@Drazen The game was neither fish nor fowl but some strange hybrid. It was a traditional regency romance crossed with Henry VIII, that was hijacked by 21st century progressive values into terrain that wasn’t entirely well thought out or coherent. The hijacking wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it was sloppily done. This made both the subjugation and the moralistic judging of the protagonist very arbitrary, and at times, downright surreal.
And I certainly agree with your assessment that joining in with the bedroom fun would have strengthened our position with
respect to Augustin(a). She’s not only bi, but also a complete hedonist. I can’t imagine her turning down an offer like that as long as she feels that she is going to be in control -and- the center of attention. We’re basically offering her a fantasy on a silver platter
Joining in the fun also gives us the ability to keep an eye on Adelita’s ambitions as well as the overall state of the developing relationship between between her and Augustin(a). And information is power. If steps need to be taken at some point in the future to deal with Adelita, we will have plenty of advanced warning. And if steps don’t need to be taken, Adelita serves as a pleasant diversion, preventing someone more dangerous from gaining a foothold in Augustin(a)'s heart.
If the protagonist is smart and values their head, Augustin(a) will stay the center of attention for as long as she desires, and until she says otherwise. We’re on safe ground as long as Augustin(a) thinks it’s about her, but things could go very bad very quickly if she starts feeling jealous of any attention we’re paying to Adelita. So a smart consort would keep the focus on their royal spouse and give them the feeling of complete control, regardless of how attracted the consort is to the third person in the bed.
The reputation hit can be minimized by keeping it entirely in Augustin(a)'s chambers, just as was done in olden times. As Augustin(a)'s spouse we have a right to be there. And if necessary, we can always shrug powerlessly and cop the old, self-sacrificing and noble “It is my duty to please the Queen/King” excuse, to seem all proper, implying we’d prefer it were otherwise, even when we’re secretly enjoying it as much as she is. And that will be believed since everyone in the country knows what Augustin(a) is like.
@MaraJade Yep, Catherine the Great is a very good example. The threesome option should have been available.
@Drazen. Thank you, and I’m not the least bit surprised by your disagreement with that word. “Progressive” is the self-label preferred by those who push for the universal adoption of those values in the US. Their conservative opponents call them “liberals” instead, a term which in the US has become something of a pejorative. And since CoG sees itself as a champion of “progressive” causes, I figured I might as well be polite while I’m on their turf and discussing how they’re allowing their political activism to negatively impact the believability of some of their games.
@P_Tigras They may well see themselves as champions of such woolly modernity; Like Generals on a Triumph, they need somebody to point out how bloody stupid this can be, - whenever and wherever this arises. It may make me sound like a bit of a twat, but hey-ho, it’s for their own good.
It’s suddenly started to bug me that two women conceive a male child with eachother.
Magical pregnancy in which same-sex couples can have a child, yeah, sure, let’s handwave that.
Magical pregnancy in which a man falls pregnant. Um… well I suppose it’s not completely impossible. Wasn’t there that film Junior with the Governator in it? And there is research going into finding ways to do that.
Magical pregnancy in which two women create a male child. Yeah that’s annoying me today. Where’s the Y chromosome coming from?
@TDilz Magic has its own internal system of logic and realism. Projecting a fireball from ones fist is logical and realistic, in a way that summoning glowing teapots from an imaginary pile of dog muck isn’t.
In the sense that a two-eyed dragon is more realistic than a three-eyed one. We’re already dealing with systems specifically designed to let impossible things happen for narrative purposes, nitpicking because they also let something that is, arguably, slightly more impossible happen is silly
edit: I suppose arguing over what the appropriate level of credulity to regard a settings magic with is pretty silly too. Looking at myself posting on the internet on a saturday night about magic babies is also silly bordering on absurd. There is no end to this rabbit-hole
@TDilz Well, no, my former example of magic is a tool utilised to reservedly spice up reality, which also helps to grease the wheels of whatever plot the author wants to run; the latter example is one which just goes totally insane and decides that “magic” means the ability to bring about whatever drug-addled effect one desires, without providing the slightly semblance of justification, or elaborating on the consequences of this messed-up buffoonery.
Glowing teapots from imaginary piles of dog muck can be part of a functional magic system, so long as the rules for glowing teapots and imaginary dog muck operate in a consistent manner.
Two women with the aid of Life Magic can produce a male child, which indicates that genetics in the Iberiaverse don’t work quite the same way as they do on Earth (this is hardly unique in fantasy). That doesn’t break magical coherence (we also know that the transmission of magical ability doesn’t follow Mendelian rules), and we don’t need to know how genetics work any more than we need to know how men birth Lifeborn children. I’m sure the minds of our forumbase can fill in the blanks on the latter one, anyway.
I’ve always imagined that they either cut the child out of the male when the time comes or magically get it out. I know the second options vague but there are just so many ways possible with magic.
We see enough, in my opinion (given that the magic system is not the focus of the game).
-Life Magic does healing stuff and mind manipulation, and some of that “healing stuff” allows for reproductive effects and a degree of magical genetic engineering.
-Death Magic does fireblasty stuff and Death Curses.
-Sahran magic does portals and teleportation.
-Two mages of the same type will ALMOST always produce the same kind of mage, two mages of different types will produce 50/50 mages of either type.
My guess is that the reproductive life spell includes some degree of genetic engineering (note that a two-male Life Spell would create a nonviable fetus, by random chance, 1/4 of the time due to having no X chromosome; there’s no indication that this happens to Lifeborn), and part of that is ensuring a random chance of male or female children. Why that spell works that way is something you’ll have to ask the experts; if the reason is known, I’m sure Ramirez or de Reyes could tell you.
But my point is that knowing the exact details of how stuff works is not required in every work, and this is not a work where it’s necessary. The work is still internally consistent in how its magic works, and we don’t have any magical effects pulled out of anyone’s ass…
@Ramidel Buttocks-babies left considerably away to one side, I think it’s rather telling that your post contained more of an explanation of the magic-system of this world than three whole games did collectively.
Y’see, I’m not inclined to be charitable to games which think it’s acceptable to leave anything remotely consequential entirely up to the imagination. In a game where magic exists and affects the plot, - specifically in a way related to whether your child is black or white (on a metaphysical level), - and where the game is driven by the machinations of the metaphysically black and white, to ignore the magical element to this degree is just rather silly.
The top four notes were all in the game. And we see plenty of how the magic is used and affects the setting.
I agree that this wasn’t written by Brandon Sanderson, who has a fetish for creating intricate and scientific magic systems. Here, the magic is plot grease (and it exists in large part to push the creators’ agenda, I’ll add, including such horrifically heathen things as gender-neutrality and anti-heteronormativity). We see enough of it to know how it works in relation to the plot, and the rest is handwavium. What a Life Mage, or a Death Mage, or a Sahran, can do is enough to make a coherent setting, except when it’s actually self-contradictory; as far as I can remember, there’s only a couple of areas that are actually selfcontradictory and this is not one of them. (The odd spots, as far as I can remember, are Tomas’ inhuman resilience and the retcon that the Aguilar family has Sahran mages in its bloodline, which by all logic should have been clear in the first game, as it’d have major repercussions on the war. You may feel free to scream about these problems.)
You don’t need to have studied RL genetics to write how a magical fantasy world handles the power of your noble bloodline.
@Ramidel Self-contradiction isn’t this games problem. The problem that it is severely under-explained (meta-level allusions to this lack of explanation correlating to a lack of thought are a related issue).
Good games immerse people in a world, and when you’re left saying “How the Hell does that work? Oh, I guess I’ll just have to pretend the fluffy rainbow bunny who magically makes things into a Critical Theory fantasyscape did it through unicorn dust and good intentions”, then you have to conclude that something is amiss.
There is a distinction between plot grease and a deus ex machine, and this game is firmly utilising the hand-waving trump-card of “I can do what I want because MAGIC!”
There’s also the issue of why the Spell of Life was used to provide the monarch with a bastard from a gay relationship, but not a legitimate heir from the original royal spouse, a royal spouse who had the nation’s most prominent family of life mages as kin.
