"I'm beginning to agree," Xel sighs, thinking of the complications humanity will give the effort, "that I ought to speak to him."
"Oh, formality," he says vaguely, making an absent, liquidly dismissive gesture with one hand. "It's always a question, ne? How closely interwoven the public persona and the private person are, when the public figure isn't a bumbler with the self-restraint and subtlety of a warthog with a bit made of ginger. Perhaps one wants what the other doesn't--or what the other does, for a reason that isn't quite the same. Perhaps a slight, or an impertinence is taken in two different ways, more or less galling or equally so. I believe people have reasons for things they do, Borgia-kun, and for things they want. I believe people inhabit offices, and often try do so honorable, effectively, or gracefully, but that only in the rarest cases do they truly become the living face of the office and no more. So, hai, if I want a dry account of your deeds, I can read them, and even perhaps find the forces-of-politics that wrapped their meaning in additional motives, but that's not terribly interesting, without knowing the players well, and it won't tell me much about a person." He smiles. "Do you think I'm a gentle person, who'll be shocked by moves undertaken during courtly skirmishes?"