From Un traité sur le mensonge de la pureté by Charles LaVedier
"... But as has been said many times in this work by more oblique signs, that which we call purity is a lie insofar as it is called good. For no thing was ever universally good. And some are always inferior in the ordinary lives experienced by non-philosophers who must get up and toil. Pure water can be, indeed, too pure, so devoid of content it is like unto a poison to the body. Air itself may have no excessive purity but that is not so easily noted. If nothing else, the scent of flowers and fresh bread are adulerations few if any would call evil. And blood, over all else, finds weakness in purity. It is known well, it is seen well, we have fought them. The pure that were fed to Madame, that yielded to our muskets and primitive soleil matrices. The grotesquely deformed Habsburgs were pure, a bloodline ourobouros eating their own children by serving them to drooling old perverts of the same blood. Purity is of limited utility in exclusion experiments in laboratories. We isolate the pure and then see what may come of it. But mixing, that is the way to great things. Only in mixing was anything ever made great. Flour and water. Yeast and grapes. Indeed, copper and tin. Iron and carbon. No copper sword survived the arrival of bronze, and no one would think to bring cold iron against gleaming steel. Plato was wrong in many ways but there is some truth to the idea of as metal, so mortals. We become stronger, healthier, greater as we are mixed. We lose our toxic purity, our invitation to deformity, and our devotion to a lie of parochial locality and tiny-minded miserly attachment to small places. The world is large and if we would be great, we would be large alongside it. My family is. With my grandson Djimon, we have grown large, great, and mixed with strength and hale hardiness."
A bit of an expansion of the world presented in a previous image showing off the result of an anecdote from the description. It should have been known, but Jean-Etienne didn't just engage in a political marriage with a chieftess' daughter for trade rights. She was lesser but not because she was all that was available, but because he was in love with her. And they did have quite the healthy love life. It has been noted that in these "refreshing" relationships (a kind of slang for the relations between Republic persons and foreign trade partners) they have many children, as happened before, but with greater eagerness, more devotion, greater care and even lower rates of mortality. But to keep the depictions low, the focus is on the firstborn. His mother, Neema, was the one to suggest the name, and though she had the power in the marriage, she didn't force it. But, Jean-Etienne was happy to have such a choice, since he wanted his child to truly embody the combination. It was already a different thing, being so proud of having a boy-child first, but Jean-Etienne related that among his people it was a happy occurrence. Neema was in spirit with her husband in a way. Djimon was a foreign name, from the Yoruba traders and she liked the sound of it. In any event, there was Djimon LaVedier.
He is... Well, no other way to say it. He is a f-ing patriot. On both ends of the Nile. He's a big time supporter of the tribal coalition and trade bloc his aunt is taking headship of, but he's also all out for The Republic. He was educated briefly in Austria and largely in Paris. He earned a military position and served in the normal corps, the Sans-Coulotte regular army. He takes after both parents, though his muzzle, ears, and tail are like his father. The spots are bold and clearly from his mother. Here he is, being a flag-waving patriot dressed to the hilt to show his devotion. From the sabots up the long breeches to the carmagnole jacket right to his red liberty cap.
And no, he's not Gabe's ancestor. His grandfather is, Jean-Etienne was his second child. His first was Gabe's ancestor. So this is a cousin many times removed.
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