World-building and the making of rules.: seanan

World-building and the making of rules.

I exist in a perpetual time-warp right now. Rosemary and Rue is on bookstore shelves, and is thus The Book I Can Discuss With People (tm). A Local Habitation is about to go to ARC format, and will thus become The Book I Can Discuss With A Much More Limited Subset Of People (tm). And in the meanwhile, I'm writing The Brightest Fell, outlining Ashes of Honor, and trying to make sure all my ducks are in a row for Tributes in the Dust.

And people wonder why the word "trilogy" has started making me laugh like a Batman villain who's just escaped from Arkham Asylum.

One of the things that's really fascinating about working at this sort of remove is that I have time to actually test my rules for functionality and long-term stability. To go with an example everyone's likely to be familiar with, look at Quidditch. Anyone who thinks about the rules for too long will realize that they have some pretty serious issues as written, but is that really the fault of J.K. Rowlings? No. She had no way of knowing that her weird little wizarding game would get the sort of scrutiny it did, and it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. (No, I don't expect to get her sort of readership. Not that I'd complain if I did...)

Right now, I'm stress-testing the fae marriage laws. At their most basic, they look a lot like mortal marriage laws: two people decide to get hitched, break out the champagne. And then they start to get complicated. For example, there aren't any social stigmas against group marriage (some fae races practice it as a matter of course, like the Centaurs and the Gremlins) or same-sex couples. Divorce when there are no children is literally a matter of going "I don't want to be married to you anymore" and posting an announcement at the hall of your local liege.

Divorce when there are children requires waiting for the children to reach adulthood, and then asking them to choose which family line they wish to belong to. Children of divorced parents can only inherit from one side of the family, because the other side must remain available to any potential future descendants (ah, immortality). (Kate points out that this probably leads to a lot of people assassinating their parents so as to inherit everything. Kate is very correct in this assertion.) This also means that the parents of a missing, elf-shot, or otherwise unavailable child must remain married until the child is either located or declared dead.

Marriage to a mortal (IE, "playing fairy bride/bridegroom") has no legal standing in Faerie (hence why changelings can't inherit), and thus doesn't interfere in any way with an actual pre-existing marriage, or prevent getting marriage. It's actually not uncommon for fae couples to fight, huff off, marry a mortal, and get back together twenty years later, having never legally been unfaithful.

World-building. It's not just for continental drift and evolutionary pressures anymore.

markbernstein

October 7 2009, 19:16:57 UTC 7 years ago

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This is the kind of stuff that fascinates me. I made a reference to it in my review, but I don't think I was especially clear. What I was wondering is this: If I'm reading R&R correctly, there are fae who are purely one thing, e.g., Sylvester is pure-blooded Daoine Sidhe. But there are some who are mixes of different lines. (Is Raysel half Daoine Sidhe, half Kitsune?) Even leaving human blood out of the scenario, does being a mix affect one's social class and standing? Does it have political implications? Would, for example, someone who can point to thousands of years of pure Daoine Sidhe ancestors look down on Sylvester for intermarrying and having a mixed child?

And you just brought me up short with this, in another comment: All fae are related on some level, since they all trace their descendant lines back to Oberon, Maeve, or Titania. Does that include Centaurs, Selkies, Kelpies, etc? If not, which lines decend from those three, and which don't? And if there are multiple fae lines, does that mean entirely new lines, with distinctive characteristics, can arise?

seanan_mcguire

October 7 2009, 19:30:29 UTC 7 years ago

To try to address...

1) Yes, there are fullblood and mixed-blood fae. ("Fullblood" is confusingly close to "pureblood," which is why it doesn't get used often, when I can help it.) Sylvester is fullblooded Daoine Sidhe. Raysel is a mixed-blood. Many second-generation changelings are mixed-bloods, because they're the result of changeling parents marrying.

2) Most of the time, mixed-bloods are viewed as being of lower social status, and yes, Sylvester is absolutely looked down upon. But he's a Torquill, and at this point, the whole family has a reputation for being crazy.

3) Some races are created, rather than born. The rose goblins, for example, were made by taking cuttings from a race called the Blodynbryd (essentially a subspecies of Dryad). They don't have a "parent," per se, and thus have no Firstborn. Selkies are also a special case, for reasons that I won't go into. Most of the bestial and animal-like fae were created, for one reason or another. And yes, in some cases, you have fae with animal traits who descend from one or more of the Three banging something that wasn't strictly sentient/human.

October 7 2009, 19:52:11 UTC 7 years ago

Good stuff, thanks.

But he's a Torquill, and at this point, the whole family has a reputation for being crazy.

Is Amandine a Torquill? I don't recall a mention of her surname, but that may just be bad memory on my part.

Tangenting slightly, I am, no surprise here, not nearly as well versed on the fae as you. Is Maeve a more correct name for Mab?

October 7 2009, 19:57:27 UTC 7 years ago

The known Torquills are Sylvester (retired hero, married a diurnal Kitsune, batshit daughter, knighted a changeling), Simon (sort of a dick, hangs out with Oleander, which is not exactly a sign of stability), an as-yet-unnamed older sister, and a niece, January, who is very central in A Local Habitation and has her own exciting brand of nuts to present. Sylvester's parents have never been mentioned, and are presumed dead.

Maeve is an older form of "Mab," yeah.

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World-building and the making of rules.

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