Tamara
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
On a re-read I noticed right at the end of Penric & the Fox when Pen is telling Llewen about Baroness kin Pikepool's idea for expanding Pen's plates into a printing press etc & Llewen tells Pen to have her secretary "explain the concept of a percentage recompense to you." but I don't remember this being addressed again. Does Pen have a big pile-up of royalties & income waiting in an account for him back in the Weald?
Lois McMaster Bujold
Ah, glad someone noticed that.
I fancy that modest sums are forwarded to Pen now and then. This will get harder to effect the farther he moves away. Medieval international banking is a fascinating real-life study. But usually money transfers came down to finding some hopefully trustworthy person going that way, giving them the purse, and hoping they didn't run into disasters along the route. Erratic method.
One of the interesting anecdotes from my great-something uncle the ironclad riverboat medic in the American Civil War was about entrusting his year's pay to be taken home to New Hampshire by hand, and it never arriving. I'm not sure what $500 translates to in today's dollars, but that loss had to have hurt.
(See: The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir on Kindle.)
Ta, L.
Ah, glad someone noticed that.
I fancy that modest sums are forwarded to Pen now and then. This will get harder to effect the farther he moves away. Medieval international banking is a fascinating real-life study. But usually money transfers came down to finding some hopefully trustworthy person going that way, giving them the purse, and hoping they didn't run into disasters along the route. Erratic method.
One of the interesting anecdotes from my great-something uncle the ironclad riverboat medic in the American Civil War was about entrusting his year's pay to be taken home to New Hampshire by hand, and it never arriving. I'm not sure what $500 translates to in today's dollars, but that loss had to have hurt.
(See: The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir on Kindle.)
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Liz
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Hi! I've been rereading all your books this year since August because they are one of my comfort rereads and, since I just had another kid, they're a wonderful meditation on families and what it means to be a parent. And thank you for that! And leaving that aside, I was wondering - while rereading Paladin of Souls - whether Desdemona is still around somewhere and whether Foix dy Gura ever gets to meet her?
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Oct 31, 2025 12:02AM · flag