.... er, well, okay, if the authorial intent there is that Verra is talking about specifically economic stagnation -- well, for one thing, that invalidates my entire post above, which, okay, but it also makes me deeply confused about what it is that specifically made Verra decide that "an era has ended" in Vallista. I assumed it was the house looping time. But that's got nothing to do with economics/politics, so if it's not the house, what it is? It's something that happened around 200 years ago and that she wasn't sure about until Vlad showed up. Rachel and I had speculated at first that it was the end of the Interregnum or something to do with that, but Verra should have known about that at the time that it happened, and then we hit on the house which fit perfectly. So now I'm basically back to square one on trying to figure out what Verra meant by that comment. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I gotta say, if the entire above post is completely me reading things into the series that the author didn't intend, it all hangs together weirdly well!