[Dragaera] An extraordinarily convenient disease...

[Scott]

>The recent new wiki page on Baronet Taltos has reminded me that I have
>had vaguely paranoid notions that Vlad's father was killed
>deliberately, almost certainly by Verra, for the purpose of isolating
>Vlad.

>I am just curious if this makes sense to anyone else, or if I am once
>again alone in my idiosyncratic pararectal ideation.

Plagues are a relatively common occurrence in the Easterner Ghetto. The
uncommon thing is that Taltos, Sr. would veto any treatment because it was
"too Eastern". 

He must have died rather suddenly. I have a difficult time imagining that
Vlad or Noish-pa would deliberately follow his wishes to the point of death
when either one of them was a skilled enough witch to effect a cure. Vlad
might have been questionable in that area, but Noish-pa certainly would have
been able to do it. Maybe I'm presuming too much, though - Disease and
healing might be some branch of witchcraft that would require a specialist
to be hired.

IMO, Vlad was already well on the path that would lead him to the Jhereg by
the time his father died. I don't see Taltos, Sr. as an obstacle here. While
he might have disapproved of Vlad eventually becoming an assassin, I think
he would have approved mightily of Vlad joining the Organization in some
capacity. It would have validated him as a "Dragaeran". He might not want
details of Vlad's actual work, but he'd be happy that Vlad was "moving up"
in society from his point of view.

In short, I don't see any neccesity for Verra to kill Sr. As long as Vlad
had Noish-pa and Kiera, he wasn't really isolated. All that Sr.'s death
accomplished was to put Vlad in a position of considering what he actually
intended to do with his life if he wasn't going to be a restrauteur. I
imagine that Verra could have found any number of ways of putting him in
that position without killing his father in the process.

Here's a wild thought - Noish-pa deliberately let Sr. die as a blood
sacrifice to Verra so that she would watch over Vlad. All that "that is not
our way" talk was just a big cover for the one time he slipped in his
convictions. ;-)