Tattoos, Luck and Addictions (spoilers all RotE books)

[Nightchade]

Addictions: Well I dont know about 'addiction' (which is such a charged word and means different things to different people) but the Fool certainly chugged down a lot of apricot brandy throughout the TM series! Not just for fun either but in times of stress. Always a bit of a warning sign re emotional dependancy . His breath smells of the stuff when he first comes back to meet Fitz in FE, initially.. ' His breath smelled of honey and apricot brandy. Had he fortified himself against this meeting?' then a little later '..so he had fortified himself against this meeting. I wondered what part of it he had dreaded. ' He is later seen turning to drink when upset (after showing Fitz the tattoos he is slugging straight from the bottle..) . Other characters also seek solace in alcohol. I recall Fitz going through a phase of over-indulgence in the first series, drink caused him to fight with Molly and be a bit of a slacker around the stables etc at one point. Chade also drains Fitz's glass of brandy when he's a bit overwrought in another scene during TM. Brandy is also used 'medicinally' throughout the series as well as smoothing social occasions. Much as it is in RL. I also wonder about the 'smoking herbs' which seem to move from something slightly naughty to being more mainstream following Regals reign. Its not just men, Kettricken I recall was also becoming fond of the odd smoke also. '...her eyes were bright through the haze..' GF

Tattoos. The Fool envisioned a world where dragons would exist again and possibly spoke of this as a child. The PW had a different vision and I have always seen the Fools tattoos as representing her mockery of him. Painful, bewildering for him and humiliating. She was exerting her control by branding him cruelly with an image of something he longed for. The slave tattoos also had an element of humiliation as well as being a symbol of ownership and I would guess this was in the PW mind also. She may always have intended to remove them when she 'triumphed' and the Fools nightmares had shown him this, adding to the abuse. By the time she had tattooed Eliana she had refined her torture and found a new way to apply the control. She may also have known how freaked out the Fool would have been to discover this. '...arrrgh... I need more brandy Fitz...now...now....'