Hey, is Dunstan on good enough terms with Leofric to let him put his talents to use and name his and Brit's baby? Because I'd imagine he's still at least somewhat angry about the affair with Matilda, but at the same time, do we really need another little Matilda/Maud/Alred/Sigefrith running around Lothere causing confusion à la the infamous Eadgith/Eadie mix-ups by all in 1077?

Of course, I'm sure if all else fails, Dunstan, Britamund, and/or Alred could come up with a perfectly good name on their own...

Thank you

I noticed there weren't any avatars for Larl or Gwynn, and I wasn't really doing anything at the time, so I whipped up one for each of them, and then one for Finn too, just because. The Gwynn and Finn ones look a little zoomed out (I kind of went overboard when trying to prevent any severed foreheads), but I think the Lar one turned out okay, even though I felt the need to play around with brightness and contrast (at 85x85 pixels, his chin seemed to be blending into his neck).

I can't wait to see Alred as a grandpa. Maybe his little grandchild will help him get his life back in gear...

I kind of hope Gwynn is the baby's godmother. Yeah, she's a little young, but I'm pretty sure you aren't planning on killing off Brit or Dunstan before Gwynn grows up, or at least not both of them. Gwynn does have something a friendship with Brit, and she's Dunstan's oldest surviving sister... although maybe they didn't make godparents out of such close relatives in those days? I'm not totally sure.

Did Egelric have any of the same problems with Sela that Malcolm does with Iylaine? I'm sure Sela would have been considerably more keen on a little four-legged frolic during her fertile periods, just like Iylaine is, but all the same, I can't see her being quite as frigid as Iylaine is when she's not fertile; if she was, Egelric never complained about it, at least not that I can remember. Is it just a kisor/khirron thing, or their personalities, or did Sela just have a more consistent sex drive than Iylaine does?

There was no Gwynn? I'm stunned! I like the one you chose... looks like she's squawking. So Gwynn.

Um, I don't think I have any ownership rights on most of the names in my story since I am just borrowing from historical sources, as I just explained to François. So I don't think it's possible to "steal" them. (OK actually if you had a character named Shosudin, that would be iffy... You would have to work a random name generator for a long time -- and probably bribe it with bacon -- to spontaneously come up with Shosudin, so I wouldn't buy it. OTOH someone else spontaneously come up with the name "Lothere" so who can say? There's a lot of bacon in the world.) I'm curious, what are the names though?

Anyway, about godparents, I'm doing a lousy job with that I think. I'm not keeping track of them very well, which I know is going to come back and bite me in the behind one of these days. And back in this time period it was actually pretty complicated who could be your godparents. For one thing -- and I have already totally ignored this several times over I believe -- it was actually frowned upon for you to marry a child of your godparents, even if they were totally unrelated to you.

So mostly I just ignore all that bother and make everyone be godparents willy-nilly as best amuses me and advances my story. I wouldn't be surprised if Gwynn got to be the baby's godmother, especially if it's a girl. Though Ogive would also be a splendid choice. But if it's a girl it's not unheard of to have two godmothers and one godfather, so maybe they both could be. And maybe Bertie as a godfather? So cute! Can't wait!

As for the ELF SEX, I think a lot of that is just Iylaine's personality. For one thing, withholding sex would be a great way to assert herself and remind the world (in the guise of Malcolm) that she doesn't really want to be in that relationship -- or at least, not in that sort of relationship with that particular man.

Now, I don't think it's just that -- their relationship is not that bad. I think Iylaine simply has some trust/intimacy issues thanks to her upbringing that would make her somewhat ambivalent about sex. She has never been interested in flirting or kissing or dancing, or any of that stuff. (Which is probably one of the reasons why she liked Malcolm so much. He wasn't into the romance thing either.)

But given that, it just means that sex is one of the "first things to go" in that relationship every time they fight or Iylaine gets cranky about something. Check out "Malcolm goes on" to witness this dynamic in excruciating detail.

And when I'm in a cranky mood with Iylaine myself, it is just one of the things that puts me over the top. Sometimes I wish Malcolm could have had (or that he will someday have) a relationship where he's not carrying all the weight uphill both ways -- where he's with someone who really adores him, and wants to spend all her time with him, and wants to be intimate with him, and thinks he's the best and cleverest and handsomest man in the whole world. I think Malcolm would be like "WOAH! It can be like that?"

And if that ever did happen now I bet Iylaine would finally realize what a good thing she had. But maybe it would be too late.

As for elf sex in general though... I don't know. Whom have we seen besides Sela? She seemed to like sex with Egelric at any time (WHO WOULDN'T??). Otherwse we've only seen Madra and Ris, and Madra didn't even want to touch that (WHO WOULD??). And Nush and Nina, but there seems to be something a bit creepy there, even if it's only due to the unfairly taboo nature of their relationship. It would be nice to just see an ordinary loving couple, like Shus and Dara, say, to get a baseline example of what it's supposed to be like.

Oooh Fenric, we might be seeing more of him soon since he will be going to live at Sigefrith's castle as soon as Theobald is out of the valley. And Theobald just left the valley today, so that should be any day now. I don't think we have ever seen him in a chapter yet though!

As for Oswald... yeah I am assuming you didn't choose that name in anyone's "honor". I think I spoiled it for myself forever.

We already saw Lena and Aengus together in the woods in early May and she seemed to be enjoying herself with him, so I guess there's that evidence. Who knows, though, whether Lena wasn't more interested in just being loved than having sex?

Are Aengus and Lena really in love? It's probably better to look at that question separately for both sides.

I think Lena loves Aengus in her resigned way -- he's her man, she just can't have him. I doubt she would look for another man if she lost him totally, though. Especially with what we've just seen, she would probably be fine with just raising her son and forgetting about any other males of any race.

Meanwhile Aengus is a twisted up bundle of indecision. One minute he loves Lena, and the next he's pining for Maire. He's a wishy-washy sort of guy. But overall I do think Maire is the love of his life. She's just too much for him -- too high for him, too mighty for him. If Maire says No to him, he doesn't have the will or the courage to stand up to her, and that's what Maire really needs. (Not necessarily in terms of sex, I mean.)

I think Aengus really screwed up when he got back with Lena after Paul's wedding. It was so nice, so easy, having his cake and eating it too... but he ruined things with Maire. He's not done paying for that mistake yet.

We'll get some additional insight into the Maire/Aengus/Lena triangle right soon, methinks.

Meanwhile don't forget that Maire has no way of knowing yet whether she's even pregnant or not, and Aengus is on his way home, so you may soon get a definitive answer to the question of what she would do or not do to cover all her bases.

I would love to do Shus and Dara together but it's the usual boring-happy couple syndrome...

Or maybe not. These past few days I have come to realize that I probably will need to do my big messy khírrón drama this month after all, in spite of how much longer it's going to drag out December. Too many other stars are coming into alignment at the end of this month, and in order for it all to make sense without ruining the fun of the drama part of it, I probably will have to add that piece of the puzzle in too. Oh well, at least now there will be Shus. (I think this will even have an impact on Rua and Malcolm's story too...)

Oh, the terrible memories!

There is absolutely NOTHING worse

Did young Sigefrith ever really love Hilda as anything more than the mother of his children, even before they got married? Also, did Hilda have any opportunity to cheat other than with Leofric (who may not have even obliged her)?

There's nothing worse, Van?

Meanwhile, onto more pleasant things... I noticed Malcolm's mother is ten weeks pregnant. It's so sad that he'll probably never see her again, and never meet his new little sibling ...has he even met some of his younger siblings, like the twins Gog named for Sigefrith and Eadie?

There are a few actions you make your sims do, and I'm not sure if you downloaded them (I think you can download actions?), or if you combine two actions and move people around, or if you need a certain expansion pack for them.

First one: the comforting when someone's crying. At first I thought that must be from an expansion pack, but then I started thinking maybe the person doing the comforting is really in the middle of some other action? I'm not sure.

Second: The kind of dancing your sims do. How on earth do you do that?

I use the "Cry... Mild" animation to make one Sim start crying. You can get this with the downloadable reaction tester mod. It's a yellow box you can buy and put on your lot, and when you click on it you get a big pie menu of various animations your active Sim can do.

Once a Sim is crying, another Sim who has a high relationship with him can click on him and select "Console" and then he will do the comforting animation. The "Console" isn't even a hack. Any Sim who's crying (such as after a death) can be "Console"d by someone with high enough relationship -- the trick is getting someone to cry in the first place, and the animation tester takes care of that.

decorgal21572 also has a bunch of animation mods over at mts2. I think they're all base game compatible. You use those to make your Sim perform one of a list of hundreds of animations... a lot of trial and error and happy accidents there.

There is a "Console... Back Off" animation in the Standing Talk Hack that is very cool -- you can use it to make the 2nd Sim look like he's attempting to console and getting rejected. I actually used this animation several times on Eithne when she's freaking out while trying to help Cian while he's coughing uncontrollably. (Coughing brought to you by the Hula & More hack, which I was just about to get to.)

My other big source of animations is Squinge's Hula & More mod, which has moved AGAIN and is now here. When you install this mod, a new "Hula & More" menu appears when you click on a Sim, and you can choose animations from in there. The advantage/disadavantage of Hula & More (unlike most of the other animation hacks) is that the animations loop forever until you cancel them from their queue. For dancing that's great though.

For dancing, I use the "Hula Dance (No Music)" animation from Hula & More. If you make sure all your Sims' queues are clear, then pause the game and make everyone start "Hula Dance", they will all start dancing in unison when you unpause. Then it's just a matter of using move_objects to get everyone in line.

For the recent Crazy Dance Party, I used quite a few other animations for the Crazy Dances. Cearball and Connie were using the bonfire dance from the University Animbox (requires Uni, obviously), and I think Paul and Rua were doing a Hula & More animation ("Bowling... Strike" I believe... crazy I know), and the rest of the people were using various other dance animations from Hula & More. (There are a lot more than just the Hula Dance in there, of course.)

As for Cedric... well, I don't know. I don't think Cedric was ever "into" Kraaia in that way, but after his first experience of kissing her, he might want to go back for more. Not out of love though... it depends on how much Cedric's natural gallantry will be influenced by the whisperings of boys like Cubby. If he thinks she wants it and isn't worthy of being allowing to keep her virginity...

Gwynn on the other hand... I think he does have a slight crush, but perhaps not as big as he is imagining it to be. Cedric has a way of blowing everything out of proportion.

Cedric still thinks that Karaaia would still want to see him after what he did? That boy is somethin else..

Well he's gonna have to get past Osh to get to Kraaia. I guess I'm not for Cedric and Kraaia anymore...

*hugs Osh*

When I first made Lar I didn't even plan on making him pretty -- much less the leader of the kisór, or with any backstory at all. I just needed some pointy-eared genes to make a baby. I whipped up a family consisting of the uncle and the black-haired woman we saw in "Dunstan attends an awkward meeting", plus a brunette, a blonde, and a random male elf. My original idea was to breed the three ladies with the elf until I got a boy baby with pointed ears, but I got Wulf on the first try -- and then I was a little disappointed because I wished I had started with the brunette or the blonde.

The whole backstory for Lar, and the kisór in general, came quite, quite late in the story. Even as late as 1081, in "Malcolm meets an elf", Vash was saying "No elf has killed another elf in a very, very long time." So I had to retroactively decide that he was conveniently excluding the entire race of the kisór from his calculations.

I think we first saw Lar in 1082 in "Iylaine is underground", when he was still on his high from getting Dre on his side, and he still had dozens of fighters, and he really thought he was going to pull something off. (I didn't know that then, either.)

His character didn't begin to develop until even later, when Dre started pressing him to do some really weird shit, and then of course once Dasi and Imin hit the scene, things really took off, to the point that I wish I could write their whole history as a separate story now.

For your second question... I would have to say it's Margaret. She owned Leof's ass in "Leofric sees the daughter". And she's the type who could hold a grudge for a very, very long time, and be very dangerous when she acted out over it.

Gwynn doesn't like him, but Gwynn-like she can't help but think he's lusting after her.

The Old Man doesn't remember his mom too well, and if he resents Leof for anything it's more for what he did to his father. The Old Man takes his cues from his father, and probably isn't quite sensitive enough to realize that Alred's forgiveness of Leofric was fake, so he must have thought everything was OK there until Leof almost did it again with Hetty.

Dunstan, as I discussed recently, is getting wise in his earnest young way, plus he did for a while have quite a close friendship with Leofric, so he is probably still rather ambivalent. And certainly trying to forgive.

That leaves Yware, but I am going to assume he doesn't even think about Leofric any more, except perhaps as some swaggering 16-year-old's favorite "I'm gonna kick his ass someday" enemy whom he curses when he's drunk. But I really don't want to speculate too much about Yware since I haven't written him in so long. He may surprise me.

Uh, yeah. That was not at all an unintentional revelation of anyone's secret parentage there. As if it's not BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS Wulf really is Egelric's son.

If I were a kisór female elf you mean? I wouldn't want to meet any of them if I were a male.

There are some khírrón who do not partake of the fruits of the forest at all, so I guess I would most like to meet one of those, if that's what you're getting at. Shus and Paul and Vash never did... Some kind of spoken or unspoken solidarity with Vash, who couldn't see his woman at all. Vash is the trendsetter among the young elves (keep an eye on Finn's hair for further proof of that ) so the younger generation got stuck in a collective virginity pledge. Shus and Paul were virgins when they were married, and most of the younger guys still are too. Also some of the older guys have stopped going, though not necessarily because of Vash.

(If I have to tell you which one I would like to meet in the hopes they would want to sleep with me... heheh...)

Needless to say I would not want to meet Ris or Dru under any circumstances.

I think Gwynn and Finn would be excellent candidates for "trouble" because Gwynn seems so impulsive (and horny). If anything she would be the one trying to talk Finn out of his worries. (She can embroider the family motto on her pillowcases: "We can be Careful!"™)

The two of them in a couple of years... in full flush of teenage hormones and sense-of-invincibility... in the heat of the moment...

And that's assuming Gwynn even understands by then how babies are made!!!

Margaret on the other hand... hmm...

And Emma on the other hand...

So Tashnu isn't going to follow in Shus, Vash and Paul's example.

Hmmm....

Gwynn should definitely keep her legs closed. So we can get a Gwynn becomes a wife scene on her wedding night. Complete with the wedding processional and pics.

That would be awesome. Finn with his ears all pink from blushingness. Gwynn all drunk and horny and not knowing what it is she wants but wanting it NOW! If told from the perspective of Finn... it might indeed resemble Brit's POV.

I feel so woozy when I think about that little exchange almost as if I was there!

I'm already planning their wedding via modthesims2.

There was an awesome OMG are they gonna kiss?? picture in this last chapter, which sadly I was unable to use due to Gwynn's apparent perkiness. What a scene this would have made in a movie! Just watching the two of them moving around each other...

You will have to count on me to pick the best POV when the time comes. Surprisingly it is quite rare that I ever want to tell a chapter from two POVs. Sometimes it takes me a while to decide (I often make up my mind while I'm taking the pictures), and on a few occasions I even got half-way through before I realized it wasn't working and rewrote from another POV, but really, it is almost always obvious to me who should tell any given chapter.

I wonder if that is common among writers? It's just like with the characters... you mysteriously know what they will do and say, and on a higher level it's the same with the story... you mysteriously know who the story wants on center stage. OK enough writer wanking...

As for Gwynn and Finn, I admit I have a hard time imagining their wedding night coming off like Brit and Dunstan's. The whole procession and the blessing of the bed and all that. It's just so tame.

Gwynn needs romance! Their marriage will be more like some breathless affair at midnight in a crumbling abbey, while a band of angry torch-wielding villains gallops up the hill in pursuit. And their first time (which may or may not coincide with their wedding night) won't be some quiet business in a big, freshly-made bed with all the candles lit and her brother getting drunk downstairs. No no.

Yes, this sort of thing is straight out of hackneyed romance novels, but THAT'S GWYNN! I can go hog-wild with the hackneyed. It will be awesome.

Gaaaaah, why do I keep forgetting to log in? Damn exam stress!

But what about Finn? Finn is so very unromantic. What would he prefer.

*giggles giddily*

These two are so much fun.

I forgot about Finn's sense of adventure! Oh how perfect are they for one another as masculine/feminine archetypes?

You already know what their babies will look like?

Por favor?

SPEW!!

Tiffany, meet the Interesting Family.

I reserve the soap opera writer's right to make all my main characters be gorgeous, however.

That's Old-Cearball's kid THANK GOD. I haven't made any test-babies with New-Cearball though, so you never know...

If you do plastic surgery, the genes don't change. The Sim has two facial structure files then, and it uses the original one for genes and the new one for rendering the Sim. (If you do plastic surgery again, it just rewrites the old plastic surgery so the genes never change.) However, if you have SimPE you can copy the new facial structure on top of the old and that effectively changes the genes. I've done it before.

Eadweard died on my birthday...

No, that just means you're on my side with the soap opera theory.

I'm not sure he noticed the ring at the time, you're right there. Estrid was rather distracting.

Now that he's done the deed, however, if he thinks he's subtle enough not to raise suspicions he will probably try to find out. Not because Oooh he wants to marry her, but because he will want to know whether he has an ass-kicking coming his way. He knows his English is not so hot, but he speaks Gaelic and Norse, and there are a few lower-class Gaelic-speakers in Lothere. He might be able to gossip his way into that information down at the tavern.

But maybe I shouldn't wonder about that too much yet. I think the next time we see Estrid and K it will be from K's point of view, so I can answer all these questions and more!

(He has to be at least a little freaked out though. Even if she's not married, she's Brass-Dog's sister, which might be worse.)

I'm glad you asked about this, because I think the death of his little brother affected Alred a lot, even though it's not something he talks about much. I can only remember two occasions when I mentioned him:

From "Alred and Matilda come to say goodbye":

People always said that the dead looked as if they were at peace, but he had never been able to see it.  Colburga looked exhausted, as if she had borne life as long as she could and then collapsed under its load, never having felt the relief of its being lifted from her back.

His father had worn a look of angry surprise, as if his broken nose had come from Death punching him in the face.  His little brother had lain with his brows knit in consternation, seemingly unable to believe that a ten-year-old boy such as himself could truly be dead.

I am sure Alred was projecting some of his own surprise and consternation on the poor little body back then.

The other one I can't find, but I seem to remember Alred telling Matilda about how he and his little brother used to wait until their grandfather was snoring on the couch after dinner and try to pitch berries or grapes into his mouth.

I don't think Alred has any special guilt about that death -- as in, he wasn't responsible for it in any way -- except maybe survivor's guilt.

Given what we've seen of Alred's father's treatment of him, the way he called him a worthless snivelling brat and so on, I can imagine Yware being a bigger and stronger and braver and better boy in every way, and perhaps the old man was sorry that Alred was the eldest and heir, and Alred heartily agreed.

So perhaps when Yware died, Alred was just furthered along in his career of wondering why worthless sniveling him gets all the glory why the good people around him die. I do think they were very close though, and it's one of those hurts that he's been carrying around unlightened all these years.

I don't know how he died though. Maybe a childhood illness, but at that age it could easily have been something like an accident hunting or fighting or even playing. But not Alred's fault anyway. I doubt he would have lived to adulthood if he had guilt over his brother's death piled on top of all his other anguish and sorrows.

Lothere do you know if the elves are buried in coffins like the men?

Also was Egelric present when Vash Shosudin and (Tashnu?) supposedly buried Sela?

I could have sworn I posted my question in my thread; I'm having a senior moment.

IMIN knows where she's buried!! I was hoping Aia knew.

I don't think Aia knows. She might know vaguely that it's far across the valley, but she doesn't know the lay of the land on the other side, so no one could even explain it to her. Anyway, she could never make it that far on her own, at least not on her own two feet. The elves are good at navigating by natural landmarks, as we saw once with Vash and Iylaine, but Aia never got out much due to her handicap, so it's not something she's good at. She knew Nothelm because Sela had once pointed it out to her, and it's quite the landmark.

Imin and Aia do not talk, so if only Imin knows, then she wouldn't easily find out, either.

Lar probably knows. Those elves know everything that happens near the lake. However, Lar doesn't tell everything to all his men, so if he knows it, it is probably more like a secret between his four. We know he hasn't told the whole truth about how she died, so he probably wishes that memory would just go away.

Or maybe Imin is the only elf who knows where she is, besides the four who buried her, and he's keeping it a secret from everybody. Haven't decided yet...

Pol and Dru were pretty close friends, weren't they? Do you think Dru might have told Pol something about Lar? Maybe not all the details of their mysterious meeting or anything, but did Pol at least know that Lar was Dru's son?

I know you use the moveobjects cheat for a lot of your pictures, which makes me wonder what you do for chapters shot on community lots. Is there some sort of mod or cheat that enables buy and build modes on community lots, or are all your lots residential?

Yeah, taking photos for chapters is almost impossible on community lots. I know first hand. Not being able to go into the buy and build modes puts a severe hinderance on... everything.

1) I believe we've only had the two chapters with Matilda ("Matilda is welcomed home" and "Matilda has no idea") and so far she doesn't seem to have much affection for the baby. So far we've only had this, from the chapter you read:

Mouse promised her she would feel nothing but love for her baby once it came, but for now it was only a weight in her belly—a weight that sometimes squirmed and stretched its limbs, making embarrassing ripples across the front of her dress.

Of course that was back in September. I will speculate a little bit, though I plan to do a Matilda chapter or two in the next week or so, and maybe prove myself wrong in the story.

I think she's still not feeling any great affection for her baby. I think it is very hard for her to conceptualize the baby that's in there, given all the yuckiness of the situation surrounding it. It's the child of a terrifying rape, and it's an elf's child, so not only is it traumatic for her, it's also something that makes the people around her very uneasy.

We're talking about a culture so superstitious that menstruating women aren't allowed to churn the butter for fear the milk will turn, so you can imagine what some of the less "educated" (and I use that term generously, since even the Alreds and Ralfs of the world would probably agree it's best to leave the churning to women not in any particular "condition") people think of her being pregnant with an elf baby. They're afraid her mere presence will bring the wrath of the elves down on their heads -- like what if the elves come to take the baby back? Or to kill it? Or decide they like it so much they want to make a bunch more? Plus you remember how people were afraid of Iylaine and her evil eye.

So I don't think the servants in the house like her, since she has unfairly been promoted to practically being a lady's companion as the "prize" for having an illegitimate kid. (And there may be some who believe she made up the elf rape story to hide a liaison of her own desiring.) And they and the other people of the village don't like her and actively fear her due to her baby being an elf.

AND on top of all this, she has to deal with a sort of "survivor's guilt" right now, since Mouse lost her dearly-beloved baby, while Matilda is still tottering around with her rape-spawn in her belly. Obviously she's wondering why Mouse's baby died when her own is still alive, and worst of all, I think Ethelwyn wonders the same thing, and even if he's too polite to say it aloud, Matilda must feel it every time he looks at her.

That's why I'm sorry I never found the time to write much about her during her pregnancy. I bet some chapters from her POV or showing her daily life would have been interesting. Because of the anti-elf phobia of a lot of the people on her level of society, plus the whole dynamic with a resentful Ethelwyn and a Mouse too weak to defend her -- it would have been more than just a "Oh, look how rough peasant life is" foil for the pampered existence of Gwynn and her peers.

2) That's the same Osgyth. I just noticed I have never yet updated her family tree to include her husband and upcoming baby... I really need to do that. So I don't know exactly how that's going for her. Her new husband probably won't be the classiest man around... maybe a tradesman but certainly not a gentleman. Too bad she didn't wait for Shirtless K. But really, if she had behaved herself and she and her Mama had done the right sort of plotting she might just barely have aspired to a knight. Her brother had been one, and he had been sorta friends with Eadwyn, who has friends back home...

3) Uhhh... That's a good question. Sophie's station always was far above theirs -- she was a Saxon baron's granddaughter, and it was only because she married down that she entered into that circle at all. Now she's married to Stein, who's the grandson of a Norse princess and all around Great Lady (to the point that he is identified as "son of Gamle, son of Astrid" rather than "son of Gamle, son of Olaf"), she's actually stepped up in the world from where she was at birth. So given that and just the awkwardness of the situation I don't think anyone would expect her to call at the house of her dead husband's family-by-marriage, where she might even meet her dead husband's mother or brother or sister. Ethelmund probably has to pick sides, and he would be obliged to go with his first wife's sister's side, I think.

Now, Stein does know Gunnilda from back in the days when he and Bertie used to hang out together, so knowing Stein I suppose that he has at least talked to Ethelmund since all this happened and sort of smoothed things over. "No hard feelings" but they won't drop in for a piece of cake, if you know what I mean.

And now that Lili's dead, Estrid is the closest thing to a best friend that Sophie has, and we know what a snob she is, too. Estrid is definitely way off in the stratosphere in terms of what sort of people she'll notice. She was not raised in Lothere in the days when the King could drop in to a peasant's shack -- she was raised in the court of Norway. Sophie likewise is "old money" so I don't see her looking back now that she's hanging out with the likes of Stein and Estrid and Edris. In some of her chapters with Leofwine she was thinking about how vulgar and ill-bred he was, so she's surely relieved to be back among her own kind.

Alred is too much of a gentleman and a romantic to have sex with anyone but his beloved...

Er- Speaking of Alred (and I'm sorry if someone has asked this question before or even if I asked this question before) but when ran himself through, was that what he had planned to do from the moment he drew his sword? Or was he first thinking that he was going to kill Leofric?

If "Vash" means "dark water" or "first water", what do some of the other elf names mean?

EDIT: Also, before I forget, I remember you saying something about Matilda having some sort of diabetes or something that made her pregnancies so difficult. Is there a chance that either Gwynn or Meggie will have this as well?

Nooooo Gwynn and Finn's unborn babies must not wreak havoc upon their mother, aside from the occasional kick... or, since they are Finn's babies, maybe the occasional sneeze.

Hmm. They do still see each other but they are not SUCH good friends that he would tell her about that. Everyone thinks that Leof & Alred fought and that's how he got wounded. Very few people actually know the truth of that -- I don't think even Bertie knows. And even to the people who think they fought, it's such a touchy subject that they wouldn't bring it up...

I don't know, I would have to see them in a chapter together to get a better feel for how their relationship is going. We will probably at least see them together in a room sometime by the end of this year or early the next.