Here we have another “DVD Extra” from the new novel, The Office of Shadow, this time concerning Lord Gray. This epigram is from Chapter Thirty-Two, taken from Lord Grays Recollections:

Lord Valen once asked me how I defined true friendship. I told him that a true friend is one who forgives any indiscretion. I thought it a particularly fine thing to say, as I was having an affair with his wife at the time.

Prior to the publication of his Recollections, Lord Gray was already a notorious figure. He was a womanizer, who claimed to have “fathered more bastards than any Fae living.” He attained his lordship after accusing his brother of treason (it turned out that his brother was in fact a traitor, but not for the reasons that Gray had alleged, all of which were pure fabrications.

Known for being querulous, misanthropic, and deliberately unkind, Lord Gray achieved a questionable fame when he published his Recollections. Believing that he was near death, he crafted a memoir that also served as an open poison-pen letter to everyone he hated, which number was revealed to be quite large.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), Lord Gray fully recovered from his illness and lived for another forty years after the release of the Recollections. His revelations and opinions proved explosive, especially his long list of purported romantic conquests, which included a number of ladies at court. He was ultimately dragged before the Queen for sedition; he’d devoted an entire chapter to criticisms of Titania, expressing blunt opinions about her policies, her manners, and even her taste in clothing. He was sentenced to live out the remainder of his life at the prison of Crere Sulace.

Regardless of the outcome, Gray claimed that he regretted nothing, and when his cell was cleaned out after his death, the guards found an unfinished sequel to the Recollections, even more vitriolic and inflammatory than the original. The warden of Crere Sulace, Crenyllice, had the book burned “for the good of the realm,” though a guard who perused the book prior to its destruction maintained that a good deal of it was devoted to crimes and misdemeanors committed by the warden himself.

Interestingly, Recollections inspired a brief flurry of satirical imitations, known as “backhanded wisdom,” owing to Gray’s peculiar genius at dispensing uniquely terrible advice.