It might be genuinely the most shitty rich girl thing I have ever had her think or say in this whole quest, and there have been a fair few in that category. I don't think she'd have even thought it if she weren't kind of internally a mess right now.
Instead of guaranteed safety with Mnemon, we get guaranteed influence with V'neef. I want to see Ambraea start becoming to important to sideline in any event be it a Mnemon victory or a V'neef victory (...or you know...a Saloy Hin win)
That isn't necessarily entirely off the table with an adoption. Sesus is taking a wait and see approach, but ultimately they want to back someone else for empress first and elevate their own matriarch second. The only obstacle is that then cathak backs the competitionand this escalating into full civil war becomes unavoidable. Still, it's possible.
As Gazetteer has alluded to, it's a bit more than just losing rich kid privileges. Mnemon would strip her of the assets she would need to be capable of fending off the wrath of the houses the empress uprooted assets from to prop up V'neef as a counterbalance to Mnemon and further divide the great houses against eachother. V'neef and L'nessa have good cause to believe there may not be a house V'neef around in a decade even if they bend the knee. Do you really think V'neef was in position to refuse any of it without ending up on the empresses shit list and paying a price just as heavy?
House V'neef is the second largest naval power in the Realm. While Peleps has many more ships than them, none of the relatively small house navies that the other houses maintain can even really compare. They're also a very wealthy house, because the merchant fleet skims some off the top of all the tribute brought to the Blessed Isle. They control a number of lucrative satrapies, and a really significant chunk of V'neef's adoptive daughters are veterans from the Imperial Legions. She's in a much better position in terms of military strength than, say, Nellens. It is not that she's going to be a puppet of a stronger house if she takes the throne, so much that she's going to need to build a strong coalition if she wants even a chance at it, and she's going to need to offer the houses who supported her concessions.
Actually, V'neef has always played nice. Has, somewhat desperately, attempted to gently, carefully advance her and Ambraea's ties beyond the bare minimum. Hopefully, now that Ambraea has Shigora's own account demonstrating that while V'neef got to hear the congratulations spoken aloud, their mother outright arranged for a rare gift to be prepared years in advance instead when it came to her certainty and pride in Ambraea's success and growth, she can embrace the emotional gratification and actually try to grow to like V'neef in whatever brief moments they have together when not by necessity seeing to other tasks.
I'm more surprised House Sesus got as many votes as they did.
Speaking as someone who voted for Sesus, it was a good middle ground that maintained our group bonds without putting us in harms way from Mnemon.
