Thinking about how Palamedes tells Pash that they "are conversant with the concept of family in the Houses" in Nona....because, like, are they? Are they really?
Palamedes calls his own mother by her full name or job title more than he calls her 'mother'. Their relationship is COLLEGIAL at best. The Sixth raise their children in some kind of communal academic system, from what we can see in canon. Meanwhile, on the Second, it's all about that sweet sweet military command structure. On the Seventh, your parents literally try to pass super cancer onto you, and probably die of it themselves before you reach puberty. The Eighth is a monastic order where EVERYONE calls each other 'brother' or 'sister', regardless of family relationship. From everything we hear, the Tridentarius' parents are fucked-up in some way. The Ninth is....the Ninth, and on the Fourth, parents just tend to be dead.
So, like, are they really 'conversant with the idea of family'? Everything about the system John has set up discourages real family relationships. There is no socially acceptable way to share a family name with your spouse, parent, or sibling - the arithmonyms encourage you to identify with your HOUSE, not your family, and every time characters share an arithmonym, that is considered 'weird' (see the Tridentarii). John's system demands allegiance to the EMPIRE, not any individual family units.
This dissolution of family has the side effect of also dissolving (unjust) gendered roles, but it is also VERY effective at creating the existential, deep loneliness that so many of these characters experience and that John's system then uses to fuel their loyalty to him as God. It's this dissolution of family that creates the codependent structures you see in so many cav-necro relationships (Cam and Pal above all else), because WHERE ELSE but in this (fundamentally militaristic) relationship that was originally intended to serve the Empire could you find the closeness family often provides.
And, like, every time characters prioritise their chosen or blood family over the values of the Empire, it's transgressive. Any relationship that emphasises the individual - as a spouse, friend, lover, sibling, child, parent - over the 'imperial role' of cav, necro, soldier, or servant, is transgressive in the world of TLT. Magnus and Abigail are transgressive for that. Gideon and Harrow are. Even the Tridentarii have something going on that seems to go against imperial power structures, even if it's a different kind of fucked-up. Cam and Pal are such a complex case because they DO earnestly love each other outside of their role as necro and cav, but are so fundamentally alienated from healthy relationship dynamics because of their absurd upbringing that they immediately become *like that*, to the point of doing ye olde soul-merger. Still - they fundamentally hold allegiance to each other as family of some sort, whether romantic or platonic.
Which, I think, is why it's so perfect and messed-up and appropriate that Juno Zeta, Palamedes' literal mother, spends the last few minutes of her son's earthly existence as an individual quizzing We Suffer about her family structure. Rather than. Y'know. Talking to her son. Who is about to eradicate himself as an individual within the one relationship that ever transgressed that enforced, non-familial distance.
Camilla, meanwhile, does not let her fathers watch her death/ascension at all.
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