PrePub - Ascendance of a Bookworm

Damn... I already felt bad for Karin, from what little the main story gave us, but I never considered, how the other Klassenberg people might treat her, after coming back. Considering it was Klassenberg that forced through the purge, I would not be surprised if a certain level of vindictivness were to run in the entire duchy, not just the archduke (or rather former archduke). I hope Otto's being mistaken here. Or alternatively, that Karin does find a way to come to Alexandria and win Benno's heart... or rather convince him of the economic benefit of their marriage. I think without the need to keep business secrets from her, they'd get along very well, probably better than many other arranged marriage partners do. And with Benno now being associated very closely to a full-on Aub, not to mention the Divine Avatar of a goddess, even Klassenberg merchants should be a bit weary of messing with him and accidentally getting into trouble over it.

I am rather confused about the gods supposedly not approving of traveling merchants drinking alcohol in a bar... why would the god of alcohol exclude hard-working merchants? Maybe it's a matter of some of the soldiers disaprooving of their haunts being "infiltrated" by "greedy money grubbers" and so the traveling merchants learned to keep a low profile in such places, and they just told their children about this being the will of the gods, to make them accept it more easily. We saw how hostile Lutz's family was toward any merchant, and I doubt they'd exclude the traveling ones from their ire.