>>5491605The red-cloaked bard, Lescurel the Troubadour, opens his mouth as if to continue his villifying tirade against the ear-tickling courtesans.
But the bird-masked Cantergloak holds up a tawny finger and stops him:
-You speak of the Circus and the Ringmaster, friend, of danger and the Lion Tamer, of Death itself - my Dear Fellow!
But I have heard a few of your songs and tales; they appear to me to be rather undistinguished.
Do you know of Rostand, and "La Princesse Lointaine," for instance...
>>5489919It seems to me the key to romance - as is well understood and demonstrated by these hated ear-teasing temptresses of yours, the mistresses of sleep - the key to Romance is unattainability.
Instead of Death, the Lion Tamer, and so on and so forth, perhaps you want "La Princesse Lointaine", the Distant Princess, or the theme of L'Amour de Loin, the Love From Faraway, as we called it in the elegant Old Gothiric tongue.
The devotion and passion aroused by knowing one is thinking and dwelling upon you from afar... one whom you can never meet. The delicate blush reddening against a damask cheek, the stolen glances of longing, treasured and remembered even after they were lost... The secret of desire is distance. Because if their admirers ever met them, they would soon find familiarity breeds contempt; they might find their countenance disagreeable, rebel at the noises, smells and sights of their bodily ablutions in the morning, and the capricious changes of their mood and temperament. Perhaps this is why these strange ear courtesans of sleep have cultivated such gatherings of simpering, parasocial adulants - they understand this distance, the romance from afar.