“It is rarely pleasant to live a story-worthy life.”
“Don’t call me your girl. And don’t ask me to smile.”
“My dear, if ever life gives you the choice, always, always laugh. There will be days when you will only know how to cry.”
“Hurry! You’re dying, you stupid ass!”
“I think that we should try and try to be happy whenever we can and however we can, even if there is a risk that we will be made unhappy. I think we must keep trying.”
“I’m spinning my W.W.A.S.D (What Would an Angry Scotsman Do) thing I got for Christmas and its landing on.…. Use Colorful Language.”
“I don’t like Araphel/Bastien and I don’t like his green robe.”
“Dantalion is just too dramatic for me, he makes my brain hurt and I kind of want to punch him in the wiener.”
“I can’t help it but when I reread the title I couldn’t stop thinking ‘Malcom breaks a thousand mirrors… with his fine butt’.”
“Bless my balls!”
“PHWOAR!”
“Where have you been?” Her mother had always warned her that this was among the phrases one did not speak to a man if one wished to have a happy marriage.
“It is not necessary to hate a man in order to love his wife.”
“Sometimes I wish you were an ordinary girl.”
“We poetic folk call those tears.”
“Son of a serpent!”
“You thought you had found a great knight who also wrote bad poetry. But that wasn’t true. I was a miserable excuse for a knight who wrote rather good poetry.”
“My father was right! Name of God! Teaching a woman to read is like giving her a second bite of the apple!”
“Go home, Sela. You’re too sweet to be out here with me, and too pretty to last long.”
As he carried her outside, he thought that she felt lighter than she had that day when he had held her, all warm and pink-cheeked and laughing, in his arms. He would try to remember to ask Father Brandt how much a soul weighed.
“If I believe in curses, I have also sometimes believed that you were sent to save me.”
“You carry your own truth inside of you. You are the messenger, and the message.”
“Chicken neck?”
“If chicken necks did glow.”
“Do you think I could last one day in paradise without you?”
“Then you must pretend to be happy, Baby. Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do.”
“If Maud said ‘Boo’ at you, you would pull your skirts up over your face and cry.”
“Oh, pish!”
“No matter what I say to you ladies, whether it’s absurdly metaphorical or simply very true and flattering, it’s always the same pish to you!”
“And why should I mourn this night more than the last? I have lost nothing that was mine.”
“You better get used to carrying your best friend’s body home on your back. It won’t be the last time.”
“Never forget it, my son. Never let it be forgiven.”
“Alwy was a real big man.”
“Arm wrestle me?”
“Arm—Are you insane?”
“Ah, but I am thinking about ladies’ feelings, and they are thinking about feeling ladies.”
“Advent time in your castle simply means no leaping while dancing and no candy before breakfast.”
“Which Sigefrith?”
“The old, ugly one.”
“You’re not ugly!”
“But I am old, is that it?”
“So kiss me one more time and then go back to your bed like the good girl you are not.”
“What is that?” – “What?” – “On — my — leg.”
“I pray you keep in mind what everyone seems to forget: the man is more to blame.” – “I assure you, it is ever at the front of my mind.”
Where Colban loved, he did not ask questions. It was not how Malcolm loved, and it was not how Maud had loved, but Malcolm knew where Colban had learned it: it was how Sigefrith had loved him for so many years.
“You have your one man, Hetty.”
“Are you in trouble, henny?”
“Not yet, but I think I’m about to have a wee bit of the old devil in me!”
“Now you’re in trouble! You said wee!”
“I might as well give myself up, if my only defenders are a giddy blonde and a knight who runs around his friends’ castles in his underpants. Unless that’s your sword you’ve got in there, sir.”
“It’s our last alone together I mean,” she said with her sweet smile. “Soon we shall be three. You’re growing as superstitious as I, my darling boy.”
“Tell me your water did not just break!”
“Oh, get out of my way, you useless baggages! What would have you her do, Lili? Cross her legs and hold it in?”
“But we were careful…”
“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Careful’ is leaving that poor lamb alone! ‘Careful’ is cutting it off and putting it in a locked box!”
“Whisht!” he said, and closed her mouth with a kiss.
“I’m sorry, Dunstan,” she said in the best Princess voice she could muster, “but I don’t think I can.”
Well, a Scot was only a man, after all, under the kilts.
“You expected to see a wolf’s pelt?” he whispered.
“Eirik!” Sigefrith cried with joy.
“Raedwald!” Cenwulf groaned.
“Three people I don’t know!” Alred added gleefully.
“There was a time when I had to make a choice between doing the honorable thing and the dishonorable thing, having already done more than the devil’s own share of dishonorable things. I chose to do the honorable thing. I shall regret it until I die.”
“I am certain that when Death comes for you — which I hope will not be for an extraordinarily long time — you will look him in the eye and say, ‘Very well! I only hope this will be interesting!’”
“I knew her father, and by ‘knew’ I mean I busted his face once.”
“Poetry is not only something to be written, dear Lili, but to be lived.”
“Holy Juno, mother of Mars!”
“We are all unhappy. Remember that.”
“I guess you know what it’s like to be a boy what picks on other kids, and I know what it’s like to be a boy what the other kids pick on.”
“I don’t think she’s cut out to be a lady’s horse, but that’s what she has become, so the lady will just have to make the best of her.”
“Welcome to the stupid family.”
“And I was right about who the bosom belonged to hurrah *does a bosom rightness dance*.”
“I thought Maire’s body language was so blatant it stuck out like a boner in sweatpants.”
“Now we shall never have a little house, as you used to say, just you and I.”
“You have been cruel to her as well. All her life. And I shall not blame her if she doesn’t forgive you for that.”
“Be kind to him, Wynnie. He’s a good man, but soft. That sort of man is soon spoiled by a hard woman.”
“To my dying day I shall not forget her voice when she said to you: ‘You never told me once.’ It is as good as a poem. The entire tragedy is told in those five words.”
“Will you be following where I go?”
“Come, wife, and be shedding no tears. I told you you would be sorry.”
“Ho shit. Cenwulf?! One of The Four Sigsketeers?”
“A ninny is what you are! I don’t know what it is, but I think you are one! A cockaninny!”
“His Grace is a kind, patient, and long-suffering man, not to mention brilliant, gifted, and exceedingly pleasing to ladies in every manner.”
“Lothere is definitely becoming the ancient capital of cute priests. They should have a pageant or something.”
“I cannot take you home. You must find your own way. And please hurry. I cannot bear to hear her crying for you.”
“She preferred that brute Leofric to your sublime love. So don’t try to give me lessons about love, my lord.”
“At least there is a chance that my husband will still be alive this time next year.”
“Araphel, however, is a lovesick, monumentally jealous douchebag himself right now, so I’m gonna take any anti-Osh sentiment he has with a bucket of Dante’s Saltiest Godforsaken Salt ™.”
“One does soon weary of elves and dragons.”
“I was so happy! I thought — one man! One man loves me better than Lili. I only wanted one!”
“If any of your children are capable of having a flight of fancy that even lifts both of their little heels from the ground, it will prove you a more whimsical man than I have ever imagined.”
“Dan–cing! During Ad–vent!”
Sebastien appeared to be a feline of the sort who repaid such indignities by sneaking back later and pissing in a man’s bed.
“He was the sleeping snake, and Maire poked him with her finger.”
“You’re not a monster. You only like to pretend to be. You’re not the only man like that, you know.”
“We are admiring one another.”
“My mother was a hamster, and my father smelt of elderberries.”
“I don’t like Malcolm. Malcolm smiles all the time.”
“Creepy, stinky, withered, rasputin-like, interfering, little crawling critters up the spine, vague stink that you can’t locate, demon-employing, angel-enslaving, creepy, creepy, creep! Keep your hands off the saint!”
“And those angels who kept not their first estate, but left their habitation, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness until Judgment Day.”
“You know that if you drop a stone into a lake, the ripples will eventually reach every shore. In nearly every way, for nearly everyone, what was supposed to be has come to pass. You had the misfortune of standing beneath the falling stone.”
“Poor Alwy! Never did the Lord put so much to say and so few words in the same man.”
“All that really matters is Matilda. Matilda, and Matilda’s children… but Matilda at the heart of everything.”
“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
“No sodomy! You swore!”
“I absolutely love Margaret and Conrad…there’s a reason the last part of his name spells RAD cause he is!”
“Poetry is vanity and not worth the breath spent upon it.”
“He’s so unworthy of her affections…he’s not even a MAIN character…she deserves much better.”
>8(
“He could do with that steel rod being removed from up his butt”
“But I’m sure it’s such a cuuuute butt!”
“left hand 4 waves, hands at crotch 3 butt shakes, another 4 hand waves, turn…”
“He’s like an emo Peter Pan.”
“Hey! It made it 4th on the sin list!” *highlites*
“A dead chicken! Speak for your own man! My chicken’s still alive!”
“God’s wounds! You don’t think I know what color eyes anyone has around here, do you? I would have to sit and think a while to tell you what color eyes my children have. They do all have eyes, don’t they?”
“Poor minty Vash.”
“Oh, Alred!”
“Oh I could write 10,000 words about Vash. But I fear that all 10,000 of them would just be the word ‘phowar’.”
“Happy is for me, happy is for you. Won’t you be happy? You?”
“I am happy for you.”
“Girls! I do not think we should talk about what is… erotic…”
“What if only the handsome went to Heaven?”
“Then I am surely damned.”
“And Eirik was the Lord God.”
“And then the devil shows up and turns to her and says, ‘Get in the handbasket and lets go.’”
“May the earth welcome your footsteps as it seems to welcome your forehead, Sorin. Now get up.”
“The carving on the key. I think it looks like a toad with hair.”
“Runt, that’s supposed to be the Virgin Mary on that key there, with her crown.”
“Ugly little wench. No wonder she was a virgin.”
“Stinking Mother! I’d forgotten once again that the sun and moon and stars revolve around your cock!”
“On the other hand, I still want to jump on the furniture, and he still wants to jump on the pretty girls, so perhaps it was only ever a difference in our personalities.”
“Llen is a turd.”
“If turds could somehow instill both fear and phowar, then I would 100% agree with that statement.”
“And I can sit on one of the chairs by the candles and sew, and toast my feet meanwhile. I think my hands will be strong enough to sew again soon.”
“And your feet stale enough to be fit for toasting.”
“Is that wrong English?”
“It is wrong English and right poetry.”
“I just want to know what is a asshat?”
“O dear Araphel: what might not your earnest charge have said while you were off frigging some louse-ridden hosteler’s daughter?”
“Careful, are you?”
“That’s right.”
“I was ‘careful’ to the tune of Margaret and Cynewulf, you know.”
“It’s called self-mortification.”
“It’s called fucking insanity.”
“A dream! Stop this blubbering! First of all, you don’t cut a head off with a sword, it’s much too difficult. You use an axe. Now—”
“I believe we are all far too discreet, with the noteworthy exception of my wife.”
“I dated an Imin too but he was deported.”
“Holy cock-sucking mother of a misbegotten, shit-eating, goat-fondling god!”
“I have diligently edited and found minor mistakes in your writing for the past few months, and I say that this entire post is a mistake. Erase it immediately or I shall throw karma coins at your head.”
“Is it good with raw babies?”
“That gangling monkey who just took the finest fruit of your loins out for a dunking.”
“Black-hair goat is fine too.”
“There is worse than winter, my dear. There is nothing at all.”
“Who can flirt within a fifty-yard radius of Father Matthew?”
“One can flirt within an eighteen-degree angle directly behind him. I have through experimentation and much elaborate geometry proved the theorem.”
“Ok I really like her and Careballs together.…there I said it…I’m team Connie/Carebear.”
“One of them is so innocent she’ll likely fall into the hands of the first man who reaches out for her, and one of them is so wise she’ll likely be the one to do the plucking.”
“You have an elegant nose, sir, and I should like to think it would appear on some descendant of mine. But yours is very cute as well, Kiv.”
“The devil take you and feed you to his kittens!”
“Leofric: You knocked-up my wife! — Alred: No, your wife sent you to me since you knocked-up mine. Now get out of here so I can finish writing this poem to Egelric’s wife.”
“If ever there was a man who could beat some pretty into me, it’s Wyn. He’ll probably even leave me symmetrical bruises and make sure the colors don’t clash.”
“Ach! Love! Women think it the solution to all of life’s problems, men think it the cause.”
“What happened to your hair?”
“What happened to your dress?”
“Matilda Reincarnate… Alred will be having flashbacks followed by an aneurysm.”
“The best I can do is to speak plainly and use a good many big words.”
“I should rather be called ugly than lazy. If indolence is the price of beauty, then I find it too dear.”
“Your father has asked me not to flatter you, so lacking my usual means of communication, I must resort to getting directly to the point.”
“It’s not gibberish, it’s Gaelic.”
“It sounds like Hundr when he gets a bone in his throat.”
“My cousin speaks Gaelic like a four-year-old, unless he’s railing at you. Then he’s a dictionary!”
“Swearing in your barbarian language is like playing the harp with a single finger.”
“Prop me up if you can, but if I start to fall, you tell everyone to get out of the way.”
“I just got rid of one Norseman, and so you bring me two? Is Tryggvason planning a conquest by slow, blond invasion?”
“I tell you, if there’s any justice on earth, you’re going to make an ass of yourself.”
“Connie never had a brother, that’s why she still thinks men are clever and fine.”
“I have seen you in far less dignified positions than this.”
“You haven’t been peeking in my bedroom windows again, old man?”
“If he reminds me of anyone, actually, it’s Richard Nixon.”
“I am not certain that the plan that caused Leofric to come back to life came from God.”
“Leofric — I didn’t like him at first, but affairs with Matilda change everything.”
“He says it is — is pretty. It makes me pretty. Like lady pretty!”
“My girls? God help their husbands!”
“I think Special K gave her a Special STD!”
“By command of His Majesty the King, whom God preserve, you are under arrest.”
“The peace of God on you, brother. It’s time for me to go.”
“But the bubbles were so pretty!”
“I am certain that the Lord is reserving a special place in Paradise just for you.”
“I hope it is in the library.”
“You are the twentiest twenty-year-old I have met today, and that is saying a lot.”
“Give me what I need to have peace. And, if I may — if it is not too much to ask — to be happy.”
“All you want to do tonight is to kiss babies and get roaring drunk.”
“My wife is a brilliant and capable woman, but for every nine-and-ninety brilliant and capable ideas she has, she has one idea so incredibly stupid that I never fail to be dumbfounded, though one would think I would have the habit after fourteen years.”
“May rain and fire and ill wind follow after you until you’re festering in the earth!”
“It’s a cure for everything except an aching back.”
“I have learned that man can live by bread alone, for at least a month.”
“You’re not a dragon, Sigefrith. I keep telling you: you’re only a fire-breathing ass.”
“And you’re only a cross-eyed old monkey with a rash on his behind, but I don’t feel obliged to constantly remind you of the fact.”
“Don’t ever let me hear you say you love my daughter.”
“Eve might have sinned, but if Adam had been a gentleman he would have lied for her sake, even to the Lord.”
“I am not a lass!”
“Are you no? I beg your pardon, sir…”
“You have nothing to be worthy of such poems, Hetty.”
Gunnilda deserved far better than Alwy Hogge. By God, what was he thinking? She deserved far better than Egelric Wodehead.
Ah, he would make sure his great-grandsons would talk of him around the fire: the legendary first Duke of Nothelm.
“Fie! I spit on your kingdom!”
“A whit! A whit! A whit, you stupid twit!”
“On your knees, bitch.”
“He is so badass he can permit himself to paint flowers on his furniture.”
“Nobody likes a clever woman, but they can forgive her for it if she’s pretty enough.”
“I understand the reasoning here, but what satisfaction would you get holding someone else’s tooth? You’d still be without your OWN tooth, correct?”
“Witch, you shall not take him with you to the grave.”
“Tell me how I could possibly love you less if there were more of you to love?”
“I don’t think the ‘WTF is this site?’ is a very valuable demographic.”
“Aww…I’m a part of that demographic…sort of.”
“You’re mad, a chagair.”
“I must be.”
“I voted earth, but I’m kind of watery too. Mud-nature?”
“I feel an emergency binding coming on.”
“This is Magog we’re talking here. Mr. Flighty McFlight-Flight, can’t-stay-in-one-place-any-longer-than-he-can-keep-his-pants-on, Magog.”
“Maybe I can throw in some tedious backstory and unnecessary details?”
“You even killed Araphel twice!”
“Quit looking at my ass, son.”
“That’s what your sister said.”
“Underneath his kooky, funny-mustached, middle-school-art-teacher exterior, he has this sublime mother-of-pearl beauty, and inside of that there is a little something sinister that he carries coiled up like a whip.”
“But oh my God, sometimes it seems like every story I come across has ‘You must be 17′ or ‘after the cut’ or whatever, and I just want to break my keyboard across my forehead and go read Proust.”
“I can’t hate him, he has his moments, but I can greatly dislike him!”
“Cearball is what happens when emo and testosterone meet.”
“You seem like a nice enough lad, your resume is all in order but I’m going to need a few letters of recommendation and Condal’s expressed interest before we proceed.”
“My warning is this: some of the most interesting men are not worthy of the love of good ladies.”
“Ooooh, Estrid’s making K-bies!!”
“Think of Matilda – the mouth on her! Talking about pee was as polite as she ever was.”
“I always thought she was the finest lady I knew, even if she did laugh when she farted, which my Ma never did.”
“He gave the elf Iylaina a choice, which was more than any other elf ever did for her. And more than anyone ever did for him.”
“You’re not any prettier in the dark. Nor any darker.”
“Cedric, the Lord knows I never thought I would have to say these words, but No: you do not and never shall have my permission to become a eunuch.”
“Every day you spend thinking about going to see her is a day you’ll not be spending at her side. And no gentle god will be coming along later and tacking those days back onto the end of your life. Nor onto hers.”
“There’s no shame in loving a girl out of your reach. The only sort of girl worthy of you is a girl you’re not worthy of.”
If there was one species of humanity that she could not bear, it was rude boys.
“Because having a beautiful elven lady be jealous over you is SO ROMANTIC. Never mind the fact that she can set you on fire.”
“I am cinder-colored. Not black. That would be bad luck.”
“You have been nothing but a scoundrel from the day you were born.”
“And I have loved you since the day you were – my lord’s son, and then my lord, and then my son.”
“Damn you.”
“Even if you had the face of a newt on the neck of a toad, he would find you pretty enough for his purposes: namely, to injure me.”
“I’m certain it’s a very civilized beard.”
“That Murchad, now he is my friend forever!”
“Do you realize how insufficient a reason ‘I love her and she loves me’ truly is?”
“Nimea: Hmmm, who would I rather hang with? A group of scrappy, kick-ass underdogs led by the most gorgeous profile on the continent, or an elitist group of inflexible, stuffy nobles who spend their days committing violent genocide, braiding each other’s hair and being bossed around by an old lady with a hat that must be almost as heavy as Alred’s attitude?”
“‘A catastrophe going on long enough’ is another definition of ‘life.’”
“As long as you say No, you have all the power. As soon as you say Yes, he does.”
“Alas! If only her cakes were as tender as her sensibilities.”
“Oh, you. You’re a pearl.”
“Well, I don’t know but I guess I’m more like a pebble with a bit of a polish to it, but I guess I’ll take the compliment. Now eat your cake and don’t pick at it.”
“Any man worth anything is still an eight-year-old inside. Too big to cry, but too little not to want to.”
“I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the… and of the Other Thing.”
“You just take your shirt off, fall for a vulnerable lady, and start hanging out with Alred, and you’ll have your own fanclub soon, buddy.”
“Without you, I’m only a tiny, insignificant speck of a useless knight who laughs because he is afraid and jokes because he is sad and fights like a lion because he is too foolish to know when he has no chance. Even with you, I’m still all of that, but at least I have you.”
“Oh, the angst! :( I feel so Vashy I could dry my own tears right now.”
“Do you suppose I mean to stand on the roof of the tower and shout ‘Kiss me!’ in every language until some passing knight understands? Say, that would be romantic, though…”
She might die an old maid—she might end up an old woman with dozens of cats as Catan had predicted—but she would not marry that nose.
“I do not think anyone ever died of a broken heart. Did someone?”
“You’re a clever boy, Finn. I guess no one ever did, or your Da would have died many times.”
“Has any joy ever come to the race of men when they have looked to love among the race of gods?”
“There’s nothing on earth like a contrite woman in your bed, as you would know if you had ever once stopped being wicked long enough to let a woman feel naughty in comparison.”
Robert sighed and shook his head. It was like Leofric to come back from the dead to break the law.
“Pride is like hair – no matter how closely it is shorn, it eventually grows back.”
“‘Deciding to fall in love’ is a dangerous thing to say in Lothere. The irony bus comes barreling down the road at frequent intervals here, and woe unto careless pedestrians.”
“When once a woman tells you to hit her, you had better hit her so hard she won’t ask you again. Otherwise she will rule over you all the rest of your days. And she won’t have the respect for you she has for a dog.”
“I want—maggots—should suck your cock!”
“A little advice from a man who once got his nose broken for ‘enjoying the company of a chaste and charming young lady’—propriety is not as much fun as even the appearance of the contrary, but it is less damaging to the face.”
“Gwynn is a quadruple-ninny with taffy for brains.”
“My dear… so was your mother.”
“You can waddle yourself right out of here, duck-man, and none of your nonsense!”
“I shall call you Battle Mama!” Yware cried.
Matilda’s brows arched into a look of warning when she saw Alred’s eyes light up at the name. She knew she would hear it again, and not only from her son.
“I do love you, Gunnilda, but if that girl’s first word is ‘pish’ I shall never forgive you!”
“Gaeth was sent to a monastery because he was gay? Well, that explains the Bible verses and why he doesn’t want to be touched. Also the hair.”
“I knew I brought you back to the mirror for a purpose. Will you look at yourself? I find it very becoming.”
“My hair?”
“Your hair is lovely, my lady. But I meant your happiness.”
“But happy new families are just what we can’t bear, aren’t they?”
“He’s better than all of us. Hell, he’s probably better than Saint Aelfden and Chuck Norris combined!”
“‘The turd seldom falls far from the horse’s ass,’ as my esteemed sire used to say.”
“You were the turd, lord?”
“And now I am a horse’s ass! Makes one think, doesn’t it?”
“Is Sigefrith mad? No one loves monday mornings. It is unnatural and causes irritation in other people.”
“Ralf cannot be straight after all. He has too many cats.”
“Poor little sprout! I guess you need a mama after all. Luckily you have me.”
“Now, Matilda, you know I don’t mean you. You’re not a fool, you’re a damned fool, just like any man, which is perfectly respectable.”
“Name of God! What did I do to deserve this affliction?”
“It’s a cute affliction.”
“You see, if I put a gun on the mantel in the first act, I always manage to fire it by the fifty-third act.”
“There is no shame in thinking the best of people, even when they are not as good as they might be.”
“I know what I want to do about him, God bless him. Geld him and stuff his empty ball sack full of burrs. Shabby son of a bitch.”
“I hate you!”
“That is of no importance to me.”
“I don’t think it’s bigger than Paul’s, but it’s nicer.”
“He doesn’t have to get you on a battlefield, you know. He’s King—he can knight his horse if he likes.”
“No more tears for us two. Life is too short for that, Dara. And love is too long.”
“I’ve often thought that the only way to be happy is to feel nothing.”
“We always have a choice, Eithne. It is the one thing God gave us all—angels, and fairies, and men: His blessing and His curse.”
“You reminded me of a little deer. I tell you that often, don’t I?”
“And you never saw a deer but you wanted to hunt it.”
Even he, eternal optimist, knew how unsteady the crown of happiness could be. How many times had he already picked it up and shoved it back down over his head, battered and dusty as it was from falling off even so many times but one?
“What are you doing in Father Brandt’s bed?”
“And what are you doing naked in Father Brandt’s room?”
“Like the romance of Alred & Matilda on steroids with dynamite thrown in!”
She did not know what he had said, but she was certain it was melt-worthy.
“I never spank a man who is bigger than I unless my stick is longer than his arms and I am certain I can outrun him.”
“We’re always surprised when bad things to happen to good, sweet folk, but most of the time it’s what bad things do.”
“It’s always better to regret a thing you’ve done than a thing you feared to do!”
“Alred. We have moved from romantic sighs of ‘oh, Alred’, to sympathetic sighs of ‘oh, Alred’, to disappointed sighs of ‘oh, Alred.’”
“Sometimes it takes as much bravery to do something wrong as to do something right, when the entirety of your life is on the line.”
“I’ll take ‘Bone-ified’ for 100, Alex.”
“Alright and here’s the clue: If closets were in wide use in 1086, this is what Lothere’s reeve would keep in his.”
“Some men are simply born to rule, Alred. No—not even born to it, for any man might inherit a title or a position of power. Some men simply can’t not do it. Some men, whatever you do to them, wherever you put them, so long as there are other men there, they will naturally lead.”