Hi, some of the information around avian attitudes towards sex and marriage doesnt line up, so i hope you can enlighten me:
Early on it was established that avians dont do long-term romantic relationships, and skimmer culture views marriage as indecent and vulgar because it is seen as a form of prostitution.
But without long term-relationships, how does inheritance work, especially seeing as brights are the dominant gender class? If property and status is passed down from bright-parent to child, are brights concerned about whether their heirs really are their children?
Youve mentioned before that theres a cultural fear in skimmer avian culture about duns using birth control to trick brights into thinking theyre carrying the brights children, but if brights worry about their potential children wouldnt it makes sense to pressure duns into only having one bright partner?
Historically the sexuality of people afab in patriarchal societies was restricted to control paternity, so that men could be really sure that their partners children really are theirs.
Additionaly, the Tiiliitian empire is a monarchy, and the Tiiliit (the ruler) is presumably always a bright. Since legitimacy in monarchies is generally about the purity of bloodline, how are heirs selected in the Tiiliitian monarchy?
Hi, so, this gets complicated. As a background, no skimmer avian cultures have "naturally" occurring exclusive two person mating systems; they seem to have a common taboo about repeating sexual partners year-to-year. For the rest I need to explain some political history.
In the modern Dominion of Tiiliit, there are brights who are allowed to directly sponsor their biological children: nobles. As a commoner, you can get in big trouble for doing this. Generally, commoner brights sponsor the bright children of their dunsiblings ("nieces") if they are going for biological favoritism. (Your brightsiblings' children are considered a riskier investment, as you are betting on their mate keeping their eggs.)
This Tiiliitian system of inheritance is actually a rejection of older Wiariian inheritance systems. Before the Tiiliitian schism, Wiariians were a monarchy, but the actual divinely-appointed monarch and nobility-based government was a joke. The industrial revolution saw the rise of mercantile capitalism and colonialist expansion, and the nobility's wealth was utterly eclipsed by rich brighthouses who had massive control over politics. These company brighthouses operated like mini dynasties and would consolidate power among their direct descendants by having "captive" dunhouses, which were paid for by corporations, and the duns within were heavily punished for seeking mates or labor employment outside their sponsorship—basically, a company brothel. Brights born there would compete for management positions, duns born there would labor for the company if they were ugly and get traded as gifts between company dunhouses if they were handsome.
The Tiiliitian revolution was actually a liberal populist movement. Led by the first Tiiliit, a charismatic secular political dissident with an "ugly" green crest mutation, and fueled by common anger at both the ineffectual nobility and wealth-hoarding corporate dynasties; the people ignited a civil war that broke the skimmer archipelago in half. The new Tiiliitian nation rejected the religious divine right to rule, and loathed the power hoarding "inbred" company brighthouses. They rallied for a strong, meritocratic secular government, democratic representation, an end to corporate control of politics, and government funding of dunhouses. That last part is very significant. The first Tiiliit had broad support from duns, who in Wiarii were typically either exploited poor laborers with no house funding aside from their jobs and charitable brighthouses, or were kept in company dunhouses with no freedom.
So the reason for the strange new system of inheritance was to prevent the formation of corporate dynasties that threaten the government, and promote meritocracy. With government funding of dunhouses, it is much harder to trap a captive selection of duns to breed bright successors and dun laborers, and with a prohibition on funding your direct offspring, Tiiliitian brights are encouraged to spread their money more broadly and seek out successors who are Most Fit. (In theory. We're getting there.)
While the newly born Dominion of Tiilit did set up a democratic parliament as its primary legislative engine, they opted for an emperor, not a president. At the time, the theory of evolution and eugenics were hot new topics, and the first Tiiliit was popularly regarded as having "superior genetics" in leadership and intellect, marked by the green crest. This position exempted the Tiiliit from the direct inheritance rules, creating a new class of nobility. All noble brights are descendants of the Tiiliit, though because avian concepts of eugenics highly value outbreeding, it is a soft rule that noble brights cannot chose mates from nobility, so their dun selections during spring become nobility through bearing noble children. New Tiiliits are selected within the noble class by a council of other nobles.
There is a tension in the ideological foundation of the Dominion of Tiiliit between capitalist meritocracy and oligarchical eugenics, embodied by the hypocrisy of nobles getting to fund direct descendants, but commoners only being able to fund their sibling's children. In the modern day, these laws that were progressive when instituted have calcified into a system that creates a huge wealth and influence gap between nobility and commoners, and puts pressure on duns to have more kids with a higher ratio of brights, because both them and their dunchildren will often NEED those brights to share prosperity with them when they are older, depending on the quality of the government funding their dunhouse has. (Funding that is under heavy influence by legislative bodies of mostly brights.) Brightsiblings also often put great pressure on their dunsiblings to choose mates they approve of, and to bear brightchildren successors for them.
So, "marriage is prostitution" is fine as a summary but it's not quite... an adequate metaphor for the hang ups Tiiliitians have around the concept. To most Tiiliitians, contractual mating obligations bring to mind company dunhouses, old systems of sex-based oppression, playing at being nobility, and selfish attempts to subvert a rule that is supposed to level the playing field and promote common good. Despite this, there are zillions of small ways to game the system and make sure your offspring benefit from your influence, so many Tiiliitian commoner brights still wring their hands and fret about the possibility that the eggs they put in a dun actually stayed there and didn't get replaced by another bright's.
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