Lady Amalsand Jakoba was Emperor Yu's concubine
Seeing how she's trying to do the same thing in Calabria that the concubine attempted in Zhongguo. The Book of Jade never named Yu's concubine, or really anyone in the history section other than the Emperors. And the concubine is said to have fled with a significant chunk of the Imperial Treasury and Fidelio married Amalsand for her money. I know that the Jakobas are stated to have made their fortune trading erythrosinum, but the Middle Kingdom does trade with Govorya so that could be how she became a concubine of the Emperor. And she might have come to Calabria while en route to home since it's a stop on the trade route between Zhongguo and Govorya. The only problem is that Emperor Ping is stated to be a rat in the gazetteer and he'd probably be Vaslov's half-brother. Perhaps species is matrilineally inherited in interspecies couplings, the Duke of Jin at the time of Yu's reign was the Empresses' father and the Duke of Jin in the gazetteer is a sheep (though there's no indication he's even related to his predecessor, no names given). The world of Ironclaw is a lost world of the Myriad
The Syndics decided to experiment with a human world that was technologically in the dark ages, and just for fun they spliced the colonists' genes with various animals from Earth.- Legends of Abusive Precursors? Check. The Autarchs could have been purebred Conductors, with modern mages being watered down strains whose powers are colored by their culture, or even the Syndics themselves.
- High-tech feudalism? Check. China abolished feudalism almost a thousand years before inventing gunpowder, Zhongguo has gunpowder and only began to reduce the power of the Houses a century or two ago. In Europe feudalism was well into its decline by the time wheellocks were invented, in Calabria Triskellion is the only place where the nobles are losing influence.
