Graydon wrote:jsburbidge wrote:(3) An unrecorded episode of Bahzell and Brandark cooperating years before Bahzell's hostage status, no more than twenty years before the beginning of OoS and more likely about fifteen
I don't think that can work because Bahzell and Brandark are very young, just barely at the age of responsibility, when OoS opens. (If Hradani-equivalent 12 year-olds took a sword off a corsair and got home intact, it would be talked about.)
They were about forty, IIRC, at the beginning of OoS, and Bahzell has already had time to be fairly thoroughly experienced with raids onto the Wind Plain before his father stopped them... so it's not impossible, just somewhat unlikely. Twenty-five year old Hradani might very well be involved in raids as part of youthful hijinks, but that still would need explaining away why this was never mentioned earlier.
I can't see any reason other than toying with us for the second scenario, either. It involves invoking everything you have to invoke for the first scenario, while also requiring some reason that neither of them even mentioned it (say, on departing the ship) at the time, so it gets into significant retcon territory.
The snippet leans pretty heavily on how mature Leeana's affect is compared to her appearance (and there's that rank as well, which she presumably achieved before Gwynna was born); Occam's Razor as applied to indications of authorial intent would suggest that the most likely answer is that she's been given an extended lifespan to match Bahzell's (foreseen by the gods, not necessarily full-length for a Hradani dying in bed) life.