presents...
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Your typical non-Vodacce has heard about the Great Game and the cunning and treachery required to play. They know about the hedonism: the fine wine, delicious food and beautiful courtesans. If they don't know about Vodacce honor and Vodacce tempers, they learn about them quickly. What do the Vodacce think about these visitors?
Men
It's all about the virtu, the Vodacce ideal of masculine honor. If a man has virtu, he's a real man and a force to be reckoned with - a player in the Great Game. Maybe he dresses in girlish Castillian lace or talks with a funny Ussuran accent. But if, when he's challenged on those things, he can best other men in a duel, then he's welcome to them.
And he will be challenged on them. He will be tested, again and again, every time he meets a new player in the Game, at least until he's developed sufficient reputation that it preceeds him. The Vodacce don't cut each other any breaks; they certainly aren't going to go easy on some foreigner. There is no "respecting his culture" or "appreciating his differences." He's either a real man, or he's not, and they'll insist on taking his measure.
Unless, of course, he's already given his measure as a sufficiently large number of senators or a Syrneth artifact or something else the Vodacce want. When someone is holding high cards in the Game and he knows it, it doesn't pay to bluff him.
Vodacce women, when they interact with foreign men, tend to measure them against whatever standards they use for Vodacce men as well. Courtesans are well aware that foreign men are often very curious about them and are eager for their company; prices are raised accordingly.
Vodacce men have a small number of roles into which they can comfortably place women, Vodacce or foreign. There are wives. A man's own virtu is connected to his ability to defend his wife and her honor from other men. Respect is shown to other men by respecting their claim to their wives. If they desire a married woman and don't respect her husband, well... he'd better be prepared to demonstrate his virtu by safeguarding his wife.
There are also lovers; the insult involved in romancing a man's lover is less than the one given by seducing his wife, but it's still an insult. And there are servants, who are typically invisible.
Castillian women are accepted by Vodacce men as honorable wives, as are proven good Vaticine women of any nationality. In general, however, most foreign women (unless the wives of potential business partners) are thought to be of rather easier virtue than decent (Vodacce, Vaticine) women and are popular targets for romantic seduction. None of them seem to mind their husbands overmuch, and their husbands don't seem to care how other men look at them. It would almost show a lack of virtu to ignore such a tempting target!
Vodacce women, on the other hand, have very definite and sharp opinions about these foreigners. Courtesans dislike the competition for the "educated female companion" role they monopolize in Vodacce. Strega bitterly resent the reminder that they are considered disadvantaged and ignorant by the rest of noble Theah. Senzavista would be envious of their advantages, if Senzavista had the willpower to summon up strong emotions against anyone. Feminine visitors to Vodacce get the strong impression that the women don't like them much, although the men are always so charming (although perhaps a bit forward, and you have to watch the hands).
Foreign women who marry into Vodacce families had best pray to Theus for good luck and a mainland match. Continental Vodacce families find it prudent to solidifiy alliances with foreign marriages more often than island families, so the practice is more accepted. Indeed, a woman from a cosmopolitan center of Theah might be welcomed in a mainland home if she brings some of the goodies to share with the Vodacce women already there, shows proper respect to the house strega, and loses her forward, foreign ways (of speaking without having been spoken to, of looking men in the eye, of dressing in colors other than black, etc). In other words: if she acts like the Senzavista she is, she may not be ostracized.
Island noblewomen (and courtesans) tend to be much more vicious. The islands are the homes of the Princes and the center of the Great Game; everything is more vicious. A foreign wife on the islands will find her strega in-laws stubbornly silent and uncooperative; she is, to them, an unworthy Senzavista match for their brother or son. Her husband's courtesan will probably be as sweet and nice as can be, until the awful public betrayal and humiliation she'll attempt to inflict to prove that she's the smarter, prettier, more cunning companion. Her husband's (male) courtiers may offer her their friendship, but most will have ulterior motives for doing so - and she'll eventually come to automatically suspect them all. At best, if her husband clearly favors her, she might acquire some sycophants and flatterers.
The notable exceptions to these unhappy circumstances are foreign women married to church men who cannot marry strega. If a man must marry a Senzavista, and he's a man of learning and education, it must be admitted by all that a well-educated foreigner might be more suitable than a Vodacce girl. At least it's more decorous than a priest with a courtesan on the side.
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