Navlad Nobility

Noble families, ruling class of Empire. Most of the sai in the Empire are born to this class due to extensive breeding.

Female Nobility
There is a difference between what a middle class/low class and noble woman does with her time. There’s even a difference between what the lower echelons of nobility in comparison to the upper nobility. The lower nobility is much closer to their individual holdings, and more likely to only be in charge of a few planets as versus whole sectors or even quadrants.

A noble woman of Rissa’s class isn’t likely to be in a House that can call on more than three or four planets. There may be another layer of nobility under them, depending on how those planets are distributed. If there’s an Ajiri planet in the House holdings, the House likely has its Capitol there. Which means, in essence, they’ve set up shop on a tourist trap. A place where many people in the Empire would like to live (ideally. As opposed to being crammed into ships and stations and the like. This of course, would fluctuate depending on the personality. But agriculture is almost as venerated as having the right family line).

A Family has their Capitol, usually one of the equatorial trade cities. This makes it easier for travel on and off planet in case the husband needs to go off to visit other parts of his holding. And it makes it easier for visitors to come as well. Anyone who needs to have a face to face meeting, work out a trade agreement that’s bigger than the scope of an individual corporation/conglomerate in the case of business holdings, etc. Visiting nobles of higher or lower rank. Priests will usually have their largest temple/clinics in the trade cities (some people even have to travel to the equator for implantation, if the planet doesn’t have many temples or what not).

Most of the economy and commerce on an Ajiri planet lands in a trade city. Most of that will wind up in the Capitol. And the Kovavek stations and planets are kept in line by requiring travel down into the gravity well. This plays a part in a noblewoman’s education. They don’t have jobs obviously. And many things that used to be made in the noble house (not that they know it), are buyable now. A servant wouldn’t need to know how to make lotions and makeup and such anymore. These can be purchased at just a high a quality as made. Sometimes even better, depending on what the lady is looking for.

Neither is the noblewoman required to do her fine sewing, or embroidering, or so on. A local person can do that and get paid. A lot of these things can be hobbies if that’s what the Lady wants. If she wants to learn sewing or some other hand craft related to the status of being on an Ajiri planet, she can. She can also paint, write, play music, etc. But she’s not expected to do so as a profession. Her livelihood doesn’t depend on how well she performs these tasks. She’s noble. There are professional singers/spinners/actors/musicians, etc for all that.

Their economic society doesn’t look a lot different from ours in terms of what can be bought instead of made yourself. There are servants of course. A noblewoman doesn’t clean and only the middle to lower classes of commoners have to stoop to needing robotic help to keep their houses clean (Roomba, dishwasher, automatic laundry and dusters-yes please). Mail service automized, trash pickup, lawn care. All of that is something taken care of by servants in a noble house, and in the richer or busier places, the servants will be live in.

Of the hobbies a Lady might have, cooking is not usually on the list, for sheer fact of the volume needed to take care of one house. Cooking for servants. Cooking to the tastes and dietary needs of however many members of the Family. Different schedules, different ingredients needed at different times.

Gardening may be something a Lady might be interested in, but rarely to the point of planting and weeding whole plots of ground. A flower bed here or there. Overseeing a greenhouse with the aid of a gardener. Less nitty gritty and more of the broad picture.

The main function of the Lady of a house is to keep the house running smoothly. She’ll work with a housekeeper or butler to keep the household budget in line, make sure everything is stocked, bought as needed, or ordered. She keeps track of what visitors are coming, business contacts, political contacts, etc of her husband. She’ll make sure there’s room in the house, that the guests’ needs are met (since they rarely only stop for an hour). She’ll wine and dine the local small nobility, mayors, continental overseers, hemisphere overwatch, etc. She coordinates her children’s education and participates in their daily life as much as possible. A smaller household with smaller obligations will, of course, give her more time with her children.

She’ll also be monitoring her cycles and doing her best to coordinate with her husband in hopes of a natural born child. There’s also the tests, confirmations, and implants to schedule with the local temple/clinic. If her daughter is sai, she’ll see to the training of her child in as much as she is able. Sai-tutors are very highly valued and many of them come from military families, since a woman born to a military father is going to be locked into that life as well.

Of a necessity, a noblewoman has access to her husband’s schedule and may take trips off world with him, although usually if he’ll be gone for a while, she’ll take over the smaller political duties at home. In a fraught political situation, her husband might leave a mercenary company in addition to the household guards, and the noblewoman’s main handmaiden is also usually a product of the military and is trained as a bodyguard.

This isn’t something Alrurisi is familiar with though, because the biggest political tension in their lives comes from their relationship with the Duke who rules their sector of space. They’ve got an unlisted system full of ore that the nominal Emperor doesn’t know about, and the Duke wants to use it and the family shipyards to build himself a fleet and challenge for the throne. Failing that, he wants a better defense for when the Fleet shows up (which is the excuse he’ll be giving for the construction going on).

Also, Alrurisi didn’t have quit the full calendar once Rissa brings home Syrus because Karudis claimed ‘childhood cancer recovery’ and moved them all out of the trade city. This means that their visitors had to be really dedicated to the idea of coming to see them, and the casual visitors weren’t showing up as much. They did get more people who wanted to take advantage of the local (touristy) and the local small nobility gets a bump in prestige and has an easier time accessing their Count.

Local business got a bump too, and some of the exports did better for the attention that the Lady can pay to them. She is the purveyor of fashion and decides the nicest things she likes on her own planet and what’s nice enough to start shipping off world. Or she helps facilitate the imports of things from other Ajiri planets and stations as she discovers them (hard when she’s further away from the trade cities).

A noble woman’s place in the religion is generally greater than the husband’s. She’s the one whose bloodline carried the sai, the one who has the issue with conceiving. The one who will be most in touch with the priest/doctors of the fertility worship. She’ll coordinate the testing and possible outcome visit and so forth. She makes sure the ceremonies for activation of maruste are planned at the right time. That any new nanites that need to be added are actually added with the proper ceremony. Her husband will get involved with this, but more along the lines of ‘donate sperm’, ‘bribe a priest to activate or not activate’ this or that set of markers in the nanites.

The woman also has to deal with the certifiers. Priests who trace her bloodline along the matrilineal lines, not just the lines of marriage. They look at who is related to her, make sure she and her husband aren’t looking for a spouse too closely related to the child they’re trying to marry off, and generally facilitate marriages. This is again, something the husband will be in on, by necessity. But the woman is the one who makes the trips down or invites the certifier up to the house.

Also with a death in the family. The woman is in charge of maintaining the family shrine, even if that means she’s the first to make offerings in the morning. And on menstrual days. And possibly fertile days. She and her husband will probably both pray there before going to have sex (if it’s planned) or after, depending.

A child of the house who is married off will not have their death tablet placed in the shrine. Instead, the child will be placed in their new families shrine. The shrine is a memorial to the ancestors past. But often times a woman will have a copy shrine of her own female ancestors. Not the actual tablet. But miniatures of her mother, grandmother, etc. Depending on who is dead. Not so much sisters or nieces, but her forebears and possible carriers.

This is all well and good for a normal noble woman in a normal house on the equator. But there are always exceptions. Childhood cancer isn’t the norm in the Empire, but it’s a side effect of the genetic engineering done to create the sai. Because of this, a family will often withdraw from society if they think their kid is getting sick. They might leave a city entirely and move to the country if need be. Money and travel won’t be an object, and a lot of emphasis is placed on getting the kids into a calmer, quieter environment without as much noise and distraction (in the region of space the Rissa’s family lives in, there’s a fondness for Greek style homes in the equatorial areas, and the walls are usually either open or very thing). The air isn’t bad the way we think of air being bad now, but most streets aren’t paved when you get off the main roads, and there’s dust and such to irritate as well. So, a move to a country estate, either on the equator, or closer to a pole, may be what happens.

In that case, the social life drops off. Mother is suddenly in charge of a different sort of home that needs a different sort of care (large log home/lodge). The town is much smaller, and her society of locals is going to be the type who can’t really make it to the trade city very often to appeal to their Lord. Outplanet visitors have to make an extra hop in their flight to get to the family. The local priests suddenly have patrons they haven’t had before, and are probably somewhat overwhelmed. Maybe the family travels with its own fertility priest?

Syrus was sent out to work the animals in the nearby hills, Some cattle, some goats. It’s a bit like moving from Greece to Montana. It’s not a coastal city, but it’s central continental hub that people need to be able to funnel their goods down to the equator. Or maybe it’s like moving from Greece to Oregon, only there’s a bit more chance for farming and cattle in the terrain. Wet. Orchards. Not so much grain or plains animals. There’s hunting though, and the herders who have Syrus teach him to do that too. Berries. Local foods. Etc. Alrurisi got an education in what’s available locally too, and with a smaller social calendar, had time to worry about her children a little more. Also, time for some hobbies. Maybe she took up music? Journaling and writing seem to be something she’s done for a while. She’ll have to know what her husband is doing as far as guests though. She might not be present for all the conversations. And she might not have a spy for her among the staff. That or her husband made sure to only talked to the important people about Syrus and Rissa in his office, which he keeps swept for bugs. Yeah. That would explain why she’s caught so short.

While they are living in the country estate, Father needs to make trips off world and even out system for political and financial reasons. Making sure taxes are collected here. Keeping track of a band of Imperials there. Rebels over there. A trade issue that gets bigger than the business managers can handle over there. His brother is in charge of the business for now, and Jirdis went to apprentice with him at the age of sixteen. While Father was off world and out of town, Mother kept things going at home. I would imagine she has her own contacts to keep track of Syrus while he’s out in the fields. She also spent as much time with Rissa as she can manage, to varying degrees of success as far as prying her away from Syrus go.

Related Organizations
Military in the Empire