I'm glad someone else mentioned the possibility that merchants might be looked down on as they were in real world pre-modern Japan. It's not something I'm comfortable about overtly stating, but it's interesting to consider.
I'm writing my Raen's family to be a relatively recent addition to the ruling class. It's kind of a "not that important to RP" detail, but the family name wasn't changed that much when they transitioned, it went from two characters that meant roughly "evergreen tender" to only one that means roughly "destroy the enemy". It's a bit of a stretch to use that as a family name in real world Japanese, but I've realized looking at the name generator that some of the Raen generated names aren't quite correct either, so there's some wiggle room if you're careful.
Anyway, Kurenai's father views their humble background with contempt. Whether it makes more sense in lore for that to come from societal pressure or personal feelings is irrelevant. The result is that he shielded Kurenai from anything remotely "beneath" her. This provides a window to RP her as both extremely capable in some areas and totally naive in others. She has some martial training and knows a thing or two about the finer things, but if you ask her about how the average Doman lives she couldn't give you a straight answer.
This way I don't really need an answer for a lot of of the gaps in lore. Kurenai being a teenager who was extremely sheltered, too young to engage in politics, and too apart from most common people, she simply doesn't know.
Obviously, you don't need a very specific background to avoid needing answers to our lore gap questions. Your Raen could simply be too emotionally scarred to even talk about his or her homeland for example. I'm sure other ways to get around the issue could be concocted given enough thought.
I'm writing my Raen's family to be a relatively recent addition to the ruling class. It's kind of a "not that important to RP" detail, but the family name wasn't changed that much when they transitioned, it went from two characters that meant roughly "evergreen tender" to only one that means roughly "destroy the enemy". It's a bit of a stretch to use that as a family name in real world Japanese, but I've realized looking at the name generator that some of the Raen generated names aren't quite correct either, so there's some wiggle room if you're careful.
Anyway, Kurenai's father views their humble background with contempt. Whether it makes more sense in lore for that to come from societal pressure or personal feelings is irrelevant. The result is that he shielded Kurenai from anything remotely "beneath" her. This provides a window to RP her as both extremely capable in some areas and totally naive in others. She has some martial training and knows a thing or two about the finer things, but if you ask her about how the average Doman lives she couldn't give you a straight answer.
This way I don't really need an answer for a lot of of the gaps in lore. Kurenai being a teenager who was extremely sheltered, too young to engage in politics, and too apart from most common people, she simply doesn't know.
Obviously, you don't need a very specific background to avoid needing answers to our lore gap questions. Your Raen could simply be too emotionally scarred to even talk about his or her homeland for example. I'm sure other ways to get around the issue could be concocted given enough thought.
