ok guys but my question was why would she allowed herself to be captured?
she can assume she was stronger then Sharon and the MC put together but once she is caged in and with Andrew suport she can not hope to overcome!
she might be hedonistic but she is hardly a dumb cunt so there had to be more to her allowing herself to be captured then just trying to get get Sharon back! a pathway into political power by becoming an agent of the temple would be a good reason!
she might not have known who Calisto was but once Virgil shows up she knows somethings up since very rarelly the court cares about the archons bussinesses! can not be that hard to pin point that the only thing diferent is the MC who happens to be under the protection of her former lover... so pathway into the MC and from the MC to whatever hidden power is behind the new manouvers that puts a teenager on a throne... she is not a teenager vampire who is clueless, so she must have felt something is amiss!
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as for her thralling she might have a kind of Andrew thralling that enables her to work on her own accord or just a slight princeps Sharon thralling that does not enable her to lie to Marcius! besides you can rationalise almost anything so her conscious can lie to her saying it is to protect Marcius while her unconcious is like "yey more power more freedom less Marcius...!"
not an expert at VTM but i am not brainless either!
Just as the current events can remind us, despite the historical warnings there are "hardly dumbs", who tried to march an army thru on a thawing ground
if you speak of the russians they lost most of those wars only a true idiot like napoleon and hitler managed to fuck it up so badly that they got crushed but everyone else from the poles to the mongols just waltzed in! (keeping it is diferent then winning)! (do pay attention that the sweadish northern empire went south instead of marching on moscow and lost the war at poltava because the saxon allies and the polish reenforcements and 2 of their armies never reached their emperor charles so they went against the russians outnumbered... and they never made a b line straight to moscow...)
thats one of the greatest miss conceptions in world history, flat terrain is hard to defend and easy to attack as for the cold... just use a fucking jacket instead of being effemenate idiots who treasure style over confort....
only advantage of the thawing is that being a natural helps a bit but nothing that good organisation and some proper planning can not overcome and if you are on the offensive thats like text book noob knowledge! as state of the 68 times they won 66 and only the french and the germans managed to fuck themselves up!
the french because they planed to have it finished before winter set in and waited 3 weeks in moscow and the germans because they delayed the operation barbarossa for 2 months and winter came 1 month earlyer! (and the russians managed an amazing feat or organization where they where able to get 5 million soldiers from eastern siberia into the batlefield in less then 3 months... fucking hell the one´s in charge where not commies at heart thats for sure, still one hell of a organisation and logistic nightmare overcome... amazing!)