No need to be paranoid! I like a lot of set-up to a story, getting to know the characters and the sub-plots. It makes the...er... climax all the more satisfying! It just adds an extra degree of poignancy when you know that there are unavoidable Big Events on the horizon. And my Ashmael is just as speculative as yours! :-)
I'm not sure if Ashmael felt ashamed of his relationship with Vaysh - when he says "... and here's a Wraeththu heresy... he was mine", he actually sounds as if he's... well, not proud of bucking the system exactly, but not ashamed of it either. He says something to the effect that Thiede allows him some autonomy of thought because he helped Thiede build his kingdom, and he's obviously a bit of a thorn in Thiede's flesh in a way that the other members of the Hegemony aren't! I think his regrets are to do with having gotten so emotionally involved, and then having suffered the consequences when he lost the person he loved.
It was heretical from a Gelaming point of view, of course - they were big on that whole not getting emotionally attached to any one person in particular thing. That was for uncivilised types, like Varrs (or humans!). And of course this happened before Pell showed up, imagining himself to be a Unique and Special Snowflake because of his relationship with Cal. (not Pell's biggest fan, in case you hadn't noticed ;-).
I would imagine that this idealism about the emtional aspect of relationships and not being exclusive would have been quite... fervent in the early days, before they all got a dose of reality.
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I'm not sure if Ashmael felt ashamed of his relationship with Vaysh - when he says "... and here's a Wraeththu heresy... he was mine", he actually sounds as if he's... well, not proud of bucking the system exactly, but not ashamed of it either. He says something to the effect that Thiede allows him some autonomy of thought because he helped Thiede build his kingdom, and he's obviously a bit of a thorn in Thiede's flesh in a way that the other members of the Hegemony aren't! I think his regrets are to do with having gotten so emotionally involved, and then having suffered the consequences when he lost the person he loved.
It was heretical from a Gelaming point of view, of course - they were big on that whole not getting emotionally attached to any one person in particular thing. That was for uncivilised types, like Varrs (or humans!). And of course this happened before Pell showed up, imagining himself to be a Unique and Special Snowflake because of his relationship with Cal. (not Pell's biggest fan, in case you hadn't noticed ;-).
I would imagine that this idealism about the emtional aspect of relationships and not being exclusive would have been quite... fervent in the early days, before they all got a dose of reality.