"Who's we, I still don't want to create the first sapient golem, the idea of creating life is really weird to me, you can do it, you've done it seven times."

"Fair enough. I shall ask my daughter to do the awakening bit."

"She'll be more accustomed to the concept," nods Kib, "and might even find it uncomfortable not to be able to create life in the locally conventional manner, could be a nice substitute. Depending on her, anyway."

"I think she's brilliant but I might be biased. It's a known affliction of parents."

"I'm not sure how you could tell at three weeks."

"Babies stare longer at things that are novel in their environment, so you can test whether they notice violations of physical law by whether they stare longer when magic is performed, or when they're presented with artwork depicting something geometrically impossible."

"...and you have been performing these experiments?"

"...of course. I'm curious about the relative rate of Elven and human development."

"Of course, how silly of me. And you have control results from your other children?"

"I do! Though girls might develop differently than boys so perhaps I should go ask someone to let me experiment on their infant daughter."

"I'm not aware of any systematic differences but I haven't heard of the staring-at-things test so maybe."

"There are differences in inclinations which are assumed to be differences in aptitude, but people make all kinds of assumptions."

"Humans don't have the math thing, I don't remember hearing about any other local expectations."

"The most significant one is that every Elven ruler has been a man."

"Why's that?"

"I have no idea. The sample size is only a bit large for 'coincidence' to be an explanation - seven kingdoms."

"And the succession thing works by heredity and the family seems skewed male based on who I've met and heard of..."

"I am only counting original founders in that. The fact the kingdoms are then invariably passed on to men has an obvious cultural explanation."

"Huh. Yeah, that is weird, I think it's close to fifty-fifty for humans. Maybe some different governance style, although I never know how seriously to take those assertions, they tend to come from the same sorts of people who go found radically segregationist villages."

"Well, if my daughter turns out to want to inherit a kingdom I suppose she'll have to fill it with people who think that she can." He shrugs.

"Is she likely to encounter very much disagreement on that? Like, are there women Elves who are making serious bids to inherit kingdoms to compare here?"

"Well, there are eight people ahead of her in the succession, that'd be a bigger problem. To my knowledge there are no women who've made a serious bid to inherit a kingdom."

"Ahead of her...?"

"The rule, which should never really be relevant again, is the current King's oldest son, or brother if he has no sons, or his sisters' sons if he has no brothers."

"...and not his sisters themselves, that's blatant. Here I was thinking it was more a 'the king's pool of apprentices is people he's related to', I guess I got an incomplete explanation."