Thank you everyone who’s left interesting, lovely notes in my inbox, and I really hope I can respond to them all; I am currently only allowed short bursts of goofing off in a day and I am ashamed to say that I mainly spend them losing my life to the sea ice challenge in Rimworld. Here’s a wonderful question from @sensenoi about the book that I will put under a read-more due to spoilers –

What a lovely thing to say; thank you, everyone in my inbox is so great.

Let’s say everything had gone according to the Emperor’s plan and Cytherea hadn’t interfered

I will try not to be aggravating and expound loads on “WELL THIS IS WHAT I THINK” because death of the author etc etc who’s to say what’s canon, but this is very funny because I accidentally had this conversation with my editor just the other day. Fragment:

what follows instead is a years-long detailed refurbishment of Canaan House found families etc quiet slice-of-life slow burn romance between various people, only to end in tragedy when they all get botulism from a bad clam, and die

(I don’t think you can even get botulism from fresh clams, so this is even more tragic)

(my editor immediately speculated on what kind of new murders would take place; wow, I was only trying to give some gentle slice-of-life botulism)

In that particular exact scenario (lack of Cytherea, all else the same), which I cannot actually expound fully upon because there are facts from Harrow the Ninth which may prove useful here, I will give this answer on the understanding that I am not saying everything –

WHO WOULD HAVE STILL DONE IT

• Ianthe

WHO WOULD HAVE CHICKENED OUT

• Everyone else