If you’ve read my stories, you will have noticed that my version of the omegaverse is not exactly the same as the one you probably know. (See fanlore.org for a full description of the tropes.) I’ve tinkered with the conventions to suit my vision and I thought I should explain.
The people of my AU Earth are born into their identity as Alpha, Beta, or Omega. Instead of being a planet divided by skin colour, I went with the three castes instead. And I’ve omitted the werewolf aspect of the trope. I decided not to get into presentation v birth identity, which means there is nothing about mpreg, or all the complicated secondary genders. However, I am intrigued by the idea of humans having three castes or dynamics, and organising their social structures around them, rather than around gender and/or colour.
So, in my world, alphas can procreate with other alphas, but omegas are the preferred option, Geoffrey Wayland notwithstanding. (See “I Kiss You And The World Begins To Fade”.) There are some families who have eradicated omegas, and even betas, from their blood line. Silly, short-sighted noodles that they are, risking inbreeding and all kinds of horrors. But most alphas do not discriminate against the beta and omegas members of their families. Betas in my version tend to stick to other betas, though some do occasionality mate omegas. Omegas can procreate with other omegas, but preferably with alphas. (Some omega-beta combinations do occur, but are not usual. However, that is a feature of “The Wonder That’s Keeping The Stars Apart”.)
In every country, the alphas rule. Business, politics, even religion, are subject to the laws of the alphas, the richest and most powerful humans on the planet. However, they are not in the majority. For every alpha that is born, ten betas are also born. They do the actual organisation without which, no alpha could rule anything at all. They are the teachers, the medics, the administrators of the will of the alphas. The omegas, are gentle, vulnerable, fragile people, usually smaller in size to the alphas. Most live in enclaves within the cities. They are protected in law. Harming an omega is severely punished. Killing an omega leads to an instant death sentence. Once upon a time, alphas were only able to procreate with omegas, which is why they are protected. But, y’know, times change and time marches on, and not always for the better. And then there was the war, during which many omegas died because of their habit of living in enclaves. This made them more vulnerable to bombing raids.
The people of this AU Earth do not marry. If they are really lucky, they find their true mate, or soulmate, and bond for life. The wealthiest alpha families are more pragmatic. They bond with members of other families for the purposes of alliances. If an alpha then finds their omega soulmate after bonding with an alpha, they are allowed to keep that mate as well as the alpha person they were bonded to. It’s complicated, but basically poly bonds are accepted.
In James and Carys’s bonding, the officiant bound their right hands with a long piece of silk, with the totem colours of the three groups. Alphas are red, betas are yellow, and omegas are green. They also invoked the names of the Three: Loucetios, Ancamna, and Nemetona. These are the three deities which are worshipped all over AU Earth. For the deities, I used the names of Celtic Deities. Loucetios was worshipped by the Gallo-Roman people, and was their equivalent of Mars. So, He’s a warrior God, and His name means “lightening”. Nemetona was Loucetios’s mate. “She of the sacred grove” is, I thought, perfect for the omegas. And for the betas, there is Ancamna, a water Goddess who was often linked with Loucetios and Nemetona.
In the time of James and Cary’s grandchildren, around 10 years after the war, betas are seen as workers and little else. The scarcity of omegas means that they are, as it were, reserved to become the mate of alphas. The government of the country that Adam and Ffion live in created “divisions”. So that everyone employed in science lived and worked in one division. The technical disciplines, in other words. It’s all about conserving resources and people power; the beta orphanages provide the raw material as workers in the divisions. The arts are seen as irrelevant and unnecessary. (I may add to this as I think of things, and write more stories.)