I finally got around to reading this thread. Sorry for being so late.
When I read Elega's descriptions in your quotes, I remembered of course her indoors, candlelit fitting features and her striking violet eyes (which are perhaps a word play on Violent/Violate) of course but her short cropped hair caught me by surprise. I imagined her, like the other female characters in the story with long hair. She is a beauty after all, right? Long hair to hide her scheming face behind was another thing I half pictured. But that's not MN Elega. That Elega wants to partake in the Men's World of power and politics. She despises the weakness of women in her culture. She wears nice dresses, true. I guess she must, but she cuts her hair short. Elega, is Mordant's version of a feminist. At least, her speeches early on in the books are feminist speeches. Til the end of the series she keeps her short haircut as far as I can tell. Kragen, I think, falls for her assertive personality not her beauty. We know Terisa is the curvaceous ideal of feminine beauty and Myste comes close but isn't as full chested, Elega I'm guessing is on the slim side.
"Myste, you are incurable." A small frown pinched Elega's forehead. "If the High King's Monomach broke in upon us, butchered me before your eyes, and raised your skirts with his sword, you would say that we must not be quick to judge him."
"I trust," the lady Myste said gravely, but without irritation, "that the High King's Monomach has more honor."
I found this quote telling in retrospect. Elega makes the indomitable High King Monomach a lecher which we know he isn't. (He's only bloodthirsty. Literally.) Myste imagines he has honor which is bullshit as well.
Cord Hurn wrote:
Elega is probably polling so low in this thread because there is a disdainfulness about her that comes out at times that can make her character less endearing to readers than is the case with her two younger sisters. But I would defend her by saying that her disdainfulness doesn't decend to level of Eremis' mostly-hidden contempt for nearly everybody around him.
She [Elega] looked away. Cupping her hands about her elbows, she gripped them tightly. "I hate it when he [Master Eremis] looks at me like that. He smiles and jests, but all I see is scorn."
Elega is very aware of the ways of men and women I guess. But she's not depraved and isn't attracted to domination plays like Terisa was at first. I doubt she was ever with someone before Kragen though maybe that's an assumption.
Myste sees the goodness in people even when it's not there while Elega sees their faults.
"And you are not translated by them?"
"No."
The lady rose to her feet. Facing the hearth, she cupped her hands under her elbows, holding her forearms across her midriff as if to restrain herself from an outbreak of emotion. "You insist that you are an ordinary woman. Perhaps that is true in your world. But is it possible that your are translated and do not know it--or take it for granted? Here, we are told that any man who faces a flat glass in which he sees himself facing himself will be lost in a translation which never ends. But what if you--if all the people of your world--possess a power which we lack? A power to master the most dangerous manifestation of Imagery? You might be unaware of it--and yet it would be fundamental enough to alter all our preconceptions."
Facing the hearth, she cupped her hands under her elbows, holding her forearms across her midriff as if to restrain herself from an outbreak of emotion. We've seen Elega do this once before, after facing Master Eremis' air of superiority. It can show her resistance to an idea, such as the idea that Eremis is as superior as he nonverbally insists, or the idea that Terisa is really as ordinary as she verbally insists.
I read it the opposite way. Elega is excited about the possibilities of Terisa's world full of nascent Imagers. With Eremis she hugged herself in self protection from his killer intent, here she holds herself to stop from bursting in excitement. Similar gestures for opposite reasons.
[more to follow]
A little knowledge is still better than no knowledge.