Senavista

Senzavista - without sight. Vodacce noblewomen born without Sorte are typically disregarded at birth as half-blind, unable to fulfill their assigned role in the Great Game. They are subject to most of the restrictions placed on their sorcerous sisters, but do not receive the same respect in return. For most, it is an unhappy life.

Growing Up

If a Senzavista has an older strega sister, the assumption is that she will be her sister's vedova. The word is the same as the one used for "widow," and in some senses, the vedova is "married but without a husband." She shares her sister's husband, but is expected to be a distinctly junior partner. Her husband, after all, has to maintain her for the rest of her life and she can't even provide him with the most basic Sorte readings. These Senzavista will be trained to be subservient to their older sisters. They will be her lady-in-waiting (or, in some cases, maid) for the rest of their lives.

Luckier by far are the girls born to families with no strega at all. They have either all brothers or other Senzavista sisters. This is common in Vestini lands, where strega are rarer than elsewhere in Vodacce. There is no sister to be vedova to, so the girl must eventually be married off in her own right. To be an attractive prospect, she must bring something to the marriage - a large dowry and good family connections are the best options. Beauty may find favor, but a Vodacce man knows he can always go to a young courtesan for beauty, so it is not needful in a wife. A clever woman who can play the Great Game well is a prize, but only to those men far-sighted enough to look beyond common Vodacce prejudices.

Noblewomen, strega and Senzavista alike, are not taught to read. Women in Vodacce households spend a great deal of time alone together, and the men don't trust an educated Senzavista not to teach her sisters or mother how to read. Some Senzavista (again, especially in Vestini lands) are permitted to educate themselves by attending lectures designed for them. Material is presented orally or by demonstration - nothing is written down, except maybe for some geometric diagrams.

Vedova

Usually, just as the Senzavista has been raised to "know her place" relative to her "sighted" sister, the strega has been raised to know hers. By the time the two are married to a husband, both find it entirely natural that the strega gives all of the orders. They might be affectionate toward each other or not, as their personalities incline them, but the natural expectation is that, if the strega tells her sister to do something, it will get done.

Strega are themselves very aware of relationships and the way power flows between people; they also play the Game. Although many - perhaps most - are not "evil stepsisters," they also understand that the only way to have power is to take it, keep it, and defend it. Their Sorte gives them unnatural ways to do that; if they have the smallest bit of authority over their sister and enough sorcerous skill, they can tug and strengthen that slender Rods strand into a thick rope. To keep their husband's affections, they increase their Cups strand with him while thinning out any that may attach to their sister. They can act without malice toward their sister, seeing these things as their own defense, not as attacks on her - but the result for the poor vedova is a broken will and loveless marriage.

The Church

Not a few Senzavista join the Church as nuns. This allows them access to learning, including reading, and to life roles beyond wife or vedova. Some monastic orders are contemplative - that is, the nuns do nothing but pray all day. (These orders are the only ones strega may ever join in Vodacce.) But others are active, doing works of charity like running orphanages or teaching in Church schools.

Unlike priests, who can marry, most Thean monks and nuns do take vows of celibacy. The call to a monastic life is a call to a marriage with Theus, whether one seeks him through prayer or through works. So educated noble nuns do not present Vodacce society with a large problem.

Female priests, however, do.

Whether she was a Senzavista, merchantwoman, or commoner, the Vodacce look askance at female priests. The Vaticine Church has no policy against it - indeed, two of the cardinals of the church today are women - but priests have authority. In Vodacce, male people are the ones who get to exercise authority in the public sphere. Female people in positions of authority over male people - inconceivable! The problems of noble female literacy and then marriage are secondary to that.

For a determined individual with sufficient leverage, it is not impossible to get into a seminary, receive Ordination, and get a post in a small parish somewhere. It is difficult, though, and of the women who aspire to the priesthood, many end up taking monastic vows instead.

A noble Senzavista priest like Father Masacci will almost certainly never be permitted to marry. The risk of an educated mother bearing a strega daughter is something the Powers That Be do not care to contemplate.

Vestini "Courtesans"

The great beauty and poor sorcery of women in the Vestini family is well-known in Vodacce. Sometimes, these Senzavista are referred to as Vestini "courtesans," which ought to be a killing insult.

A Vestini Senzavista may have been raised with the best education a Vodacce noblewoman can get, short of the nunnery. Vestini etiquette teachers aim their Senzavista pupils toward a pleasant but modest ideal of comportment that is something between the silent, submissive posture the strega is supposed to show her husband and the forward, flirting ways of the courtesan. A good Castillian wife and a Vestini Senzavista might find that they had quite a lot in common.

They are not courtesans. Courtesans take lovers for money. They might have the manners and education of a real lady, but they're just grasping commoners reaching above their station by seducing men. To compare any noblewoman to a courtesan is a grave insult. The only possible way "Vestini courtesan" could be used correctly would be to mean "a courtesan from Vestini lands." To in any way imply that the Vestini family was training its daughters as expensive prostitutes would quickly earn one a duel from any Vestini partisan who happened to hear.