Damen sighs as Laurent gets up saying: "Lovely weather we are having, is it not? What a shame that everyone is so on edge from this turn of events."

It sounds like a verbatim recitation of something out of a textbook, rather than anything an actual person might say to start a conversation. Because it is - it's a sample greeting sentence he learned in his Veretian lessons he remembers mostly because he couldn't fathom why he would ever need to say it.

Apparently the answer to that question is "specifically to annoy someone by both using your worst, most formal Veretian and blatantly using the worst conversational starter in the history of conversation."