Quote Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin View Post
Contextually, taking the firstborn son of your conquered foe into service is a BIG DEAL in feudal societies. It never said that was the only source of Custodes. People trying to parlay that into Custodes being a boys only club are reading into it something that isn't there.
Yeah, that act only matters as long as the inheritance laws say only the eldest son inherits. And any sane response to "He takes our eldest son as punishment leaving us without a proper heir" is "Lets just make it eldest child so we at least have an heir if he takes our son", and Emps saying "I can work with this" and starts taking eldest daughters too. If they tried to outwit him with something so simple, his ego would instantly make him work twice as hard to outplay their attempt to outwit him. Even if hes so backwards to only make it work on male kids, the instant they tried to outmanoeuvre his punishment in such a simple way he would lock himself in his lab for the next half decade to work out a way to make it work on girls too.