Back on topic, there’s already a Goldenism in the excerpt in the form of Lirath and Vereesa’s names being a combination of their parents names. I don’t know if Golden is the one who gave Lireesa her name but I’m assuming she did because of how well that lines up. This is a basic and lazy way to give characters names, which I’m guilty of doing for some of my own characters, and it’s kind of an indicator of Golden putting her RP habits into writing. This is a tool that can be interesting in roleplay since it’s two different people’s characters combining together, like a metaphorical mixing of genes, but when it’s characters named by one person it’s kind of self congratulatory (not sure if there’s a better word I can use to describe this). It’s essentially Golden procreating with herself and is similar to the recent incident of her quoting Anduin in regard to Ukraine (because it’s her quoting herself).
The characters that are in stories are creative extensions of the authors who have created them, they come from them. Combining two characters names in another character is a way of honoring that character’s parents. It’s the same as someone named John Smith having his son named John Smith Jr, it’s a name given in honor of the father. Character names are made by the authors who made those characters, so when those two characters have a child and name it after themselves, it’s a meta form of the author honoring their own characters and themselves; it might not be so bad to use this technique on one character, but it’s been done on two, both Lirath and Vereesa, which is excessive. Golden is also working backwards to achieve this since Vereesa isn’t a character she named, essentially stealing Vereesa from Knaak in a similar way to how Roux named Thrall’s daughter Rheze; she’s making a character she didn’t create be named after characters of her own creation.
If you’re wondering what I mean by Golden’s RP habits, she’s mentioned that she’s been an active roleplayer on Wyrmrest Accord and has included some of her RP characters as cameos in her books, such as a Night Elf priest and the white haired warlock that showed up at Theramore and Garrosh’s trial. There’s been an increasing occurrence of unimportant events that happen in her books which I’ve suspected to be situations she’s RP’d with people ingame, that she’s included in her writing for some bizarre reason, such as the random and minor plot involving Anduin’s butler dying. She’s basically getting ideas from things she’s played out. The more I think on this naming situation the more I think about other characters she’s named, like Finel, the last Elf to leave. Kinda sounds like final, get it?
I’m really tempted to pre-order this book so that when it releases I can make a topic listing all the Goldenisms in it and explaining them in detail.