>>>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.
Where on earth do you get a 99% pass rate? Mandarins are the cream of the Kralori civil service and there is simply no way that a son of a Mandarin can expect to achieve Mandarin status. They are as rare and and as exalted as High Priests are in west-central genertelan society.
>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.
Why? If he's a failure, he's still literate and thus find employment as a scribe, scholar or whatever the Kralori intelligentsia do. Most male kin of a Mandarin would be employed in this aspect. Therefore there is no need to demote the failure to whatever class his ancestors may have had. The Kralori are not a caste-ridden society - people can and do jump classes and the only mechanism to control this is social disapproval.
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