Hi! first time using the ask feature on tumblr... ever.
Just saw ur description says u answer eldar lore questions so im here to hopefully get clarification xd.
The other day i was amicably argueing with someone online about a certain aeldari in WH40K: Dark Heresy. we got to a point where we were theorizing about their sexuality at which point i concluded all aeldari are pansexual.
My argument was:
- im unsure if theres anything in canon lore on their sexuality but i couldnt think of any
- i do however flimsily recall something about them caring very little about gender both at a societal and individual level,
- also as a species i think i recall it being canon that they are not very sexually dimorphic (if at all?)
- thus i concluded that this would lead them to be pansexual.
Whats your thoughts on it?
Hey anon! That's very much fine, I leave anon asks on for this very reason. Thank you for your question!
Short answer is rather simple, for Craftworld Eldar: individuals have their own preferences and are free to express it. You'll have some that prefer same or different sets of genitals or some that embrace everything, which you might see more of given the lack of stigma. Craftworlder society is vastly less gendered and prejudiced than ours. Personally, I think it's hard to extrapolate this to an individual's bedroom preferences, and all the romances in Path of the Eldar are straight for example. For Laarthyr, we will have to see when we get more info on Starlight and his past, alas.
So, Eldar are quite a liberated society. In the Path of the Eldar books we see one Craftworld (Alaitoc) where they have flings, ONS, and even swinger parties / orgies as Gav Thorpe recently expanded on in his Discord. Different Craftworlds might have different cultures. I've never read or heard about a restriction on same-sex relationships, the lack of soulstones and need to regulate births could even lead to hetero relationships being more policed than other ones but that's HC. What canonically tends to be policed hard is the strong emotions and attachments that can come from jealousy and romance. In the same PotE books, one character mentions not being willing to enter a long-term thing because she wants to be sure that they fall in love over several paths, and who she is becoming as she shifts paths does not love the other one like her previous self could (might be a bit off, been a while since I read it). They do have a concept of pair-bonding / marriage and there's even an Aeldari word for "bride" . I haven't read anything stating that it's only valid between two Eldar of the opposite sex (though all the examples are het). So there might be more same-sex relationships going on because Eldar are much more free to explore this.
I feel like I need to mention however that non-drukhari don't use vats to grow more Eldar, so all those you see are "trueborn", womb-grown. On a Craftworld, if you want more Eldar, you need a daddy eldar and a mommy eldar to love each other very much etc. The pregnancy also ties a couple together during the whole pregnancy (they need to keep at it during - at least according to xenology).
As far as gender, Eldar tend to differ less between genders indeed and males and female differ less in strength and stature. They're still mammals with one sex carrying babies and breastfeeding (unlike Kroot or other xenos species), but the differences are not as big as between human men and women. A howling banshee can be male underneath the boob armour plate. Striking Scorpions are a male aspect and women wear the same armour. The plates mold onto to wearer anyway so the technology to adapt to bigger or smaller or buffer is inbuilt. They also don't have cultural structures that autarch / Farseer / authority can or can't be this or that gender. Prince Yriel descends from Eldanesh through his mother and that's viewed as a perfectly valid lineage, it's not patrilineal. Recently some authors have been trying their hand at Eldar characters that forego gender altogether.
Things are a bit different for other Eldar factions.
Corsair put even more emphasis on individual freedom than others. I think there's it's even more an "anything goes".
For Drukhari, a shorthand is "your sexuality is whatever the most powerful person in the room says it is", so for them I think you can make the generalisation that they're all supposed to be able to do anything with anyone - but there again individuals might prefer certain things. Lelith Hesperax for example has male lovers in Valedor and female ones in her name-book. There are a few gender norms in Commoragh, traditionally Succubi are female (nothing a haemonculus can't fix though), Incubi read as male. But that's pretty much it. They mostly get boners on pain and torture anyway.
For Exodites the Worldsingers I've heard of so far all seem to be women as well, probably because they seem inspired by shrine maidens. But they're one of the factions we know less about. A couple of short stories that feature them mention ruler dynasties and lineages, so if you'd want to wager a place that is more restrictive, Exodites might be it.
