Annotated 31-8
This is about as frosty as you’ll ever see Fr’Nj when she’s among friends and relations. Doctors make the worst patients, but as we’ll see, that’s not all she’s concerned about.
I appreciate the little “!”… “!!”… “!!!” sequence that John adds to the last panel. From “how did he get IN here?” to “Greater than the REBELS, REALLY?” to “How DARE he, the AUDACITY.”
The dynamic between Syr’Nj and Ardaic is the main driving force here, and it’s a little demonstration of why they never would’ve worked as a couple, even in those hypotheticals where Byron isn’t an obstacle. (Guess I’m still thinking about that a bit after the Syr’Nj-Frigg pairing in the last story.)
Ardaic’s more broad-minded than many of his fellows, enough to appreciate Syr’Nj on many levels. But when he sees her on a sickbed, his impulse is to massage his report to protect her from the worst. He may not yet have a full count, but he could probably give an estimate. But Syr’Nj wants facts. She derives comfort from knowing facts, even when they’re discouraging ones. What’s more, she can sense he’s holding back, so his holding back actually serves no useful purpose. In the final analysis, he’s a little too chivalry-bound, too medieval, to be a proper partner for someone so Renaissance.
To me, this tells us everything about Ardaic priorities vs Syr’Nj’s. To Ardaic, the important people survived and that’s what matters but it wasn’t that long ago Syr’Nj was fighting in the mud as a field medic with the other grunts. Again, think this is one made Ardaic a compelling character at first, he’s not a ‘bad’ person per say but very much a cog in the machine that’s very broken.
So, here’s what I find weird about this conversation:
Ardaic want to tell Syr’Nj about the problem with “the greater tactical situation”, and she insists on numbers, apparently to prove to Ardaic that the World Rebellion was their worst problem. But … isn’t that what Ardaic was already trying to get across? Bad news to do with the lost battle? The territorial losses he mentions are the thing that is bound to enable the next lost battle, complete with huge body counts.
So … what are they fighting about? Ardaic is less concerned with lives than Syr’Nj, and “lives vs. strategy” would have been a good theme, but then she ends her argument by saying that the World Rebellion is their worst problem, which I suspect Ardaic finds completely obvious.
It looks a bit as if she abandoned her line of argument in order to provide a better introduction for Gravedust’s line.
What she says in panel 3 is a response to what he says in panel 2. It’s not an argument about whether the Rebellion is a major problem or not (that’s something they both agree on), but about “You need to rest and recover your strength,” vs. “I need to *do* something, dammit!”
ah … yes, how did I overlook that … mumblemumble…
Ardaic thinks Syr’Nj should rest until she’s better. Syr’Nj thinks she should drug herself into immediate functionality.
Their disagreement is about the value of Syr’Nj‘s life relative to, e.g., the life of a random Gastonian soldier who just got blowed up real good by the [the name of this group is another thing they disagree on].
The way I see it, they’re both trying to be pragmatic, and failing utterly.
There’s nothing to be gained by looking at rough estimates. Not if Syr’Nj is demanding information so she can come up with a coherent strategy. Even if her potions are better than real life painkillers and she’s actually capable of planning a strategy while recovering, her plan is only as good as the data she’s supplied with.
And Ardaic should know Syr’Nj better than that. Soldiers can accept casualties, but heroes can’t