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When we sat with my parents to watch The Shipwright at Landfall, Martisset incessantly nudged me and shook her head. No, that wasn’t right: the Shipwright wouldn’t have dressed so, because that particular sartorial item was long out of fashion even before her older-father’s patron’s time; she wouldn’t have held her saber so, because they didn’t do that until two hundred years later.

And no, she definitely wouldn’t have sung that song at seventeen, because Phila the Flute-Player hadn’t written it yet. 

I didn’t mind so much, because it’s my parents’ favorite opera and the likely genesis of their notion to have a clone of Naime Shipwright for their very own. Martisset’s pedantry saved me from having to think about it too much.

Also, she was taking my part. Her nudges and head-shakes and eye-rolls rendered my parents’ taste ridiculous. They did not care about essential details, which exposed them to my sister’s sharp censure. 

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Martisset can’t abide historical inaccuracy, even at the opera. Character interview for NaNoWriMo 2016 project The Clone’s Complaint.