I agree, there's no way to separate politics from the Drow. Their society is too extreme to not notice the politics.
Regarding Drizzt, I recall him being vaguely purple-skinned (YMMV, one of my friends thought he was a very dark shade of blue) in the game Menzoberozzan back when I first played it in the nineties. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something discussed in the eighties as well.
As fantasy evolves, I believe the Fantastic Racism trope will either become a Dead Horse trope or will just involve different targets.
I believe the same discussion has been going strong with orcs (which also started with RA Salvatore and one of the later Drizzt novels). One aspect I'm glad they did away with was half-orcs having an automatic -2 to their charisma. I remember character creation rules for half-orcs in D&D's second and third editions stipulating they always had a -2 to their charisma. IIRC, the same applied to Drow. I can't tell you if they dropped those rules in the fourth edition, but I know it's no longer part of character creation in the fifth edition.
Incidentally, one of my 5e characters is a Half-Elf/Half-Orc Throat-Singing Bard with a 20 charisma. His father and mother had a drunken night of passion and decided to raise him together, but they didn't marry and remained friends. In his back story, I never explained that they really were attracted to one another, but were just too drunk to use precautions. Growing up, Aggemar still faced prejudice for simply existing. However, it was also compounded by the fact that he was of Elven heritage instead of Human. Whenever his mother would throat sing on the streets, he would be around, but they couldn't acknowledge each other as family without affecting their lives. It was only his father that he could be out with in public without fear of threatening his parents' livelihoods (his father was a blacksmith, his mother a bard).
Sorry for the long response, I just have fun talking about this stuff.
Have you read any other Forgotten Realms novels? There is one series I'm always itching to recommend, LOL!
Damn, I just thought of more stuff to talk about, LOL! I feel Drow as they are written would be a little more acceptable if they either had an opposing society with the same physical characteristics and similar political structure (dark-skinned elves living in a matriarchal society, but nothing evil) or if they weren't dark-skinned at all. So much time has passed since their creation that I find it odd that an opposing society of Drow hasn't been introduced completely into the game. There has to be cities where Eilistraee is worshiped instead of Lloth.
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Regarding Drizzt, I recall him being vaguely purple-skinned (YMMV, one of my friends thought he was a very dark shade of blue) in the game Menzoberozzan back when I first played it in the nineties. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something discussed in the eighties as well.
As fantasy evolves, I believe the Fantastic Racism trope will either become a Dead Horse trope or will just involve different targets.
I believe the same discussion has been going strong with orcs (which also started with RA Salvatore and one of the later Drizzt novels). One aspect I'm glad they did away with was half-orcs having an automatic -2 to their charisma. I remember character creation rules for half-orcs in D&D's second and third editions stipulating they always had a -2 to their charisma. IIRC, the same applied to Drow. I can't tell you if they dropped those rules in the fourth edition, but I know it's no longer part of character creation in the fifth edition.
Incidentally, one of my 5e characters is a Half-Elf/Half-Orc Throat-Singing Bard with a 20 charisma. His father and mother had a drunken night of passion and decided to raise him together, but they didn't marry and remained friends. In his back story, I never explained that they really were attracted to one another, but were just too drunk to use precautions. Growing up, Aggemar still faced prejudice for simply existing. However, it was also compounded by the fact that he was of Elven heritage instead of Human. Whenever his mother would throat sing on the streets, he would be around, but they couldn't acknowledge each other as family without affecting their lives. It was only his father that he could be out with in public without fear of threatening his parents' livelihoods (his father was a blacksmith, his mother a bard).
Sorry for the long response, I just have fun talking about this stuff.
Have you read any other Forgotten Realms novels? There is one series I'm always itching to recommend, LOL!
Damn, I just thought of more stuff to talk about, LOL! I feel Drow as they are written would be a little more acceptable if they either had an opposing society with the same physical characteristics and similar political structure (dark-skinned elves living in a matriarchal society, but nothing evil) or if they weren't dark-skinned at all. So much time has passed since their creation that I find it odd that an opposing society of Drow hasn't been introduced completely into the game. There has to be cities where Eilistraee is worshiped instead of Lloth.