The thing is, Zandakar isn’t class passing in the same way — he’s Hekat’s son, and the unknown son of the only good Mijaki man in the whole series — Vortka, who hears the voice of the true (loving, non-Mijaki god) and warns Hekat against her path to conquest. Now, I guess you could point out that both Vortka and Hekat are former slaves, making Zandakar a child of slavery, but at the same time, the books focusing on him focus on his nobility, not on his heritage. His story is one where his blood marks him as different and better than the average Mijaki, and it’s this difference that’s brought out by the true (loving, non-Mijaki) god talking to him and bringing him to Ethrea.

It seems like class-passing your way to success is okay for Zandakar, but too butch for Hekat. Unfortunate, because going off of the vaguely ethnic names, this could have been a fantasy sci-fi revenge epic set against a backdrop similar to The Years of Rice and Salt.