Moral codes are about how you treat other people. Don't steal from them, don't kill them, help those in need. A tiger has no other people. It only pays attention to others so it can figure out how to eat them, sleep with them or take their territory.
And yet we don't call this good or evil. We call it biology.
It becomes slightly more problematic, however, when a solitary predator claims the top of a social hierarchy.
Vaelezar is a dragon; the only true dragon of the Persistence. No truer solitary apex predator has ever existed. With all the repercussions thereof.
The closest human parallel is a psychopath. And yet, nothing is wrong with her, any more than with the tiger. It's her nature. She measures with a different yardstick. The problem? The whole society below her keeps projecting theirs onto her. She lets them. If they're willing to make that mistake, who is she to correct them?
Guilt, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, indignation. All are social emotions that help us track and manage our social standing. She feels none of them. She understands them, though. She has simply learned the steps of a dance to music she does not hear. This is not too hard for her. Not only has she had three thousand years but her draconic blood makes her highly intelligent.
By the movements alone, she can tell another being's values, rules, as well as what it will defend and what it will abandon. From the outside, this is often mistaken for empathy.
The Herd
What would a solitary predator want with a whole society?
For a tiger, that's straightforward enough. To eat without having to worry about being eaten. But then Vaelezar doesn't operate on the level of a tiger. She isn't ruled by instincts and can think beyond immediate needs.
Besides food she wants things like safety, comfort and pleasure. Most of these things are easier when instead of eating the herd you milk it or let it breed. In other words, you let the society prosper enough so that you can extract what you need both today and tomorrow.
'Extract' being the operative word here. The society she has created is not built for the people. Institutions do not exist to make those below her better off. In the Persistence, this means that the Church, the mages guild, the Inquisition, the nobility and the army are each independent fiefs who answer to no one but her. Conflicts are left unresolved on purpose so that these groups continue to distrust each other and remain unable to unite against her.
As an extra step, the Church has been tasked with creating a religion around her. Not because she wants to be worshipped but because an indoctrinated population is a safer population.
Is all this efficient? Certainly not. But again, efficiency isn't the goal. What she cares about is satiating her personal needs and keeping any potential rivals under her thumb. That this means that her subjects live lives filled with more hardship and less comfort than would otherwise be necessary probably doesn't even register.
Kinship
No other creature is like her. Legend has it, she killed all the other true dragons. That is not to say there are no other creatures who look like dragons. She's had plenty of children with other species. And because the draconic blood is so much stronger her children appear like full-fledged dragons. But their minds are subtly different. The other parents have introduced something into them that she does not have.
This is something she (and most of her children) see as a contamination.
And yet, this impurity does give them something that's beyond Vaelezar. Family.
Her children have established large sprawling lineages that run all the way from their almost fully dragon nature to the far-off branches of the family tree where the draconic features have faded away. These lineages have, through intermarriage and breakups, formed numerous houses that control nearly all of the institutions that rule the Persistence.
In these families, the social structures have re-emerged. The draconic blood makes it so they don't function the same as among other species. But it's still there, affecting them in a myriad of ways depending on the strength of that generation's blood and how well they hear the music.
Those of the blood go by several names, and who is called what depends on who is speaking. These are Brood, Dragon and Drakin. Seen from the outside, the rule is simple. One or two generations removed from Vaelezar? Then you are a member of the Brood. Can you do what dragons do? Then you're a dragon. Everyone else is Drakin.
Inside the lineage it's a little more complicated. Here the term Drakin is just as often used derogatorily as descriptively. Those below you on the ladder? They're Drakin. Those above you? Dragons. Somebody needs flattering? Then the term 'Brood' makes an appearance. You yourself are always a dragon, of course. Even if you're nothing of the kind.
The Blood
The Brood have to, just like her, learn the steps from observation. But as the draconic blood gets diluted this is harder. There are good reasons they consider non-draconic blood impure.
Also like Vaelezar, they see social interactions through a utilitarian lens. Some are entirely solitary. Others do enjoy the presence of close family even if they see those relationships as competitive. The activity that most often binds these groups together is the hunt.
Interestingly, these hunts have structure and rules. There's a right way and a wrong way to run down a quarry, and a crude kill is gauche. Hunting parties are as much about establishing dominance among the participants as about bringing down prey. Dragons sort everything alive into three categories: predator, prey, or kin. You don't kill kin. But embarrassing them? That's an entirely different story.
Dragons have no natural predators and during the hunt, 'kin' is a tiny circle that consists of the hunting party. That leaves one category for everybody else — one you really don't want to be in when dragons are out for blood. To make matters even more precarious, dragons need dangerous prey to make the hunt exciting.
Nonetheless, the sheer spectacle of watching dragons bring down prey or each other still attracts an audience. Some want to see how the hierarchy is affected. Some to wager on the outcome. Others to do both.
The Music
At the other end of the lineage from the Brood are those Drakin who can fully immerse themselves in mortal society. They don't just hear the music and they don't need to learn the dance. It is a part of them. They are moved by it. Those whose blood is purer look down on them. And not with empathy since they don't feel any.
Hearing the music means the whole package. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, indignation. A thin-blooded Drakin keeps their word because breaking it would make them feel bad, and they remember exactly who screwed them over last spring. They can build something with people they trust and carry a grudge when they are betrayed. They can understand what praise means and know what it is to be looked down on when a purer cousin walks into the room.
That gives them an edge when dealing with the herd. The Brood might be able to read the dance but that's always as an outsider looking in. These Drakin know from the inside what a threat does to the threatened and know that somebody will only take so much humiliation before they stop paying.
So they end up running the outward facing businesses. They manage the lands and the industries. They collect the rents. They start projects of their own. For those above them, all of this is a sign of impurity. They call them Interpreters and don't mean that name kindly. After all, in their eyes, the only reason they're interpreting is because they can't command.
And yet, these Drakin can do surprisingly well for themselves. They see the ebb and flow of society and use it to lever themselves into positions of power. Some of these lower branches end up rivalling the great houses in terms of wealth and influence. Much to the chagrin of those who know how superior they are to the lowly Interpreters.
The Middle
The ones in the middle of the lineages are in some ways the least fortunate. Their blood is diluted while the music is faint. As a result, neither their intellect nor their empathy is up to the task of understanding the society of the other species. This makes them the most short-sighted.
Other species interpret this as cruelty. But that is once again outsiders misreading the family. The Brood are just as cruel (if not more so) as those in the middle. They are just more likely to temper it since they understand they can extract more if they apply it judiciously. This is not trust or empathy. It's the illusion thereof.
As the middle doesn't have that capacity they are often the most despised. Their demands are unreasonable, they ignore complaints, and use cudgels where a scalpel would have been more effective.
Where the Brood care mostly about themselves and their direct descendants and the Interpreters spread their interest across multiple species, the middle is fully immersed in draconic society.
Put it in the breed's own terms and it comes down to who counts as kin. For the Brood, it's direct family expressed through the hunting party. For the middle, the group has expanded to include their whole house. For the Interpreters, kin has become malleable enough to include whoever they trust, whatever species they may belong to.
The Season
The music the middle does hear makes it so they care about the opinions of their kind while the blood makes sure that this caring is only ever seen through the prism of competition. This expresses itself in what on the surface might seem peculiar to an outsider. Social events. The middle can't get enough of them. They are constantly attending balls and soirees.
But they don't do it to socialise. Instead it's once again about dominance. Who gets invited to what event. When that invitation arrives. If the invited person goes or doesn't. It's all an intricate kata that establishes which house is on top this season.
Beneath the pleasantries, the competition is vicious. Everybody watches everybody and who talks to who is carefully tracked and analysed.
The real movers and shakers of the social scene are those least influenced by it. The Brood. Where they show up and how long they stay is the talk of the houses. They don't attend many events. When they do, the why is often opaque. Sometimes it is as a favour. Sometimes it's to stir the pot. And sometimes it's because they understand the Drakin dance as well as that of other species and see reason to act.
Another thing the middle spends a lot of time on is demonstrating their heritage. A class of experts has sprung up to trace the genealogy of Drakin and Dragons. As the houses intermarry a lot, what the genealogists do is in part research and in part storytelling.
The goal is twofold. First, of course, there is purity of the blood. The houses are always attempting to prove how close to Vaelezar they are. The second is to burnish the relations with the rising houses and bury the ones with the houses that are losing favour.
One way to track what house is currently rising in importance is to see what portraits are being shown in the great halls. If a house is putting up a lot of portraits of members connected to a certain house, you can be certain that house is doing well. Similarly, if certain portraits are being removed then that's a connection they do not wish to advertise. It is even the case that houses rise or fall simply because a great house begins to put up or take down their portraits.
She Doesn't Care
At the epicentre of all this sits Vaelezar. She never attends any of the social events. Her painting never leaves pride of place in every great hall. She does not hunt with others. As she has no need for the company of others, she's rarely seen. For her, nobody counts as kin. Her children are prey like everybody else. The only thing she watches for is whether any of those below her are gathering too much power. If they are, she deals with them. Sometimes lethally.
The other species have a saying for misfortune. They call it 'catching her eye'. And yet, as all power flows from her, many of the dragons spend their lives trying to do exactly that. It's understandable. It's also playing with fire.
But then, that's what dragons do.