What would the social ramifications be if a Seeker Tia sired a child with a Keeper?

[Jzarah]

There doesn't seem to be a ton of information on how Miqo'te tribes and clans work outside of ordinary function, so I'm wondering - what would happen if a Tia had a child with a Keeper of the Moon? Would he be exiled from his tribe, or even possibly killed? Would there be any negative consequences for the Keeper? And what of the child themselves? Would they be shunned by their father's tribe as well? From what I know of Keeper society, I assume they'd be fine in their mother's care, but I'm not certain.

[MikkoAkure]

There doesn't seem to be a ton of information on how Miqo'te tribes and clans work outside of ordinary function, so I'm wondering - what would happen if a Tia had a child with a Keeper of the Moon? Would he be exiled from his tribe, or even possibly killed? Would there be any negative consequences for the Keeper? And what of the child themselves? Would they be shunned by their father's tribe as well? From what I know of Keeper society, I assume they'd be fine in their mother's care, but I'm not certain.

There's not much for us to go on as far as ramifications, but there's several mixed clan miqo'te in the game already. Minfillia's adoptive mom for example is a moon keeper with a sun seeker name.

Personally, I don't believe tribes matter too much in the modern day of the game unless your people are still living in the middle of nowhere as hunter-gatherers like the U and M tribes. J tribe seems to be from Ala Ghiri and they're more cosmopolitan and not tribal, with no nunh in sight and even a sub-plot of a miqo in a relationship with a hyur. Most sun seekers seem to live in the cities and we've yet to see any tribe stuff in Limsa Lominsa. There's also a few miqo mentioning having a mom and a dad which implies a nuclear family and not a tribe.

Moon keepers don't really have tribes as much as small groups of women and their kids. Male moon keepers seem to be booted out after they're done growing up or after their part in making a baby is done. And again, we see most of them in towns and cities so who knows if "tribe" rules still apply.

[KylePearlsand]

Doesn't appear to be any. It seems like mixed race mating seem to be more taboo amongst tribes and villages. It comes to mind a Miqo'te and Hyur couple that were exiled from their village not for their sexuality but for the race of the their partner. It doesn't seem to affect inter tribal relationships or mating at least. F'lhaminn for example appears to have some keeper traits like her fangs and eyes. Despite being a member of the F tribe. On a non Miqo'te example, Hilda is a mixed race child between Elezen and Hyur. Her mother was ousted when it was discovered she was pregnant because that kind of affair is a big slight in Ishgard amongst the nobility.

Things seem a lot more relaxed about it in the cities and larger towns. Such as the similar Hyur and Miqo'te relationship that in Ala Ghanna. Adventurers also seem to go against the taboo, such as the previously mentioned gay couple. But there is also a Miqo'te couple who were killed by bears in the Dravanian Highlands, leaving a daughter behind. Though this is more along the lines of a same race couple going against the rules of their race.

So on that note, it seems to vary between race to race. As well as tribe to tribe.

[myahele]

Inter-clan relationships doesn't seem to be frowned upon in Eorzea compared to inter-racial ones. For example, there's the Mandervilles (unless Julyan is supposed to be a Highlander using a midlander model like Minfilia and Yda/Lyse) and M'naago's mother is a Keeper despite living with the M tribe in Gyr Abania.

[Jandor]

The interracial dating taboo has always seemed a tad odd given that the various player races for the most part live alongside each other and get along fine, not much overt racism in the world but they can't date

-------

Maybe any prospective children from said relationships are sterile, a bit like mules IRL, and it's considered kind of cruel?

Maybe any kids at all is a rarity in such relationships, and the community considers it kind of selfish? Children would be needed to replace relatively frequent losses in the dangerous world of Eorzea, and a bunch of children to look after you when you got old was often the retirement plan of choice in the past, which would instead fall to the wider community to do if you had no children.

Might be a combo of both.

[Enkidoh]

I wouldn't really take F'lhaminn as an example of a 'mixed clan miqo'te' though, as her appearence of moonkeeper traits with a sunseeker name is simply a development error due to 1.0's muddled development which SE has simply retained or fixed with no explanation (to my knowledge).

If she was mixed clan it would be more likely she'd have fangs but cat eyes as well, which she doesn't - SE simply used the wrong character model for her naming traditions and never corrected it (or, alternatively, the racial naming traditions hadn't been correctly "settled on" by that stage so there might have been some drifting between appearence and name, with Oda and Koji-Fox only finalizing that canonically by ARR's development, hence leaving poor F'lhaminn as an anomaly).

Either way, for all intents and purposes from name she's a sunseeker, and from what I can tell is regarded as one narrative wise despite her appearence.

[MikkoAkure]

I wouldn't really take F'lhaminn as an example of a 'mixed clan miqo'te' though, as her appearence of moonkeeper traits with a sunseeker name is simply a development error due to 1.0's muddled development which SE has simply retained or fixed with no explanation (to my knowledge).

Koji mentioned her specifically as an example of inter-clan miqo'te heritage 8 years ago.

As is indicated by the name, F'lhaminn is a member of the F (bear) Seeker of the Sun tribe. However, as many of you have pointed out, she has many physical features which are attributed to Keepers of the Moon (such as iris shape, skin color, etc). As many of you have also noticed, there have been other characters which have displayed the features of one clan, while following the naming conventions of another. This can be attributed to two factors.

One: It could merely be a genetic anomaly. Just because certain races have a tendency to display certain features (pointed ears, long legs, darker or lighter skin, soul-piercing eyes), doesn't mean that once every thousand or ten thousand births, something deviates from the rules.

Two: It could be that a parent or grandparent was of a different clan, and the features of that clan were passed down. We know for certain that F'lhaminn was raised as a Seeker of the Sun, but we would have to look further down her family tree for clues why she has the appearance of a Keeper of the Moon.

Finally, some good news for our role-players who want a little more spice in their character's history--in character creation for ARR, we'll be allowing the mixing and matching of certain features between clans, so it will be possible to create a Keeper of the Moon-like Seeker of the Sun (or vice versa).

Mixed clan wouldn't necessarily mean an even mix of inherited features either. It's a limit of the game for not being able to mix and match features, but it's not like that doesn't happen in real life either, where despite being mixed the child could take after one parent much more than the other. There are also 8 other miqo'te in the game with appearances that don't match their clan name so F'lhaminn isn't alone. And considering Koji is one of the lore creators, even if these 9 miqo'te were accidents, it's canon now.

Edit: I don't think we got the full mixing and matching of features that he mentioned though... In 1.0 the different clans had different bust sizes as well as their own hair color palettes, and those were made more customizable in ARR but that's all I can think of.

[Naria]

The interracial dating taboo has always seemed a tad odd given that the various player races for the most part live alongside each other and get along fine, not much overt racism in the world but they can't date

-------

Maybe any prospective children from said relationships are sterile, a bit like mules IRL, and it's considered kind of cruel?

Maybe any kids at all is a rarity in such relationships, and the community considers it kind of selfish? Children would be needed to replace relatively frequent losses in the dangerous world of Eorzea, and a bunch of children to look after you when you got old was often the retirement plan of choice in the past, which would instead fall to the wider community to do if you had no children.

Might be a combo of both.

It does seem to be mostly racism actually.

click for wall of text

MCKF: I touched on this a little bit today in the live stream and there was a question about relationships between the races and crossbreeding. A lot of it doesn’t happen because while we have all these races living together in Eorzea, there’s this tension between them. That’s there because they have these histories of fighting for a long time and then not really making up, but agreeing to disagree and living together because it’s better than living by our self and being more susceptible to Garlean attacks or whatever. We work together because we have a common enemy type of thing. Most of the races don’t really like each other and it”s gone on through multiple Eras. There are times when Eorzea has been more populated by one race over another and there will be conflict there. With the Hyur and Elezen, that’s very recent. In the sixth astral era, Elezen migrated in and in that era they were like “we’re the first ones here!” even though they weren’t, but they were the first at the beginning of the sixth astral era and they settled and of course the pesky Hyur who are everywhere come in and the Elezen are like “oh my god we left you that whole continent up there why are you here!” and the Lalafell come in and you have these cycles of clashing and moving part and that gets ingrained in their society and their racial cultures. There’s always these power struggles, you’ll have times when the Lalafell rise for whatever reason and they’l side with one group and then turn on another group and that’s one of the reasons there’s not a lot of interracial relationships because even though they’re living in the same towns it’s like well yeah… but you’re an Elezen.

from: https://gamerescape.com/2014/10/22/f...pher-koji-fox/

He also cites racism here https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...l=1#post490835

I get the disconnect, though, but remember that adventurers in general seem to be the exception to a whole lot of social conventions, and the WoL, Scions and their associates are exceptional among them. Also most of the main Scions are Sharalyan, which seems to anecdotally be even more of a melting pot than Eorzea. Most of Sharalyan's prejudice seems to be wrapped up in nationality not race.

Just because there aren't race wars happening in the street doesn't mean that tensions between races doesn't exist. Off the top of my head I can think of several instances where hyurs and Wildwood elezan act bigoted towards Duskwrigths and Moonkeepers in the early Gridania quests. That he isn't and doesn't allow prejudice in his tavern comes up almost as often as Buscarron is mentioned.

There is one instance in the Hildebrand quests were a Lalafell magnate adopts a Hyur girl, but money is power especially in Ul'dah. Anyone who said something nasty that got back to him probably regretted it. Rich people being able to do almost anything they want in Ul'dah is probably why Gegeruju also doesn't suffer any consequences for his . . . everything.

That said, while the races can crossbreed, I can only think of three examples mentioned in game, so I tend to headcanon that such relationships are less fecund. All the children mentioned in game are hyur/something else. I imagine that races farther from human likely have more trouble producing offspring together. I.E. Elezan and Roe might be okay, but an Au Ra and a Hrothgar probably not. Hyurs are just most likely to be able to produce viable children with another race in my headcanon. Even then it might depend on which parent is which race. I.E. If the mother is from a much smaller race than the sire it might be advisable to abort anyways since carrying to term could risk her life.

Edit:
As far as the offspring being able to have children of their own, one of Kuranai's ancestors was Hyur/Au Ra and was clearly able to have kids with full-blooded Au Ra, since Kuranai exists.