Marian wrote: <In Assassin, why are the two slavers who are holding Avon not surprised when he addresses "Sleer" as Servalan? And does this mean that she later kills them to keep their mouths shut? Or even kills all the slavers?>
and Anna replied: <I've always more than half suspected that *everyone* in the Federation knew who Sleer really was, they were just humouring her. I expect that a memo got sent round, saying basically, 'Look, she's having fun, she's a useful genocidal maniac to have running the pac. prog., and being busy keeping her secret is stopping her having a pop at the new Pres. Let's all just go along with, shall we?'>
<grin> Like that, I do.
Of course, the alternative is that the slavers neither knew nor cared who this particular 'Servalan' might be. If slavery is illegal or semi-legal, then quite a lot of their customers could use false identites, no questions asked; and when all is said and done, Servalan was only in the *public* eye for a short and rather non-glorious period as President, so people outside the elite political circles (and her victims) have probably just about forgotten her.
This is part of the reason she can get away with the Sleer persona, as long as she stays in the outer reaches of the Federation power structure.
And after all <g> is there any proof that she's the only one of that name anyway?
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