Madam Silvertongue's Treatise on Elegant Discourse
This scandalous work first appeared in the social circles of House Orloi in the year 855 AS.
The author is anonymous but rumour at the time attributed it to the social lioness Vesurai, Lady of Orloi who, it was widely agreed, was a mistress of the arts of conversation and intrigue so cynically presented within the pages of the work.
Written with an arch and cutting wit, the treatise is an analysis of the ways in which people in the nobility gain, wield, lose and use power over others by the ways in which they interact. At first seeming to be a condemnation of these manipulative ways the book then goes on to instruct, with reference to real events and people as examples (albeit concealed behind pseudonyms) exactly how one would go about not only detecting, but employing such tactics. A joke at the time was that everyone who read it enjoyed all the examples given except one... the one in which they recognised themselves laid bare and exposed in all their scheming ambition.
The author is anonymous but rumour at the time attributed it to the social lioness Vesurai, Lady of Orloi who, it was widely agreed, was a mistress of the arts of conversation and intrigue so cynically presented within the pages of the work.
Written with an arch and cutting wit, the treatise is an analysis of the ways in which people in the nobility gain, wield, lose and use power over others by the ways in which they interact. At first seeming to be a condemnation of these manipulative ways the book then goes on to instruct, with reference to real events and people as examples (albeit concealed behind pseudonyms) exactly how one would go about not only detecting, but employing such tactics. A joke at the time was that everyone who read it enjoyed all the examples given except one... the one in which they recognised themselves laid bare and exposed in all their scheming ambition.
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