I had to do a little bit of research on the allusions as I was not totally familiar with all four of them. The name The Bloody Sire, in and of itself indicated to me that the allusions were tied to violence. I had actually never even heard of Herod. I agree that Helen, Christ, Caesar, and Heron can be symbolic in the hunger for power, which in return caused violence. When you said, "people do not stop being violent, they just change how they execute the violence," it gave me a new perspective. I had never thought about violence throughout history in that manner. From some of the discussion posts I have read, you are right, you were not alone in having difficulty with identifying all four of the allusions. It seems that most people had knowledge
