Florabundi

Sergeant-Major Charles "Blossom" Florabundi was a senior military man with one of those embarrassing ailments forensically listed, or at least embalmed, by the Guild of Barber-Surgeons in their indispensible medical manual Household Medicine, Hair-Care and Simple Surgery

RSM Florabundi gave his name to a medical condition characterised by an embarrassing tendency, in times of stress, to suffer erratic and professionally detrimental attacks of civility, good manners, and expanded vocabulary. This is not unknown in conventional military circles; the tendency of Llamedosian sergeants to avert use of extreme swear words and to invent their own dysphemisms is well documented. Excess politeness is also a known tool of the sarcastic and sadistic, especially if they are otherwise known to freely let rip with the vernacular.

But Floribundi took it to extremes, once provoking a whole regiment to mutiny when he delivered the killing and unforgiveable insult You quite vexing gentlemen!. He was swiftly pensioned off, while the leader of the mutineers, Corporal Harry "Sharpey" Pointer, is recorded as saying at his subsequent court-martial

"No one minds being called a "-ing -er of a -ing ------, but that sounded like he -ing meant it! What does -ing "vexing" mean, anyway?"

It is possible the pretender King, Duke Felmet of Lancre, was suffering from a touch of Florabundi when he interviewed the Guardsmen who had signally failed to extract any tax from the witches in Wyrd Sisters. His politeness and forbearance could have split granite. He also exhibited a touch of this wnen enduring entetainment from his court jester.