Rissa's Family Dynamic

The issue with who is who in Rissa’s family is that the family dynamics of who does what according to order of birth are so generally set in Navlad society. The eldest son inherits, or else the eldest daughter is married off to an eldest son somewhere else. Maaaaybe to a second son, if the business interests of the family in question outweigh the land holdings. Daughters tend to get married off, no matter what birth order they are. The second born winds up, more often than not, either taking care of the work for the eldest, if the holdings are large, or taking care of any business interests the family might hold. A space station here, a trade conglomerate. The original families holding the system might not be who holds it now, either because of marriage or dying out or war or what. So new families have come in, and there’s a history of commercial concerns being tied to the landed families. This has also come about because to keep bloodlines from being too inbred over the years (and while people were stuck on the same planetary system before a new colony could be established), landed families would marry into those who were primarily merchants. This happened more often where the wife was a merchant’s daughter and sai than a daughter of a noble house marrying down into common blood. Each woman brings with her not only her bloodline, but a token of its strength. Not so much a matter of her value as the family saying they have enough to spare to give away. Saying that it’s a gift, to give a woman who could be or is carrying the sai genes, and to prove how much we have to spare, here’s a minor company, or a trading post. So on and so forth. So that takes care of the women as a general rule. Women born to the third place in line, if the family chooses to have three, are generally married off to a military officer. Those contracts are taken care of between families who have matching children. A third son here will be contracted to a third daughter there, and the military takes them both on from a young age to be trained. Sai girls as the third are VERY, VERY valuable, because even if the military has been breeding its own sai, it still wants fresh blood. So. First is inheritance, Second is business or assistant to the first, and Third is military. That generally takes care of any kids an ideal Navlad family would have. Rissa’s family was far enough out from the Core that most of the fighting over the throne wasn’t right in the middle of them trying to keep their family line going. But the family is old enough that they are very aware of their lineage and history and the importance of maintaining traditions as the Empire apparently burns down around them. The father isn’t stupid enough to take them outside the Net at this point, because it’s known that the Fleet is getting closer and there’s been unrest as people try to move back inside the Net (not knowing it’s there) and finding either that they can’t, or that they can’t settle in any one station or a planet or what have you. (Space gypsies!) I think that either Rissa or the no-face brother need to be third born. Which essentially takes the role of the military sibling out. Because military at these levels is for life. If it were a brother, he wouldn’t have the chance to leave his post long enough to hunt Syrus all over the system. And also, he’s been conditioned to a certain degree to put the well-being of the Empire as a whole ahead of any small potatoes political struggles. So unless I plan to have him show up in a later book, and why would he anyways, because he wouldn’t know Syrus, he’d be gone and there’d be no reason for conflict there, third son as military doesn’t work out With Rissa as the third born, she could have been married off. But then why would she be running around the streets when the military should have had hold of her for sai training and again, conditioning to her role. Not really as WIFE, but as asset to the Military. So that’s silly. So Rissa would be second born I think. Not natural, but still sai, so props to mom. And she’d be supposed to marry an important second son somewhere else to strengthen…business ties? Trade ties? The family has some sort of drydock that builds fighting ships. They have the resources for a stronger private military. But they need other resources? And that’s what Rissa was supposed to lock in? But when she found Syrus, he ruined everything. Only the military would have wanted him in any capacity. Even MORE when they ran a DNA test and found out his bloodline. Someone in the military thinks it’s a good idea to have as many imperial bloodlines as they can manage under their control. But that’s already been talked about. Anyways. What if Rissa is eldest. Not natural, but sai, so still valuable. And her younger brother isn’t natural either. If she was the oldest, then she lost the family a valuable connection. If the brat is second in place, then he would have been groomed to take over the family business/land holdings and used to the idea of being in charge. He expected it. But with Syrus come along, too many people knew, and the engaged’s family isn’t going to want a Savage in the household. Rissa’s father can’t get rid of him before people find out, and he’s going to have to salvage the situation somehow. So when his wife ends up pregnant (naturally) and gives birth to another son, he sees a great way to redeem the situation. He promises Syrus to the military as his ‘third’ son, keeping the new baby out of the running for military school (this is a contractual thing the nobles have? We ennoble you, your third sons will be taken by the military). And then the way is clear for the youngest son to be raised as the heir and the second son finds himself bumped down the rankings. It’s not something he would have fully understood as a child about three or four years younger than Rissa, but as he grows older and sees Rissa and Syrus together and listens to his father complain about how the plans for the family have been ruined, he gets that in his brain. But there’s still hope he’ll take over the family, so his father kept training him. And once the little brother is born, then all hope for advancement is lost and he has to be content with a permanent second place to a natural born. The third son would maybe be three or four by the time Syrus is handed over to the Military. No need to even frame him. Or is there? Frame him, and have Rissa’s dad show up at sentencing, and a couple remarks from those in the Military and it’s clear enough what happened. Make it obvious that they know the rumors of sai are true and that they know Rissa didn’t just take him on as a pet, and it will be even more obvious that he just got sold. The third son is raised in a conflicted household. His eldest sister is in cryo waiting for a husband to take her. She couldn’t be left awake because she went batshit once Syrus was out of the gravity well (her sai is stronger in reach than Syrus? But a very narrow focus. He opened it up for her. He strengthened that part of her). So they sedated her, and then when the doc said that’s not going to work for long, they looked for a longer acting sedative. And viola. Cryo. So Leader boy grew up sitting in the room where his sister slept (or near it) and telling her stories of his lessons or training or what’s going on in the household. When she’s married off finally, they need to wake her up to go through the ceremony, but she’s so drugged up that she isn’t really coherent of what’s going on. The husband comes inside the Net for the marriage ceremony, because he’s an out-system lord that doesn’t have the rank to make it worth the family’s while to move the ceremony past the Net. The leader will be in his teens by then, and be part of the ceremony as the heir. This will give him a bit of something to remember Rissa by. Conversation with Syrus later? In some time between Rissa getting married and Syrus rescuing her, and then the two of them vanishing off the map for nearly twenty years, the boys grow up. Leader takes his spot at the head of the house when his father dies…poison? Ship accident? Barb accident? Somehow or other, he dies. That leaves the mother as wielding influence, but she’s dowager now, not actual lady of the house. Leader is married at this point? Politics or the civil war mean they wind up moving away from the boundaries of the net. Closer to the home of Leader’s wife? Or else Mother’s brother, who is Eldest of his family, brings her in and takes her for a second wife when his dies. One way or another, they move and get drawn further into the politics. Orrrrr, their system gets overrun by one of the Imperial players. Leader is allowed to run the system, while the other two or three in their holdings are given over to the new ‘duke’. Because of their drydocks, the system is valuable in terms of manufacturing. The conqueror doesn’t have a wife? Or have a wife here? So he takes on Mother, who is looking for resources of her own to find Syrus and Rissa, who she thinks are still alive. So she supports the Conqueror’s plans on the throne and taps into his systems and eventually finds out the Syrus has resurfaced. No. Don’t have them move. That’s stupid and over complicated. But they are in travel distance of the Seps Gateway, and that’s another reason why they’re valuable. More and more people are looking for ways into the Gateway system, hearing about it through rumor and myth because it’s been kept quiet by people in power so far. A hole in the Net. Which is also becoming more and more known as people figure out where the migration boundary is.