Books Houses Peoples Languages Names Time Seventeen Jokes & Allusions Acknowledgements Assorted Shards Cracks

Cracks and Shards Feedback to me my home page

The Houses of the Dragaeran Empire

• Characteristics of the Houses
• Miscellaneous
  • Nobility
  • The Guard
  • Sources
• Notes

Characteristics of the Houses

In the following table,

• "#" is the House's position in the Cycle.
• "Colors" are the heraldic colors typically, but not always, worn by members of the House[Orc 18,29-30; FHYA 260-261]; they are also used in official House symbols [Phx 125].
• "Character" is an attempt to summarize distinctive or proverbial characteristics of personality in a couple of words. Parentheses mark a characteristic that, while not typical, fits with other House characteristics.
• "Appearance" lists typical or distinctive traits, not necessarily applicable to all members of the House, but constituting the "clues to identity that we notice almost unconsciously" [FHYA 65].
• "Class" refers to social level.
• "Occupation", like Appearance, is typical, not absolute. For example, Vlad's father was a restaurateur, and there are Dragaeran Jhereg who are not part of the Organization [Yen 97].
• "Epigram" is the one-line description of the animal from the poem of the Cycle.
• "Epigraph" is the quotation at the head of the "#"th chapter of Jhereg. As Lance Nathan pointed out to me (see "The origin of Seventeen"),

  the 17 chapters and the Epilogue correspond directly to the 17 houses, where chapter 1 is the decadent Phoenix, the epilogue is the Phoenix Reborn, and everything in between somehow lines up to the houses (Hawk: "There is danger in eyesight too keen," and so on).

  "Epigram" and "Epigraph" have two entries for the Phoenix: decadent Phoenix in line 1 of the Cycle poem and Chapter 1 of Jhereg, and reborn Phoenix in line 18 and the Epilogue. This seems contrary to what we have seen in the books: the reign of Tortaalik I, a decadent Phoenix, ends with Adron's Disaster, leading to the Interregnum, which ends when Zerika, a reborn Phoenix, brings back the Orb from the Halls of Judgement and takes the throne as Zerika IV, beginning the second Great Cycle. Maximilian Wilson pointed this out on the Dragaera list. I credited him with "a notable Crack" until Steve replied (23 Apr 2005), "This is most emphatically not a crack."
• Concerning the hyperlinks from entries in the table, see "A note on notes".

Miscellaneous

Nobility

Although technically all the houses except the Teckla are "noble houses", "only a few [of the 'noble houses'] ... contain any of the aristocracy, and then only a few of that House" [Tek 27; Paresh speaking]. Kelly implies that the Houses of the Dragon, Dzur, and Lyorn comprise the bulk of the aristocracy [Tek 188]. The House of the Phoenix is almost certainly also largely aristocratic, but they are the smallest House and so do not count toward the "bulk". Vlad characterizes the Orca and Chreotha as "minor aristocracy" [Orc 195], which doesn't mean they're the only such houses.[2005-05-15] In fact, Paarfi takes for granted the existence of bourgeoisie as well as nobility [FHYA 285]. Vlad, technically a noble of the Jhereg, makes his living (for most of his career that we've seen so far) as a mobster and an assassin. -- The "noble's point" is a feature of the hairline typical of all but the Teckla, apparently what we would call a "widow's peak": a downward point at the center of the forehead.

The Guard

But on at least one occasion [Jrg 152-153] Vlad repeatedly calls them "Imperial Guards". He wasn't feeling quite himself at the time, but to the left he is describing this scene in retrospect. This was Brust's first Dragaera book, and he might not yet have settled on the convention of naming the Guard for the reigning House.

Sources

Other sources of related info, and credits:

• Jake Kesinger's Dragaera page includes a very good summary of House details, with somewhat different emphasis. I have not referred to it in developing this one.
• Sabia of Borg's Small Invisible Lights site has had a page describing each House's animal and what the House represents.
• Some items in this table were brought to my attention by Philip Hart and by "Frieda".

Notes

[Phoenix colors] We are never explicitly told that the Phoenix's color is gold, but that is the one constant that we find in all the places where we would expect to see the color. It represents purity [TPG 20]. It is always in the clothing of Tortaalik [FHYA 5,51,100] and the Consort Noima [FHYA 171]. Tortaalik's favorite chair in the Seven Room is gold-colored [FHYA 9]. The cloak of the imaginary Phoenix Empress is gold [Yen 61]. The uniform cloaks of the Phoenix Guard, which are in "the Phoenix colors" [TPG 48??; see also FHYA 50], are gold and only gold. (We can suppose that the plural form "colors" is used here in its heraldic sense, rather than referring to the number of hues involved.) Gold also appears in that House's hair ("and if I'd meant 'blond' I would have said 'blond'"), and even their eyes [Yen 63].

This inference also implies a pleasing symmetry. As far as we know, all the other houses are distinguished by exactly two colors, except the Teckla, who have three, and the Yendi, who, as might be expected from their all-around tendency to camouflage, have no identifying colors [TPG 15]. The Phoenix are the noblest House ("air of majesty" [TPG 20]; see also FHYA 285-286) and fewest in number [FHYA 17,Yen 63], and have only one color; while the Teckla, the only non-noble House and the most numerous, have three.

[Dzur foolhardy] Chad Underkoffler ("Rage") pointed out to me that the Dzur courage and their love of odds-against fights often lead them into actions that others consider foolhardy.