Rakshasa wrote:
Sweet, except it assumes Rarune is so green as to assume all rangers kill the half-elves they meet. He seems to come from the race that were most friendly with the half-elves iirc, and as an ambassador he probably knows a bit of what goes on.
"Willing to sleep with humans" is not the same thing as "friendly with the half-elves." If there was a racial dimension to the Errant War, I can't find it. Got a reference?
As for "knows a bit of what goes on," remember that Sarine, in her interactions with the elven council, was very careful only to mention Ian in connection with the Anilis affair, not Meji. She very artfully implied that the other half elf (Meji) had wandered off somewhere else by the time the Giant Magic Potato was reached. Furthermore, Misa's comments to Sarine make it clear that knowledge of how Sarine deals with half elves isn't exactly widespread
("...sneaking around the others' back") and is most likely restricted to Sarine's closest friends who can keep a secret. Yes, Rarune is probably reasonably well filled in on the situation as gleaned from Sarine's report and other intelligence sources, including what's known about Sarine's own behaviors. That doesn't mean he knows everything, and those behaviors quite likely fall under the heading of stuff he doesn't know.
This, incidentally, is a lesson for our own times. When a government gets its information on another government from agents on the street -- what's called human intelligence, or HUMINT -- it's necessary to be very careful to ensure that the information being gathered isn't excessively colored by the views of the humans doing the gathering -- or the interpreting.