Flora: Just how smart is she?

[RPGPundit]

Flora is one of the more varied characters of the Amber setting in terms of how I've seen her played.

Its easy, on the surface, to play her as the "Dumb blonde". And a lot of people do.  To many of them, whatever intelligence she might have is at best, a kind of survival instinct, where she will quickly hook up with whoever happens to be winning the latest family conflict.

But certainly, some moments in the books, particularly in the second series, hint that Flora might be much smarter than that.

If you play her as something other than a "dumb blonde", how do you show Flora's smarts?

RPGPundit

[Ivanhoe]

It can be refreshing for the players to have someone "simple" to understand in the elders. Mine are Gerard and Flora. With age does not always come wisdom and cynicism, even if this is the road Corwin followed in his life.

In my games, Flora enjoys life, enjoys what shadow-earth has to offer, does not really look for more and is pleased when her brothers, sisters, nephews and niece bring some action to her place. Why would she want anything else ? She found some earthling she is quite fond of, who are secret agencies directors, generals, yakuzas (she has a crack on old men, who are, anyway, way younger than her). She can have whatever she wants on earth with total discretion if necessary. In some circle she is known as a powerful witch, but does not take that too seriously.

The "dumb blonde" is a bit more than the surface impression : she is a lady who enjoys life a lot and would readily admit that she is too dumb to want Amber's throne. She has found the way of life she likes a few centuries ago, to her brothers perplexity, and simply, completely, lives it. Don't play her as dumb, play her as uninterested. A bit like Llewella, but in a world we know better ;-)

[evileeyore]

Don't play her as dumb, play her as uninterested.

To an extent that's how i run her as well...  except she isn't even really uninterested, that is a cover.

Flora isn't the brightest bulb or sharpest tool, and unlike most her siblings understands this.  Her particular talent lies in political cunning and understanding the motives of others, she can read the wind and knows when a gail is coming.

So she generally gets the hell out of the way, plays her games on earth, and leaves her family alone (unless forced or persented of a different option).

My methods are just to have her always ducking before anyone else even knows there is threat (she is always prepared for when things turn sour) and also prepared to celebrate someone's victories or commiserate their defeats.

[weilide]

Like RPGPundit, I am inclined to see Flora as a bit brighter than she gets credit for, if for no other reason than that interpretation conforms to my big rule of thumb for Zelazny / Amber: "The universe is always just a little more complicated than you assume." Consider, for example: Corwin is easily Eric's biggest threat, someone he fears to kill, someone who freaks him out even in the absence of memories. Surely he wouldn't set Flora to watch over him if she were a total incompetent. This is not to say that I have this vision of her cackling over a crystal ball when nobody is watching and then totally switching personalities in the company of others. It's just that you don't get to be many centuries old without picking up more than a little street smarts, if nothing else.

As long as we're on the subject of Flora, I also tend to feel that she often gets unfairly painted as an out-of control nympho, seemingly on the basis of just two incidents that I can think of (one, Merlin trumps in on her in flagrante delicto; two, she makes reference to a Kashfan boyfriend from something like fifty years earlier). There may be one more in there somewhere. Corwin and Merlin, by contrast, hit on or sleep with nearly every female character they meet who is not a blood relative. (This is actually not much of an exaggeration). Frankly, it seems this stems in no small part from the fact that Flora is described as a beautiful blonde –– making her a sex fiend serves as a bit of fantasy wish-fulfillment.

Well, I'll get off my soapbox now. I don't mean to lecture, I just think it's more interesting to make Flora actually somewhat buttoned down and have the horny one be someone unexpected, like Llewella.

[JongWK]

Here's another take on Flora...

Imagine a high school cheerleader: Popular, sexy, and shallow... but with a killer social instinct. Mess with her and she will gut you with just a few words in the right ears.

[Nihilistic Mind]

I honestly tend to keep her smarts hidden until the right time. And what's funny is that every time that's come up, the PCs reaction has been disbelief and surprise. They were expecting her to be a dumb, fearful fool!

One guy insisted she must have been someone else shapeshifted as Flora for the element of surprise, which was an awfully convenient theory.

[Trevelyan]

I think that Flora maintains an interesting balance - she is clearly more intelligent than the rest of the family give her credit for, but I wonder if she is really as intelligent as she sometimes thinks she is.

I play her as a reasonably intelligent member of the family, certainly not a dizzy blonde, but one who long ago decided to focus her efforts on manipulating those men who were willing, or could be coaxed, to undertake anything that looked remotely like work on her behalf. She's a reasonably smart girl, but she's incredibly lazy.

She can follow the ebb and flow of family politics with the best of them, but her desire for an easy life inclines her to identify the top dog and openly support them. This grants her an easy life and neatly puts her outside of all the tiresome plotting that occupies the rest of the family.

She has a lot of contacts, understands people well and could be a supremely competent manipulator of any situation. But why would she go to all that effort when she can get a few compliments and take home a good looking guy at the end of the night simply by batting her eyelashes? And anything else she wants, the sort of things that other people might be inclined to work for, can easily be found in shadow with a minimum of effort.

Flora is a woman of simlpe and direct tastes - safety, comfrot and entertainment - and since she can get all of these without having to exert herself, she comes across as less capable than she might if she occasionally made the effort. The only trouble is that, in failing to make the effort for so long, she might find that she's lost her edge when disaster strikes.

[SunBoy]

IIRC, not only Eric sent Florimel to watch over Corwin, but also sort of exiled her on Shadow Earth. Not directly, but she does complain to Corwin about this and mentions that "the way is closed". Eric could have provided her safe passage. What if, after Caine, Flora is the best connected amberite through the Golden Circle? That may be why Eric, still unsure of his position, and fearful of her, decided to keep her away. She's a people person, no doubt, and a great one at that. She licks Eric's hand, then plays the scared child with Corwin, then the wise aunt and even a little of the temptress with Merlin later. But, on Shadow Earth, away from the centre of power, she was almost helpless, because her greatest strenght is her biggest weakness: she's too good a manipulator, which causes her siblings to keep away from her. They do not dissmiss her, the are wary of her.

Who knows, not my true take on her, but might work and be funny. Like a Livia with boobies.

[Trevelyan]

Like a Livia with boobies.

What makes you think that Livia didn't have boobies too :confused:

[boulet]

My take on Flora isn't very different from some other posts here. In my vision she isn't much of a mastermind, at least if you consider a machiavelian type of intelligence. But she's got real good intuitions, she reads body language like an open book and she doesn't let her pride get in her own way. So I picture a quite adaptable woman who won't win a chess game but would guess who is going to win just by observing the players. She's a people person obviously and when Random (to the opposite of Eric) chose to keep her around the castle he was rewarded with a top class ambassador. I have no issue with her sexual appetite, I'm not sure what it says about her mental disposition. The thing I wish Zelazny had done is provide a few more signs about how Oberon's daughters get along with one another. I mean sisters, by my personnal experience, thrive on competition, wether openly or behind the curtain. And in the process we probably would have learned a few things about their intelligence.

[Croaker]

Who's livia???

(BTW, my answer is: Smarter than you, smarter than me too )

[weilide]

I presume the Livia in question is the wife of the Roman emperor Augustus. Then again, Tony Soprano's mother is also named Livia. (Both endowed with boobies…)

[SunBoy]

Yup, I meant Augustus' wife. Sort of a private joke, because she played a big role in one of Pundit's campaigns, but not so private, luckily.

And I wouldn't call them boobies. In my mind, at least, she's always old, and she hasn't got boobies, more like medium-sized, wrinkled, empty, pale and veiny leather pouches attached to her chest. And too thin nose and lips, but that's my mental image.

And hey, c'mon, I'm sure you all got what I meant. Livia isn't famous for her sex appeal. I meant Flora could be every bit as brilliant and devious, with the plus of a bigger comeliness. Get it? Livia... with boobies. Hehe. Boobies.

[Corvus]

I would suggest that the source of the apparent differences between Corwin's Flora and Merlin's Flora lie in the biases of the narrators.  It's pretty obvious, to me at least, that Corwin considered Flora good for just about nothing.  Merlin did not have such prejudice, and in his tale we see Flora as more competent.  She is in no way the genius that Fiona is, but she's definitely capable of handling herself amid the intrigues of her siblings.  I think Corwin's Flora is an unflattering portrait painted by a man who simply doesn't like her at all.

[SunBoy]

That's pretty interesting, but more than "not like her at all" I'd say "despises her for not being power mad", which could be why in the end, when Corwin thinks he has forsaken his prejudices and stuff he sees her (and everybody else) in a little softer way; a quite more contemptuous way, of course, but that's Corwin for you.