It occurs to me, as I work on something only coincidentally pertaining to Alsace for class, that this statement, appropriate as it is to the conversation, is not in fact true. Not only is it literally untrue (Remilia the Elder would have been a native speaker of the Flemish dialect of Dutch), it's also figuratively false. Since she was born in Colmar in 1503, Remilia's first language would have been a dialect of New High German. Alsace didn't become French*-speaking until the 1670s, when Louis XIV completed the annexation of the region begun by his father during the Thirty Years' War and, as conquerors of borderlands often do, set out to stamp out the old language and enforce ubiquity of the new.

The distinction is a bit academic--being a vampire with a lot of free time, Remilia was probably fluent in many European languages by 1789, and the Scarlets would have spoken French at home since becoming part (however peripheral) of the Court of Versailles, but even so.

The real anomaly here is Flandre, who was born in 1508 and went mad in 1520. Why she even understands a word of French, let alone speaks it as a natural matter of course in Book 1, is a complete mystery.

--G.
* or in this case Gallic, but you know
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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