Respectable, for a human.

"Monica had nine. But we were married very, very young, and did lose one in infancy."

Is this a noble thing? This has to be a noble thing. She doesn't think her mother killed that many babies.

"My father's first wife had six children, four daughters and two sons. My mother had three sons and then a daughter. Four of my sisters are still alive. My father never had children by a mistress that I know of but he's an aasimar."

"My mother has six children, and all of them are still alive."

Eulàlia has absolutely no idea how many children her father had. She will not make this contribution to the conversation.

"We should put a lot more thought into inheritance laws...there's a committee for it but it's naturally full of people tussling over their own personal inheritance situations and I'm more thinking that it matters a great deal if the default is 'eldest son' or 'most capable legitimate son', and this varies by region and it being unpredictable is the most hazardous possible state for it to be in."

"The Archduchy of Menador - though not all the lesser individual titles in it - does the latter, checking after death if necessary, in cases where there's any question of the title holder being murdered or a will having changed under suspicious circumstances. I can't claim there aren't conflicts, but I don't think a ruler without personal strength could handle the region, and I would worry about settling things purely by birth order encouraging even more murder while leading to worse rulership."

"Why most capable son and not most capable child?"

"There is not, technically, a rule against leaving the Archduchy to a woman, even if she has surviving brothers, but I don't know it to have ever happened. Mind you, my knowledge of history isn't much better than anyone else's, and if it had happened in centuries past I would not necessarily know. But most women in Menador are not seriously trained for combat, and they're accordingly less likely to become the most capable. But that's not to say that there aren't those who can hold their own in a fight." He gives a bit of a nod to Valentia.

"Many women are perfectly capable warriors" (he nods at Ser Jornet) "and rulers" (he nods to the Duchess), "but it's often a wrong to force a woman to take on a role like that, the same way most women would be wronged by being conscripted as soldiers. ...I can imagine circumstances where it would be worth it but I'm not sure whether they hold in Cheliax."

"I was to a certain extent raised to it but that's substantially because my mother took it as something of an omen that my first cantrip was Detect Fiendish Presence, my sisters were - raised with a view to the possibility but not much underlying investment in it. And my whole family is somewhat oriented toward raising paladins; one of my brothers was a paladin also."

"Raising women to be adventurers or rulers often competes with raising them to be wives in a way where raising men to be adventurers or rulers does not compete with raising them to be husbands. ...also just as a practical matter a woman of twenty-five exactly as competent as her brother of the same age will be a worse ruler over the next ten years because she has the additional demanding duty of bearing the next generation. If she's sufficiently more competent than her brother perhaps you'd rather she have two duties than he have one but the differential isn't trivial. ...Chelam had sons from eldest to youngest, and then brothers, and then unmarried or female-succession-married daughters ahead of sisters' sons, but I don't know if there was a rigorous justification for that and if there was it was a very old one. In practice if the oldest son was unsuitable his father would tell him to go fight monsters until he became suitable or died, or oblige him to take vows."

STOP OBLIGING PEOPLE TO TAKE VOWS

Yes, Carlota's got it. Nod nod nod.

"How does - raising women to be adventurers and rulers - compete with raising them to be wives -" All of the people who aren't Evil kind of make marriage sound really unappealing while also insisting it is the only permissible way to fuck people. Eulàlia would like to fuck people and also be an adventurer and ruler.

"Well, there are only so many hours in the day, right, and if you're adventuring you're not spending them learning to manage a household. And most people consider close male friendships inappropriate for a woman of an age to marry, so you're adventuring either with a group of other marriageable-aged women - who will then marry - or with close male friends who your prospective husband might be suspect of. 

- and a lot of people would also say that - it works better for a marriage to have a cleaner division of roles, that a husband will be happier if he's the one who can fight and you appreciate him the way we appreciate people who possess skills we do not, and that men want women with feminine virtues not adventurer virtues. Though I think 'what do men want from a wife' is in fact a matter that is - more varied than people usually let on."

Wait, they're not even supposed to have male friends now? 

"They say that Archmage Naima adventured while pregnant but I assume almost everyone who attempts to do that fails to become Archmage Naima and more likely loses the baby, so while I confess there's a certain romanticism to marrying within an adventuring party the wife will inevitably fall behind over time."

"I think more highly of Archmage Naima than almost anyone else I have ever heard of but I cannot really countenance risking your children for any stakes lower than the ones she faced."

It's the right thing to do, though, for those stakes. She is not going to say that because she does not want to make her fiancè concerned about his future children.

Joan-Pau doesn't want a wife, he's just ethically obligated to get one.

"All true. But these are generalities. I have a daughter who is pregnant with her third, and spending her pregnancy focusing on research, as she very recently hit third circle as a wizard. I have ten others who I would be horrifically wronging to send into combat beside their brothers, but that does nothing to make her less capable. But she is illegitimate, so not relevant to the succession question." Unless he were to divorce Valeria and marry Estel, which the three of them are all clear is not in fact impossible, depending on how things go.

"I have always been grateful to live in an empire where it is understood that some women do have the souls of warriors and can be wronged by being kept at home, even if they are not the typical woman and their course would serve the typical woman poorly."

"I certainly appreciate that I had the choice to put myself at risk on a course most would consider untraditional, though it was not a warrior's in any ordinary sense and would not, in a healthy country, be dangerous at all."

She's strong enough that she knows her alignment, without any real fights. Which is validating, in a way, that Creation recognizes that her risks were real.

She raises her glass for a toast. "May our children's politicking be lethal to very few of them."