Miss Mara! You are one of the best feedback queens on this forum. I dunno how you get that title but I know that your feedback is on the top tier.
Some don’t get the feedback you give but that is their loss - and the regular authors love you.
Even in threads like Guns of Infinity you hold your own
speaking of which; promise to read my update sometime soon, k? lol
Now Is when I say I don’t remember what your Wip is … I am terribly you know. With names each time a wip changes name or something like that, I ended mistaken it with other. Maybe That’s way i don’t have the title lol. 
I have a lot of weird name badges I don’t know what in hell are. So I look them and ask myself Mara what did you do to get that? I am crazy clumsy you know 
its linked in my icon summary thing. lol.
crazy lady from Seville… maybe but clumsy… naw. especially as english is not your primary language.
La chica da Mara es me amiga… (as you see my espanol is quite clumsy) 
This is absolutely amazing advice @Zolataya, it’s nice to think that I can divide it into stages (helpful for me to find out who enjoys the beta-process and likes giving feedback)
I hadn’t properly thought about specialists either. While Aegis is not exactly a historical fiction I have been wondering about things like gender issues - of which I have very little knowledge. One of the first people to comment on this thread @trinnie helped spot some gender choice issues for example and I’m aware that without feedback in this area I’m likely to be guilty of a lack of tact.
(I also have 1 beta tester extraordinaire @FinalFantasyFreak aside from the really amazing @poison_mara, who has kindly offered to test ‘The Aegis Saga - Blood’)
@nightcap Wow, I’m late to the game.
As stated previously before, it really depends. Private beta- testing tends to be more specific, while making it open for everyone to play can have varied amount of success.
Though you can still get some pretty deep and meaningful comments with an open-beta test.
-cough cough - I offer myself as tribute -cough cough-
Most likely but remember if you ever get two monarchs, who really want to find a way then the odds are still decent of them finding a way. Finding and exploiting the legal loopholes is what lawyers, or before that councillors and learned advisers exist for. Maybe your system has so far been lucky enough to never have both monarchs really fall in love with each other to the point that they’d rather marry each other than a consort of the opposite sex.
Given that most people are, or are most often at least encouraged by society to identify as, straight and even the ones who aren’t are statistically rather unlikely to fall for their royal counterpart your system has most likely just gotten “lucky” thus far.
By the way can you go for a same-sex consort? I mean it could possibly work if the consort instead of biologically procreating does a secret adoption.
More generally speaking, on the one hand law may have a conservative bias and exist mainly to maintain the status-quo to the advantage of the current elite. On the other hand there are lots of people who make it their business, whether professionally or not, to (attempt to) subvert the hell out of it and then you have actual revolutionaries who may seek to impose a rather different set or even system of laws altogether…
@poison_mara if you were hacked through no fault of your own just contact @jasonstevanhill or @Havenstone and I’m sure they can cook you up a nice custom title.
Thanks @Silhuetta, I really appreciate the generous offer.
Though I expect you’ll be regretting it 
- the rest of the story is quite an unwieldy beast - particularly because I mapped out much larger significant changes following MC choice.
I’m working on Chapter 6 at the moment (one of the especially guilty chapters - 3 choices leading to large unique sections, plus the glyf mechanism which might form the basis for tomorrows Question.)
I figured I might as well make myself useful, so…
“…and I know my darling wife that our distance shouldn’t mean as much as it does.”
Commas after the bolded words, perhaps?
"I like going out in the fiercely unseasonable heat, I tell strangers it stimulates my health.
You could probably make use of a hyphen in this sentence.
"Sometimes I imagine that the world must have known we two would be born; would meet;
Generally, semicolons are used to join two independent clauses, or sentences that could stand alone by themselves.
–
There really wasn’t much I could nitpick about, just tiny little grammar mistakes that everybody makes. I suppose that’s all I’ll do for now, gotta go catch another plane 
@nightcap challenge accepted. 
I think I can keep up.
That’s the right thinking @idonotlikeusernames!
Subversion remains the order of the day, but you may have to wait for the finale in the Epilogue for your fill.
Your comments on ‘Hallin’s’ law are all very good ones.
Currently:
the law prohibits same sex Consorts (so there will be children)
it also prohibits the monarchs marrying each other (to try to prevent them undermining the unusual dual system and subvert the enforcing power of the bureaucracy.)
[I think looking at your feedback and that from @TheTrueKing I am going to put in this general prohibition, rather than using the current “Hallin’s law prohibited two royal heirs of different sexes from ruling the Kingdoms at the same time.” ] Thanks 
So:
the monarchs can take all the lovers of any sex that they want
but only the children born of each of their Consorts will become heirs. And that Consort will be the only person to hold the secret of their identity.
Cue: [quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:268, topic:16190”]
lots of people who make it their business, whether professionally or not, to (attempt to) subvert the hell out of it
[/quote]
these Queens are messing with the system and each other. They’ve taken one Consort between them.
The in depth look at their power struggle will come in book 2 ‘The Aegis Saga - Forge’, after book 1 'Blood’s Epilogue reveal. so I’m hoping generous people like yourself will help fabricate different ways the Queens can game the system.
Hells, if you come up with a couple of good ones I’ll name a book 2 lawyer after you.
erm. . or at least an anagram of your handle.
Anagram lawyer name:
Autonomies Rekindles?
Noisemakers Outlined?
Kaolinises Remounted?!?
Kaolinise Tremendous
Ohh Yeaa-HHH
The kingdom rules had a hole the queens used. If rules said no consort of the both royalfamilies could came from the same nobility family . Because if I were a Queen first thing would married older brother or father from other royal family consort. Then provoking a civil war turning the family against itself. And feeding the political fear from other noble houses against consort family plans of become a new empire. And at the end only a ruler in the Poison empire. After of course make two royal families become one unit empire stronger.
Ouch - you circumvented the law of the the Two Kingdoms in 10 minutes?
I am really underestimating the cold calculated scheming you lot are capable of. I’m going to stick that idea into the ‘how the Two Kingdoms fell’ pile. 
Oh, I love imaging backstage stabs and court intrigues. I am terribly with goodie goodies stuff. I just don’t get how selfless heroes working. 
I they just don’t have sense to me.
So out of interest how exactly does a love interest progress with the poison princess?
(More a topic for book 2 ‘Forge’, but the initial beginnings of early character romances are in book 1 ‘Blood’)
Oh easy first question
-Could he make babies?
-Has political and economic power enough.
-Comes he from the right family to provide me help with the throne
-The rest doesn’t matter to her, He could be a zombie thoughtless coconut .
A romance is for weak, She would have disposable lovers politicians alliances and convenient marriages.
. . . scribble. . . scribble. . zombie thoughtless coconut. . .scribble
nice one Mara.
Paris is worthy of a piña colada.
Of course a lot of this discussion assumes that our mc will turn out to be the prince(ss), which is by no means certain, considering the sheer amount of children it is in fact rather unlikely.
Maybe without all the crazy stuff that is happening our mc’s would have been destined to become nothing more than the assistant dogsbody to the keeper of the royal drains and cisterns, eh Mara?
As I already said It doesn’t matter if Mara IS the real blood heir. Mommy would certainly prefer Mara to a bunch of stupid children with no political idea. In fact Both monarchs desire being themselves who choose their heirs. Until now only the fear of being attack by the other is who maintained that feble balance . Now it is no longer possible maintain the consort stuff. Because any bloody prince knows that they could deal with that law. So Now It’s just not Who is the right one ? It is who is the right one for me X queen. Mara would do whatever and KILLING WHOEVER stand in their way. Last 14 old alive wins and these loosers are no rival for Mara
Hmm a difficult career choice - cistern diver or murderer of innocents. . .
You are right to be cautious about the numbers @idonotlikeusernames.
I am not suggesting anything one way or the other. Though you can find people who will still roll the dice on similar long odds. (And I did/am weighing up whether this feature should be random or author driven).
I guess that may be one for the beta-testers.
The main flaw is that unless there is a reliable way to test the bloodline the whole system basically relies on the honour system, in this case the honour of one consort specifically. With there being only one consort at present it presents all kinds of opportunities, particularly since the impression I’ve got of this consort is that while he may have been the hottest hunk of the realm, once upon a time, he does not strike me as all that honourable.
Lastly if our mc desperately wants to be the heir and does not want to risk it all on a possible deal that may or may not happen then eliminating the competition, Mara style, may be the way to force the consort’s hand into naming us heir.
Not that my mc desperately wants to be the prince at this time, the prospect of having to marry an opposite sex consort and sire children doesn’t really strike him as all that appealing, not if pursuing magic is also an option.
Though the magic of this world does seem to be horribly corrupted at the moment, so I wonder if it’s either possible to cleanse it somehow or else to master the taint.
Then again if the options at the end really do turn out to be either prince or cistern diver, well that might just motivate him.