This? This clearly marks Eric as a genius, and obviously the most qualified person for the throne. O0
That was a reference to
Sword of Sedition where Eric is in a cantina eating chips and salsa with Jack Farrel. And I figured that after having to run things for an increasingly irrational Caleb that Eric would rather go on a quest to find better chips and salsa.
Nope, just a very, very nicely written bit of humor there.
Nice touch with Lestrade. I wonder what the Bard would have done with the Davions...
I'll admit I'm a fan of Stackpole's earlier novels before the word counts cut the later ones down. And some of my favorite lesser characters were Aldo Lestrade and Alesandro Steiner. I also love the ambiguous nature of the supernatural that shows up in those earlier novels like Aldo Lestrade's appearance in Blood of Kerensky. And I figured making Mason Aldo all along was better than my original idea.
As for the Bard, I could see some traces of King Lear in the death of Hanse Davion. Though Hanse fortunately didn't get to live to see the downfall of what he had worked to make possible. It would probably not have resulted in "Titus Andronicus", and if the Davions were the patrons of the Bard, we would have probably seen "Hanse Davion the Great" in the vein of the end of "Henry V".
However, I'll say that every time that I see the Master or Apollyon my mind seems to think Prospero from the "Tempest".
Though I think Melissa Steiner II would make a good Shakespearean tragic heroine. The audience sees her fatal flaw, but the early success make you forget that it'll probably come back to haunt her. And then bam in Act IV Scene II, she gets whacked.