The Dowry of the Angyar

"The Dowry of the Angyar" is a science fiction short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in 1964. It is the first work of the Hainish Cycle. The story is set on a fictional planet of the star Fomalhaut, and follows a highborn woman as she tries to track down a family heirloom. The story was later used as the prologue to Le Guin's 1966 novel Rocannon's World. In later publications, the story was given the title "Semley's Necklace."

"The Dowry of the Angyar" is the first work set in Le Guin's fictional Hainish universe. In this alternate history, human beings did not evolve on earth, but on Hain. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems, including Terra (Earth) and Athshe, possibly a million years before the setting of the novels. The planets subsequently lost contact with each other, for reasons that Le Guin does not explain. Le Guin does not narrate the entire history of the Hainish universe at once, instead letting readers piece it together from various works. The novels and other fictional works set in the Hainish universe recount the efforts to re-establish a galactic civilization. Explorers take years to travel between planetary systems, although the journey is shortened for the travelers due to relativistic time dilation, as well as through instantaneous interstellar communication using the ansible, introduced in The Dispossessed. This galactic civilization is known as the "League of All Worlds."

The story is set on a planet of the star Fomalhaut, which is depicted as having multiple intelligent species upon it. The species that the protagonist belongs to has a social structure which divides individuals into two categories: "Olgyior" and "Angyar," with the former subordinate to the latter. There are two additional species, the Fiia and the Gdemiar. The story depicts the plan soon after "starlords," who are emissaries of the League of Worlds, have begun to land on the planet and levy taxes on its population.

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