Hey, did anyone else notice something interesting about that encounter? Namely, that Tarquin made no attempt to defend himself? He just took the hit and let Elan do the fighting. When he decided to put an end to it, he called the guards rather than drawing a weapon on his own account. In fact, he doesn't even seem to have a weapon, despite his spiky armor of doom.
Now, maybe he just doesn't want to damage his future bride, but I note that to date, his accomplishments in actual combat consist of a) flashbacks from highly unreliable narrators (Nale and Tarquin himself), and b) bull rushing Haley off a balcony... and under 3E rules, bull rushing is a straight-up Strength contest, in which class and level play no part. In fact, it's the only standard combat maneuver where that's the case; everything else keys off base attack bonus in some fashion.
Even if we accept the flashbacks at face value, it's not clear that Tarquin can fight. We see him crossing swords with Nale, but it's never stated how that duel turned out. Nale's visible injuries could have been incurred by a random spell blast, the Empress's breath weapon, an opportunity attack, whatever; and Nale himself is not exactly a great fighter for his level.
The more I think about it, the more certain I am that Tarquin is, like his sons (at least before Elan discovered the Dashing Swordsman PRC), essentially useless in combat.
