The Family Cult: House Baenre
I know it has been awhile since I’ve last updated this series, and I’m sure many of you have probably been waiting for me to talk about Minthara and Lolth for quite some time. I’m digging this one out of my drafts because my current fic got me really thinking about this essay that I never posted.
One fundamental difference between Lolthite worship vs the cults we see in the game is that Lolthite worship is far more encompassing. Comparing this to the Sharrans, or the Absolute, or the Dead Three, we see tiny sects, tiny groups of people worshipping these gods. But Lolth? She’s got an entire city, people, and culture dedicated to her. This isn’t to downplay the influence the other cults have had, what I’m simply saying is that Lolthites are not ashamed to admit they are Lolthites nor do they try to hide it. It’s no secret in Menzoberranzan who they worship and when you meet a drow with red eyes, it is far more likely they worship Lolth than not. In Menzoberranzan, Lolthite worship is not a cult, it’s their religion. But people in cults never think they are in cults, and secrecy is not a requirement for a cult to exist. At it’s base, a cult is nothing other than a coercive institution/hierarchy. And yes, it is possible for a cult to dominate a city, a culture, even a country…
It is not uncommon for cults to co-opt the practices and beliefs of an established religion that dominates their place of residence. Not all cults, but some cults do like to form around the family unit and establish "The Family" as the cult. We can think of Lolth as the official religion of Menzoberranzan, but Minthara was not in a Cult of Lolth. The cult Minthara was in was the cult of House Baenre that used the tenets of Lolth as a means to control those within it.
It is easy for us as fans to use Minthara as a representative of drow society and to a degree she is. But she is more representative of noble drow if anything. Most drow perhaps never really had to worry about the things Minthara had to, nor had the same expectations she did. Many of the drow we know of by name are all noble drow: Minthara, Viconia, Drizzt, Jarlaxle, Gromph. Even characters like Dhourn and Oblodra are noble drow. I think the drow twins are the only drow we meet in game that are more than likely not noble drow.
I think we can consider each noble house to be its own mini cult. A lot of the noble houses have similar hierarchies and operate in similar ways since they are basing their family cult off the tenets of the same god. They use the idea of "family" to create this militant force within the house, and I've talked before about how cults can be very militant. Minthara talks of having been trained as a young child to be a soldier in Lolth's army. The thing is, Menzoberranzan does not have a formal army but it relies on members within these noble houses to offer up their own people to defend it. Like most children in irl cults, she was groomed as a child to be expected to use her body and die for The Idol. And like all members of cults, her expected life path was somewhat dictated for her: go to cleric school, become priestess, become High Priestess of House Baenre, have a daughter, kill you mother, become matron mother, get killed by your daughter.
We do not know for sure that Minthara did go to clerical school, but she more than likely did and there is in game evidence for this. Generally, The Family will train their children in the ways of Lolth before formally sending them off to Arach Tinilith. (And if you really think about it, the practice of sending young female drow at the age of 25 to Arach Tinilith is Menzoberranzan’s version of forced conscription. What makes this an interesting take on forced conscription is that there is greater pressure on noble drow than commoners). Her earliest foundations of Lolth would have been based upon House Baenre's interpretation of Lolthite worship, and House Baenre has a very close connection to Lolth and the founding of Menzoberranzan. It would have been installed within Minthara very young the importance and significance of her name, forced to hold herself to significantly higher standards than others. The purpose of sending the female drow off the Arach Tinilith is to make the cleric's more powerful and deepen the faith in Lolth, and to tell these young women that their purpose is to use their newfound knowledge and power to serve The Family.
At the end of clerical school, there is this graduation ceremony. This ceremony is basically a massive orgy filled with booze and drugs and mindless sex. At some point, a fiend is summoned and the top performer is expected to fornicate with this fiend. It is done in the hopes of conceiving a demon baby and gain additional favor from Lolth. At the end of their formal training, it is instilled deep within them that they are to use their bodies and wombs for Lolth, as a sign of devotion and they have no real say in the matter. We do not know if Minthara participated in this ceremony as we do know she goes on to become a paladin. However, I think her... infatuation with the Slayer and even a Mind Flayer player character could indicate that she is not unfamiliar with sleeping with non-humanoids. If she has never slept with this fiend, she has at least been groomed since she was a young woman to do so. My personal headcanon is that Minthara never finished clerical school and went down the path of paladin at some point during her training and it is related to the Vandree Priestess. Her oath to Lolth is her sign of devotion, a divine promise that she will live and die to fulfill Lolth's agenda, for The Family.
Minthara says that she has been called "special" since she was a child and refers to this as the "burden of expectations". And the path that was predetermined for her did have some pretty high expectations. Ambition and the strive for power is one such expectation. An expectation that comes with the risk of being murdered. Minthara is very paranoid and always anticipates a knife in her back. But the most likely person to kill her is someone within The Family. The members constantly biting at each other's throats keeps the ones at top in power, even though the ones at the top are not 100% safe but are the safest. Remember, those who fight for autonomy do so because they have none. The drow in The Family are expected to kill each other and expecting to be killed as that is how to show devotion to Lolth, devotion to The Family. To kill is to show strength, and to die is to show weakness. So one must always be strong, because otherwise they do not deserve their privilege, they do not deserve the name of The Family, they do not deserve to live.
Minthara and most other drow are also completely disconnected from their emotions, namely love. Love is incredibly taboo to the point that there is no word for it in their language and they have to borrow it from other cultures. When you're in a cult, you are not supposed to love anybody but The Idol. You are supposed to put the cult first, The Family first, The Idol first. Why do you think a DJ Shadowheart demotes a romanced player to FWB after becoming the Chosen of Shar? To love another is to put the cult aside, and that is a big no-no. So the drow have become rather secretive about feeling genuine affection towards others. Not only could Lolth punish them for loving someone, but so could other drow. Other members of The Family will enforce this punishment, and kill the lover to remind the drow that their heart has strayed and to correct this behavior. And, perhaps, Lolth could have directly instructed Minthara to kill her lover, because Minthara made the cardinal sin of putting someone else first in her heart.
Now, the drow cannot survive if all they ever do is kill each other. Unlike other elf races, drow do not have a reincarnation cycle and so they are not restricted in reproduction like other elves. So drow noble women often have a lot of kids and there is an expectation that they will. They are expected to use their bodies to repopulate their house and strengthen Lolth's army and gain more favor with her. In EA of BG3, Minthara had a Speak With Dead line where she mentions a daughter in Menzoberranzan. This line has since been removed from the final release (sans that one buggy update) and there is no other mention of a child. We do not know for sure if Minthara has children, but considering she is 200+ years old and has had many sexual partners, I find it unlikely she doesn't have a kid waiting for her back in Menzoberranzan. Especially since House Baenre would have expected her to have a kid at some point, because no kids means less power and less labor for The Family to exploit.
Children also establish a line of succession, and give a drow a stronger claim to Matron as her own children can form as her own mini army. We can think of the Matron mother as the head of the cult, and the only way to replace the head of the cult is for them to die (usually). And everyone wants to be cult leader, everyone wants to be safe. They kill their competition, siblings, aunts/uncles, nieces, nephews, anyone who has a claim to Matron, for the purposes of weakening the head of the cult so they can claim it for themselves. Minthara has a complicated relationship with her mother and does to refer to her mother's treatment of her as torment. I do not deny that a little bit of Minthara's desire to kill her mother would be fueled by good 'ol resentment and that vengeance oath. But there is still this cult expectation to do so. We do not know for sure who her mother is and there are plenty of theories. If her mother is matron mother, then Minthara is just one premeditated murder away from being the head of the cult, one premeditated murder away from being truly safe. If her mother isn't matron, well, she would still be on the murder path to safety. If Minthara becomes matron, she can change whatever rules she wants, fill her closest enforcers with allies, do whatever she needs to do to maintain her power and safety.
It's why she is so hung up on matricide and is upset about not being able to kill her mother. Or why she congratulates Wyll and Shadowheart for killing their parents. Because now they are the head of their cults, now they have power, now they are safe. And in Shadowheart's case, it is very very literal. Especially since Viconia structured the House of Grief kinda like a drow noble house and treated Shadowheart like any drow matron would their daughter.
But the failure to live up to expectations has Minthara rattled. Leaving a cult is not easy and comes with it a lot of emotional shock, one Minthara pretends doesn't bother her. Cults instill such intense expectations as a means of getting members to restrict themselves, and with it causes distress if they fail to meet these expectations. There comes the desperation to make it up, get right with The Family and The Idol. All she wants to do is go home and kill her mother, live up to those expectation and soothe her discomfort. Show to all those who care that she isn't a bad drow, she isn't a bad Baenre, and she's entitled to safety. With you by her side, she feels comfortable discarding these expectations and forging her own path. But without you to encourage her, what else is she to do than to walk the path already written for her and live up to the expectations of the cult that is House Baenre.
