Plot holes (spoilers included) in RotE

[redchild]

these beings discovered an interesting plot hole in "assassin's apprentice"...

about 3/4 of the way through the book they saw this:

It was in Piche, an ancient native tongue of Chalced, the southernmost Duchy

If that isnt a hole torn in how the plot evolves, then there's not much that can be such...

That's either a pretty major plot hole or an editing error.

I am not sure Galen tried to *kill* Verity? Fitz says he wanted to 'drain him dry'.
I think he wanted to drain his Skill strength to augment his own, and that was his main aim.

I don't quite understand how he would be able to hold the "surplus" Skill strength in reserve. Verity's stamina is already known to be very substantial, and Galen's Skill ability is probably not as good as Verity's as his training was not complete. Wouldn't it be like trying to make a bucket bigger by siphoning water off an Olympic sized swimming pool?

I suppose that's why Galen trained his coterie so that they would help him by pooling together. If you have enough buckets, you can empty out a swimming pool.

Possibly it is easier to intentionally kill with the Skill after the person's Skill strength has been drained to a low level? He may have intended to follow up by killing him.

Probably because he knew Verity's Skill ability far surpassed his own, so he adopted the "draining" approach, tiring Verity out so that his every effort in using the Skill would be too focused on watching out for Red Ships to realize that Galen's coterie was siphoning his Skill.

['thul]

skill-drain is pretty much deadly, just look at shrewd.

[Nuytsia]

I am not sure Galen tried to *kill* Verity? Fitz says he wanted to 'drain him dry'.
I think he wanted to drain his Skill strength to augment his own, and that was his main aim.

I don't quite understand how he would be able to hold the "surplus" Skill strength in reserve. Verity's stamina is already known to be very substantial, and Galen's Skill ability is probably not as good as Verity's as his training was not complete. Wouldn't it be like trying to make a bucket bigger by siphoning water off an Olympic sized swimming pool?

Well that's a whole other question! I have no idea if you can Skill-drain someone with more 'capacity' for the Skill than yourself!
I am happy to believe it's possible...

On another minor point, I don't think Verity's training was complete either, and although I guess Galen's was even LESS complete at the time of Solicity's death, Galen had access to Solicity's Skill scrolls (whereas Verity did not). Toward the end of AQ that is indicated as the likely reason why Regal's coterie were so effective (despite the fact that AFAICT none of them are 'naturally' strong in the Skill except Will, and probably Serene).
I get the impression Verity is 'naturally' very strong in the Skill ......

I'm a bit late for the whole Realder's dragon discussion but having just finished re-reading AQ it's totally clear that Realder's dragon is completely different from girl-on-a-dragon. There's no ambiguity. I don't think there is any mention of who else is in Realder's dragon besides Realder. Girl-on-a-dragon contains Salt's coterie (Salt is the girl who kept herself apart from the dragon, and I think the rest of the coterie are all women)
So, yeah it's a pretty big plot hole really that they are seen to be the same thing in the Tawny Man trilogy (which I hope I am right in assuming is the implication of the original post....) Yes I've read Tawny Man trilogy but I can't remember......!!

['thul]

According to the text in Tawny man, while it was salt's coterie, the dragon was named after Realder... Indications are that Realder was the catalyst of one of the prophets, and was thus more important than the leader of a coterie...

[redchild]

Well that's a whole other question! I have no idea if you can Skill-drain someone with more 'capacity' for the Skill than yourself!
I am happy to believe it's possible...

It must be, but I'm wondering where all that energy goes...

Perhaps the cost of performing a drain was much more taxing for Galen's coterie than the gain of any Skill energy. It may have even cost more than the gain, seeing as the coterie never seemed to grow substantially past their nominal levels, and that they needed more than one practitioner to perform a drain, done in separate intervals.

On another minor point, I don't think Verity's training was complete either, and although I guess Galen's was even LESS complete at the time of Solicity's death, Galen had access to Solicity's Skill scrolls (whereas Verity did not). Toward the end of AQ that is indicated as the likely reason why Regal's coterie were so effective (despite the fact that AFAICT none of them are 'naturally' strong in the Skill except Will, and probably Serene).
I get the impression Verity is 'naturally' very strong in the Skill ......

Ah right the scrolls! Though now in hindsight, I wonder why Verity never had Galen give him the scrolls for him to learn techniques with against the Red Ships... Probably because he was the only person capable of fending off attacks and could not afford time to study and practice.

Now I'm also wondering if Shrewd had knowledge of what was in those scrolls. What was the extent of his ability? Couldn't he have realized that someone was draining him? I've had the impression that Shrewd was one of the last fully trained practitioners of Skill and should have knowledge of symptoms of Skill attacks against him.

['thul]

shrewd was one of the last ones fully trained, but he was most likely not trained to the master level (why should he need that?) and he had little experience with coteries...

As for the scrolls and verity... Most likely Galen denied their existence or similar...

['thul]

'thul found another plot hole... In dragon keeper, Sedric helped clean the wound on Spit, cutting away some flesh.
Then, near end of Dragon Haven, Greft stole that flesh, and ingested it.

After this, all of a sudden the sample bottles had held pieces of a copper dragon (Relpda).

Never was any flesh/scales removed from her body. Not even back when he drained blood from her, then he only lifted a scale.

A plot hole, no?

[Farseer]

So many things I want to respond to in so many threads!!

Yes, Nuytsia, as far as I can surmise, Realder's dragon is potentially a massive plot hole as per my previous posts. What we are told in AQ conflicts terribly with what we are told in TM.

Even so, it is all fairly complicated, particularly when the events of the AQ and FF plaza scenes are added in (as I have done for my Rooster Crown theory!) so I am still trying to determine the possibility that Fool has simply been mistaken due to his very first dream where Realder had promised he would fly him, or if it's something else altogether that we've missed somewhere. Fool's dream was in AQ, when they were on the Skill Road, and it was from this dream that he first identified and named Realder's dragon when the party came across him in the Stone Garden. At that, and every other reference in AQ, Realder's dragon has no connection whatsoever with GoaD.

It is difficult to see, no matter what research I do or what connection there is if there is no plot hole, how it is that Realder's dragon can be known as Realder's dragon (the first dragon awoken by N'eye and Fitz and also the last to leave the quarry at the commencement of the Red Ships War) and yet the other dragon within the GoaD simulacra could also be named after Realder. Of course, it IS possible that both could be named after Realder, remembering that the double referencing of something deems that 'something' to be particularly important.

Anyhow, it's been a point of research with me since I first read FF.

As an aside, GoaD was made up from Salt's Coterie, as well as Fool and even Fitz ...and I think it's signifcant that Fitz' memories were later swapped for the Rooster Crown! More on that later...

In Dragon Haven, Chaprter Thirteen, 'Decision Point', it says this of Sedric who is fretting about Relpda finding out about what he'd done to her: "He did not understand how she could not remember that he had come by darkness, to pluck scales from her and fill vials with her blood."

Though it's true it was not mentioned during the actual event, Sedric here remembers plucking scales as well as drawing blood, and that would then support there later being copper scales in vials? Not sure...clutching at straws...the RWC is my least strong point in the RotE books!

['thul]

it might be incorrect recollection on the plucking scales part, but these beings are fairly sure that it did say it was from the injuries treated... and there were no injuries treated in that manner on Relpda...


Girl on a dragon was not the official name, and if these beings recall correctly, it was named after not the coterie leader, but the most prominent member of the coterie...

[Farseer]

Girl on a dragon was not the official name, and if these beings recall correctly, it was named after not the coterie leader, but the most prominent member of the coterie...

While you beings do recall correctly, and G-o-a-D was not its 'official' name, it was the name given to the dragon from Fool's dream by Fitz and Fool in AQ, and G-o-a-D was a totally different simulacra to that which they did name as Realder's Dragon back then. In AQ there is both G-o-a-D and Realder's Dragon. They were not the same in any way.

As per previous posts, Fool had dreamed of Realder's Dragon during their trip up the Skill Road where RD had promised Fool that he would fly him. He then went on to recognise Realder/Realder's Dragon from his dream and other half-memories when they first came across him in the Stone Garden (I believe that Fitz even felt his Wit sense of the simulacra increase when Fool spoke the name 'Realder') and Fool could almost remember knowing him.

It was also during this introduction to Realder's Dragon that Fool and Fitz spoke of the experience at the plaza where Fool had told Fitz afterward that Realder's Dragon had promised to fly him. In all ways and at all times, this dragon was the one that they both spoke of as Realder's Dragon for the remainder of AQ.

Fool did not come across G-o-a-D until they reached the quarry and did not even acknowledge at any time having remembered or dreamed or seen G-o-a-D ever before. To Fool, Realder's Dragon from back in the Stone Garden was, at that stage, a totally different being to G-o-a-D/the Realder's Dragon that G-o-a-D came to be known as in FF.

As you say, the 'official name' given to G-o-a-D in FF was Realder's Dragon and this was because, as you also say, it was named after not the coterie leader, Salt, but after Realder, the member of Salt's Coterie who was willing to give heart to the dragon.

While all of that is true of the text in FF, it still does very much conflict with the text in AQ. Up until then, while we had not known G-o-a-D's official name, we did know Realder's Dragon's and it was...Realder's Dragon...and they were different beings.

When Fitz and Nighteyes woke Realder's Dragon together (the first one of the Stone Garden dragons for them to do so because it was Burl's death by Nighteyes that had earlier allowed G-o-a-D to finally be 'finished', not 'wakened'), Fitz noted that whoever Realder had been, he'd put a healthy appetite into his dragon. G-o-a-D was the first to lead the attack on the Red Ships, carrying Fool, and Realder's Dragon was the very last one to leave the Stone Garden. Two totally different simulacra in different places at different times.

Later, in FF, Realder's Dragon is the name given to G-o-a-D and, yes, it is G-o-a-D who Fool confirms as being the dragon that he'd announced during his announcing of "the flight of Realder's Dragon" way back in AQ but it still does not shed any light on the reason why the other dragon, first known as Realder's Dragon, had been named that way.

The only ways I can think to explain it away (if it is not a plot hole) is that Fool got it wrong between having his dream and coming across the dragon in the Stone Garden. He got it wrong and thus wrongly named that dragon as Realder's Dragon, only to have got it right by the end of FF after being in possession of all of the facts eg while it was Realder's Dragon who had promised to fly him etc, it was actually G-o-a-D who was always Realder's Dragon and not the other dragon which they had mistakenly took to be him. This makes no sense to me, and it is rare for the Fool to be so utterly wrong, but it is possible. It could be explained away by the confusion he experienced after the Skill experience and the groping for the dreams that were not as clear as his prophecies would normally be.

There is one other possibility that I can come up with (as mentioned a couple of posts ago, that they could both be named after Realder) but it's even sillier and makes even less sense. Why would two dragons be known as Realder's Dragon even if portions of Realder were found to be in both (much like it could be said that Fool is a part of both G-o-a-D and the PW/Kebal's Rawbread's simulacra)?

If it is a plot hole, it's actually just as much a plot hole within AQ, as far as I can tell, and not only between AQ and FF. This is because it was back in AQ that we are first told that it was Realder's Dragon who promised to fly Fool. Even by the end of AQ it was actually G-o-a-D who flew with Fool, even before it happened with them again in FF. Fool only ever flew with G-o-a-D (who came to be known as Realder's Dragon by FF), and never with the dragon we were first introduced to as Realder's Dragon in AQ.

I can't stand it any more. I'm asking Robin even though I'm hoping things will be cleared up further in later books! Sure messes with my other theories re Fitz and Fool and Realder etc!

EDIT: I did ask, and will share anything that comes of it.