [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure responsible for her people's wellbeing]], so the conversations always end with her reluctantly doing what he wants as his plans make sense -- she just wishes he were honest about the whys.
to:
* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: She Stamps Them Flat and Shekelesh the Great get married [[AltarDiplomacy to prevent a war]] between the Dejauzi-Echmen alliance and the Sashan Empire, all arranged by [[FalseProphet Felix]] (war ''and'' marriage) and [[IndignantSlap with the implicit understanding]] that She Stamps Them Flat doesn't actually have to live with the Great King. Shekelesh is cheerfully content with the idea while the young warrior queen isn't shy about showing her disdain for the scoliosis-striken teenager she meets at their wedding ceremony. They turn out to be made for each other: She Stamps Them Flat can show her kind and caring side while Shekelesh ''actually listens'' when she speaks.
* PerformanceAnxiety:Inverted. Felix is quite good at giving big impromptu speeches in front of many people but afterwards he visibly shakes like a leaf in the wind.
* ReassignedToAntarctica: Felix was assigned as translator to the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court after he [[KarmicShunning made a disgrace of himself]] to get him out of everyone's face. While not remote, it is certainly an undesirable location for a Robur to be sent to.
* ScamReligion: In a gamble to gain control over the Hus to achieve his plans of conquest, Felix cobbles together a false religion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as itsprophet]], though he prophet]]. He keeps the tenets and teachings of it as inoffensive as possible to make it easier for the locals to digest. So far so good. Then [[spoiler:Hodda, pissed about Felix not paying her and leaving her to die in the desert,]] decides to get her,]] gets back at him by proselythising about what she remembers of it and making people pay for a copy selling copies of the holy "holy" scripture. Felix is appalled about how much money people are willing to part with for faith and how fast they come around and become believers but is all too willing to roll with it as long as it's useful. When the craziness reaches the point where even those people initially in on the scam switch over to idolizing him as a real prophet, [[UnwantedFalseFaith it sort of stops being fun]].
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie:How Felix and Oio became friends. One friends after one early morning Oio bumped into Felix begging him to tell any guards that might come asking any moment that they'd spent all night together. Felix's reaction is was to shrug and concoct a lie about them having played chess all night seamless and detailed enough to get Oio out of being hanged for murder.
* SelfDeprecation: Felix starts the story by apologising for the rather unfortunate circumstances of him, of all people, being the narrator:
--> It's unfortunate that I'm the main character in this story. [...] I've found that people quite like me at first and can put up with me for a little while after that, but it's like they say in medicine, the dose makes the poison. Unfortunately, I come with the story. You want one, you're going to have to put up with the other. Sorry about that.
* ShaggyDogStory: Thewhole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer Felix's conquest of the world, with Felix known world being just a stepping stone to a true goal, which he hides by giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging points. They range from becoming king of the world to ending fighting a war to end all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the City has since become uninhabitable due to plague and his fellow Robur still treat Felix worse than a leper.]]
* ShamingTheMob: Felix is awoken by an angry mobtentatively wanting to lynch him for being a false prophet. [[spoiler:With some help from FalseProphet. [[spoiler:By using a theatre knife to pretend-kill himself and killing make it look like a miracle, and to kill their spokesman]], spokesman for real]], he convinces them otherwise, then loudly shames them for [[spoiler:murdering their king]] on the words of an enemy soldier.
* StepfordSnarker:Generally, Felix tries to keep up a somewhat upbeat attitude and find humour in everything -- that humour being of the [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecating]] and dark kind. People often find him pleasant enough upon a first meeting but get increasingly more irritated with his "incurable flippancy". Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' resulting from past trauma and the fact that his life sucks and ain't going to get any better ever again, so he's resolved [[FirstPersonSmartass to find a certain kind of joy in the small things]].
--> I'm prepared to engage with the world -- at any moment my head might get bitten off by it, but that's the risk you have to take -- in order to extract a minuscule shred of something worth having. The alternative would be to curl up in a ball and never speak. That hasit's its attractions, believe me, but I'm not quite ready for it yet. Tomorrow, maybe.
* TactfulTranslation:Played straight and inverted by When Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He Flat he translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he says to She Stamps Them Flat.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: A significant portion of dialogue within the story is devoted to She Stamps Them Flat trying to understand Felix's motives and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie Felix making up half-truths to keep her on board]].It's clear she's She's signed up for the ride but wants to understand where this is going as she is [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure responsible for her people's wellbeing]], so the conversations always end with her reluctantly doing what he wants as his plans make sense -- she just wishes he were honest about the whys.
* PerformanceAnxiety:
* ReassignedToAntarctica: Felix was assigned as translator to the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court after he [[KarmicShunning made a disgrace of himself]] to get him out of everyone's face. While not remote, it is certainly an undesirable location for a Robur to be sent to.
* ScamReligion: In a gamble to gain control over the Hus to achieve his plans of conquest, Felix cobbles together a false religion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as its
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie:
* SelfDeprecation: Felix starts the story by apologising for the rather unfortunate circumstances of him, of all people, being the narrator:
--> It's unfortunate that I'm the main character in this story. [...] I've found that people quite like me at first and can put up with me for a little while after that, but it's like they say in medicine, the dose makes the poison. Unfortunately, I come with the story. You want one, you're going to have to put up with the other. Sorry about that.
* ShaggyDogStory: The
* ShamingTheMob: Felix is awoken by an angry mob
* StepfordSnarker:
--> I'm prepared to engage with the world -- at any moment my head might get bitten off by it, but that's the risk you have to take -- in order to extract a minuscule shred of something worth having. The alternative would be to curl up in a ball and never speak. That has
* TactfulTranslation:
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: A significant portion of dialogue within the story is devoted to She Stamps Them Flat trying to understand Felix's motives and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie Felix making up half-truths to keep her on board]].
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* UnknowinglyInLove: Deconstructed. It's obvious Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals to entertain the idea. He does notice her feelings and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual AnxietyDream{s}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he's admittedly not too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]]. At the end, She Stamps Them Flat and Shekelesh the Great turn out to be a [[MarriageBeforeRomance a perfect match]].
to:
* UnknowinglyInLove: Deconstructed. It's obvious Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals to entertain the idea. goals. He does notice her feelings towards him and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual AnxietyDream{s}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he's admittedly he admits to not being too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]]. At the end, She Stamps Them Flat and Shekelesh the Great turn out to be a [[MarriageBeforeRomance a perfect match]].jokes]].
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Changed line(s) 482 (click to see context) from:
-> My name is Felix. It means lucky; there's irony for you. This is the true history of the intended and unintended consequences of my life, the bad stuff I did on purpose, the good stuff that happened in spite of me.
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-> My ''My name is Felix. It means lucky; there's irony for you. This is the true history of the intended and unintended consequences of my life, the bad stuff I did on purpose, the good stuff that happened in spite of me.''
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Changed line(s) 482,483 (click to see context) from:
--> My name is Felix. It means lucky; there's irony for you. This is the true history of the intended and unintended consequences of my life, the bad stuff I did on purpose, the good stuff that happened in spite of me.
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----
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--> My name is Felix. It means lucky; there's irony for you. This is the true history of the intended and unintended consequences of my life, the bad stuff I did on purpose, the good stuff that happened in spite of me.
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Changed line(s) 498 (click to see context) from:
-- I don't say what I think. I translate what other people say. That's my job. Just as well, sometimes.
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* CrystalDragonJesus: While Felix's hastily cobbled together scripture has nothing in particular to do with Christianity, and besides, the whole thing heavily relies on the Hus goddess Queen of Heaven, somehow by the time this new religion has become popular it's gained a lot in common with Christianity: temples selling absolution from sins for a reasonable fee, monks in brown habits reciting scripture on street corners, archbishops appointed by a central church institution, a holy prophet that's about as important to the faith as God himself, militant troops in white smocks and the sign of the Scroll on their chests, and by the time the book ends [[spoiler:Hodda as archbishop of Echmen]] is busy building an entire holy city.
* FalseProphet: Oh boy. Felix exploits the sudden enslavement of the Hus by the Echmen to make himself look like a prophet chosen by the Queen of Heaven to free them and lead them to world conquest. He does that by copious amounts of research, theatre tricks, blackmailing an actress and, well, denying to be a prophet while "miracles" happen all around him -- after all, only a true prophet would be too humble to bath in the glory of being one. On the up side, his true motives do align with freeing the Hus from enslavement as a stepping stone to greater things, so there's that. Several people, both who are in on the scam and those who are not, call him out on it and he always [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie serves up some sensible reason]] on why they are mistaken. Deconstructed when the whole thing flips and even those in on the scam start believing him to be a real prophet and the aforementioned actress starts a ScamReligion based around him to spite him, leaving him with a dose of UnwantedFalseFaith and LonersWillStayAlone.
* FirstPersonSmartass: Can't have a K. J. Parker book without one. As a translator, Felix considers it his duty to translate as thoroughly and precisely as possible but lets absolutely loose in his narration, and he's got an opinion on ''everything''. Although, his sarcasm is less biting and more melancholic compared to, say, Orhan in the first book.
-- I don't say what I think. I translate what other people say. That's my job. Just as well, sometimes.
* ItsNotYouItsMe: When it dawns on Felix that She Stamps Them Flat may be in love with him, he quickly uses that to manipulate her, saying that while he cannot love her for [[CripplingCastration obvious reasons]], he still ''cares'' about her.
-- I don't say what I think. I translate what other people say. That's my job. Just as well, sometimes.
* ItsNotYouItsMe: When it dawns on Felix that She Stamps Them Flat may be in love with him, he quickly uses that to manipulate her, saying that while he cannot love her for [[CripplingCastration obvious reasons]], he still ''cares'' about her.
Changed line(s) 502,503 (click to see context) from:
** The second time Felix claims to be fine despite intense shaking while being unable to move he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in it. This isn't something he usually does since Dejauzi isn't his mother tongue and as a translator he always chooses his words carefully.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in it. This isn't something he usually does since Dejauzi isn't his mother tongue and as a translator he always chooses his words carefully.
to:
** The second time Felix claims to be fine -- despite intense shaking while being unable to move -- he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in it. Thisisn't something he usually does is very unusual for him since Dejauzi isn't his mother tongue and as a translator he always chooses his words carefully.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in it. This
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* ScamReligion: In a gamble to gain control over the Hus to achieve his plans of conquest, Felix cobbles together a false religion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as its prophet]], though he keeps the tenets and teachings of it as inoffensive as possible to make it easier for the locals to digest. So far so good. Then [[spoiler:Hodda, pissed about Felix not paying her and leaving her to die in the desert,]] decides to get back at him by proselythising about what she remembers of it and making people pay for a copy of the holy scripture. Felix is appalled about how much money people are willing to part with for faith and how fast they come around and become believers but is all too willing to roll with it as long as it's useful. When the craziness reaches the point where even those people initially in on the scam switch over to idolizing him as a real prophet, [[UnwantedFalseFaith it sort of stops being fun]].
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* StepfordSnarker: Generally, Felix tries to keep up a somewhat upbeat attitude and find humour in everything -- that humour being of the [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecating]] and dark kind. People often find him pleasant enough upon a first meeting but get increasingly more irritated with his "incurable flippancy". Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' resulting from past trauma and the fact that his life sucks and ain't going to get any better ever again, so he's resolved [[FirstPersonSmartass to find a certain kind of joy in the small things]].
--> I'm prepared to engage with the world -- at any moment my head might get bitten off by it, but that's the risk you have to take -- in order to extract a minuscule shred of something worth having. The alternative would be to curl up in a ball and never speak. That has it's attractions, believe me, but I'm not quite ready for it yet. Tomorrow, maybe.
--> I'm prepared to engage with the world -- at any moment my head might get bitten off by it, but that's the risk you have to take -- in order to extract a minuscule shred of something worth having. The alternative would be to curl up in a ball and never speak. That has it's attractions, believe me, but I'm not quite ready for it yet. Tomorrow, maybe.
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* TeethClenchedTeamwork: A significant portion of dialogue within the story is devoted to She Stamps Them Flat trying to understand Felix's motives and [[SeamlessSpontaneousLie Felix making up half-truths to keep her on board]]. It's clear she's signed up for the ride but wants to understand where this is going as she is [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure responsible for her people's wellbeing]], so the conversations always end with her reluctantly doing what he wants as his plans make sense -- she just wishes he were honest about the whys.
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* UnknowinglyInLove: Deconstructed. It's obvious Felix and She Stamps Them Flat care for each other in some way or another, but Felix is both too traumatised to believe anyone could truly like him and too busy using She Stamps Them Flat and her people for his own goals to entertain the idea. He does notice her feelings and offers up an ItsNotYouItsMe-rejection to not put her off too much. However, after having arranged for She Stamps Them Flat to marry Shekelesh the Great, Felix has his usual AnxietyDream{s}, but this time instead of Carloman cutting him open like a pig it's She Stams Them Flat in the royal regalia of Shekelesh the Great saying "this is my beloved wife with whom I am well pleased" before [[TraumaButton knifing Felix]]. He doesn't dwell on it, but then, all we get is what Felix [[UnreliableNarrator chooses to share]] and he's admittedly not too keen on dwelling on things he cannot [[StepfordSnarker make into self-deprecating jokes]]. At the end, She Stamps Them Flat and Shekelesh the Great turn out to be a [[MarriageBeforeRomance a perfect match]].
* UnwantedFalseFaith: Technically, Felix ''does'' willingly start a ScamReligion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as its prophet]], but he manages to maneuver himself into a position where even the people originally in on the scam start believing him to be a true prophet. This leads to a situation where those who could otherwise have become his friends fawn over him instead, [[LonersWillStayAlone preventing any deeper connections forever]].
* UnwantedFalseFaith: Technically, Felix ''does'' willingly start a ScamReligion [[FalseProphet centered on himself as its prophet]], but he manages to maneuver himself into a position where even the people originally in on the scam start believing him to be a true prophet. This leads to a situation where those who could otherwise have become his friends fawn over him instead, [[LonersWillStayAlone preventing any deeper connections forever]].
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Deleted line(s) 399 (click to see context) :
* HeroesWantRedHeads: Rillirin, who is a redhead and becomes [[TheChosenOne Dom's]] LoveInterest during ''Godblind'', turns out to be quite spunky and willfull after she loses her paralyzing fear of everyone around her.
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* CurbStompBattle: Justified. When [[spoiler:the Dejauzi engage the Echmen lancers in battle for the first time]], they do so well prepared and having set a trap. It ends with twelve thousand dead [[spoiler:Echmen lancers]] and twenty-seven dead [[spoiler:Dejauzi tribesmen]]. Felix remarks how he's glad to have been far enough away to not see anything that might disturb him.
Changed line(s) 500 (click to see context) from:
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in it, which isn't something he usually does since Dejauzi isn't his mother tongue and as a translator he always chooses his words carefully.
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* ObviouslyNotFine: Felix lives by the tenet that [[StepfordSnarker he's always doing well enough]] and gets called out by She Stamps Them Flat on at least two occasions:
** The first time she catches him shaking like a leaf from anxiety and exhaustion after [[spoiler:just having won their first battle against the Echmen and convincing the Dejauzi kings to keep going]] and also not having slept for three days. Felix claims he's fine then immediately falls asleep.
** The second time Felix claims to be fine despite intense shaking while being unable to move he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words init, which it. This isn't something he usually does since Dejauzi isn't his mother tongue and as a translator he always chooses his words carefully.
** The first time she catches him shaking like a leaf from anxiety and exhaustion after [[spoiler:just having won their first battle against the Echmen and convincing the Dejauzi kings to keep going]] and also not having slept for three days. Felix claims he's fine then immediately falls asleep.
** The second time Felix claims to be fine despite intense shaking while being unable to move he's [[spoiler:covered in the blood of someone he just killed, after having pretend-knifed himself with a theatre knife]], which [[TraumaButton triggered his trauma about knives]].
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie: How Felix and Oio became friends. One early morning Oio bumped into Felix begging him to tell any guards that might come asking any moment that they'd spent all night together. Felix's reaction is to shrug and concoct a lie about them having played chess all night seamless and detailed enough to get Oio out of being hanged for murder.
* ShamingTheMob: Felix is awoken by an angry mob tentatively wanting to lynch him for being a false prophet. [[spoiler:With some help from a theatre knife and killing their spokesman]], he convinces them otherwise, then loudly shames them for [[spoiler:murdering their king]] on the words of an enemy soldier.
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* ThereIsAnother: After believing himself to be the LastOfHisKInd for quite a while, Felix meets [[ContinuityCameo Hodda]], who tells him of how the siege of the City ended, making it likely that there are still yet other Robur out there and planting the world conquest idea in Felix's head.
* TraumaButton: Knifes, when they get too close to Felix, make him go all to pieces. He likens the feeling to having a terminal illness -- you wake up in the morning and it's the first thing you remember.
* TraumaButton: Knifes, when they get too close to Felix, make him go all to pieces. He likens the feeling to having a terminal illness -- you wake up in the morning and it's the first thing you remember.
to:
* ThereIsAnother: After believing himself to be the LastOfHisKInd LastOfHisKind for quite a while, Felix meets [[ContinuityCameo Hodda]], who tells him of how the siege of the City ended, making it likely that there are still yet other Robur out there and planting the world conquest idea in Felix's head.
* TraumaButton:Knifes, Knives, when they get too close to Felix, make him go all to pieces. He likens it to the feeling to having of waking up and remembering you have a terminal illness -- you wake up in the morning and it's the first thing you remember.illness.
* TraumaButton:
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* AdamAndEvePlot: Discussed very briefly when Felix meets [[ContinuityCameo Hodda]], who recognizes him as a friend of a friend of a friend and quips: "So much for [[CripplingCastration you]] and me being the parents of a new Robur race."
* ContinuityCameo: Hodda, of all people, materializes in the Echmen capital in a quest to [[ContinuityNod interest the locals in classical Robur theatre]] after the previous book ended with her absconding with the money her and Notker stole from the Imperial Treasury.
Changed line(s) 491 (click to see context) from:
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulating their faith towards his warmongering goals, and Felix in turn offers to lend her a book on poisons.
to:
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulating their faith towards with his warmongering goals, warmongering, and Felix in turn offers to lend her a book on poisons.
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* LastOfHisKind: After the news reaches the Robur diplomatic mission in Echmen of the conquest of the Robur Empire by a confederation of pretty much every nation and tribe they've pissed off in the past several hundred years, now determined to wipe every last Robur from the face of the earth, the Robur ambassador kills himself and the other two Robur diplomats get killed by an angry mob trying to flee the palace -- leaving only their translator, Felix, as, presumably, the last surviving Robur. Although people make him feel how rude it is of him to not also drop dead, Felix has no intention whatsoever to do so or to even feel survivor guilt -- he's too busy just staying alive in a foreign court where the only thing between him and death is the fact that the Echmen invented diplomatic immunity. Having figured his life can't get any worse, he embarks on a quest to conquer the world. Another character theorizes that Felix intends to avenge the Robur, but Felix refutes that, claiming he actually ''hates'' the Robur and what they stood for. Subverted in that the reader at that point, presumably having read the previous two books, already knows that [[ThereIsAnother there are still Robur out there]] who managed to eventually escape the siege of the City. The real question thus becomes, wether Felix will be able to find them and what he will do once he does.
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* MotiveMisidentification: She Stamps Them Flat reasons that Felix wants to conquer the world due to the following train of thought: the world rightfully belonged to the Robur (as far as they were concerned, anyway), Felix is [[LastOfHisKind the last Robur]], therefore the world belongs to him and he wants to be king or even god-king of the world to avenge the Robur. Felix calls it a plausible scenario, except he really hates the Robur and good riddance to them.
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* ThereIsAnother: After believing himself to be the LastOfHisKInd for quite a while, Felix meets [[ContinuityCameo Hodda]], who tells him of how the siege of the City ended, making it likely that there are still yet other Robur out there and planting the world conquest idea in Felix's head.
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* AnxietyDreams: Played for laughs. Felix quickly deduces the source of his standard bad dream becoming weird as eating too many savoury dumplings. When eschewing the dumplings doesn't stop the weirdness, he visits a doctor, who reassures him that he's probably just worried about all the big things he's got on his mind; prophets, Gods and the destiny of empires and such. Relieved to be taken seriously for once, Felix is about to leave when the doctor asks if he's ''sure'' he's not the prophet, just maybe?
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Felix is afraid of confined dark spaces and gets the horrors while fleeing the Echmen palace with She Stamps Them Flat. It takes her yelling and kicking at him for an extended period of time to get him to move again.
* TheDeterminator: Once he's made up his mind to... whatever it is he aims to achieve, Felix can only be stopped by death. At one point, She Stamps Them Flat offers him essentially all the gold and silver in the Dejauzi nation just so he would go away and stop manipulating their faith towards his warmongering goals, and Felix in turn offers to lend her a book on poisons.
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* ShaggyDogStory: The whole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer the world, with Felix giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging from becoming king of the world to ending all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the City turns out to be uninhabitable due to plague and his fellow Robur still treat him worse than a leper.]]
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he said to She Stamps Them Flat.
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he said to She Stamps Them Flat.
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* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: She Stamps Them Flat concludes that Felix's monologue about why he hates the Robur can be taken at face value because he uses multiple swear words in it, which isn't something he usually does since Dejauzi isn't his mother tongue and as a translator he always chooses his words carefully.
* PerformanceAnxiety: Inverted. Felix is quite good at giving big impromptu speeches in front of many people but afterwards he visibly shakes like a leaf in the wind.
* ShaggyDogStory: The whole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer the world, with Felix giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging from becoming king of the world to ending all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the Cityturns out to be has since become uninhabitable due to plague and his fellow Robur still treat him Felix worse than a leper.]]
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what hesaid says to She Stamps Them Flat.Flat.
* TraumaButton: Knifes, when they get too close to Felix, make him go all to pieces. He likens the feeling to having a terminal illness -- you wake up in the morning and it's the first thing you remember.
* PerformanceAnxiety: Inverted. Felix is quite good at giving big impromptu speeches in front of many people but afterwards he visibly shakes like a leaf in the wind.
* ShaggyDogStory: The whole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer the world, with Felix giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging from becoming king of the world to ending all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the City
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he
* TraumaButton: Knifes, when they get too close to Felix, make him go all to pieces. He likens the feeling to having a terminal illness -- you wake up in the morning and it's the first thing you remember.
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* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]]. He claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of a past FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix leans into it and sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way, but ends up pushing them away in his oblivious [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work as planned and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
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* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]]. He claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of a past FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix leans into it and sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way, but way. However, he ends up pushing them away in his oblivious [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work as planned and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
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Changed line(s) 491 (click to see context) from:
* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]] -- the former due to him being a Robur and the latter due to [[FalseRapeAccusation what got him reassigned there in the first place]]. Felix claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of said FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in accidental CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way, but ends up pushing them away in his [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
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* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]] -- the former due to him being a Robur and the latter due to [[FalseRapeAccusation what got him reassigned there in the first place]]. Felix else]]. He claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of said a past FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in accidental CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix leans into it and sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way, but ends up pushing them away in his oblivious [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work as planned and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
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[[folder:Blackdog]]
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* BornAgainImmortality:
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** Felix discovers that the Hus who requested him as their translator all understand and speak Echmen perfectly well but prefer for the Echmen to not know that.
** When later Felix first meets the Sashan Great King the latter brings along a translator, but Felix waves him away since he himself also speaks the Sashan language.
*
* FileMixup: Felix and She Stamps Them Flat first meet when he is called upon to translate her death warrant. Between translating and being told to go fuck himself, Felix deduces there's been a file mixup since She Stamps Them Flat is Hus, not Dejauzi, and it wouldn't do to execute the wrong hostage.
* LanguageBarrier: One of the Echmen lancers -- none of whom speak the local Dejauzi language -- discovers that one of the Dejauzi tribesmen understands Pirzoi, a language foreign to both of them, and thinks it's funny to claim the Dejauzi goddess Queen of Heaven is just an actress in glowing paint. Not only does it [[spoiler:start a mutiny among the Dejauzi and results in the death of the Maudit king and his brother]], it also almost gets the Echmen lancer hanged since all communication henceforth has to go through those two people.
* LonersWillStayAlone: Felix starts off as a translator attached to [[ReassignedToAntarctica the Robur diplomatic mission at the Echmen court]] where both the locals and his own countrymen [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer suffer his presence more than anything else]] -- the former due to him being a Robur and the latter due to [[FalseRapeAccusation what got him reassigned there in the first place]]. Felix claims to be dealing with it just fine considering people have always liked him well enough only at first anyway, before they discover his [[StepfordSnarker "incurable flippancy"]]. Actually, he's deathly afraid of ''everyone'' as a result of said FalseRapeAccusation that resulted in accidental CripplingCastration, leading him to feel "cut off" from the entire human race for the rest of his life. Having figured that he's got nothing to lose, Felix sets out on a quest to conquer the world, meeting people who genuinely care about him along the way, but ends up pushing them away in his [[TheDeterminator single-mindedness]] to reach his goal and the events that spiral out from his less-than-honest actions. That he is, at the end of the day, seeking some smidgeon of company and acceptance becomes clear when he reaches his ''true'' goal of [[spoiler:finding the last remaining Robur and returning with them to the City. It doesn't work and they still think him worth less than dirt. And despite now being hailed as a prophet, Felix ends the story living alone in a monastery with any people who could've been his friends either fawning over his holiness or keeping him at arm's length due to fear of being used by him again]].
* MarriageBeforeRomance: Sometime after having talked She Stamps Them Flat into marrying Shekelesh the Great King [[AltarDiplomacy for political reasons]] Felix returns to find them "getting on like a house on fire" and She Stamps Them Flat head over heals in love because her husband ''listens when she talks'' -- unlike some.
* ShaggyDogStory: The whole story builds towards Felix reaching whatever goal it is he set himself that led him to wanting to conquer the world, with Felix giving various reasons for his actions at various points of the story ranging from becoming king of the world to ending all wars. When he finally reaches it, that secret goal turns out to be [[spoiler:returning the Robur to the City and reconquering their Empire for them. However, the City turns out to be uninhabitable due to plague and his fellow Robur still treat him worse than a leper.]]
* TactfulTranslation: Played straight and inverted by Felix when he first meets She Stamps Them Flat. He translates her cussing and snarling into very polite sentences towards the Echmen official and calls the Echmen official an arsehole when translating what he said to She Stamps Them Flat.
