The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy with kings queens dukes and court politics but of course like what I was explaining before about making the science make sense you have to make the politics make sense too.
