World-building and the making of rules.: seanan

World-building and the making of rules.

I exist in a perpetual time-warp right now. Rosemary and Rue is on bookstore shelves, and is thus The Book I Can Discuss With People (tm). A Local Habitation is about to go to ARC format, and will thus become The Book I Can Discuss With A Much More Limited Subset Of People (tm). And in the meanwhile, I'm writing The Brightest Fell, outlining Ashes of Honor, and trying to make sure all my ducks are in a row for Tributes in the Dust.

And people wonder why the word "trilogy" has started making me laugh like a Batman villain who's just escaped from Arkham Asylum.

One of the things that's really fascinating about working at this sort of remove is that I have time to actually test my rules for functionality and long-term stability. To go with an example everyone's likely to be familiar with, look at Quidditch. Anyone who thinks about the rules for too long will realize that they have some pretty serious issues as written, but is that really the fault of J.K. Rowlings? No. She had no way of knowing that her weird little wizarding game would get the sort of scrutiny it did, and it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. (No, I don't expect to get her sort of readership. Not that I'd complain if I did...)

Right now, I'm stress-testing the fae marriage laws. At their most basic, they look a lot like mortal marriage laws: two people decide to get hitched, break out the champagne. And then they start to get complicated. For example, there aren't any social stigmas against group marriage (some fae races practice it as a matter of course, like the Centaurs and the Gremlins) or same-sex couples. Divorce when there are no children is literally a matter of going "I don't want to be married to you anymore" and posting an announcement at the hall of your local liege.

Divorce when there are children requires waiting for the children to reach adulthood, and then asking them to choose which family line they wish to belong to. Children of divorced parents can only inherit from one side of the family, because the other side must remain available to any potential future descendants (ah, immortality). (Kate points out that this probably leads to a lot of people assassinating their parents so as to inherit everything. Kate is very correct in this assertion.) This also means that the parents of a missing, elf-shot, or otherwise unavailable child must remain married until the child is either located or declared dead.

Marriage to a mortal (IE, "playing fairy bride/bridegroom") has no legal standing in Faerie (hence why changelings can't inherit), and thus doesn't interfere in any way with an actual pre-existing marriage, or prevent getting marriage. It's actually not uncommon for fae couples to fight, huff off, marry a mortal, and get back together twenty years later, having never legally been unfaithful.

World-building. It's not just for continental drift and evolutionary pressures anymore.

bearhand

October 7 2009, 17:23:04 UTC 7 years ago

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I also imagine that the ability to procreate within faerie is also much more uncommon for those races that have a very low mortality rate, that may also mean that the production of any bastards within faerie would have a more sinister stigma attached to it, as more would be at stake. The human/hybrids, being unable to inherit, would not have the same class stigma as a bastard, in fact, that may be why many of the male faeries will chose a human mistress, the ability to easier produce offspring and practice their child-rearing, husband skills before the real thing happens. Or not. use what you like, throw away the rest.

the_s_guy

October 7 2009, 17:50:11 UTC 7 years ago

many of the male faeries will chose a human mistress, the ability to easier produce offspring and practice their child-rearing, husband skills before the real thing happens.

Possibly not just the males. I wonder if it would be a point of pride or shame to have successfully reared one or more half-blood families before attempting the same thing with another fae?

Another point - if the birth rate is very low, would grandparents (and great-grandparents, and cousins, and siblings, and everyone) have a much greater stake and presence in a fae child's life? I can't think fae parents would generally have trouble finding a babysitter at any point, for example. Fae kids are probably monitored 24/7 to make sure they don't kill or injure themselves.

On the other hand, with effective immortality, would kids matter all that much? Who cares if a kid gets killed; there'll be another one along in a century or so.

October 7 2009, 18:36:29 UTC 7 years ago

I see a couple of points that would influence how children are perceived. One, if ability to become pregnant is limited and rarely happens, then each child becomes precious to the point of hoarding and stealing, but if fay woman are able to become pregnant when they choose, then children may be perceived as nuisances until they learn enough or grow big enough to be useful. Which could explain some of the attitudes of the fae we see in nursury rhymes and fables of various cultures.

seanan_mcguire

October 7 2009, 18:49:13 UTC 7 years ago

The former is the case: fae children are very rare, and very precious, and pureblood children are so rare as to be their parents' most prized possessions.

October 7 2009, 19:00:24 UTC 7 years ago

I can see kidnapping happening and even wars starting over the murder or even accidental death of a child. You steal a fae child, you still their future.

October 7 2009, 19:07:28 UTC 7 years ago

Oh, yeah. You mess with a fae kid, you're messing with their parents, any allies their parents happen to have, and every other fae parent in the Kingdom, because who knows who you're gonna mess with next?

October 7 2009, 18:48:29 UTC 7 years ago

Distant family tends to be just that: distant. I mean, when you had one kid six hundred years ago, and that kid has a kid, the familial relationship just isn't as visceral. All fae are related on some level, since they all trace their descendant lines back to Oberon, Maeve, or Titania.

As for fae kids, they're more precious than anything else in the world. Even changeling kids are protected and coddled, as much as they can be.

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World-building and the making of rules.

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