Very minor point, but they can be as lusty as the like so long as no offspring come of it. Maiden Tea is still a thing.
General Exalted Thread
Very minor point, but they can be as lusty as the like so long as no offspring come of it. Maiden Tea is still a thing.
Eldagusto
Voivode of Neterkhertet
- Location
- The Bleak Shores of Never in the Land of Naught
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah nothing says lusty like regular use of contraceptives!
is your complaint really that db's aren't barebacking enough
is that like-
is that the level we've ended up on right now, just so i understand it
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's not... really a big change. It's a big change from a single story in Second Edition which portrayed the genesis of the Dragon-Blooded as a days-long orgy, but that was also itself a big change from the much more nuanced portrayal of First Edition. There is nothing in the new edition that indicates that Dragon-Blooded cannot have bastards, just that as the Progenitive Essence is not restored, these bastards would (generally) be very unlikely to Exalt and when they do Exalt, much more rarely to the full potential of the strength of their parent's essence. With regards to siring bastards ruining your career.... yes? You are a holy aristocrat member of the world-ruling warrior-ethos dynasty of the Scarlet Empress? Of course siring bastards can fuck with your career, you are diluting the proud lineage of the Great House, not in the sense of somehow making the members of the House less well-bred but in the sense of introducing common blood the highest aristocracy of Creation. This not ruining your career should be more surprising, luckily you can happily sweep it under the rug; getting bastards was always seen as bad by your House and the Immaculate Order.
I mean, yes? You couldn't negotiate in real life for getting a matrilineal marriage, when the heritage followed the female line, it was generally a sign that there was no male line to follow, such as with the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish crowns inheriting into Margaret the First (and then Erik of Pomerania) or the accession of Maria Theresia to the Habsburg monarchy following the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. This was an extraordinary event and often sign of disaster on the male line or a failure to have any male heirs. However the Realm as presented in What Fire Has Wrought and generally in previous editions, does not do the whole succession thing; the Dynasty is an economically productive aristocracy. This means that every scion of House Cathak, Peleps, Ledaal or any of the other is added to the roster of the house and the elaborate conflicts of succession that characterize European monarchies in the medieval and later are inapplicable to the Realm, unless one goes about explicably changing it. Of course male Dragon-Blooded would marry into the line of the woman, that's how matrilineal systems work and is not unique to the Realm. In the Spartan constitution, inheritance and property followed the female line of mother to daughter and the Jews have practiced a matrilineal system since Biblical times. If anything, the Realm goes too soft on it because it is hard for people like us used to the familiarity of patrilineality exactly how different matrilineal systems can get, and because Exalted players explode whenever the Realm's society changes to be anything but perfectly equal in gender roles, presumably out of fear of legitimately exploring how an ancient civilization might talk about, and consider the matters of gender, homosociality and sexuality.
Eldagusto
Voivode of Neterkhertet
- Location
- The Bleak Shores of Never in the Land of Naught
Your ignoring what I said about The book saying Male Dragonblooded marry into female Patrician's mortal houses.
I already said it was always a Matrilineal Society.
And I never mentioned the 2nd Ed's story about the first Dragonblooded. I'm talking 1st and 2nd ed in general had it be a significant part of Dragonblooded identity that they had a predilection towards creating by-blows, it was not introduced with just one story in 2nd ed. It's literally the big reason the Realm had a large number of non-Dynast Exalts.
I already said it was always a Matrilineal Society.
And I never mentioned the 2nd Ed's story about the first Dragonblooded. I'm talking 1st and 2nd ed in general had it be a significant part of Dragonblooded identity that they had a predilection towards creating by-blows, it was not introduced with just one story in 2nd ed. It's literally the big reason the Realm had a large number of non-Dynast Exalts.
I'm not familiar with 1e's dragon-bloods. What are the main differences with 2e?
On the flip side the Realm's biggest divide should logically be between Exalted and un-Exalted - both because the capability divide between mortal and Exalt blows everything else out of the water and because the Realm is very much and has always been an Exalt dominated society ideologically speaking.
The Realm sort of 'giving in' socially to non-Exalted seems... somewhat dubious? Someone from a Patrician house getting adopted by a Dragonblooded matriarch (perhaps an aunt of the groom) before the marriage makes more sense than the Realm putting anything before Exaltation.
Eldagusto
Voivode of Neterkhertet
- Location
- The Bleak Shores of Never in the Land of Naught
No that's just reshuffling some standard western tropes. The fact is they are expected to be much more temperate as they only sire children ideally between 12-20 years.
Also didn't Exalts used to have 15 month pregnancies? This book talks about 9 month pregnancies.
- Location
- London, England
I'll note that the Patrician Houses have their own Exalted - one of the signature characters is even one of them!
Eldagusto
Voivode of Neterkhertet
- Location
- The Bleak Shores of Never in the Land of Naught
It's more Patrician houses can have their own Exalted. Great houses are large extended families. Patrician families are of no uniform size and can range from a single household to something the size of the Addams families extended lineage. Something the size of say Clan Giovanni would be like a collection of Patrician houses and a Ruling house comparable to something like Nellens.
What I'm saying is the book mentions Male Terrestrials marrying morta Patricians and becoming part of their family for the spouses' lifetime.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Well, if you're biologically male it's fairly unlikely you're taking oral contraceptives to help with PMS.Yeah nothing says lusty like regular use of contraceptives!
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Of course they marry into female patrician houses, matrilineality has nothing to do with matriarchy; the two are literally unrelated. One is a kinship term that describes inheritance and the other is a word made up in response only to the existence of "patriarchy". No one knows how a matriarchy looks like because anthropologists can't fucking agree on what it is, if it has ever even existed, and indeed the entire word stems from a view of looking at the development of society where "matriarchy" is a more primitive form of tribal government compared to more advanced patriarchy. That male dynasts marry into female patrician houses does not matter, it just means the inheritance follows the female line, it tells us nothing about the power of the man or woman in society. For example in most matrilineal and matrilocal societies, the development was not that the women held all the real power, the development was an invincible iron tyranny of aunts and uncles, and a delegitimization of the power held by the father, to such a degree that in some societies it literally didn't matter. For example, in Spartan society, men literally lived in the garrison and went to visit their own families.
Furthermore, I went searching through the Exalted: The Dragon-Blooded and found the following quotes:
Page 114 said:
In other words, this is literally the same as progenitive essence, but less harshly enforced. The reason progenitive essence is so harsh is because everyone selectively forgot this was a thing and began pretending that the social fiction that Dragon-Blooded mothers were supposed to have a billion children as something that literally happened. And indeed, despite pretending to be a "matriarchal" society in First Edition, it wasn't ever really significantly so, and indeed actively worked against that point as seen here:
Page 117 said:
I love how this book talks a high game about the Realm favouring women and then going on to just unironically repeat social norms that primarily occured in the 19th and 18th centuries, and thus enable a more patriarchal Realm, that's hilarious. The foreignness of a Realm that is actually just 19th century Europe with a funny hat. Regardless, while we can conclude that changes in the society of the Realm have taken place. For example What Fire Has Wrought mentions that:
Page 104 said:
Here we see a distancing from the previous paragraph, but you are overlooking something. You explicitly said that:
But this is actually wrong. This is not the case at all, the book specifically says that:
Page 105 said:
This is not a departure from earlier, it is perfectly in line with what Exalted: The Dragon-Blooded wrote about maintaining the illusion of faithfulness. It is just a logical extension of the following paragraphs:
Pages 114-115 said:
These are not incompatible, they don't even disagree that much. They are in agreement, mostly. There is no huge change as you are ascribing it, least of all a change from Dragon-Blooded somehow being axiomatically lustful; "the passions of the Exalted are not those of mortal men" has been part of the gameline from the start, and the Immaculate Order has always been about reigning in the passions of the Dragon-Blooded.
The Realm is not "giving in" to anything; it is not a singular actor and it is not surrendering anything. Societies don't "decide" to be sexist or "decide" to be racist, these things happen as a confluence of interests and factors that pile upon each other, and in the context of society become social norms, structures, laws and thoughts. The Realm does not have an "ideology" of preferring Exalts to mortals, it's a pre-modern empire; you won't find pro-Exaltists and anti-Exaltists in the Realm. It's not giving anything away. Lineage following the female line just means that. It has nothing to do with dominance or power relations, it just means that. It can have influence on a number of other things, but it has nothing to do with which gender or what is dominant. If a Dragon-Blood marries into a patrician household and joins that house in name and line, what this means is that the Dragon-Blood has made a social misstep to be married off to a patrician house, so of course he's going to fall in prestige when he joins it. This is no different than how a royal marriage between say, the Archduchy of Austria and some shitty fucking principality in the middle of fuck-off nowhere would indicate a huge loss of prestige and status on the part of the Austrian marrying, but a huge gain of prestige on the part of the other. This is not the Realm "surrendering" to anything, this is how culture works. It does mean a surrender of prestige on part of the marrying Dragon-Blood, but that's just how it works because society allows for social missteps, and if a Dynast is getting married off to a patrician house, then they would fall in status, just like they would if they married a peasant, just like if the Queen of Denmark married a serf from England. As a general rule, society contains more ways down than it contains ways up.
Of course it is not entirely one-sided; that patrician house would see an enormous rise in prestige and favour. But there is not infinite room for growth of prestige and social favour in the society of sharks that the Realm is, for one to rise another must fall. So, yes, if your parents marry you, a man, off to a patrician, that patrician house is going to be very liable to do what that Great House (and you) want them to do, and if a male patrician somehow gets a marriage with a woman of House Cathak, that guy's scored and marrying into one of the most prestigious lines of the Realm.
It used to be a specific Dragon-Blooded thing in the Exalted: The Dragon-Blooded, then 2e expanded it to everyone and 3e just dropped it.
The Realm's ideology/religious position as upheld by the Immaculate Order and all other institutions is that Dragonblooded are more enlightened than mortals. The social order is that Dragonblooded are always above mortals. The very reality is that Dragonblooded are generally better at absolutely everything when compared to Mortals - from occult stuff to learning faster to healing stab wounds. One of the first things about the Realm in 3e Core is how Dragonblooded (particularly Dynasts but also Outcastes) are above mortals.
There shouldn't be any factor that trumps Exaltation in terms of society shaping as far as I know - and that applies to any edition.
If a Dragon-Blooded joins a Patrician line then the DB's parent house socially loses not just the Dragon-Blooded but also his children - who may Exalt, and then potentially their children who may also Exalt. Considering the small number of Dragonblooded and the individual importance of each Dragonblooded to their respective House it seems pretty damn unlikely for a social mechanism that splinters bloodlines away from the Great Houses and puts it into less then prestigious and powerful hands to evolve.
Edit:
This is true and it would somewhat mitigate my argument above but... unless the patrician house remains forever (or at least for centuries) under almost complete control by the Great House (essentially becoming a subsidiary) it still feels very much unlikely that the Great Houses would let potential future Exalted out of the family.
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- Location
- Virginia
(emphasis mine)
I'd like to expand on this, because it's interesting how the line established this deliberately-by-accident.
To start with, the traditional aristocracy of historical countries similarly situated to the Realm was organized around controlling and enjoying fixed sources of income; specifically, land rents. This income was limited, and that made inheritance extremely important, as it was a primary determinant of a descendant's material standard of living. It also mattered for social status, but this was often very closely tied to that material wealth - for example, because more material wealth gave you more to spend on status goods.
Thus, the disposition of surplus children was incredibly important (thus the tropes about second / third sons and the priesthood and the military). Games like CK2 convey this very, very well. Having more children than needed to reasonably secure the line becomes, often, a problem to be solved.
In the Realm, or more precisely in the Dynasty proper, this is just not the case. More Dragon-blooded children are always an asset. The Great Houses have an incredibly communitarian distribution of resources. Land rents are not an unimportant part of House income, but Exalted Dynasts have many other ways to earn income for their house (or to earn status or glory for their house for which the matriarch will gladly pay the cost of their stipend). Great Houses do sometimes feel financial squeezes, but reducing the number of Dragon-blooded in the house would never lighten the pressure.
This is actually a strange and possibly unique situation! Each new member of the aristocracy is, generally, producing value. Now some of this is "production" in the sense of, like, conquering even farther-off Threshold nations and taking their stuff, but from the perspective of the Realm that's production. In a "normal" aristocracy it would be very uncommon for any individual to actually justify their own standard of living through their own labors.
The reason Exalted is like this is twofold.
First, Exalts are superpowerful and yadda yadda, and the fanbase never really progressed from thinking "well, you would obviously want more superpowerful people, not fewer, that makes you Stronger", perhaps missing the distinction between individual and collective interests.
Second, the game line has always pressed extremely hard the idea that the player characters matter and do awesome things, and that naturally defocuses a bit from the idea that you're just fighting over who gets to inherit the duchy and its revenues. The game wants there to be plots so that any Dragon-blooded can be an upstanding member of their house by way of their own particular specialty, be it performance or art or sailing and so on. The writing that enables that naturally leads to this strange state of affairs, even if the end result wasn't exactly planned.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Fortunately we are not talking about mortals, we are talking about patrician houses. Not random mortals here. Don't move the goalposts in bright sight, at least wait until mild darkness to yeet them over in the other court. Not only can patrician houses be very prestigious, they also have their own Exalts and indeed, the holder of the Imperial Seal in the very self-same book is a patrician. So like, hey, come back with the goalposts, we need them here, you can't just take them like that.
Why?
Why is that? Did the Empress design the system so the communities magically developed as she liked?
No, Manus, not you too!
From what I gather this was a case of the Great Houses wanting a compromise candidate.
If anything the No.1 priority of the Great Houses should be to recruit DB's from the patrician class (and from everywhere else really) whilst ambitious patrician houses would want to become as close to a Great House as possible.
I wouldn't necessarily say Great House Dragonblooded marrying into patrician houses makes zero sense and is verboten; but it should be the exception not the rule due to how the Terrestrial Exaltation works.
Because even the 'humble' Terrestrial Exaltation at least triples your natural lifespan, makes one better physically, mentally and metaphysically from their mortal selves and grants awesome supernatural powers to boot? Also because Terrestrial Exaltations can be inherited thus paving the way for a hereditary ruling class that's ability based (or upper management class if we're talking about high First Age Creation).
What other factor can be more impactful than that?
Hereditary elites have never been great at willingly sharing power and Terrestrial Exaltation is the basis for a House's wealth and power.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
Pity that the Terrestrial Exaltation is pretty good at spreading, the term "Lost Eggs" wans't coined for nothing.
- Pronouns
- she/her
I like the changes to marriage in the Realm, though it helps that I view this material first and foremost as a game resource.
The way I see it is that if the Dynastic Dragon-Blooded husband joining the Patrician family was the exception, it'd basically never happen... but since statistically he's the person here most likely to be a Player Character or a prominent NPC, I'm happy to leave the burden of flanting social conventions with him.
The way I see it is that if the Dynastic Dragon-Blooded husband joining the Patrician family was the exception, it'd basically never happen... but since statistically he's the person here most likely to be a Player Character or a prominent NPC, I'm happy to leave the burden of flanting social conventions with him.
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UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
It seems to make sense, though? Obviously you won't adopt 'random boffin from threshold #498' name instead of your own civilized, distinguished line that's probably extend from the Empress herself. While the one betrothed from the great house is likely a gift, so them marrying into your patrician line seems... well, expected?
- Pronouns
- she/her
Yeah, it's easy to assume that the Realm's customs should favour the Great Houses and let them use marriage to effectively headhunt everyone of value the Patrician Houses have. Except that's not the Scarlet Empress' style of leadership, she probably wanted a couple of the Patrician Houses to be strong enough to be contenders for the mantle of a Great House in case something... unfortunate, happened to one of the existing ones.
Sheer numbers, and the opinion and culture of those numbers. You may as well ask why the culture of the US isn't completely defined by the ultra-wealthy; having all the power only gives you some (a fairly respectable amount, to be sure, but not such as to be entirely un-defyable) control over the culture of a society.