[Dragaera] Breaking the Cycle - Genetic Purity

[Philip Hart]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Maximilian Wilson wrote:

> On 8/28/06, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
> > 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].)
>
> Sounds like a good way to come out with a lot of non-Yendi
> crossbreeds, if the Yendi male (say, Pel) passes on his non-Yendi
> genes (say, Issola) instead.

Well, it's complicated I think, and I didn't want to get into the
whole mess since my genetics knowledge is puddle-shallow, but
I can imagine a few scenarios: the allele in question is dominant,
and most Yendi have two copies, in which case there would be no
real crossbreeds.  Or many Yendi have one copy, so half of the
children wouldn't be Yendi.  But those children wouldn't come back to
House Yendi, keeping things pure on that side.  Presumably the (e.g.)
Issola would discover the non-Yendi child in question wasn't really a
full Issola (lacking full expression of the house characteristcs) and
would have to deal with the consequences but would have trouble tracing
the issue back (or would find it embarrassing, etc.)  Or the gene might
be expressed in some genotypes, etc.

Anyway, the idea demands that there be a noticeable but not easy to
trace effect - a very Yendi sort of thing - so that there's anger
but no outright excuse to kill all the snakes.  If your child doesn't
really excel as a whatever-you-are, maybe you blame the Yendi.  If
your child just coming into adulthood leaves one day without explanation,
or upon saying he has certain issues of a personal nature he doesn't
care to discuss, maybe you blame the Yendi...


Whether this explains enough to be of any worth, I can't say.