[Dragaera] A Crack. ( Teckla-SL )

[Scott]

>given Paarfi's desire to seem like a "historian" 
>it will also involve cases where he needs to deflate some events to make 
>them *less* dramatic... Which may be the case during the Paresh encounter, 
>since while it was very important to our good Teckla revolutionary, it is 
>merely a sidenote in Aerich's grand adventure to rescue his friend.

Consider also that Paarfi represents Aerich as the model of an honorable
gentleman. While gentlemen will do many things, one thing a gentleman most
definitely would NOT do is engage in any sort of fight with a Teckla. It
would be beneath him on so many levels as to be inconceivable.

Even if everything happened exactly as Paresh says it did (which is open to
question), Paarfi would never put any of those details into his history
because it would, from his point of view, cast a bad light on Aerich. 

Welcome to the world of the unreliable narrator. Your confusion will resolve
itself somewhat if you think of these novels as being "ghost-written". The
Paarfiad is not written by Steven Brust. It's written by Paarfi of Roundwood
and translated and possibly abridged by SKZB. The Vladiad is also not
written by Steven Brust. It's the memoirs of Vlad, dicated by him to the
metal box and transcribed and possibly abridged by SKZB for publication in
our world. (_Athyra_ and _Orca_ being exceptions; we don't know how SKZB got
his info for those stories. Perhaps Vlad convinced Kiera to spend an evening
dictating to the metal box. Maybe Vlad even gave it to her for safe-keeping
when he left town, which is why he didn't have it in _Athyra_ and why Kiera
is the one using it in _Orca_.)

The authors are characters in the stories they have authored. As such, they
have prejudices that influence their narration and their knowledge of the
things they narrate is sometimes limited or just plain wrong. Everything you
read has to be considered to be potentially questionable. The degree of
question just depends on who's telling the story and who reliable that
narrator can be considered to be when talking about the topic at hand.