Dragaera

Multi-jointed fingers (and houses)

Fri Jun 16 09:16:23 PDT 2006

>Sorry, but you don't get to decide what's privileged, or what's "normal
>circumstances" for that matter.

>And judging from the above you still don't even get my claim - which is
>that for all we know titles and citizenship of the sort Vlad's father
>bought aren't heritable.

On the contrary, I understand the claim perfectly. "For all we know" isn't
anything you can work with; it's speculation. For all we know, Vlad Norathar
is a duck. Can you prove that he's not? If you say  "normal human genetics
don't allow for ducks as offspring" and I say "who are you to decide what
normal genetics are in a fantasy world where magic is somehow related to
genetics?" are you going to think me a reasonable person?

Steve is the one who decides "normal circumstances". If there's an example
of a Dragaeran child of a noble family (who was not a half-breed like Grita
or an outcast like Kragar, and we don't even really know Kragar's situation)
who did not inherit his family's title, then I haven't seen it. If you can
provide such, then that's the text evidence I requested. If no such evidence
exists, then it's up to the person claiming that Eastern titles are somehow
different to show evidence how they are different.

Some things ARE axiomatic, because the cycle of stories assumes them as part
of its background. We can't expect Steve to justify and explain every little
thing about the society he's writing about. We'd end up with the appendices
to the _Lord of the Rings_ instead of Vlad story. It's a feudal society,
with many examples of titles being inherited through the family. Barring
some sort of exception being noted in the stories, there's no good reason to
believe that Jhereg titles are any different. In fact, it's noted in
_Teckla_ that Jhereg titles are actually "landed" titles. Vlad has an actual
baronetcy consisting of essentially a small city block with four families on
it. The point being that there are examples showing that Jhereg titles,
aside from being for sale, are like other titles while no such text evidence
exists showing the contrary.

>Relative ease of purchase of title (Vlad's father not being rich).  Lack
>of the Jhereg being all Easterner, as indicated by Vlad having met many
>Jhereg and only one other Easterner among them, and people being surprised
>to see him in House colors.  All indications being that Easterners are
>fruitful and multiply.  The simplest consequence of the above being
>lots of Eastern citizens, then nothing but.

These are not text evidence, which is why I termed them speculation. Are
they good supporting evidence for the idea of limited titles? Maybe. I'd
question some of your assumptions. Taltos Sr., for instance, was well-to-do
for an Easterner. That's why he was able to buy a title even though doing so
broke him. The average Easterner doesn't have the means. 

Moreover, titles are a bad investment. Citizenship, in and of itself,
doesn't get you anything but a link to the Orb. It's as silly and as
expensive as an American buying an English knighthood. As Vlad prosaically
puts it, his father blew their life savings so that Vlad could always know
the exact time. Vlad's power and privelege comes from being a successful
member of the Organization, not from being a titled member of House Jhereg.
Being a Baronet means exactly squat, especially when the title can be
revoked by the Council for whatever reason they might see fit. The odds of
there ever being more than a few Eastern Jhereg at a time would seem to be
pretty high against, especially when they run into prejudice on both sides
of the fence for "getting uppity" or "putting on airs" depending upon your
viewpoint. Rather than overrunning the House, I'd guess based on Vlad's
experience that the average Eastern Jhereg family doesn't survive more than
a couple of generations before being wiped out or re-absorbed into the
mainstream of Eastern slum culture.

>Same story for House Teckla.

House Teckla is a different story entirely, since they apparently accept
anyone who wants to join. There's no title to inherit and even if the child
of an Easterner didn't automatically get Citizenship, she'd be able to claim
it just by swearing fealty the same way her parents did. Technically, House
Teckla really could be overrun by Easterners in a few generations if, say
all of the Easterners in Adrilankha joined up en masse and the House
representatives allowed it to happen. Apparently, though, it's not an
attractive proposition even for an Easterner living hand-to-mouth in the
slums of Adrilankha, or else it's not really as simple as all that. (The
local Lord might have to approve things based on whether he actually can
support more peasants on his lands, for instance.)Considering that Teckla
make up the vast majority of the population I'd wager that it would take
quite a while before anyone started worrying about Easterners outnumbering
Dragaerans in the House.