A house isn't Highborn until the sitting Grand Duchess has a direct blood relation back to the current Empress.
The House of Karinne will become a Highborn house when Rann and Shya's child takes the house throne.
And yeah, I'm aware of that error, blame glitchy MS Word spellchecker since both Yuri and Yeri are named characters in the book and the fact that sometimes I have character dyslexia.
If you read closely, you'll find the occassional place where I also confuse Ayuma and Ayama. Two different characters, extremely close-sounding names.
This is the peril that comes when you create a society where the custom is to have short, vowel-dominated names for women and names that tend to end with the letter N for men (recall Jason believing that Gora was a woman due to his name). There are only so many combinations, and you tend to run into "phonetic synonyms" that can turn you around. So, aspiring writers, my advice to you is DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE, FOR IT WILL HAUNT YOU.
Luckily I haven't reached the point where people don't have the same names yet that weren't specifically named for someone else, but that time will come soon, I think. Names are getting harder and harder to think up.
Oh, that reminds me: a couple of people have asked for the rules of pronunciation for Faey names and words, mainly people who aren't sure how to pronounce the names with Y as vowels in them. I suppose I'll have to get around to that eventually. I've listed a few of the quirks of the Faey language before (like there is no "I after E" in the Faey language), but haven't gone into much detail.
Oh, and for the record, in Faey, when a Y is used as a vowel, it takes on the short I sound, which I will represent with the "ih" phonetic sound. So phonetically, it's "JIHS-lin" and "sih-MOAN." Often, the Y replaces the first I in a word or name to prevent a repeat of the use of the letter I, most often in words with only two syllables, but it is also sometimes used as a stand-alone to create "calligraphic diversity" of a sort, since Y and I are the only interchangable vowel letters in the "English Romanized" Faey language. This is very much different from English, where vowels often have multiple phonetics and can be interchanged in words freely. In Faey, a vowel has ONE sound, and to create alternate sounds, the vowels are combined (AI combining to form the long I sound, AE combining to create the AY sound as in "hay," for example). This convention is common in quite a few languages, and it's based on my own knowledge of the Japanese language.
If you read closely, you can see this pattern repeat in the Faey words I've introduced...if I did it right and followed my own rules, you shouldn't find any two syllable words outside of a couple of exceptions where there are two I's in the same word unless they're together (e.g., the day Chiira). The double I phonetic (pronounced "ee") is why the Y vowel convention came into being, to prevent mispronunciation. There's an exception to this rule, and that's when the I begins the word, like in Ilia's name...and that's a hard name for English speakers to pronounce. "IH-lih-ah"...try it. Both I's carry the short I sound, as in "lick." English speakers reflexively convert the second I to an "ee" sound, but that's not correct pronunciation.
Faey words starting with Y utilize it as a consonant rather than a vowel, much like English.
There is an exception to the phonetic Y rule, as well, and one that matters to the readers. When a Y is followed by a V in a Faey word, the Y changes its pronunciation. It's one of the language's little quirks. In this case, such as Kyva, the Y becomes a long I ("sky" is a good example in Engilsh of this process), replacing the "AI" phonetic in the Faey language that represents the same sound. Kyva's name is pronounced "KAI-va."
Which is completely different from Noraavi. Kyven's name is pronounced with a short I sound ("KIH-ven"), as are all words and names carrying the Y vowel spelling convention; his name is an evolved version of the common English name Kevin.
See? SEE? I DO do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that you never see! I'm not just playing Warcraft or watching My Little Pony or anything!
Mostly.