Right, so either we must find a guy with a decent social position who has siblings able to inherit and is willing to marry us, or we must displace our cousin to become the Nightshade heir, but that requires making nice with grandparents my mc is likely to dislike and to top it off once we do get to be the heir we need an opposite sex marriage to reproduce.
So marrying a decent guy with a decent social position may be best in terms of love but it will always make my mc feel like he has and owns nothing on his own merits since all we have would then come through our husband.
Which is what I don’t understand, if homosexuality is accepted our dear uncle and his lover could just as easily have adopted their heir or paid for a women to be the surrogate for his lover child(ren), since I understand it was the lover in this case who needed an heir of his own. But there are ways to get heirs that don’t involve marrying a woman, unless the Society only recognizes “true born” heirs born in wedlock.
Again if all they needed to do was reproduce I’m sure our uncle and his lover could have paid some surrogates. Or in an extreme case even poly-married or taken a concubine. Though I guess both concubines and poly marriage are not legal in the Society.
Presumably something like this would only be possible in an all-out war then, cause under such circumstances it might pay to dangle that carrot a little lower, though I understand it won’t be an option for our mc’s.
From what I recall Rhona was literally a Thorn in our side in the old demo and the only ways to get out from under the marriage contract to her our dear mother so foolishly arranged would have been to become the Nightshade heir or to make sure a guy with a higher title then her would make a marriage contract for her with her father before she herself turned 21.
Though it seems in the new setup the mc may get a bit more agency here.