"There's been more of it lately. All these royal marriages."

"They just recently aging into the cohort for it?"

"By ordinary standards they're a little young. I think Merenre's twenty-five? But then they have different duties than the rest of us."

"Was his wedding otherwise notable?"

Snort. "He invested a lot of crown money in a jewelry business and then a couple months after that the proprietor revealed she was actually a woman dressing as a man and now betrothed to him. Anyone's guess what actually happened, of course. I have heard that presumably he picked a fellow out and demanded he switch, or that the fellow switched of his own accord when he thought it'd get him a shot at it, or that it really was a woman all along but it's her brother who ran the shop..."

"Are they allowed to demand that people switch?"

"A good question. I think not strictly speaking? It's not obvious there would be avenues to decline short of fleeing the continent, though."

"They can take women without anyone's approval. I'm not sure it'd be different if one tried it with a man. It might bother people more."

"Well, my grandmother likes to say that you at least shouldn't marry someone who'd rather be dead - too likely they chance stabbing you in your sleep - but that's probably not the same bar in Osirion. I suppose I'll try not to interest any royalty."

"I don't think they're permitted nonhumans, so I wouldn't worry."

"Aren't they? Good to know. Brush me up on the protocol for kneeling and so on, will you -"

"Of course." And he explains. Osirion takes their royalty very seriously which is why you kneel in their presence and don't contradict or disobey them without a spectacularly good reason and so on.

"Is 'they're wrong' not a spectacularly good reason?"

"No. Or - conceivably, depending on the stakes? If they told you to do something that was going to kill you and you said 'that will kill me' and they said 'no it won't, drow are indestructible' then you'd have a decent case that you were obeying what you understood them to want with more accurate information."

"We are though, little known fact. You've never seen me bleed!"

"I apologize for my dreadful cultural ignorance.

I think you'd be trusting in the personal restraint and good sense of the royal family, in any interaction with them, but I also generally believe them to be possessed of a lot of both."

"Wouldn't that be - I dunno, coincidental - only one of them having the divine mandate?"

"Sure, but he's the head of their household. And Abadar thinks highly of Prince Merenre, as much as Fazil I think."

"I will consider myself in good hands, then."