Technic History/YMMV
- Complete Monster: These are rare in Anderson's works, but one shows up in The Rebel Worlds, a Flandry story. Imperial Governor Aaron Snelund gets a title and position by becoming the emperor's lover. He then manipulates the drunken sot into posting him to some out of the way sector, where Snelund swiftly becomes a cross of the worst parts of Caligula and Vlad the Impaler. For example, he punishes one alien village for not obeying him swiftly enough by impaling the village's children and forcing their parents to watch for the three days it takes them to die. Snelund caps off his career by pissing off the Imperial admiral of his sector by kidnapping the man's beloved wife so he can rape and torture her. Flandry is barely able to head off the ensuing all-out rebellion by tricking Snelund into coming along with him to finish off the admiral's wife... who is now free, armed, and oh so happy to meet her torturer when he can't escape.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Nicholas van Rijn is a Malaproper and "master" of the Mixed Metaphor, who on one occasion laments that "Gabriel's trumpet will tootle" before he learns to speak proper Anglic. But in The Man Who Counts, he in a few months learns a completely nonhuman language so well that he can translate several of history's great speeches and patch bits and pieces of them into a coherent, eloquent masterpiece of oratory. It seems improbable that he's really as helpless with Anglic as he says. Especially considering how many of his malapropisms and metaphors are hilarious.