Thoughts on Part 5: Chapter 60 - The Lashunta Matriarchy’s Unconscious Bias and Protecting Entitlement
A lot happens in today’s Chapter 60. Along with the aftermath of Lady Vaeol’s and Demante’s weapondare against Soaras and the other Korasha champions, preparations begin to go home to Son (in less than a Lashunta month - 18 days). Furthermore and more traumatically, Lady Vaeol receives a snaky offer from three of Qabarat’s outrider headmistresses. They try pressuring her to cancel Kaure’s and Oshis’s spear-ride challenge, since the scandal of two Korasha holding the City Gameyard against outriders on equal footing is more than their entitled sensibilities can stand. Lady Vaeol upholds her pro-Korasha / pro-crossclade position and almost ends up back on the weaponyard against all three headmistresses. Within the Lashunta’s highly stratified Damaya Matriarchy (this Castrovel worldbuilding project started under PF1E after Stardinder came out, thus under the premise that Lashunta are a Damaya-dominated matriarchy evolving toward Starfinder’s more egalitarian self-determination), Lady Vaeol’s liberal sympathies are no secret. Along with having a Korasha wifemate and a male Korasha who rides Shotalashu whom she promoted as her flag’s firstspear, she has courted controversy, broken decorum, and championed unpopular causes many times in the last two years in Qabarat.
Despite that curriculum and her tendency for self-examination, however, she is still a Damaya female, dubbed as an outrider-knight, trained as a psychic, the head of a sworn warrior-flag, running among the Lashunta cities’ highest social circles, and also a mother. In many ways, she is the epitome of Damaya female entitlement. It is almost impossible not to exercise her privilege, even unconsciously, to attain her desires, whether or not those desires are selfless or to help others.
How does this manifest in Chapter 60? She and Demante sleep with Soaras. Possibly they do not fully understand why.
It began back in Chapter 57 right after Soaras won the Korasha foot-combat finals. Lady Vaeol, as winner of the Damaya foot-combat championship, challenged him, and then organized the exhibition fight for her and Demante against Soaras and his three other finalists. Such a mixed-clade demonstration grew scandalous among Qabarat’s highly cultured upper echelons, whose ladyhood defends their privilege as only Qabarat’s outrageous wealth enables them. Yet Vaeol had made her early reputation back in Son defeating Korasha champions and took the restriction as an insult to her pride. She intentionally chose to train for the Motorae Games at a Korasha weaponyard to improve her strength and infighting game against weaker, range-fighting Damaya. Then she touted the new challenge as an opportunity to prove which champion was the best foot-warrior in Qabarat. She also held to that promise when she finally lost to Soaras and so surrendered the crownwreath she had won for the Damaya championship.
Yet right afterward at the end of Chapter 59 while she was finishing her daylog entry, she could not - or would not - admit the reason for her sorrow, which was this: she not only wanted to prove who was best, but also wished to be the best. She regrets the loss.
So why sleep with Soaras her recent opponent? Under the Lashunta matriarchy, men become socially obligated to the wives they sleep with. Symbolically, Vaeol now holds a portion of Soaras’s soul within her womb, which is why she dares, when he asked what she and Demante wished: ~Hari-sya mi vaea, yeio-zhaoe risyelma, o ve inyaeve!~ - “Your strength and life, so that when next we fight, I will win!” and which furthermore shows Lady Vaeol understands what she is doing, even if she refuses to take it seriously.
As revenge goes, it is fairly mild, which even Soaras acknowledges when he says: ~Hiorashi vehae,~ - “This is odd revenge/wrackgeld.” And let it not be said this payback does not offer inducements to voluntarily submit to the two wives’ social privilege. Vaeol furthermore goes out of her way to avoid insult and explain to Master Evauess, head of the Lemussa Yard, (under whose roof an orgy is pretty much breaking out) that she and her flag will leave Qabarat in the next month, thus minimizing any outstanding social obligation over individual yardmates or the weaponyard in general. Yet in the end, sleeping with Soaras is a power move, whereby female pride is assuaged and entitlement is confirmed. Now when people mention Lady Vaeol’s loss to Soaras, she could answer (although she would not): ~Miea, hei meavya-shyalf,~ - “Yes, but I own him.”
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