Those are all great ways of explaining how it works. My point isn't that it couldn't work, it's that if you add them to the world, you need to address how it works or it becomes a big question for me how it does. I don't think people thought about or were conscious of the concepts of gender the same way we are today, I think history itself is fairly recent, at least to the common man. That's the one differences between science-fiction and fantasy to me, fantasy extrapolates how societies would deal with modern issues with old fashioned world views, while science-fiction tries to extrapolate what future issues will change a society's assumptions and world views. Case in point we meet the Empress of Orlais whose reign is under threat and whose legitimacy is in question, an heir, or a political marriage could really have helped with that situation, I don't remember if this is ever addressed in the game. I don't remember much about Inquisition anymore actually, though I remember the Orlais story being the weakest in a game that was really underwhelming me. That kind of strained logic abound. It's funny you mention that about Dorian, Silver/, because of how established adoption is in Roman society, I'm still not sure what was going on with that plot.
I don't consider the setting of Faerun to be tailored to fit every roleplayer, if it were it would have skills and take social interactions more seriously. It's a heroic adventure game, and heroes can be anyone, if it dealt more with the fantasy societies in a realistic way than I would expect these issues to have satisfying answers. But like I mentioned, because the Forgotten Realms is such a pastiche of tones, genres, cultures and time periods, I don't sweat it too much. But I do think there was a antique mindset in the setting that has become more and more modern with mixed results, for me at least.
