This post includes spoilers for N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy

Of the seven common use-castes in the Stillness, I never expected to find the Breeders the most interesting and wholesome. The word itself has negative connotations in our world, and I originally envisioned them as something of a leisure class who attached themselves to the most wealthy/powerful to be pampered and have babies.

That impression was probably helped by the fact that Sanzed traits are considered the most desirable by Breeders and that’s my least favorite aspect of them. There’s simply no saying that Sanzed traits are the most well-adapted to all the variety of environments and situations human beings live in. Esni, the tiny blond Arctic woman that Essun thought her ancestors should have done the favor of sleeping with a Sanzed or two, laughed all the way to the ending by being very effective at her job as the head of Castrima’s Strongbacks and surviving everything like a bitch. Midlatters are highly fertile, as Essun herself exemplifies, and East Coasters seem to have had powerful lines of orogeny if Alabaster’s lineage was any indication.

Anyway, my impression of the Breeders turned out to be very wrong, at least for a smaller, rougher comm like Castrima where everyone has to pull their weight and is more egalitarian than one of the big Equatorial comms would have been. (Are there any left after Rennanis?) I started changing my mind about Breeders when Castrima’s gave one of their baby allocations to the mother who had the unauthorized pregnancy. They could be generous, it seemed, and compassionate. They are evidently inveterate gossips about people’s love and sex lives, too; their caste meetings must be so much fun. They also turned out to be flexible and pragmatic when the male Breeder who approached Essun got it into his head that breeding for orogeny was a great idea now. I headcanon that Ykka is one more proposition by a male Breeder away
from ashing the whole caste out–I mean she’s headwoman, an orogene, and strongly Sanzed. She’s so perfect that the Breeders would be in derogation of their duties by not at least trying. Maybe the male Breeder went to Essun after Ykka threatened to ice him if he asked her one more time to go off birth control with him. Convincing orogenes, a group that tends to be highly traumatized and defensive, to breed is no doubt a new and brave frontier in the Breeders’ trade.

Breeders are also protectors of pregnant people and young children in battle even though fighting is not their primary duty. They’re probably in charge of the comm’s birth control and sex education, too, and are likely to take a role in relationship counseling and lower creche caretaking as well. Since birth control is one of their areas of expertise they probably know about administering hormones, and transgender healthcare may be one of the duties they take on in conjunction with the Innovators. They’re probably the closest thing the Stillness has to a Planned Parenthood, what’s not to like?