That's a great point about Vlad's own self-perception. Especially in first-person POV, it's really easy to take Vlad at his word about things and not notice the things he doesn't notice. For instance, he mentions Valabar being kind of impressed by Vlad as a 'nobody who made good' against Dragaerans, but Valabar is kind of an outlier among Easterners himself, and we definitely don't see the average citizen reacting to Vlad like this. I'm pretty sure there were a couple scenes where Vlad casually notes Easterners unconsciously moving out of his way when he's not doing anything particularly threatening, but Vlad doesn't spend the time on this that he does on Valabar. (Which in itself says something about whom Vlad spends time with, and whose opinions he values or considers worth noting! But in first person that's really easy to miss.)