#the line. Because the physical attribute that sticks out about Brakul most is the fact that he is Very tall (average male height here

[serpentface]

do Erubi, Livya, and Baby #3 ever find out/have their own suspicions/draw their own conclusions about the...interesting circumstances of their births & parentage? How do they feel about it? How do they view their parents in their adulthood?

I will be 100% real I don't have the post-canon timeline Solidified for anyone but Couya and Palo (and also Faiza on account of her being dead) so I don't have much set in stone for this.

The main thing that impacts this is that I have two HEAVILY branching options how things are going to go for Janeys specifically (and by extension his children). In one option, the post-coup restructuring attempts to legitimize the Odomache as a dynastic kingship, kind of like old Ephenni kingship where a king's sister's eldest son was his heir, except patrilineal and focused on producing related female heirs that can become celibate god-monarchs. Janeys would thus be semi-forced into forming part of the body of a new royal dynasty, and one or both of his children would be subject to extremely high-stakes political marriages to fully entrench their positions.

In the other option, this system develops much later on during a succession crisis towards the end of Couya's life, or after a highly questioned appointment of her successor. Janeys just kinda gets dropped and goes back to being the Haidamane failson who just inherited a kinda shit parcel of land and a bunch of cows, his only children are girls so the family line dies with him. They get married off (or Erubi might be inducted as an Odonii) in a pretty normal capacity and have pretty normal lives for female nobility.

Both routes would need further development so I'm not sure what I'm going with yet. The former is wayyy meatier because it sucks worse and also would entail additional succession issues because THE KIDS ARE BASTARDS. Not everything needs to be so fucking dramatic though.

One other thing is that, spoiler alert, baby #3 ends up stillborn (baseline high infant mortality rates don't mix well with spending most of your pregnancy traveling long distances over land). His existence was an ominous growing weight of the future, a body dies in the womb but the future comes nonetheless, etc. Baby # 3 has no particular feelings about the circumstances of his conception.

Otherwise yeah Erubi is presently at an age where she can start to understand complex aspects of the world she lives in and question her place in things, so this is quickly oncoming. She's already approached some of the immediately obvious questions like 'why am I the only Haidamane with red hair?', with the answer being the (culturally standard) notion that red hair runs in some families with some northerner blood and just kind of pops up every so often ((given the gene is recessive and can seemingly spontaneously express in children of two brown haired parents who carry it)). Hibrides' grandfather was a redhead, and one of Janeys' great great grandfathers was from the province Erub and a lot of people there have red hair. So it came from that.

One mitigating factor is that, as female children of nobility, they don't spend a whole lot of time out of the household in General and have next to no experience seeing how other households work in person. They play with the children of servants and peasants sometimes but any instances "your family is kinda weird" they're getting is gonna go over their heads initially because their learned first instinct will be "you just think that because you're a commoner/PEASANT".

This is going to start hitting home more when said kids can better verbalize (or behave on the basis of) rumors that the two children are bastards via the unwed middle aged man just kinda living in their house in an atypical capacity. And when they notice strange looks from their dad's extended family, and pick up on how Brakul almost never accompanies them anywhere in public, and how their mom makes Erubi wear her braids down her back so you can't see her hair under the veil but doesn't make her brunette sister do so, and how their dad and 'uncle' sleep in the same room most nights and have occasionally been encountered cuddling on the couch next to the shrine, and how they've also seen their mom and 'uncle' sleep in the same room sometimes, and start to fill in some of the blanks.

I don't expect them to be any more interested in their parent's love lives or the circumstances of their conception than most children are, so they probably won't give much of a shit about most of this until they're old enough to have other resentments of their parents to think about in tandem. It's going to specifically be the fact that THEY might be bastards (and how that affects their treatment by people who suspect this, and how it might impact their future prospects) that gets to them. There's no reason they wouldn't internalize concepts like 'being a bastard is shameful' 'being a product of adultery is shameful' etc, none of their parents actually disagree with that notion anyway (they just interpret the combination marriage + sworn brotherhood kinship to be a mitigating factor that makes it not Quite the same thing).

Erubi is going to be someone who wants to interrogate the world and her place in it. Once she has any reason to suspect her illegitimate status and is able to properly verbalize her questions, she's not going to let them hear the end of it. They're going to be plagued with questions until she gets an explanation she can understand, and plagued with more questions until she gets tired/bored of it. There's no chance in hell that this explanation is going to be a well-worded, compassionate, easy to understand one, and she's probably going to alternate between being angry/annoyed and pretending it isn't a thing for a while. I think she could come to some kind of terms with it though. Like, she is TECHNICALLY a bastard, but not like other bastards who are fatherless or were born in the kinds of secret, shady extramarital affairs their parents should get whipped and fined and socially ostracized for.

Both kids are inevitably going to have difficult relationships with their parents (not just because of the situationship stuff but on the basis that they're all difficult people and 2/3 of them didn't actually want kids) but I think Erubi will end up with Fairly positive feelings towards them overall into adulthood. They're your mom and dad and your dad's live-in boyfriend who is your actual dad, you're supposed to love and honor them no matter what. I see her pivoting to kinda treat Brakul as her Real Dad on an emotional level when she gets older.

I think she's also going to strongly internalize cultural values of pride in one's family and their honor, so she'll be pretty willing to defend things. Like, 'No my dad is NOT an effeminate cunnari, my uncle just lives with him because he has no land, and my dad loves him dearly enough to provide him a life worthy of his stature, which is a VIRTUE for such a bond. May I remind you that the old king Erub kept his sworn brother Janes as his right hand, to live within his palace and govern at his side? Famously? It's like that. I am NOT a bastard and my resemblance to my uncle is HAPPENSTANCE, red hair runs in my mom and dad's families. You see the way my hair falls in waves? THAT comes from my dad. You don't see my [bald] uncle having hair like this, do you? Yeah. Actually, how dare you even suggest that I'm illegitimate? Are you implying my mother is some kind of whore? I could have you flogged for that. [INTERNALLY: My dad is totally a faggot]'.

Livya will be more someone who picks up the vibe that No One Talks About This For A Good Reason and decides to follow suit. She might also ask a lot of questions early on, but give up after the first few terse non-answers, and would ultimately figure it out on her own and/or hear it from Erubi. She'll play along even if it eventually comes out in the open, and will probably go some lengths to emotionally distance herself from Brakul in particular. He's not Supposed to be her father after all, that's part of this whole deal. It will weigh on her heavily that people who know or suspect the general circumstances of her birth will see her as lesser or a liability in some capacity, a possible bastard from a bad family. She'll probably keep most of the discomfort about it to herself.

If the Less Dramatic route happens, it's probably going to be harder than average to find her a husband, depending on whether the families of her prospective matches are aware of the rumors. The process of being sold off like goods is already taxing enough, the feeling that no one even wants to Buy because of circumstances beyond your control might be even worse for her.

I think her inevitably difficult relationship with her parents is going to boil over into resentment in adulthood, lingering on the ways that they've set her up for difficulty and have shamed their family, particularly in contrast to Erubi (who is probably going to end up being an Odonii, was expected to do so from a young age, has been rewarded for headstrong, 'boyish' behaviors and expressions of autonomy that Livya can't get away with the same way). Hopefully her inevitable arranged marriage will be a good match, and she gets a husband and new family she can eventually feel at home with. Even if it doesn't work out that neatly, she'd still try to find a different sense of identity in this new life. Being the wife to a good man is at least better than being the suspected bastard of a failed father. She wouldn't HATE any of her parents though, and might miss her mother in particular. Might even feel a new sense of sympathy for her in retrospect, wonder how much of a choice she really had in things.