thoughtfulAnd 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.
October 7 2009, 17:42:40 UTC 7 years ago
Is there a standard length of time after which a missing child is (or can be) declared legally dead (I presume until they would have reached adulthood, as a minimum)? What happens if they turn up after this?
Are line/group marriages or multipart marriages associative and commutative? That is, if A is married to B, and B gets married to C, is A also automatically married to C? Or are the marriages defined as separate things - in which case, do they have equal legal standing or does one have priority over the other? And if so, is it the older one or the most recent one? If the latter, are individuals pressured to reaffirm or retread the "most important" marriages?
One question: A is married to B and C is married to D. B and C get married. Are A and D married? Can B and C get legally married without involving (or at least invoking/mentioning) A and D? And if A and D are now married, what if B or C dies? (ie, are the marriage structures preserved or do they all run together into a single amorphous blob?)
Hmm...
- If there are large group marriages which are roughly equivalent to tribes or clans, are the kids expected to marry into their own group when they come of age?
- What happens when you have hundreds-strong marriage groups which traditionally dislike each other, and a married individual from each side get together and marry?
- Does that mean the groups are now one? Even if one or both of the rogues are subsequently killed or pressured to divorce?
- If one of the original groups 'divorces' the rogue(s), do they then have to separately divorce all the members of the previously-separate group one by one?
- In an A-B-C-D group marriage, are there procedures for A and B to divorce C and D with A-B and C-D still remaining married, or do A and B have to divorce everyone and then remarry between themselves?
- Can group/line marriages be legally referred to as such, so that an individual can say "I marry into clan/group X" and a group-marriage representative says "I confirm on behalf of X", without the individual having to list all the members of X they wish to marry? Or do they just have to say "I marry X" (who is a member of the group) and they're automatically married to the other ten or hundred people?
Ooo, are there separate types of marriage? Marriage for love, marriage for procreation, marriage for business/legal purposes, other... and are they all associative/commutative between forms, or can A be married to B for family purposes and to C for business purposes without A and C being legally bound?
And yah, if there's a mortal/fae legal distinction, where's the line drawn and how is it calculated? Half-blood? Changeling? Quarter-blood (each way)? Legal declaration of acceptance by a fae authority or powerful personage?
*gnaws further on concepts- NOM NOM NOM*
October 7 2009, 18:57:05 UTC 7 years ago
2) No. Each marriage must be conducted as its own construct, and bigamy actually is frowned upon. So if A and B are married, and C and D are married, the four of them would have to divorce and come up with a new arrangement.
3) There are not large group marriages which are roughly equivalent to tribes or clans. Most social groups that choose that structure just don't marry, because everything stays in-clan anyway.
4) You never have hundreds-strong marriage groups. The max is likely to be found in the Centaur herds, where you might get up to ten.
5) There are no line marriages.
6) While marriages occur for different reasons, they are all legally the same, although marriages conducted for a purpose will often be dissolved when said purpose is removed.
7) You're a changeling if you ever need to make the Choice. You need to be quarter-blooded or less to be viewed as fae under the law.