something interesting: thistle said that they stopped having swordfighting tourneys because the same person kept winning. that's got to be significant in some way, otherwise it's a really weird line to throw in
a few chapters ago, we saw a creepy life-sized wooden doll sitting at the table that kept moving around. We still havent found out what was up with that, and we just learned that thistle can stick people's souls into dolls. Maybe that doll is the swordsman who won all the tourneys, and Thistle keeps them around as a guard or something? (But if that doll is some super badass swordsman guard, you'd think it would've done something by now. so maybe it's someone else, or maybe it has its own agenda and doesnt care what happens to thistle?)