Scales

I see the author didn't do her research, or she'd know that public displays of piety doubled as ways for the noblity to show off how noble they were - pun totally intended.

NRSG: Thank you! (She was apparently a historian, but I am not seeing much of it in her works...)

Priam's curls could be natural to him - my father has pretty tight curls.

Well, that only makes the pettiness worse...

and since she's healthy and was regularly conceiving the tyranny of numbers means that at least one should have made it to term.

So I guess it most likely is poisoning... maybe the later books will pick this thread up?

To be strictly fair, it could conceivably be that Axis really is just that handsome. That said, I have to wonder how many bastards he's left in his wake.

Oh, it could, though given all the skeevy (magical) things I have heard he gets up to later, I wonder... As for the bastards, none that we hear of (there is an excellent fic about one of his bastards, though: https://antishurtugal-reborn.dreamwidth.org/tag/discordant).

I have less of a problem with Rivkah getting pregnant at fifteen and far more with her only having four to fifteen months between pregnancies! For context, the current suggested minimum interval between pregnancies is eighteen months.

Good catch (and I am quite certain this is not the only such case).

Pulling back a bit, I think Douglass is trying to make Axis an underdog, but doesn't realize that she's undermined herself by also giving him a high rank and ample authority.

That is indeed it.