When Dracula seized Constantinople and the sun died, the old social order did not survive the transition intact. Kings fell, churches broke, bloodlines lost meaning, and divine authority was exposed as conditional. Gender hierarchy, long enforced by custom and doctrine, was not preserved out of respect. It was discarded as inefficient.
Dracula did not abolish patriarchal norms to correct injustice. He abolished them because they were unnecessary. Power, under his rule, is not inherited through family, marriage, or gendered lineage. It is assigned, extracted, proven, or taken. Any structure that limits who may serve, judge, fight, or rule is considered a human superstition, not a law.
As a result, women in the domains directly governed by the Ebon Court occupy positions that would have been unthinkable before the Forever Night. They serve as judges, spymasters, enforcers, artificers, diplomats, scholars, and officers. Their presence is not symbolic. They are held to the same standards, punished with the same severity, and discarded with the same indifference as men.
Equality under Dracula is not mercy. It is exposure.
Dracula views gender hierarchy as a relic of divine scarcity. In his philosophy, gender mattered only because gods demanded it matter. Once the sun was silenced and divine oversight removed, the justification collapsed.
From the Court’s perspective, bodies are vessels of labor and will. Hunger, loyalty, fear, and ambition are not gendered traits. To privilege men over women is to waste potential, and wasted potential is a flaw Dracula does not tolerate.
This does not mean women are protected. They are simply no longer shielded by tradition. Pregnancy does not exempt. Marriage does not excuse. Piety does not defend. Service is all that remains.
Among Christians living under the Forever Night, this shift is interpreted as profound spiritual disorder.
Many clerics see women’s elevation in courts and armies as evidence that the world has inverted itself. Scripture had defined roles, inheritance, and authority through gendered order. Dracula’s erasure of those distinctions is viewed as an assault on Creation itself, not liberation.
Some underground priests teach that this is a test: that when divine order collapses, false freedoms appear seductive. Others argue that women elevated by a vampire king are not free at all, but doubly damned—used as proof that God has turned His face away.
A smaller, more dangerous Christian minority interprets the change differently. They believe God has withdrawn authority from men as punishment, and that women now carry a heavier spiritual burden. These sects often produce fierce female relic hunters and martyrs, convinced they must act because men failed.
To them, women in resistance are not contradictions. They are consequences.
Among Muslims, the response is more divided and pragmatic.
Islamic scholars debate whether Dracula’s rule represents divine punishment, a trial, or an aberration outside ordinary jurisprudence. The elevation of women to positions of authority is not automatically condemned, as Islamic history already contains precedents for female scholars, rulers, and warriors.
However, what troubles most scholars is not who holds power, but what that power serves.
Women ruling under a vampire king are not seen as empowered; they are seen as compromised by association with an order built on blood extraction, spectacle, and domination. Many jurists argue that authority under Dracula is illegitimate regardless of gender, and participation risks spiritual corrosion.
At the same time, resistance movements in Muslim territories often rely heavily on women. Their mobility, underestimated presence, and exclusion from older surveillance patterns make them effective smugglers, scholars of Ilm al-Fiddah, and relic keepers. This is accepted not as rebellion against tradition, but as necessity under catastrophe.
Among Muslims, the question is not whether women can rule—but whether anyone should under such conditions.
Beyond Dracula’s direct control, older gender norms persist unevenly.
In rural regions, merchant enclaves, and resistance cells, women still face traditional restrictions, often intensified by fear and scarcity. The collapse of religious authority did not automatically dismantle social habit. In some places, patriarchy hardened as a defensive response to chaos.
This creates a sharp contrast: women under Dracula may wield authority without protection, while women outside his reach may be protected without power.
Neither condition is safe.
Dracula did not free women.
He removed the rules that once constrained them.
In doing so, he proved something unsettling: that many hierarchies were maintained not by necessity, but by permission. Once permission was revoked, the structure collapsed.
Whether this is liberation or another form of cruelty depends entirely on who survives long enough to decide.