Clan usage of familial terms in the novels

[Spirit Cat Refugee]

I got into the lore through the Dark Age books, but this past year I got the chance to read the "Blood of Kerensky" trilogy for the first time. One thing that stuck out to me was how the Clan characters talked to each other.

In the BoK novels, bloodnamed characters refer to each other as "grandmother" (Rianna to Natasha), "uncle" (The Ward Bloodhouse leader about a previous Khan), and "children" (The Smoke Jaguar commander on Wolcott about the sibkos bred from his DNA). It is clear from these novels that bloodnamed warriors, if they live long enough actually do get to encounter their descendants, and use the correct terminology that an Inner Sphere person would be familiar with.

Fast forward to the Dark Age novels and that style of communication seems to have fallen out of favor. Clan characters are constantly uncomfortable around such terms, and they almost never gets used.

I found this interesting, and was wondering what the general consensus on why this change occurred, or if it occurred earlier in the CBT novels that I haven't read. I would assume one reason for the change is that, 100 years after the invasion, Clan characters are far more spread out, bloodnames are less common, and warriors are just less likely to encounter their descendants/ancestors. Whereas in Clan space due to the proximity it was far more likely.

[Natasha Kerensky]

It’s probably just lack of continuity across authors, editors, and IP owners.  It would be nice if newer writers paid attention to those details in the older fiction, but those novels were also separated by decades.  I personally liked those kinds of references in BoK.  It would be especially interesting to see them used in Ghost Bear fiction.  Clan society has all sorts of interesting implications like this that got dropped after they were introduced or never explored in the first place.

[Alan Grant]

Natasha has it right.

In the BoK novels, there are several things that haven't held up or been maintained since then. The writers were taking an early stab at actually portraying the Clans and some stuff did got revised further over time in future works.

Over time some of that stuff changed, or got retconned by some means.

Examples include:

-Phelan's Ward mentor Victoria Ward said Kerensky's original warriors numbered 600. (later addressed by Phelan in the book Warriors of Kerensky as a mental or verbal slip)

-During Phelan's adoption ritual the Steel Vipers expressed interest in Phelan if the Wolves decided they didn't want him. The Vipers don't use freeborns, they don't adopt freeborns. I think I saw this retconned somewhere to be taken as a kind of insult. Like if you don't want him, we'll take him, and therefore he'll never be a warrior. But the intent in the BoK novel really does read like genuine interest and at the time of that book the reader doesn't know enough about the Vipers to know any different.

-During one Clan Council meeting we are shown a support warrior, a warrior from the Clan's supply/logistical system with different star color insignia and such. It's implied that some warriors go that route, and spend part of their careers as officers overseeing the Clan touman's logistics. Everything written since says that the Merchant Caste and others like the technician caste does that, and such duties are regarded as beneath most warriors.

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others.

But yeah the familial language use is one of those things you see in WoK then pretty much never again.

I do suspect this varies somewhat from Clan to Clan, even person to person. But the differences between WoK and many of the later books depicting the Clans are quite significant at times.

[Spirit Cat Refugee]

-During Phelan's adoption ritual the Steel Vipers expressed interest in Phelan if the Wolves decided they didn't want him. The Vipers don't use freeborns, they don't adopt freeborns. I think I saw this retconned somewhere to be taken as a kind of insult. Like if you don't want him, we'll take him, and therefore he'll never be a warrior. But the intent in the BoK novel really does read like genuine interest and at the time of that book the reader doesn't know enough about the Vipers to know any different.

Granted, I haven't read enough of the old fiction to know this for certain, but I thought the veiled references to the Wolf's Dragoon's helping Phelan's parents with conceiving him was some foreshadowing that he was actually born in a vat, aka he was technically a trueborn. I probably am wrong though.

But yeah the familial language use is one of those things you see in WoK then pretty much never again.

I do suspect this varies somewhat from Clan to Clan, even person to person. But the differences between WoK and many of the later books depicting the Clans are quite significant at times.

I think the familial language is actually a neat touch. It would be rare to seen it used as most trueborns die before their progeny are grown, but in the circumstances where that's not the case, it could happen. Might try to shoehorn it into a future shrapnel submission.

[JAMES_PRYDE]

Yeah using familial terms, I think gives the Clans more of a feel of being an "extended family" which is what the word clan means, and using those terms adds a unqiue element to the nature of the Clans, ie: Eugenics Programme

[BrianDavion]

each clan is differant and wil have it's own culture and cultures change with time. it's VERY possiable terms like grandmother, uncle etc where in use but fell out of use among the clans as they deliberately made a point to stop using them in a desire to emphisize the differances between them as freeborn sphereoids

[glitterboy2098]

given that the people using them were Kerensky's and Ward's for the most part, it could well be that it was just a quirk of those bloodhouses. perhaps it is an older tradition that fell out of favor, but a few keep using it?

though it could also just be that they were using terminology that Phelan would understand.

[Hellraiser]

-Phelan's Ward mentor Victoria Ward said Kerensky's original warriors numbered 600. (later addressed by Phelan in the book Warriors of Kerensky as a mental or verbal slip)
 

Victoria Ward was the IlKhan in the Golden Century.   Your thinking of Cyrilla Ward.   

[Alan Grant]

Victoria Ward was the IlKhan in the Golden Century.   Your thinking of Cyrilla Ward.

Right, good catch.