[Ze frowns, wondering at the other’s aim as they walk through the snow- already piled to the ankles despite an earlier clearing. Snow is a constant in these streets- ever persistent in the drifts and the wind. In the wealthier districts there is infrastructure to keep it from building too high and to melt the ice ere it takes hold. Here, on the outskirts, all clearing is done by physical labour and the hour is late. Doubtless, the drifts will be substantial come morning and were it not his wedding day, he’d have half a mind to come this way in the dawn to see if he might put his talents to better use. Hell, still might if he can be spared the idiotic frippery.

Which, regretfully, the stranger seems to care to indulge in. At least certain aspects of it, if nothing else. His own fault, he supposes. He opened that door.]

Surely there’s naught I could say that you yourself wouldn’t know. [Ze feels the need to point out, feeling it a redundant question. Still, having been asked, he obliges since it’s a seemingly harmless (if boring) inquiry.] Lucius yae Galvus, the Emperor’s sire. Deceased. Husband to Hypatia wir Galvus, also deceased. Eldest son of Solus zos Galvus, founder of the Garlean Empire, and the crown prince at the time of his passing. To illness or somesuch. [His frown widens marginally after he rattles off those words, drilled into him by the overenthusiastic prattling of his “tutor,” who views the nation’s history with no small sense of unbridled passion.

But, perhaps, that is not what the stranger is truly asking, just as Ze hadn’t truly been wanting to know if he had known of Zenos’ mother. Perhaps...]

He was young, to my understanding. [Not quite so young as to not have both a wife and son- Ze’s age perhaps, give or take a few winters- but young enough for his youthful portrait to be an oddity in comparison to that of his brother- Titus- and to his son, Varis who looks as though the weather found him much too tough to chew.]