"Don't you," Julian questioned as he looked at Rhys. He didn't need the whispers to tell him how naive the boy was. How young and untried by the world he was. So unlike how jaded Julian already was when blooded in a ghoul. It was all easy to read and Julian had always been keenly insightful when reading another, especially one that was an open book as Rhys was.
Julian did hold a small bit of sympathy for Rhys. He could not even begin to imagine what it would have been like if he had been forced to have to learn everything about Kindred society while trying to piece his mind back together as well. While he went by the rules of the Camarilla and didn't care enough to get up to any radical thinking, he did believe that there was one change they needed to make beyond asking a prince for permission to Embrace someone. Julian believed that anyone who might be Embrace should spend at least a year as a ghoul before it happened. Give them time to learn because thrusting the rest of the changes upon them. Otherwise, you risked messes like this. Abandoned by your sire. More often than not Julian hated Dorian for continuing his existence after Rusty had just dumped him back on his doorstep.
"You've jumped from the pan and directly into the fire with your choice of lovers and your mentor wants you to learn how to withstand the heat. The only problem is he's too straight forward and your lover is coddling you too much already. And neither one of them can offer you the perspective that I can." At least he wasn't being used as a cautionary tale. What Rhys needed to learn came from after Julian had been turned, surviving in the courts even when you had the protection of a member of it. Unless, of course, the Marquess planned on keeping his new young lover locked away in a tower then the point was mute.