Dutiful Passage
In which Shan and Priscilla go visiting.
And now we’re into that portion near the end of a Liaden novel where the chapters get shorter in a way that works as fast-paced action editing if you’re reading them normally but doesn’t work so well if you’re on a strict schedule of one chapter a day.
It sounds, from what Shan says, as if there’s never been a yos’Galan delm of Korval, and will not be as long as yos’Galan has any say in it. yos’Galan will accept the duty of First Speaker when necessary, but no more, and even that only as long as necessary before they can hand the reins back to yos’Phelium. I suppose if yos’Phelium failed entirely, yos’Galan would be obliged to become the primary line and take up the ring, but not for any lesser catastrophe. (And I’m having trouble picturing the circumstance that might destroy yos’Phelium utterly without taking yos’Galan too.)
Genetically, it may no longer matter. Daav and Er Thom where children of identical twins who where split up and assigned to the two lines.
There is that. Although nurture counts, too, and I expect being raised to think “I am yos’Phelium, and this is how yos’Phelium behaves” would have its effect.
For that matter, given the way the Clans intermarry, being brought up to think “I am X, and this is how X behaves” has probably always been an important part of Line identity for Liadens in general. There are probably a whole bunch of Clans that have Korval genes that prefer not to think of themselves as being like Korval. There are other cases of twins being split between their parents’ Lines, and even between two different Clans; Line yos’Galan itself is descended from Tor An yos’Galan’s daughter, whose twin went to his mother’s Clan and was presumably raised to think of himself as something different from Korval and yos’Galan.
(All that being said, Chi and Petrella were indeed a special case, being identical twins, and the ancestors of every living Korval, and so recent.)