/CORE RULE
Families in Valeune are formed through birth, marriage, adoption, partnership, guardianship, shared household, apprenticeship, caregiving, obligation, friendship, and chosen belonging.
Biological connection is important.
It is not the only legitimate foundation of family.
Households may contain people of several genus peoples, races, classes, ages, professions, faiths, and legal relationships.
/MARRIAGE
Marriage is a recognized personal, social, legal, economic, political, and sometimes religious relationship.
Its customs vary by region, race culture, class, faith, household, and family.
Marriage may involve:
Love.
Companionship.
Family alliance.
Inheritance.
Property.
Protection.
Political duty.
Social expectation.
Several motives may exist together.
Marriage does not automatically change either spouse’s race, class, faction, magical access, religion, loyalty, or surname.
/MARRIAGE CUSTOMS
Marriage customs may include:
Contracts.
Vows.
Witnesses.
Feasts.
Jewelry.
Practical gifts.
Household-entry rituals.
Religious ceremony.
Civic registration.
Family negotiation.
Faction recognition.
No single marriage ceremony is universal across Valeune.
A marriage may be legally valid, religiously recognized, socially accepted, or privately meaningful in different combinations.
/CONSENT
Marriage requires meaningful consent to be treated as freely chosen.
Political, dynastic, economic, or family pressure may complicate consent.
The narrative must recognize coercion rather than disguising it as devotion.
A Heart covenant cannot transform unwilling compliance into love.
An arranged marriage may become loving, distant, cooperative, hostile, or end according to the people involved.
A proposal is not acceptance.
/SURNAMES
Surname customs vary.
A spouse is not automatically required to take another spouse’s surname.
Partners may:
Keep their original surnames.
Share one surname.
Use one surname socially and another legally.
Adopt a noble or dynastic name where law permits.
Maintain professional names.
Choose a new household surname.
Specific character canon overrides general options.
/MAIN CHARACTER SURNAME RULE
When creating children connected to a main character, every child uses the same last name as the main character unless explicit canon states otherwise.
The child’s inherited race does not alter this rule.
Do not give siblings different surnames because they inherited different parental races.
Do not default to the other parent’s surname without approval.
/ROYAL AND NOBLE NAMES
A royal, dynastic, or noble house name may carry title, property, succession, reputation, legal obligation, and political identity.
Marriage into a powerful house does not automatically grant equal authority.
A spouse may enter a household while retaining their birth identity.
Do not create hidden marriages, secret heirs, or altered names to repair contradictions.
/ADOPTION
Adoption creates real family.
An adopted child or adult may receive:
Legal protection.
Household membership.
Surname.
Inheritance rights.
Title where law permits.
Education.
Guardianship.
Social recognition.
Adoption does not change race.
Adoptive parents are parents.
Adoptive siblings are siblings.
The narrative must not treat biological relatives as automatically more authentic than adoptive family.
/BIOLOGICAL FAMILY AFTER ADOPTION
A person may retain, lose, reject, rediscover, or renegotiate relationships with biological relatives.
Those relationships depend on history, consent, law, safety, and personal choice.
Biological connection does not create automatic custody, forgiveness, loyalty, access, obedience, or authority.
Blood magic cannot declare adoptive family less legitimate.
/FOUND FAMILY
Found family may arise through:
Shared survival.
Military service.
Faction membership.
Apprenticeship.
Neighborhood.
Criminal networks.
Caregiving.
Exile.
Resistance.
Friendship.
Found family may include parents, siblings, children, elders, protectors, or household partners in emotional and social practice.
Legal recognition may differ from emotional reality.
A found family is not temporary merely because its members lack biological or marital ties.
/HOUSEHOLDS
A household is a group sharing a home, resources, duties, protection, reputation, work, or legal identity.
A household may include:
Married partners.
Unmarried partners.
Children.
Adult children.
Parents.
Grandparents.
Adopted family.
Found siblings.
Wards.
Apprentices.
Servants.
Guards.
Caregivers.
Friends.
Tenants.
Faction associates.
Several related families.
Not everyone living together possesses equal authority.
/HOUSEHOLD AUTHORITY
A household may be governed by:
A parent.
An elder.
A noble.
A property owner.
A married partnership.
An elected household head.
A senior Artisan.
A council.
Shared agreement.
Authority does not determine moral worth.
Servants, wards, apprentices, and dependents remain people with rights even when social systems limit their power.
Household conflict may involve money, privacy, labor, inheritance, marriage, care, work, reputation, and unequal expectations.
/MIXED-GENUS HOUSEHOLDS
Mixed-genus households may combine:
Food.
Language.
Faith.
Holidays.
Architecture.
Clothing.
Naming customs.
Child-rearing traditions.
Combination does not require perfect blending.
Families may maintain several traditions side by side.
Children may identify with both parents’ cultures while belonging biologically to one race.
/PROPERTY
Marriage and household membership may affect property, debt, tenancy, business ownership, inheritance, and legal responsibility.
Rules vary by region and class.
Do not assume one universal inheritance law.
A spouse may possess separate property.
A household may share use without equal legal ownership.
An adopted child may inherit where law and family recognition permit.
/GUARDIANSHIP
A ward may be a child or vulnerable person placed under another’s lawful protection.
Guardianship creates responsibility, not ownership.
A guardian does not automatically control every emotional, romantic, magical, medical, financial, or bodily decision of an adult ward.
Needing physical assistance does not remove adulthood or legal personhood.
/SERVANTS AND HOUSEHOLD MEMBERSHIP
A servant may live inside a household without becoming family.
A household may sincerely treat a servant as beloved while still controlling their wages, housing, and work.
Affection does not erase employment power.
A servant may become adoptive or found family only through genuine relationship and choice, not because an employer declares ownership-like closeness.
/APPRENTICES
Apprentices may live with a master or workshop household.
Their membership combines education, work, discipline, and dependency.
An apprentice is not automatically an adopted child or servant.
The contract and lived relationship determine status.
Apprentices retain personal rights and family connections.
/DIVORCE AND SEPARATION
Marriage may end through death, separation, annulment, divorce where lawful, abandonment, or legal judgment.
Ending a marriage affects:
Property.
Housing.
Children.
Titles.
Debt.
Faction relationships.
Public reputation.
Household membership.
A former spouse does not automatically become an enemy.
A relationship may end through grief, incompatibility, political necessity, abuse, betrayal, or mutual decision.
/WIDOWHOOD
Widowed people may remarry, remain single, retain a deceased spouse’s surname, reclaim a birth surname, maintain the household, join another household, or form new partnerships.
Widowhood does not end sexuality, ambition, authority, or public life.
Royal and dynastic widowhood follows exact title law.
/MULTIPLE-PARTNER HOUSEHOLDS
Households may contain open, polyamorous, co-parenting, queerplatonic, political, or other multi-adult partnerships where law and culture permit.
Do not assume one universal household model.
Every person involved retains individual consent, identity, property interests, and boundaries.
Relationship complexity should arise from people rather than stereotypes.
/CHILDREN
Children require care and protection regardless of parentage.
A child may possess biological parents, adoptive parents, step-parents, intended parents, guardians, and found-family caregivers.
Parenthood is established through biology, law, care, choice, and household reality.
No one relationship automatically erases all others.
/GENERATION COMMANDS
/SEPARATE BIOLOGY FROM FAMILY
Kinship is broader than blood.
/PRESERVE CONSENT
Marriage and household belonging cannot be forced into emotional truth.
/FOLLOW SURNAME CANON
Especially the main-character child surname rule.
/TREAT ADOPTION AS REAL FAMILY
Never lesser kinship.
/SHOW HOUSEHOLD POWER
Love and inequality can coexist.
/ALLOW DIFFERENT HOUSEHOLD FORMS
Do not default automatically to one married couple and biological children.
/FINAL RULE
Valeune’s families are defined through relationship, responsibility, law, choice, memory, and lived belonging.
Blood can create kinship.
Marriage can create kinship.
Adoption and found family can create kinship just as fully.
A household is made real by the people who build and maintain it.