[Dragaera] If the Vlad books were made into a movie...

[Michael Wojcik]

Jon Lincicum wrote:
> 
> It's when Keira is explaining who heads Division Six -- She says it's
> the "Prime Minister, when there is one, except right now it's the
> Minister of the Houses."
> 
> Last we heard, Pel was Prime Minister, so this, to me, implies that
> something has happened to Pel. Okay, it's pretty oblique. Maybe
> doesn't affect him at all. (If, say, Pel got dismissed 150 years ago
> and there have been 2-3 other Prime Ministers in the interim.)
> However, it still does mean that Pel is *NOT* still where we left him
> at the end of /Sethra Lavode/ by the time of Vlad. 

I don't see it, myself. To me, "when there is one, except right now"
implies that there *is* a Prime Minister, but for some unspecified
reason, the PM is not heading Division Six.

If there were no PM, a more logical construction would be "Prime
Minister, when there is one. Right now it's the Minister of the
Houses". Presumably Vlad would know if there were no PM; if not, Keira
would likely say something like "Right now there isn't, so it's...".

The "except" doesn't make sense if there is no PM, because in that
case there's no exception to the stated rule in effect.

In fact, this passage almost makes me suspect that Pel still is PM. A
Yendi would obviously want to be in control of a secret taskforce, so
would ostensibly not be in control of it.

-- 
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University