Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 06/15/06 11:33 AM To dragaera at dragaera.info cc Subject Re: Multi-jointed fingers >On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote: > >> Aliera doesn't really try to make any secret of the fact, however. (If so, >> why reveal such information in front of Vlad? Or Aibynn?) > >Joy's original question was: > > Is Aliera's maternity a secret? I've always wondered whether being > only half Dragon could have disqualified Aliera from being heir. > >Aliera didn't reveal anything to Vlad, did she? And Aibynn wouldn't be >listened to by anyone if he were inclined to blab. And Aliera isn't >the heir by that point, given the events of _Y_. Well, if we're only concerned about whether or not anyone knew this fact *while Aliera was heir*, and if this fact was likely to cause her to be removed in favor of someone else, I'd like to point out that Aliera didn't *want* to be heir. So wouldn't she have just revealed her full parentage in order to disqualify herself, if this would have made any difference? >On the side, one wonders if the Orb has its own House-detection module. >The Cycle may not want a Yendi on the throne except when It says so. It certainly seems to know who is of what House. Take the (possibly apocryphal) example of Jamiss I and Faarith I during the first cycle--where the Orb failed to save the Tsalmoth Jamiss' life from falling masonry, since the cycle had turned to Vallista. It is also implied elsewhere that the Orb failing to protect an emperor is a fairly common way of determining when a cycle has, in fact, changed. How could it do this if it were unable to tell what persons were of which houses? Majikjon