When Domitian thought back on his European tour, the fondest memories he had were not of a particular place, but of a particular girl — one of the women who spent her youth trading intimacy of various types and degrees for expensive gifts, essentially but not actually a prostitute. She'd had green eyes and lived in Istanbul, but he'd invited her along to Greece where she'd stayed all day in the little cabin on the cliff side, overlooking the Mediterranean waves. She'd played some sort of musical instrument which he'd now forgotten the name of, but not the sound of. He'd stayed two extra weeks in Greece because he knew he couldn't ask her to carry on to Italy, where people actually knew him, and then eventually he'd said goodbye and bought her a ticket back to Istanbul, where she'd presumably moved on to some other likely young man with money burning holes in his pockets. This was not the sort of thing he could tell his sister about, of course, so instead he lied and said, "Spain is nice. Odd mix of architecture. Some from the arabs, some from the Italians, some from the Gauls, all mashed together in their cities."

Before the Ministry and before Matilda; a fitting title for that portion of his life. He'd originally joined the Ministry more out of curiosity for what it was like than any need to work, though he obviously felt the need for it now. His marriage to Matilda, too, was something he had initially taken a bit for granted, up until the scandal.

"Funny how backwards it is for men and women," he remarked. "We have all our freedom before marriage, and then we hand it over to our wives during the wedding."