[Dragaera] Breaking the Cycle - Genetic Purity

[Philip Hart]

On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Davdi Silverrock wrote:

> On 8/27/06, Philip Hart wrote:
> >
> > I have a hypothesis somewhere that Yendi are despised because they
> > are cuckoos
> >
>
> Do you know, I don't think I've ever seen the complete logistics of
> how that is supposed to work out.  The Yendi mother... does what,
> exactly, with her offspring?
>
> Could you expand and elucidate on this ideation?


Perhaps there's something reasonable in the archives.  But I'm thinking
about Pel in _TPG_ and why one can't tell a Yendi's house.  "Cuckoo" isn't
the right word, except for its association to "cuckold" - but anyway the
idea would have to be that male Yendi get (married) female non-Yendi
pregnant,  passing on a dominant gene for Yendiness.  Those children are
presumably indistinguishable by inspection, and good at fitting in and
not raising suspicion, but eventually return to House Yendi.  You raise
an Athyra, and you end up with the SiG.  You raise an Issola, and he
disappears one day and becomes Pel (say).  The Yendi would thus (so the
claim goes) be a hybrid house, like the Teckla or Jhereg, but with a
constant overlay of the dominant Yendi gene.  (Skipping digression on
green beard genes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green-beard_effect].)

There may also be a changeling route - Yendi female gets pregnant by
non-Yendi male, swaps the child for another of the non-Yendi house
(and gives the latter away), and later reclaims the child after
its college tuition has been paid (all of which would be done for
some other reason than the financial one, probably).

So this hypothesis claims to explain why Yendi are hated, why they have
no obvious house characteristics, and why they are good at deception.