House Orloff in High Value Target

[Mendrugo]

A continuity question about House Orloff:

In Philip A. Lee's "High Value Target" Earl Reinhard Orloff dies in 2996 and is succeeded by his son/heir Skylar Orloff.
 
However, the original House Marik sourcebook names Vicente Orloff as the heir of the Duchy as early as 2991 (at age 22) and says he is running Orloff circa 3025.  He has five named children - Misha (a cadet and heir apparent circa 3017, but apparently dead in 3025), Alfonso, Vicente Jr., Salvatore, and Regina, and eight grandchildren circa 3025. 

The information in the House Marik sourcebook seems to preclude the existence of Reinhard and Skylar.  Is there any official explanation for which source takes precedence, and/or how the Reinhard->Skylar succession can be reconciled with Vicente's profile in the Marik sourcebook?  About the only way I can see is that Vicente is Skylar's brother and Reinhard's son, but for some reason was taken out of the line of succession circa 2996.  Then Skylar has a very short reign, recalling Vicente to the line of succession.  (Though Cyril's angry diatribe at Skylar implies the ducal line will be ended if he dies.)

[Welshman]

Mr. Lee has been working on non-BT projects lately. I've asked him to weigh in on this.

Best,
Joel BC
- Catalyst

[joechummer]

"Skylar" is Vincente's middle name. He preferred being called Sklyar ever since he was a child—it had fewer syllables and was easier to spell—so he didn't formally use his first name "Vincente" until he was officially confirmed as Duke Orloff and had to adopt a slightly more grown-up public persona.

The really curious thing is, why is he shown as the ruler of Betelgeuse, a Capellan planet, in 3025?

[Mendrugo]

Thanks for the answer.

However, how does that square with the page 49 mention that Vicente, circa 2991, was the "son of the Earl and a decorated officer in the Orloff Grenadiers"?  You take pains in "High Value Target" to point out that Skylar avoided the traditional service in the Grenadiers, and in fact, doesn't know how to pilot his Awesome.  If the citation on House Marik p. 49 is correct, Skylar and Vicente can't be the same person.  ("High Value Target" was a great story, but I just want to nail down this discrepancy with the sourcebook.)

(Re: Betelgeuse, the ruler is Vincente, so probably a different person.)

[joechummer]

If you want an honest answer, the discrepancy is two-fold:

1) I somehow completely missed the reference of Vicente Orloff being around in 2991, since my PDF copy of the original Marik sourcebook wasn't text searchable. I believe I saw that he was head of the duchy in 3025, but I figured thirty years ago would be a completely different story, and I couldn't find any mention of who preceded him.

2) Because of the time crunch in getting Counterattack ready to make a Gen Con debut, we didn't have time to send "High Value Target" to fact check. Given that the story was set nearly thirty years before the Fourth SW started and it dealt with a relatively small FWL faction in a sparsely covered part of history, we didn't expect to run into any problems, and I'd done as much fact-checking as time allowed during the formulation and writing of the story.

One way to explain this discrepancy would be this:

Vicente is a cousin of Reinhard and Skylar Orloff, and his father (who I believe is unnamed?) still had some political pull but was removed from the line of succession due to estrangement or some unforgivable slight. In the story, you might notice that the characters all refer to the head of the duchy as "Duke Orloff," not "Earl Orloff."From Orloffian perspective, an earl can't head up a duchy: it'd be called the "Earldom of Orloff" if that were the case. So Reinhard and Skylar style themselves as "Duke," much to the nobility's dismay, and Vicente's father, technically an earl under Reinhard despite the estrangement, still has the Captain-General's ear, and thus so does his son—hence why he was invited to dine with Janos Marik in 2991. A lot of legitimate dukes in the FWL don't take kindly to Reinhard's arrogance for using the title, so when Reinhard is killed by a Maskirovka assassination (which was designed to give the CCAF leverage for the attacks on Tsinghai and a failed thrust into the Duchy of Orloff) and Skylar the buffoon takes over the duchy as "Duke," Reinhard's enemies seize their chance to exert political pressure on the duchy and get  "Duke" Skylar stripped from political power (or assassinated by rivals, perhaps?). Then Vicente's father is installed as the proper "Earl of Orloff."

There's a whole story there just waiting to be told, if you ask me.

Does that help?

[Mendrugo]

Works for me.  Thanks for the behind the scenes insight.

[joechummer]

You are welcome, good sir. Glad I can help.