I'm pretty positive that Ana was pregnant. We saw her in a post and she was pregnant and Eadwyn was about to go away???

Ah.. I did look at the bio page but I guess I was just blind for a while..

And yes, it was probably for the best that they didn't say anything, but it must be a horrible secret to carry around, even though was an accident.

Back to the 3rd question, I started this story at the end of November, 2005. The 27th I believe. I totally missed this year's anniversary, due to a yucky cold.

It took me only a couple of days between having the idea and getting started -- if that. Maybe one weekend. I went on a medieval CC downloading spree -- which didn't take long, since there wasn't much in those days -- made my founding families -- which took all of an afternoon, since I wasn't obsessive and didn't have much CC to customize their looks anyways -- and had at it. No pre-planning went into any of this.

Even the assignment of which couple would be the king, etc., was all but random: Maud had the prettiest dress, therefore she was queen, Matilda the second-prettiest, and on down. Oh the fickleness of fortune! But for the velvety shininess of Maud's gown, Alred & Matilda might have been king and queen!

Does Gwynn visit Dunstan and Brit often or at all? I know Brit and Gwynn weren't as close as Emma and Megs, but Brit has been less boyishly wild for a few years now, and maybe Gwynn could benefit from some Dunstan-time..?

But the image of Alred discovering the skinny dipping is just too priceless! There would be much sputtering and shouting heard throughout the land.

Oh heck yes! Finn and Gwynn in the pool of LOVE!

It doesn't really work that way, even for the elves. The boys just want it all the time. It's the girls who have their seasons of lust and their seasons of leave-me-alone. (Which is itself hard on Malcolm because human women aren't usually so black-and-white about it, or at least not so seasonal, so he takes it kind of personally.) (But it does make things fun for the lucky elves with human wives.)

How far away from Lothere is he? Because I know when you're bonded to someone you can't be too far without them or you'll get sick.

What's so special about the valley?

But why don't they ever leave it? :nudgenudge:

The first comment ever was by Yicke -- who's still reading! -- back in August of 2006. I had been writing since the end of November of 2005, but I had never advertised my blog anywhere. I finally posted on the Royal Kingdom Challenge Yahoo group, and Yicke found me there practically the same day. So I think she might have been the first reader, too. And somehow it snowballed from there.

Good catch on Sigefrith and Brede. There are two important differences between those two guys. The first is that Sigefrith is a big softie. He always thinks the best of people, always gives second chances, and so on. He's a little naive and optimistic about human nature, and people take advantage of him. He also tends to avoid the really hard duties of being a landholder, like evicting people or whatever. Whereas Brede... Brede just doesn't put up with crap from people. His tenants surely don't love him the way Sigefrith's tenants love him, but on the other hand, fences get mended and rents get paid on Brede's land.

Brede also has much more and richer lands than Sigefrith, including a mill (or two? I don't remember) and the orchards. So even if they were equally competent, Brede would make more money.

The second difference is in their stewards. Sigefrith hired a guy a lot like himself, nice and friendly, but not always the best at convincing people to do things they don't want to do. Brede has a guy who's not particularly nice or friendly at all, but he's a very good steward. Unfortunately I think Brede is about to throw a fit and fire him, whether or not it's mentioned in a chapter.

Oh, and Sigefrith's lands are also much more out-of-the-way than Brede's, and that probably hurts too. His lands just kind of trail off into the hills, so his tenants who are trying to escape his notice just do the same. That's how the people who are living up in Heaven-High ended up there. Meanwhile Brede's farms are right smack in the middle of civilization, so it's harder to hide criminal activities.

The last time we heard anything about Midra was before Druze went missing, in "Nimea fills in the hole". Vash says he asked Midra about the "missing" child of Druze's twin Silea. A few weeks before, in "Vash tells and Paul asks", Vash also says he had asked Midra whether any elf mother ever had a baby of her same nature, and how that worked out.

So she is still living with the elves. She is fairly sane compared to Druze and his alternating fits of childishness and tearing things to shreds. But she is very, very bitter and unhappy. She's Druze's wife, but they almost never see each other. (After spending a century together locked up in the dark, I guess you can't blame them.)

Most of her bitterness comes from Druze's love for his sister, which until quite recently no one knew about except them. Druze never loved or wanted Midra, and he was her whole world.

Nowadays she lives kind of separate from the elven society -- everyone she ever knew is long dead -- but she is greatly respected as a sort of ultra-elder. I guess technically she should be the Shalla, but I don't think anyone wants that, starting with Saralla and ending with Midra herself. She personally knows how things were long ago, though, so she occasionally gets asked questions about things like Vash did. But she is pretty nasty.

When searching in the bio pages, what are characters first sorted on? I've been trying to figure it out, but I can't find a satisfactory answer. A search for Britamund gives this:
http://www.lothere.com/demographics/person/index/name/britamund
I figured maybe they are sorted on ID, but wouldn't Britamund Hwala be the first one to have been added to the database? Then I though maybe it's the name, including surnames, but then why is the Britamund without surname not first or last in the list?

Wow, nice catch! The sad answer is that I was apparently trying to make things harder than they needed to be way back when I first wrote that query... I fixed it now to sort all the no-surname people first, though due to a "bug" in my old-old Family Tree program, I believe there are some elves out there that still have their first name where their surname should go, and no first name at all.

Anyway if you know SQL and you're dying to know why it was sorting that way, my original query ended with this:

ORDER BY concat(coalesce(concat(lname,', '),''),coalesce(fname,'')) ASC

and now ends with this:

ORDER BY lname ASC, fname ASC

The result of the first query was that if the person had no last name, his first name was essentially used as a last name for the purpose of sorting. (Which is why "Britamund" came after "Britamund Ashdown" but before "Britamund Hwala". The second query simply sorts all the people by surname and only uses first name to break a tie.

I think I was stuck in a mental rut, because my search-by-name function uses this criteria:

WHERE (concat(coalesce(fname,''),' ',coalesce(lname,'')) like '%britamund%')

which actually does make sense in that context -- i.e. I combine the first and last names with a space and do the search comparison. I don't want to make you have to search separate fields for first name and last name.

KARMA FOR YOU!

By the way, I believe I have also fixed the "Hide/Show Comments" feature on the chapter-reading page.

Yeah I think COALESCE is not a SQL standard, but I know it's supported at least in MySQL, which I'm using on this site, and MS SQL, which I used at an old job. You can actually pass it more than 2 params and it will just return the first non-NULL one in the list. Very useful sometimes! NULL is like cooties -- everything it touches gets NULL'ed too. Practice safe string concatenation, folks!

The Shalla is indeed the oldest living female elf, who is not the Khóra or Khíra, and who is of laítón or khórrón caste. Maybe Midra would have been if she hadn't been separated from her people for so long, but nobody really wants that now -- neither Midra nor anyone else.

I haven't thought too much about what kind of training there is for her position. Her most definite role is to decide who gets to have babies when, and what gender and nature (to the extent the ladies can control that, which is not 100%), and to name the babies when they are born according to their nature. We saw her doing that when the little Turtle-Dragon was named.

However her role is also to ensure that the rites and traditions are preserved unchanging forever. If the Shalla says something is taboo, then it's taboo, and even the Khór can't argue with that.

So there is obviously a lot of education that goes into making sure she knows the traditions she is supposed to defend. But on the other hand, I think that all the noble elves get that education. And all the noble ladies are obliged to participate in various rites themselves, including a rotating duty of attending the Shalla's audience chamber and private chamber. So they learn by doing too.

So is there some extra stuff that only she knows and she teaches to her probable successor? Maybe. And if so, it would be Mida. But who knows? Maybe the secret lore of the Shalla is simply that there is no secret lore, and your job is only to pretend there is?

In any case, Saralla has been the Shalla for a very long time, and I think her own personality (and Sorin's as well) has played a part in what the role of the Shalla has become. Everytime anyone even hints at doing something a little differently due to changing times, Saralla is there to put her foot down and prevent it. She's perhaps the main reason why elven society so is rigid nowadays that it's about to snap.

It's real, but we haven't learned much about it. There have been a very few hints here and there, but they probably won't even look like hints until we know the truth and you go back to reread.

Ummm... I don't know?

Has there ever been homosexual sex between elves? Yes. I will say no more about when and where and between whom for the moment.

Are there elves that actually are homosexual -- as in being attracted mainly to their same sex -- then I don't know. I guess I haven't decided yet. One of these days I may write one, and then I will have to say yes.

There must be some evolutionary reason why some humans are, and that's why I am not going to automatically say that elves are the same way. Their biology is already pretty different due to their separation into four "natures", plus female elves have some control over the gender & nature of their babies, which is why there might not be a basis for such a thing as evolutionary pressure to reduce the number of reproducing males through making some of them homosexual.

On the other hand, at least among the khirron, at the periods when their sex drive is the highest they are separated from others of the opposite gender. So does anything go on then...? I don't know that either. That's a social thing, however, and not a biological one. Homosexual activity may be part of the "decadence" of their society even though it's not innately part of their biology. The kisor don't have that practice at all.

All we really know about this subject so far is that Lar seems to have a particular horror of the idea (Dre is very good at picking out a person's greatest fear, after all) -- and Imin seems to be subtly accusing him of being a pedophile as well -- so there must be some taboo.

I wonder whether Imin doesn't suspect that Lar is actually a homosexual and that's why he won't get married again or have any kids. And that's why Imin won't shut up about it.

Then again I think there is a lot of sexual chemistry between those two anyway, which just makes matters more complex...

Oh yeah! I forgot that Aia may be a lesbian!

Vash and Paul?

You said elven females can somewhat control the gender and nature of their children. Then why aren't the kisors overflowing with males? Does this gender control only apply to the khirron or are the kisor simply unaware of this option?

Well, maybe one of the khirron servants could go off and tell their kisor mothers what they overhear or something...

So does anybody really know why Iylaine was sent to be with the humans?

And does the Shalla answer to a higher power, like the Bright Lady? Has she spoken to the dark lady?

What is the rank? Bright Lady-Shalla-Khor? I just don't know enough elven tradition!

Ah, thank you for the similes. I understand much better now. Especially about the Caedwulf rubbing bit.

I wonder if the Bright Lady ever talks to her sisters. Aren't there like nine of them?

Isn't the number 9 a recurring theme in the story?

Care to drop any hints?

It means "dragon".

Elven Dictionary

There are only the two... so far... as we know...

You're probably thinking of "Myrddin speaks to his minion":

"I need an unbaptized child of one of these Scots!" Myrddin cried.  "Sir Malcolm won't let me near his son!  And how am I to know which child it is if I cannot even guess the nature of that one?"

"It is surely the half-elf child," Dantalion muttered.  "The other cannot have magic."

"He does!  He does!"  Myrddin let go of his beard and shook his fist beneath the jinni's chin.  "I told you he did!  I told him what to do and say, and he was able to give mastery over air to the Queen's baby son, at least long enough for the baby to learn to breathe on his own."

Dantalion snorted.  "Coincidence."

"He has potential," Myrddin said eagerly.  "That is all I need."

Dantalion smirked.  "Unless he is the wrong one."

"And that is why I need a baby!" Myrddin snarled, vicious again.  "Listen to me!  When I give you a command, you are to follow it!"

The jinni rolled his eyes.

"I want a baby from one of these Scots.  I don't care who the mother is!  Elf or woman, I no longer care."

"Or demon?" Dantalion grinned.

"Certainly not!  What good does it do me if you've polluted it?"

"It might do me some good!"

That low-down, dirty Dantalion!

You'd better not have planned what I'm thinking you have planned!

I don't know Dantalian that well, but I wouldn't put it past him.

Seems like you know exactly where my mind jumped.

Yes, Tina's grandfather was the almighty Vín, a sort of out-of-control Prince who ought never to have been born.

Among other exploits he got his 12-year-old granddaughter Nua pregnant with a little girl she would name Nídala, or Agony, for reasons best known to herself.

And fifteen years later, that little girl would give birth to a little boy named Lar.

Téodrú's picture is different because I no longer had his Sim by the time I wanted to get a picture of him. Actually, I believe that to get the Téodrú Sim (who was only going to be in one chapter after all, I just took one of the khírrón boys, grew him up, changed his looks a little, and took the pictures. I don't even remember which kid it was now. So to get his picture, I had to take it out of the chapter itself.

Hmm the living relatives thing is because I had it set up to show different data when it's an elf instead of a human. I did that a while ago, back when I was moving elves around and creating the elven villages, and needed to see extra info like what village they lived in. So I shall add that to my to-do list of things to fix. I'll add the pictures in and probably make it look like the humans'.

Is it a mistake that in the database Leofricson is spelled with one s for Sigefrith and two s for Cedric?

~searching - searching~ where was that chapter, where Sigefrith(kung. Or someone else from the story :'D) spoke something like this.. "I think I saw my eyes on the kitchen yesterday", meaning "adventures" of his children. :>

How many are you thinking?

I Want Maire Dead before 1086 fund - Please kindly support

Well I'm very excited about the upcoming births of Britamund and Caedwulf's children. I hope we get two girls.

I hope Brit's baby is a girl, definitely--Matilda told Alred it would be, therefore it hasta, hasta, hasta be, for poor Alred's sake. Or.... ooooooh, what if it's twins?

If it's a girl, they have to name her Matilda. Yes, there would be confusion, but wouldn't it be so poetically right if Alred's first granddaughter was named Matilda?

As for Caedwulf's... doesn't really matter to me. It would be interesting if he had a boy, who one day came to Lothere to claim his inheritance or something, but a girl is fine by me too.

Brit's? But Matilda is also Brit's baby's grandmother. Plus I would imagine Caedwulf has dibs on the name Maud for one of his daughters

Poor Ogive.

...

You did notice that all those brothers are dead?

Leof has mentioned his brother only a couple times that I can recall. His brother had been lord since he was a kid, because their father died at age 24. He and Leof didn't get along so well, but don't forget that Leof grew up as a page and then a squire in the court of Sigefrith's father and then of Sigefrith himself. He didn't grow up in the same house as his brother.

Aelfden died mere months before the Battle of Hastings that destroyed everything for their family. I remember one time when Leof mentioned him because he told Hetty (speaking of Alred): "I got more sympathy out of him when my arrogant ass of a brother died than you've had for poor Lili!"

So I guess "arrogant ass" kind of sums up how Leof felt about his brother.

Also, we've had quite a few hints about the relationship between Eadgith and Aelfden's wife Lady Alix. It's hard to say how much of that is Eadgith's own jealousy or insecurities, but it certainly seems like Alix was rather high-and-mighty with her. I doubt that helped relations between Leof and his brother, though I don't really have the impression that Leof thought all that badly of Alix. We haven't had his opinion though.

Actually, now that I think about it, Hastings wasn't as hard on Leof's family as it was on others. Lady Alix married a Norman only a few months after the battle -- presumably the man who had taken her late husband's lands. So Britmar, Baldwin, and their two sisters grew up in a French-speaking household on Norman land. Brit and Baldwin ended up going back and forth between the armies of King William's rebellious son Robert, and the Count of Flanders (who is their cousin on both sides).

And of course Lady Eadgith was allowed to stay on her family farm with her children. (Her brother died at Hastings and had no children.) It probably was Lady Alix who allowed that to happen, though I doubt Lady Eadgith was happy to thank her for it.

As for Theobald's brothers, Gifmund we know was a rather beastly person. We never heard much of anything about Ethelmund, but I don't sense that he was a bad guy. They both died in the fire at Thorhold.

And then there's Alred's beloved little brother Yware...

In real history, the makers of the Domesday Book never made it quite as far as the area where Lothere is located. It was just too far from royal control. Probably not quite under royal control at all.

As for what will happen in the story... you will just have to keep reading to find out. But I will say that it is no secret to William by now that Sigefrith is who he is, and where he is. So the Domesday Book is not going to be the thing that reveals Lothere to the world. The world already knows.

Heheh, I was all set to quote from another chapter, too, and then I saw it was the one you linked to.

 It had been two years now that they had been living there.  For two years he had been playing along, calling himself a Duke because it seemed to please his wife, and waiting for the day when one of King William's sheriffs would come to chase them out of the valley.  

But he suddenly realized that it had been his idea to restore the old church and call in a priest—even he was beginning to think of their future in the valley.  His son would celebrate his second birthday in a few weeks, and he realized that he wanted this future for him, and for the baby that would be born in a few short months.  Perhaps a title and a castle were something that one could reach out and take, if one were bold enough and strong enough.  

Alred nodded to himself.  He would begin work on a stone tower immediately.  He wanted a keep that was defensible.  He wanted to stay.

I doubt Cubby remembers any of that. He was just five or so when he went to Scotland. But his dad is very fond of young Sigefrith, and young Sigefrith is fond of the both of them, so I'm sure he and Cubby are close, whenever Cubby is in Lothere. We just don't see much of Sigefrith these days. (Nor even of Cubby, when you consider the recent chapter with him was the first Cubby POV chapter EVER.)

Cubby has a ton of personality. But he has always seemed to stay in the background of chapters involving other people's problems. We never knew how many problems he has himself, poor guy. He's always teasing and playing pranks -- so no one seems to know how he's suffering. Except for Sigefrith.

Good catch on the missing Cubby! If you click on "Is this incorrect?" you can actually leave a comment on the chapter character page. Then I can fix it from there. But I read all the comments around here anyway.

That chapter was tagged by someone who didn't do many, so we will allow her a few oversights.

In French they say "faire d'une pierre deux coups" which seems physically impossible to me... making two hits with a single stone. Unless you run, pick up your stone, and throw it again. Which smacks of desperation if you ask me.

Okay. Oh, that fly-phrase is at least common in Finland. ;D Actually straight translation is something about catching, not killing, it's so neutral. But.. but.. killing birds! >O Little birds!

*loses the point*