>>Come to think of it, Last Resort "Death Blossom" reads
>>plausibly like a Touhou spell card name. It goes nicely with, for
>>instance, Atomic Fire "Uncontainable Nuclear Reaction".
>
>No less implausible than, say, a Dacio-Gallic Vampire having a
>conceptual weapon normally associated with a Baltlandic war god.

I have to admit, the Scarlet sisters' cultural background in OWaW/GG is kind of a mess. IRL, Alsace was acquired by France in piecemeal fashion through a series of wars and warlike activities in the 17th century--Colmar only became a French city de jure in 1679. For most of its late medieval and early modern history it was German (a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire), apart from a couple of years in the 1630s when it was, improbably as it now seems, conquered by Sweden.

As such, in retrospect it's really pretty weird that Remilia is as Gallic as she is in manner. Her father was an exiled Dacian prince who had long ago assimilated into Karlslandic Elsaß by the time she was born, and her mother was from the Flemish merchant class. By the time Gallia took over the area the Scarlet family lived in, Remilia was closing in on 200 years old. By rights, there ought to be practically nothing Gallic about her. And Flandre had been in the basement since 1520. She should know nothing of Gallia or the Gallic language—hell, even allowing for the excellent education she received as a child, she shouldn't speak recognizable English either. Even what English she knows should sound more like Dutch to someone with Gryphon's background.

There are a lot of holes like this in the background Remilia and Flandre present in GG, particularly the early parts. (At one point Gryphon's shown reading a book that cannot possibly have been in Remilia's library, for instance.) My only defense for this, which I think stands up from an out-of-story perspective for all that it fails to make any in-story sense, is that trying to portray them as coming from a background so obscure to the modern reader would have been incredibly cumbersome.

If an in-story explanation is needed, I suppose one may take the line that Victor and Remilia the Elder saw the value in adapting to the times, and over the century between the Gallic acquisition of Alsace and the Revolution, they had made conscious efforts to acculturate their household to its evolving surroundings. Victor always tried to be part of the community, after all, and not fall into the old stereotype of being the mysterious, unknowable, vaguely dreaded ancient on the hill. That still doesn't explain Flan, but under the circumstances, "that does not explain Flan" is kind of part of her charm anyway. :)

As for the fact that Remilia has a Baltlandic war god's weapon, I've been trying to find a place to include the explanation of why that is for two volumes of Gallian Gothic now, and I may finally be closing in on one that fits the narrative flow. Hopefully. We'll find out.

>(All in all I think he'd generally approve of her, though.)

She's certainly something to see when she gets her smite on. Wotan would probably be into that.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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