I am a big fan of the Grand Illusion series and how it explores the themes of illusions both in politics, history, and in daily life. I enjoyed Legalist and how it told the story behind Avraal’s ancestor and the Scarlet Daughter incident. That being said, obviously the events in Legalist differ greatly from what Dekkard read in the book The Scarlet Daughter. My question is: when you wrote Isolate and the scenes in which Dekkard is reading The Scarlet Daughter, did you know at that time that the “history” was distorted or was that something you did not flesh out until you wrote Legalist?

History is always distorted, and I knew Delehya’s history was especially distorted well before I even finished writing Isolate.