>>111338001>lol if you're traveling the social rules and norms you've lived with all your life cease to existIt's pretty obvious that the human part of the caravan, where Alfie's mostly been traveling and interacting, is still largely following the social (double)standards of their old societies. People may sneak off to participate in orgies, but they claim to have "gotten lost in the mist" to maintain respectability.
- Ailduin doesn't run the caravan. He finances it, but he doesn't run it. It's referred to as Eyck's caravan a lot of times by different people, Eyck's the caravan master, he's threatened Ailduin when he was taking too long in Pickering, and Ailduin had to buy Marco and Lydia's contracts from Eyck in order to be able to give them orders. Ailduin hangs at the elf part of the caravan, the human and elf sections seem to travel separately, and he's so detached from the goings-on of the human side he didn't even know Alfie was on the caravan for weeks because he doesn't give a shit about what goes on.
The human side of the caravan at least obviously is still maintaining at least the public image of respectability.
- We've seen that Alfie spends her days mostly with the other women, doing chores - and not with Lydia or Marco who hang with the guards elsewhere. Plus, Alfie's traumas are all about psychological shaming - she doesn't fear violence, she fears ostracizing and contempt. So all this "you have warriors on your side" is meaningless because she can't have the guards beat up the women for not talking to her or whatever.
In Pickering a public respectable image was everything. Alfie's mother was ostracized, mocked and hated just for coming from the wrong family and getting pregnant by a too-good man. It was impressed upon Alfie since forever that the only reason she's not treated like Vera is her "good girl" reputation - people do all sorts of things, but if it becomes public, you're shamed for it.
She can't yet lose her good girl status.
