genre

A mystery reader, confronted with a large mass of sudden detail, is going to go—subconsciously, at least— "Aha! somewhere in all of this the writer has planted a Clue!", and look for that; a reader trained exclusively in mainstream literary fiction is likely to say, "Aha! all this emphasis must point to something of Thematic Importance!", but an experienced reader of science fiction is going to assume that he or she is meant to take all of those details and out of them construct a world.

Which is why the writer of a science-fiction mystery with literary ambitions is trying to do a quadruple somersault off the trapeze without a net.

― Debra Doyle

common magic

So we have a magocracy where the upper classes have the powerful mages. Usually. They work hard at co-opting lower class mages of power, and those born to high rank without great power often marry them to give them the status.
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