<< >Once they are mandarins, where do their
>children and wives stand and who can they marry (I'd imagine they still
count
>as members of the original class of the mandarin, but I may as well ask
>anyway).
They are now considered to be of Mandarin's class IMO. >>
Which makes sense, but doesn't entirely solve the problem. The children of mandarins still have to pass the entrance exams to be employed as mandarins themselves. Even assuming a 99% pass rate among candidates whose fathers were mandarins, my calculations indicate that about 15 such candidates per year will fail the exams. OK, so the number is a very rough estimate and the pass rate probably isn't 99%, but either way there must be mechanism to determine what class the child of a member of the Mandarin class ends up in if he fails the exams.
My assumption would be that he reverts to whatever class his ancestors were in before they were mandarins - this may, of course, require going back several generations. Mind you, he probably won't be much suited for that class by training (of course, he's a bit of a pratt anyway) and he probably won't have any close relatives in the relevant profession. A bit of a bummer all round, but serves him right, I guess.
Alternatively, he could get automatically dumped into the Scribe's class or whichever it is all those minor functionaries belong to. At least he'd have some of the right skills and he won't be required to show so much in the way of initiative and intellect (which is probably a good thing in his case).
Forward the impeccable Kralori Army!
Trotsky
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