Guys - and it's remarkable just how everybody posting on this one is, AFAICT, male - I think maybe you should take the time to discuss this one with your wives, mothers, sisters, daughters or, absent any of the above, secretaries. Main talking point for the discussion being what is it going to be like to spend the night, every night, for months, in bed with somebody whose foreplay consists of:
"Strip!"
"lie down!"
"Spread your legs!",
when you have _no_ recourse but to let him go to town on you. Well, I guess there is one alternative: have your guards strap _him_ down, lube him up nicely and go for a ride. Just how much cooperation do you expect Andrin could expect with _that_ plan? And without cooperation, the marriage is as dead politically as it always was personally or socially.
If you're not looking forward to the reaction you're going to get from the suggested sources, try cornering a gynecologist instead. [Warning: you might be better off asking your mother. At least she won't be as brutally clinical.]
Remember, for this marriage to serve any purpose whatsoever, it _must_ be consummated and it _must_ be fruitful. And the only way to accomplish either of those is to insert Tab A in Slot B. It doesn't take much effort to make that exercise pretty unpleasant for the slot, and I imagine that it wouldn't need a great deal of thought to turn it into something extremely unpleasant - thought that clearly was being devoted to the matter. There's only so much that closing your eyes and thinking of Sharona can do for you. What, exactly, is the protection the Imperial Guard provides in these conditions? Accidents are great, but you're dealing with somebody who _arranges_ accidents, not suffers them. Probably the only way to convince him will be to prove it - by which time you will have had to allow most of the damage to be done.
So far, all this completely ignores the legal landscape. Which, I note, a lot of people seem to be cheerfully willing to do, for reasons that escape me. Perhaps something to do with the authors not taking the time to lay out all the unpleasant truths? At any rate, since they _haven't_ laid out the basis of local family law, I'm going to guess: it's on a par with the rest of the socio-economic milieu they've laid out for Sharona. That actually looks far more mid-Victorian to Edwardian to me than Roaring Twenties, but no problem. On Earth, in 1928, if there was any place where marriage didn't turn man and wife into a single legal entity, it wasn't English-speaking [nor even American-speaking]. That has some pretty profound implications. You can't conspire with yourself, for example. Nor can you beat yourself up. Or rape yourself. Or even tell yourself that you're not going to get off with yourself tonight, if yourself has other ideas. There's also, when property is involved, an element of "What's mine is mine. What's yours is... mine!" Involving royalty in the mix adds an interesting set of complications, which is why royal marriage contracts tended to be treaties in all but name [and sometimes got the name, too], but largely at the political, not the personal level. An entire structure of rights and responsibilities emanated from that foundation, as, in fact, they did from the older views of marriage as a straight-forward conveyance of property rights. Set them at nought, and there's no marriage. If there's no marriage, the treaty has no force. And what, exactly do you... Should I copy and paste, or do you get the picture?
Regardless of how close I may be on particulars, one thing I think can be taken for granted: the textev is that the Busars were, with loving anticipation, looking forward to doing exactly what Zindel feared. More importantly, _everyone_else_ was looking on in horror, expecting exactly the same thing. All of them seemingly certain that the terms of the treaty require it. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Sharonans know rather more about the details than anybody around here, but "Zindel was over-reacting" has the legs of a Marine half-way through a six-day drunk.
Randomiser wrote:n7axw wrote:
I don't think that Zindel or anyone else facing the prospect of Andrin's marriage to one of Chava's sons as "manageable." They were expecting her to die in childbirth. It was regarded as a sacrifice that the Caliraths woukd make for the sake of Sharona's ubification.
Don
-
Yes, Don, we get that. What we are discussing is whether those fears were rational or even credible. They all seem to be based on the assumption that Chava and his son would have everything their own way from the date of the marriage on and be allowed to dictate what happened. Over Zindel's dead body. Over Andrin's dead body (NB no Andrin, no heir from Chava's line.) Over the dead bodies of the whole Ternathian Imperial Guard. Not going to happen.
Plus the whole political situation and the whole balance of power changes after the marriage is in place, the treaty is activated and Chava has sworn oaths of fealty and allegiance to Zindel as Emperor of Sharona (it is an empire, right?) Beforehand Chava is an independent ruler who has enormous rights and may or may not join the alliance and can with relative impunity bully the smaller states around him. Afterwards he is a part of a larger entity and subject to all its laws and authorities. The little states around know that that the whole of the rest of Sharona are honour and duty bound to whup Chava if he messes with them and 'compassing the death of the heir apparent' is high treason in any empire I ever heard of. Nothing in the treaty says that Andrin has to be a baby factory and neither Zindel nor Andrin were ever going to allow that to happen.
BRNicholas makes the most plausible suggestion when he says that those fears are the outcome of the impact of war, Janaki's death and the whole political crisis which prevented Zindel from thinking logically about the fate of his "little princess"
