Non-male Blessed Siblings?

[No_Nick_Needed]

So far we only met three two-headed Mamool Ja (or just two, if you didn't play the optional ARR dungeons), and all three were male, plus the mention of the first blessed siblings, who was refered to as a he.

Was there ever a mention of a female two-headed Mamool Ja, that I missed? Or maybe even one with one male and one female head... though I have to wonder, what that would mean for their body, below the neck...

I know that Bakool Ja Ja mentioned dead brothers and sisters, but that doesn't necessarily answer the question of whether there were female two-heads, since he could also mean mixed tribe girls with just one head that were miscarriages, or died shortly after birth.

[LilimoLimomo]

I think I've done most, if not all, of the side-quests in Mamook. There's nothing in the lore that says it couldn't happen, but there's also nothing that indicates it has.

It's not quite the same, but I did learn from doing Yok Huy side-quests that several of the in-game allied Yok Huy are women, suggesting that their race doesn't have much in the way of sexual dimorphism, if indeed they even have distinct sexes.

[Cleretic]

This exact question has come up before, including the question of a sibling with differently-gendered heads. And yeah, for a simple binary female blessed sibling, we're in the field of 'all evidence says they can exist and we just haven't seen it'. Fair enough, we've only seen three blessed siblings at all.

And with a mixed-gender pair of siblings we're probably talking about an unlikely but not impossible, we're just likely to be looking at maybe some form of chimerism as the cause, or perhaps a chromosomal thing like Swyer Syndrome. However, with the sky-high infant mortality rate of blessed siblings, I wouldn't be surprised if those kids just... didn't survive.

[No_Nick_Needed]

Well... prior to Dawntrail we only ever met male Mamool Ja of any kind, so maybe we'll meet one of them, or at least hear about it at some point. If for example there was one more blessed sibling, who just wasn't old enough to compete yet, it would make plenty of sense for the Mamool Ja to hide them away from any prying eyes and raise them in some secret enclave, so their perceived enemies couldn't do the same, as the Mamool Ja did with Wuk Lamat.

But if a female blessed sibling existed, it would beg the question if a male and female pair of them would be able to conceive children togther. We know that two-heads are exceptionally unlikely to have children, but as far as we know that was from a two-head with a one-head, not two two-heads together.
Speaking of children (or rather the single child) of two-heads... I hope we'll also meet, or at least hear about both Zarool Ja's mother and partner. Considering how Wuk Lamat had this Hyur mother figure, I would imagine that Zarool's mother either died before the kitty was adopted into the family, or shortly after, or that Zarool came from a fling, rather than a marriage, with the mother leaving the baby behind and hightailing it, neither of which would exactly have added to Zarool's already strained mental state.

[Iscah]

Tangential to the discussion, but I have to wonder about the Doppro Mamool Ja. They're talked about as if they're a third clan equal to the other two but they're far less prominent, don't seem to be part of the blessed siblings thing and don't seem to have had a female model added like the other two clans.

Is it possible that they're not actually a third clan but also children of mixed-clan couples?

[No_Nick_Needed]

Considering how they were mentioned in the wars that pre-dated the birth of the first two-head, by both the Mamool Ja and their enemies, I think it's very unlikely they aren't a proper sub-race+clan. Though it might be an indication that maybe they are considered a lesser clan within Mamook. Maybe they were defeated by the other two in the internal wars, and reduced to a lower caste. That would be an explanation for how there might not have been any marriages between Doppro and the other two.

Spinning this idea further, it might be the key of why Zarool Ja was born. If the Doppro really are untouchables in their home, the chances of any of them ever getting to partner with a vaunted blessed sibling are essentially zero, so any attempts of blessed siblings in Mamook to have children, would have been with other Hoobigo or Boonewa, and due to looking down on Doppro the powers that be, were certain that the "inferior and dirty" Doppro couldn't possibly succeed, where good Hoobigo and Boonewa citizens could not, so it must be impossible.

But in Tuliyolal, everyone is equal, no matter the race or clan. Without this stigma even a Doppro woman could land a good marriage outside her clan, like say... a certain Dawnservant and suddenly the "impossible" happened after all, by simply trying what the Mamook never did, due to prejudice.

If this were the case, it begs the question why Zarool Ja only shows visible characteristics from his father, but none from his mother's Doppro side. That could be explained, if the Doppro DNA were recessive, while the Hoobigo and Boonewa are dominant. Like that Zarool wouldn't show any visible Doppro characteristics, but his mother's DNA could still be filling in the gaps, left by the unstable union of his paternal grandparents' DNA, thus enabling him to be carried to term and survive.

Alternatively, even if the Doppro are an equal clan, their DNA being more recessive than the other two clan's DNA could still explain why unions with Doppro failed to produce two-headed Mamool Ja. The other clan's DNA dominated so much, that the children came out as seemingly pure members of the other parent's clan. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for the Mamook leaders to thus conclude that Doppro can't be part of blessed siblings and thus forgo including them in any attempt to have a blessed silbing conceive a child.... again with Tuliyolal's equality and independance from the fanatical clan leaders, being the deciding differences to Mamook that enabled Gulool Ja Ja to get together with a Doppro and thus have a child, where all the other blessed siblings weren't so fortunate.

[No_Nick_Needed]

Split off to second comment, due to the 3000 character limit... why is this even here? Anyway...

If Zarool was a hybrid of all three clans, it might also explain why he was so powerful. Sure he ultimately lost to Gulool Ja Ja, while not using any performance enhancer, but the old man had multiple decades more combat experience and in that moment far better motivation to win, i.e. saving the nation he built up and protected over his entire life, where Zarool Ja was chasing his own insecurities and potentially battled a bit of guilt deep/reluctance in his own mind for trying to kill his own father. I wonder how a duel between father and son would have ended, if it was just a no-stakes sparring/for-fun match, like Estinien and the WoL had with Gulool Ja Ja.
He clearly blew Bakool Ja Ja out of the water, in terms of raw power.

[Iscah]

Split off to second comment, due to the 3000 character limit... why is this even here? Anyway...

If you hit the limit, just cut all the text, leave a short message saying "editing..." (needs to be 10 characters minimum) and post that, then edit and paste in your actual message.

Also, while we have a lot of "ools" among the cast, Zoraal Ja is not one of them.

But anyway.

Speaking of children (or rather the single child) of two-heads... I hope we'll also meet, or at least hear about both Zarool Ja's mother and partner. Considering how Wuk Lamat had this Hyur mother figure, I would imagine that Zarool's mother either died before the kitty was adopted into the family, or shortly after, or that Zarool came from a fling, rather than a marriage, with the mother leaving the baby behind and hightailing it, neither of which would exactly have added to Zarool's already strained mental state.

I find it quite suspect that there's not a single mention of Zoraal Ja's mother, and doubly so when he then has a son with equally little examination of how he came to be.

The complete lack of mention of his mother – combined with his father supposedly not able to have children in the first place – made me expect there would be a reveal of something more supernatural at work, or maybe Gulool got in contact with "the high-tech civilisation from the trailer" (I was guessing as I made my way through) and Zoraal Ja is a clone or something. I've since seen people theorising that the "key" relic might be wish-granting, so that would be the same result by fantasy rather that sci-fi means.

The only thing that makes me hesitate is that the general population of Tural doesn't seem to find anything odd about it and you'd think they would ask questions if there didn't seem to be a mother involved in the prince's miraculous birth. Or maybe the gossip is old and both people involved are well-liked (at least in the beginning) and they're just not talking about it any more.

[LilimoLimomo]

The complete lack of mention of his mother – combined with his father supposedly not able to have children in the first place – made me expect there would be a reveal of something more supernatural at work, or maybe Gulool got in contact with "the high-tech civilisation from the trailer" (I was guessing as I made my way through) and Zoraal Ja is a clone or something. I've since seen people theorising that the "key" relic might be wish-granting, so that would be the same result by fantasy rather that sci-fi means.

I would prefer if there was something interesting going on with the parentage, but I'm entirely ready for this to fall in line with the trope of mothers simply going unmentioned. Considering how many stories in Dawntrail revolve around parents, we have a surprising number of single parents where a second parent is never mentioned; unless I've missed it, the birth mothers of Zoraal Ja, Gulool Ja, and Wuk Lamat are never mentioned, though we spend a meaningful amount of time with all their birth fathers. Erenville also only has the one parent, but I haven't delved enough into the culture of the Shetona to know whether that's the standard in their culture or not.

The only pair of parents in Dawntrail that are fleshed out enough to have distinct personalities seem to be the parents of Bakool Ja Ja. And depending on how jaded a particular reader is feeling, one possible explanation to why Bakool Ja Ja was actually written with two parents is because his arc depended upon having both an abusive parent — to result in his fall — and a compassionate parent — to help provide him (and the player) with a new direction. Which is to say, in Dawntrail, prominent characters seem to have one parent unless a second would directly provide narrative utility.

And it's not like this is new for FF14. There's basically no information on any women in Solus's line. None of the mothers of Count Edmund's sons are present or prominent in the story, nor is Aymeric's mother; we meet all of the heads of the High Houses, but none of their wives. Cid has a dad, Forchenault has a dad, etc. None of which is to say that there aren't families with two parents — as there certainly are — but it's incredibly common for wives and mothers to either barely be mentioned or have no mention at all.

[SannaR]

The Shetona seem to be similar to their Eorzean cousins in that the men go from one village to the next fathering kids in each village. That when they come back to a village they have offspring in they share stories about the other villages. We learn this from the Botanist and Miner quests. During the the lv 95 follow up quest where we also learn probably the reason why Erenville doesn't speak up til Living Memory in that both Eorzean Viera and Turali Shetona males have it taught that they are to respect their elders. That upsetting one is a grave mistake. Anyway back on topic sort of if it's not mothers not being mentioned then it's the rare time fathers aren't. Unless you're someone like Tataru, Urianger or T'kebbe where you had/have parents but they're dead or assumed to be.