"Usually if one is born a haut one stays within the sort of - sphere, that implies. Haut women are sometimes awarded as brides to ghem-lords who have accomplished valuable things - to rid the haut of anyone who isn't up to their exacting standards, to incentivize doing valuable things, to get haut genes into the ghem population in a controlled manner. If Miles hadn't come along, one likely possibility for me looked like remaining in my constellation until I was thirty or so and then marrying some ghem-general or similar."