Blood Over Bright Haven

“The simple act of lifting hands off weapons was harder than he had expected. For a thousand years, the Caldonnae had defined themselves by their hunting prowess. Leaving their bows and spears behind felt like the final concession that they were no longer the apex predators their ancestors had been.”

The Caldonnae people are forced to leave their culture behind and conform to Tiranish ideals even before they set foot inside Tiran. Getting inside the city means fleeing to a repressive kind of safety; it requires a Kwen person to abandon their values and culture, here represented by “bows and spears,” which are markers of Thomil’s identity.

“But there was one last thing Elder Sertha had said about the Tiranish: they couldn’t knowingly separate parents from children. Their religious laws forbade it. So, braced over Carra, Thomil rasped a Tiranish word the Caldonnae had little use for: ‘Mine…my daughter.’”

Thomil adopts Tiranish values to protect himself and Carra, gaining some agency over the cultural assimilation forced on him. Because the Tiranish guards do not see Kwen people as individuals but do slavishly follow their religious dictates, he claims Carra as his despite the fact that ownership does not matter to his people.

“And of the few women who did make it to a graduate degree in magic, most donned green robes and went into teaching. Why pursue research, after all, when its highest levels were inaccessible to you? Better for a lady mage to employ her talents training the next generation of great male innovators—unless she was a perpetually unsatisfied monster like Sciona, always after what wasn’t hers.”

Misogyny in Tiranish culture means that while women can become academics, their options afterwards are limited to teaching. In Tiran, even the most intellectually capable of women exist to support men, whether in or outside of the home. Sciona’s rise and her faith in herself are anomalies; it is highly unusual for women to seek to promote themselves rather than their male peers.