I would normally sympathize with Titus for his unrequited affection and status as a man in this setting. His life purpose was essentially to get a good political match for the machinations of his female family members.
But he’s just so hard to sympathize with! He’s rude and feckless on top of being naive, and that’s a bad combination. Not to mention he entirely skipped out on being a present father for his own amusements.
He may be lovelorn, but I don’t think Titus is capable of being a good partner to anyone right now.
That’s my opinion as well. But I would add an additional, related reason.
If Titus was “superior” to the Prefect from a political, physical or intellectual point of view, and he used said superiority to belittle and hurt the Prefect, I would also dislike him. Case in point — I really, really, really hate Empress Galeria.
But, since the Prefect is clearly Titus’ superior in basically everything (pretty sure we could sculpt better than him if given time), I find myself in the comfortable/arrogant position of condescension. In my eyes, Titus is a poor little thing, incapable of doing much and wholly reliant on his family name to stay relevant in anyone’s life. Take away the Galeria from Titus’ name and he is nothing — case in point, Julia.
Now, there is one area in which I find Titus really concerning. Of course, I’m talking about the fact he can possibly not be Augusta’s father. He might be in self-denial now, but imagine what he could do if he just said “that’s not my daughter”. Everything goes downhill from there.
Basically, right now Titus is too harmless to be worth hating.
Tbh Titus has every right to be mad and rude to a Julia-mancer prefect because why should he treat a homewrecker with respect lol? But yuh as a Julia-mancer myself I’m very curious to see how far he’ll go to get his wife back (even though he never had her to begin with), and if he’ll make any political moves that could prove a challenge to the Prefect because I’d hate for him to just be a lovesick clown.
@Azan question: can you pursue Cato while aligned with the barbarians? My current strategy is to deprive the senate of their populist criminal ally and bring her into my camp, figuratively and literally.
You can certainly work with Ceto to undermine the Senate, but Ceto’s route and romance is gated by siding with the Consul initially, as Ceto and the Senate both oppose the imperial autocracy and the power of the barbarians, and she’ll only trust the MC with her plan at the end of Chapter II after they expand the grain dole and put her on the council.
However, that isn’t to say that giving her concessions (inviting her onto the council or integrating her criminals with the Watch) couldn’t be potentially useful for an MC aligned with the Legate’s faction, though that will have consequences as well of course.
1st question I have is; could we start a religious schism that can results in the uplifting the male gender and getting rid of matriarchy.
(obviously they would still be in a majority and more common due to having them in the beginning so it would mostly feel more natural for them to still be at large.)
2nd question is; how do you feel about a poly romances? Because to me I see two options to deal with with Titus for a Julia-mencer who want to get revenge on the MC, that being either to assassinate him or sense they are romantically starved, and can be (from what I seen) easily emotionally manipulated due to being a very emotional man, an manipulatory MC can try to play with his feeling and start a fake romance with him so we could calm him down and possibly do what Julia is doing and use him and his family for political power.
3rd question is; how does the Empires religion view same sex relationships?
Also will we meet our family in latter chapters sense when helping Julia’s (and if you picked it the MC’s) daughter in the senate we have a choice to help a friend of our family get land from someone
Forming an outright schism may be beyond the MC’s power, but there will certainly be room for a Male MC to push for the status of men to be improved and for egalitarianism.
The MC can pursue, say, a fake relationship with one character and a real one with a different character, or vice versa, but that requires Subterfuge and risking your alliances to gain access to power. I wouldn’t call that polyamory, however.
As for Titus, it’s actually hilarious how much I get asked about this at this point, but unfortunately no. I imagine even if he were to be open to someone besides Julia, he would absolutely not pursue a relationship with the MC of all people.
That’s a complicated and interesting question. So same-sex relationships are not outright prohibited in Iudia, but same-sex marriages are very rare. They have happened, and there is one such instance of it happening with an Empress that is mentioned in the game, but even she needed a dispensation from the Church, a very difficult feat. Largely, it’s looked down on and legally not often recognized as the Church is heteronormative.
Now in terms of non marital relationships, it’s considered more just a “you’re not supposed to say it aloud” social code. Given the ruthless power games of Iudia, it’s much more controversial if someone of high standing is seen to submit to their partner, in or out of the bedroom, but that is also true for heterosexual relationships.
I do plan for a cameo for some of the MC’s family members, but it won’t be the a very large plot element. The family friend, if you chose to help her, may provide aid to the MC later on, though of course helping her as it’s own consequences as well.
This Roman view of submission and dominance gave rise to a hilarious episode in Caesar’s life.
When a young Julius Caesar was dispatched to the court of King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia for a military matter, he apparently stayed for longer than necessary, so rumours started to say that he was engaged in a sexual relationship with the king.
Unfortunately for poor Caesar these rumours never left him for the rest of his life. Once he began rising among Rome’s political class, his enemies started calling him the “Queen of Bithynia”. Said opponents took every opportunity to roast him about it. This rumour was so widespread and seemingly harmful that Caesar took an oath denying the allegations.
Roman historian Suetonius wrote some hundred years later that Ceasar’s legions had a marching song that went something like this “All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him” (the original latin verb used for vanquish was “subegit”, which also means to “get under” or “plough”, make of that what you will).
Anyhow, leaving beside the hilarity of this episode, it is very much telling of the views regarding sexual activity during Roman times. Homosexuality was not particularly frowned upon (it is a far too complex a subject to discuss here), but what was frowned upon was if you were the “submissive” side of the sexual intercourse. As long as you were the top it was all good, but the moment you were the bottom it was perceived as a big no-no.
As a conclusion to this long tale, you must tell us @Azan: is Julia a top or bottom? She sure seems like a top, but we must get confirmation.
I would like to know if Júlia had a skill screen what her skill levels would be?
And if it’s not too much of a spoiler, how would Julia react if we beat her in a fair fight?
That’s my playthrough as well! My sorceress is more loyal to her sisters than she is to the Empress.
Cunning and at times duplicitous, she will stop at nothing to steer the trajectory of the empire towards her vision.
Essentially (since I can’t really imagine my sorceress in shorts) I have been picturing her dressed somewhat similar to Hypatia in Agora. The examples below are not exactly the same as a toga. But it’s the general idea of a masculine cloak over a feminine tunic.
I was wondering whether that would still be plausible for Iudian elite women like f!MC.
Picturing something similar to this, but without the purple
I wouldn’t go as far as to give her exact levels, but Warfare would be her highest stat, Subterfuge the second, and her worst stat would probably be Scholarship.
Not well, I’d imagine. She’s a very prideful woman after all.
It’s entirely plausible, I don’t think everyone of any social class dresses the same. The only note I would offer is that sorceresses in particular value the color red as it symbolizes the holy fire of their order.
Also, nice reference, Hypatia was a really interesting, if unfortunately tragic figure in late antiquity.
Small Update: Chapter III is very nearly done, I expect to have it released by the end of this week or if something comes up, sometime next week.
On a side note though, I created a family tree of Iudia’s Imperial Line for my own personal reference while writing, but I figure there’s no harm in sharing it since I enjoyed making it and will try to put it in the book in some form or another. There will be changes to it throughout the story (and changes that may or may not happen depending on choices, of course.) as well as characters you will see on here that you have yet to meet in the story.
The only significant change that you’ll see here from what’s in the book is that I’ve corrected the character’s names to reflect correct grammar, or what I hope is correct at least. That will show up throughout the demo when I upload Chapter III.
The Imperial Line of Iudia
Conditional lines reflect connections that are dependent on player choices. Actual lines reflect connections that are set in stone.
