On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote: > Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> > >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. > > 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? She might at the time not want the information public, lest the J found out. She might not be able to prove it - she is likely genetically Dragon. > >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) I certainly consider it 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. This I rather doubt - the discussion in _FHYA_ would have ended abruptly if someone could just throw a rock at Tortaalik to see if the Orb would catch it. > How could it do this if it were unable to tell what persons were of which > houses? It can obviously tell who's emperor, which is all that's needed for the action described. My point was that it may consult a db maintained by the Houses to see who's next, or it may consult that and check for true Houseness. Presumably no House would want to get shown up by the Orb refusing their Heir and would take measures to prevent embarassment.