[Dragaera] comment on Dzurs (and Lyorn)

[Philip Hart]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Scott Schultz wrote:

>>> There's nothing dishonorable about breaking bread with criminals.
>>
>> I don't know if this is a popular opinion.  Recall that Piro and friends
> are
>> robbing innocent folk at sword point, laughing at their terror, and
> murdering
>> them if they resist.  It's curious to me that the Text doesn't remark more
> on
>> it.
>
> You have to keep the medium in mind. The Paarfiad is a history of
> swashbuckling, not a hard-boiled history of the seamy underbelly of the
> Empire. Paarfi's stories promulgate the old conceit that banditry is an
> honorable trade and, in fact, the most dishonorable trade is merchantry,
> given that a bandit will steal your money honestly while a merchant will
> "steal" it deceitfully. Bandits are  predators and it's perfectly reasonable
> for a predator to have honor, even if he's doing something ostensibly
> illegal or immoral, while prey seldom have honor. In fact, prey that exhibit
> honor tend to either die or become predators themselves.

On the one hand, I agree that it's important to keep in mind that Paarfi 
is writing a romance; on the other, he does have one or more agendas,
such as attacking the stigma on interhouse relationships.  Even here he 
presents the Blue Fox gang's first victim quite sympathetically, he makes 
it clear that the moral paragon of the story disapproves, he has Khaavren 
note that he would have found banditry romantic when he was a callow 
youth, he points out the crudity of some of the brigands.  And of course 
he paints a very positive picture of various Teckla, who retain honor in 
various ways despite being preyed upon.

Reconsidering my orignial point, perhaps the pretty much complete lack of 
reaction on the part of the characters to Piro's violent crimes given the 
amount of vocal upset about his violation of (what presumably in Paarfi's 
view is purely) taboo is Paarfi's way of pointing out how messed up stuff 
is and bs.