In Which I Try To Figure Out What The Fuck Is Up With Khaenri'ahn Genetics

so. look.

dainsleif: pureblood. chlothar: pureblood.

caribert: halfblood. and yet, his eyes are just as star-ry as chlothar and dain. (although caribert did have to imagine himself grown up, so we have to take his appearance with a grain of salt.)

direidyth: some amount of kh blood (unclear how much, but likely a few generations, considering her eyes have shifted from stars to diamonds.)

so what the hell is w/ halfdan? because now, from caribert, we can guess that the star pupils last at least one generation.

and i agree, halfdan really does look liyuean! tbh, i'm a fan of it (or at least having some liyuean ancestry) bc kh was supposed to be a (diverse) nation of humans, y'know? unfortunately, genshin models are a very unreliable thing to use to speculate from, but let's just assume he is because just like caribert and direidyth, halfdan ended up monsterized as well.

-and yet, we can no longer rely on who is humanoid and who is monsterized to tell us who is pureblood or not, because. (gestures to capitano and haden).

it's implied the curse of the wild includes hilichurls and all abyss folk (mages, heralds, lectors, etc) and maybe(???) the black serpent knights/shadowy husks. but then what the fuck denotes someone from being a sentient monster vs a hilichurl? i'd say it's the dilution of khaenri'ahn bloodlines, considering direidyth, but caribert had a fullblood parent and was also turned into a hilichurl.

and let's say the black serpent knights were all fullblooded KHs, and yet, they all turned into some armored monster-knights that all suffered from erosion til they were barely sentient. but personally, i assume the knights' monster forms fall under the 'curse of the wild' category, which would imply they would all be partblooded?

and yet, look at haden (also, not my screenshot): he has the curse of immortality, meaning he's fullblooded, and yet he bears the form of an abyss lector. then there's also people like pierro (assumedly fullblood) and capitano; pierro probably has smth similar to dain to keep the curse at bay, and capitano is still humanoid and suffering from the "rot" from erosion.

i actually theorized this a while ago, but i think that all khaenri'ahns were subjected to abyssal corrosion/rot and whether they embraced it or not resulted in their abyss monster forms and coherency (esp for possible wilderness-cursed ones? after all, caribert's situation showed that the power of the abyss could return wilderness-cursed monsters to sentiency.)

haden literally tells us he uses the abyss to keep his body intact, and look at jakob ingold (iniquitous baptist) and klingsor (abyss herald) from the narkissenkreuz and khvarena quests respectively. their transformations from humans to abyss creatures implies that this happens if someone embraces or is contaminated by the abyss regardless of race, implying that the curse of the wilderness and the curse of immortality for khaenri'ahns are separate from any abyssal forms.

this also checks out for the fact dain could murder the rest of the apparently sentient abyss order army (not immortal), but not haden, and also the fact the pari zurvan describes dain's body as "half of his body had become that of a monster, but i did not sense an aura of monstrosity in him." presumably, zurvan is talking about dain's "rot", but unless dain is secretly partblooded, this makes the description of appearing 'monstrous' checks out.

(as for why capitano doesn't have abyssal corrosion, or chlothar: perhaps they did, or weren't hit by the abyss when the cataclysm happened. dain's situation with the ring regenerating his body implies that at least for dain, the abyssal corrosion/rot would continue to grow. look at atea from the natlan aq: her inner organs were abyss corrupted and continued to deteriorate, and the corrosion was amplified when she was exposed to abyssal power.)

ofc, i'm still unclear on whether the black serpent knights fall under the wilderness curse or the abyss, and whether the immortal "rot"/erosion is the same as the abyssal contamination, so halfdan could be whatever the fuck nationality honestly.

and (sorry for the kaeya jumpscare), then there's kaeya, whose eyes are slightly star-like but don't fit either versions of currently known khaenri'ahn eyes. so who knows whatever the fuck his problem is genetically.

(not to mention, direidyth, being partblooded, and halfdan possibly being so, seems to suggest that khaenri'ahn-other-nationality descendants aren't actually as uncommon or taboo as caribert's situation might make you think. otherwise, unless you just magically gained star eyes upon entering khaenri'ah, why are direidyth and her apparent grandmother around?)

SO. TLDR;