#i promised i wouldn't do pegasus studbook meta

[wolfhednn]

hotheadhero replied to your post:

So thorough! Though given the high level pegasus battalions come from Galatea, I wonder where they stand on that while thing. Too (resource) poor to help raise/train them, or is that where Fraldarius gets the pegasi, or…?

ooc. I’M GLAD YOU ASKED..........

i’m kidding.

but in honesty, i thought about that too. i just didn’t want to write it into the chart since galatea isn’t part of my city. but in the current absence of an ingrid ( down, muse. down, i say ), i can offer what i’ve headcanoned about it to fill the gap for the time being:

galatea territory is right below fraldarius’, and they weren’t one of the original faerghus houses. ingrid tells us that galatea is a branch of house daphnel that split off from them due to an inheritance dispute and joined the kingdom instead, forming a separate house and granted land and a title by the royal family. the land itself has nothing to offer, though, so much so that ingrid tells us that she grew up quite poor for a noble.

fraldarius territory is also the one closest to the alliance and daphnel lands ( i know there’s house charon; hold that thought, i’m getting there ), and i’ve always found it curious that house galatea, with no arable land, nothing to offer to the kingdom, and no crest-bearing children for generations ( as ingrid tells us ), hasn’t just collapsed entirely. i’ve also headcanoned before that pegasi are native to northern faerghus, specifically north/northeastern fraldarius territory ( in accordance with the fe tradition of pegasi being from the coldest regions ).

where am i going with this?

i’m saying ultimately that i don’t think count galatea’s move to marry ingrid to glenn was entirely a power move to make connections with the highest-ranking faerghus noble family. there was a history he was pulling on there, too.

originally, i think the land that is now galatea’s was fraldarius territory, which would put them along the alliance border along with house charon. as a house bordering the alliance and also the most closely trusted by the royal family, i feel that the fraldariuses likely played an instrumental role in supporting the galatea branch in their effort to split off from daphnel and join the kingdom. given that fhirdiad is a fair distance from the eastern border, i imagine the royal family likely entrusted the handling of that situation to house fraldarius. it was house fraldarius that offered immediate support and spearheaded negotiations. it’s never said whether the dispute became violent in nature at all, but if it did, it was likely house fraldarius that lended military aid.

a longstanding fraldarius-galatea friendship was born from this support, further strengthened by house fraldarius agreeing to cede part of their territory to the new countdom. they also knew that house galatea wouldn’t have much to their name, and so i imagine that they probably delegated the new house as the primary trainers for pegasi. they would send young foals down there to be readied for use, then have them sent back or delegated wherever was needed. in this way, house fraldarius would still be largely in charge of official pegasus stuff in the kingdom, but galatea would play a big part in that. i think it’s partially because of this that galatea became the locus of the kingdom pegasus corps over time, and this relationship still remains to this day.

( i also imagine it’s also partially genetic; i hardly think, given a long-standing political friendship, that glenn and ingrid were the first fraldarius-galatea pair. the penchant for pegasi likely migrated over to galatea genetics from the fraldarius side, tbh. )

through this responsiiblity-turned-niche granted to them by the fraldarius family, and also through their close tie with said family ( and probably others too, over time; it seems to me that galatea’s position in general heavily relies on forming connections with other nobles ), house galatea has then still been able to remain relevant enough to stay a countdom, even while lacking anything else politically worthwhile.