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Female population
- The military system has been held up in its current state for some two hundred years, and a male pilot goes through several concubines every year. How is there not already a demographic catastrophe happening with the ensuing massive imbalance between male and female population, and how are women still socially valued so little when, realistically, they must have become rare and thereby the chances of the population's survival must have thinned out?
- Several thousand female deaths per year is not nearly enough to cause a demographic collapse when it's stated that the population is in the millions. It's not like there aren't more girls being born every minute who don't go on to become concubine-pilots. Also, consider the real life effects of sex-selective abortions in China after the one child policy. It's caused a gender imbalance of at least 30 MILLION, and it hasn't made Chinese society put women on a pedestal. What it has caused is more human trafficking and increased bride prices, which parents pay for their sons by selling their daughters, like what happened to Zetian and her sister. Sexism isn't caused by abundance or scarcity of women, and it's not supposed to be based on logic sense. Everybody knows women are crucial to the reproduction of the next generation, yet that didn't stop them from aborting their baby daughters because they'd rather have a son.
- It's possible that since the smaller Chrysalises take less energy to pilot, the concubines in them might last a few battles longer, decreasing the amount of concubines a given pilot goes through. That said, it's implied that women are increasingly rare — Zetian's parents were relying on the money from Big Sister getting killed in combat before they could afford to get her brother a wife, and Yizhi is quick to mention that he can match any price Zetian's parents set, suggesting that this is a rarity.
- Zetian mentions this as well: Women are so valuable as commodities that they are worth far more than they could ever be as people. You don't care about the opinions of a big pile of gold.
How small do chrysalises get?
- The smallest mentioned is Earl-class, but we known hundun go down below noble-class entirely, so presumably that's not the smallest they can be.
Pilot smaller chrysalises
- What would happen if they started having pairs pilot chrysalises below their maximum? If you had a Prince pilot a duke-class, would he be able to control it for much longer? The average spirit pressure is mentioned as 80; could a pair of random people pilot a chrysalis made from a common-class hundun?
