Ambiades, I realized, was the kind of person who liked to put people in a hierarchy, and he wanted me to understand that I was at the bottom of his. … - Megan Whalen Turner

"Surely I am a better mistress to serve?"
"You are more beautiful, Your Majesty." The queen smiled again before I finished. "But she is more kind."
So much for discretion. The smile disappeared. You could have heard a pin drop onto the stone floor as her alabaster cheeks flushed red. No one could ever accuse the queen of Attolia of being kind.

"Ten thousand!" I shouted at the walls, back in the room with the wooden shutters, now open so that anyone could hear me, on the porch or probably across the compound. "That arrogant bastard landed ten thousand men at Tas-Elisa. In my port! Mine!" When I was a child and playmates snatched my toys out of my hands, I tended to smile weakly and give in. Years later I was acting the way I should have as a child. Probably not the most mature behavior for a king, but I was still cursing as I swung around to find a delegation of barons in the doorway behind me. My father, Baron Comeneus, and the Baron Xorcheus among them.
They thought it was how a king behaved.

We invoke the Great Goddess in our hour of need for her wisdom and her mercy," Teleus said in the demotic.
"Ere translates as love, a rather ruthless love, not mercy, Teleus. The Great Goddess of Eddis not known for her mercy.