I never really understood how Therru ended up where she did, or even what exactly it meant that she was Kalessin's daughter.

I'm not sure if Le Guin wrote herself into a corner, or if she really wanted to introduce the idea of dragon people and didn't think through the implications. A lot of her writing about the dragon people in books after this one is very beautiful but it has a lot of unfortunate implications that really bugged me. I wanted Therru to be an abused child and for that to be enough.