[Dragaera] Breaking the Cycle - Genetic Purity

[Scott Schultz]

Well, since we're speculating pararectally anyway:

How about a suggestion for the Yendi that takes written canon into account?
Sethra (who ought to know) says that there were 34 tribes at one point.
Something happened to the "lost" seventeen tribes. 

Some might have been destroyed due to cataclysm, war, and plagues. Just
because a tribe existed, there's no implication that it was numerous. The
rest, given the choice to conform to the social structure of the nascent
Empire or be banished from it,chose either to join one of the other tribes
or went their separate ways and colonized Elde, Greenaire, and probably
other lands that we haven't heard of yet.

For those who wished to remain part of the new Empire (Sethra speaks to the
effect that they didn't realize they were building an empire in the
beginning. Paarfi also says something about how it was three Cycles before
the country had developed into the socio-political organism that we now
recognize as The Dragaeran Empire.) there were few choices, I'd guess. The
Teckla and the Jhereg were both available and both unpalatable, assuming
that the "lost" tribes would have thought of themselves as being above both
of them, much as the Houses of the present day. The "official" tribes that
were in the process of becoming the Houses of the Cycle would likely have
been very protective of their family lines to the point where some, like the
Lyorn, wouldn't accept "lost" tribesmen at all while others like the Dzur
established rules to insure that they only accepted those that exceeded the
standards that they held themselves to. The rules to join a House you
weren't born into make sense in this context, and are appropriately
anachronistic in the present day.

With this theory in mind, the simplest answer of all is that the Yendi tribe
set the bar low and absorbed the "lost tribes", who couldn't gain easy
admission into any other House. Given Yendi planning and ingenuity, it's
even possible that the Yendi were the first to get an inkling of the science
of genetics and that they purposely accepted and even recruited those "lost"
tribesmen whose genetics they knew to be predominantly recessive for House,
but otherwise normal for appearance. The Yendi have no distinctive
appearance beyond the noble's point because they're a "mish-mash" as much as
the Jhereg are a "mish-mash". The difference is that they're a PLANNED
"mish-mash". Perhaps even planned to the point that marriages within the
House are purposely arranged with an eye towards keeping the recessive genes
blended smoothly throughout the House and keeping the occasional "throwback"
to an absolute minimum probability.