A Question About Marriage

[Anonymoose]

Mentions of Marriage in 1.X

• The two brother lalafell who work the miner's guild are out to stop the marriage of their sister, which was arranged by their mother at the groom's behest. The sister is hesitant because she doesn't love him (yet) and feels inadequate and like she hasn't even begun to live her own life yet.
• A sidequest in Limsa features a miqo'te who is using a love-potion-spiked stew to try to get her lalafell pirate crush to fall for her and propose.
• The WVR questline features a lalafell prince who falls in love with a maid at a ball, but she disappears at midnight leaving behind only a single glove (a la Cinderella). He scours the city looking for the girl who lost it, but this makes everyone in town start placing orders for the gloves.
• A few NPCs who deny wanting to be in an arranged marriage.

Honestly, it seems that a lot of Eorzean marriages are strategic alliances and arranged marriages; oftentimes either orchestrated by two parties of parents, or one man whose affections towards a woman cause her parents to force the issue.

[Maldalewyn]

I wonder how many of those will remain in the game though or if they'll even be referenced. ;;

[HumsterMKX]

Mentions of Marriage in 1.X
[LIST]
Honestly, it seems that a lot of Eorzean marriages are strategic alliances and arranged marriages; oftentimes either orchestrated by two parties of parents, or one man whose affections towards a woman cause her parents to force the issue.

Sounds like what we have here back in the old days.

[Vilhem]

Mentions of Marriage in 1.X

• The two brother lalafell who work the miner's guild are out to stop the marriage of their sister, which was arranged by their mother at the groom's behest. The sister is hesitant because she doesn't love him (yet) and feels inadequate and like she hasn't even begun to live her own life yet.
• A sidequest in Limsa features a miqo'te who is using a love-potion-spiked stew to try to get her lalafell pirate crush to fall for her and propose.
• The WVR questline features a lalafell prince who falls in love with a maid at a ball, but she disappears at midnight leaving behind only a single glove (a la Cinderella). He scours the city looking for the girl who lost it, but this makes everyone in town start placing orders for the gloves.
• A few NPCs who deny wanting to be in an arranged marriage.

Honestly, it seems that a lot of Eorzean marriages are strategic alliances and arranged marriages; oftentimes either orchestrated by two parties of parents, or one man whose affections towards a woman cause her parents to force the issue.

To add to the list; the lala twins also mention their wish to take F'lhaminn as a bride, to which F'lhaminn replies she can only sing for one (assuming Nielle)

I'm under the impression that marriage is treated much like it was in the middle ages/medieval times (arranged marriages for political gain or monetary gain), and probably originated from the Hyurs and/or Elezen.

The city dwelling miqo'te, or the miqo'te that have left their tribes for years are probably a lot more receptive to the idea of marriage than the ones that remain in their tribes.

[Laevetine]

Most of the npcs that discuss marriage seem to be from Ul'dah and it just as Anonymoose stated, for a large part seemed to be arranged.

Though i will have to agree that the more standard (monogamy, ceremonies, etc..) marriage seems to come from Elezen as they remind me of more royal lines. (Maybe XI brainwashing kicking in...)

The same could be said of the lalafell as they strike me as kin to the native american tribes. While along the same lines many just do not consider it to be as traditional.

[Verence]

Hm. Seems I somehow missed this thread when I went about asking marriage questions and wound up starting a new one. Purely for the sake of cross-referencing, here are the questions I had!

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...stoms?p=980456

[Anonymoose]

here are the questions I had!

In a culture that seems to have more arranged and pressured marriages than ones that start on love, you can bet name-changes will be very important from time to time. It's all about strategically expanding and pruning the family tree and having legitimate offspring to which to pass title and wealth.

This isn't always bad. Just as many stable, arranged marriages become the foundation of later trust and love as impulsive, loving marriages eventually fall apart if you look at cross-culture social psychology.

That said, you're also going to find your free spirits who do whatever they want, such as the miqo'te brewing love potions to seduce her lalafell pirate.

The answer to most of your questions is, "Yes, you'll see this happen; no, we're not going to talk about it."

They'll refer to eachother by titles, they'll nod to eachother as NPCs, but whatever a consenting lalafell and miqo'te do behind closed tentflaps is their own Twelve-darn business. I think that's about as far as SE is going to allow comments to go, though, because discussions like this always lead to questions about how those family lines "expand" and I doubt they want to deal with the ... logistics ... or possibility of lalaqo'te.

We're probably just supposed to take this whole marriage thing at face-value and not ask too many questions. Before you know it we'll have petitions for player marriage to allow for the option of name-changes and the fan art will get a lot more ... neko-sentai-ey. That's a verb now.

[Verence]

Eh, I'd argue that marriage need not necessitate offspring or even intercourse. But that latter one is an issue we'll just... tastefully decline to examine too closely, hm? Clearly many marriages produce children somehow, or the very concepts of family and inheritance would be meaningless. Granted, things get more complex when you talk in terms of interracial marriage, but I'm not particularly interested in that aspect save for how the family names pass on - father's name, mother's name, new name, etc.

I don't really see any particular need to simply hand-wave it away as unknowable things that will never see light - after all, we know how Miqo'te breed. Why is it strange to want to know how other races interact in the familial sense? Clearly SE isn't overly reticent about how this stuff happens. From a societal standpoint, it really is rather relevant and interesting information. Taking marriage at "face value" means relatively little to me in a fantasy setting whose social mores are clearly rather different than our own in at least some respects.

I also... Completely fail to see how allowing name changes would encourage the neko sentai-ization (I made a new word too, hooray!) of fan works. Besides, isn't it extremely easy to avoid that stuff? Just don't go to the bloody site! I'd actually support allowing name changes as part of the wedding package if the adoption of last names is an established part of lore. Otherwise it's kind of like dangling stuff over our head and going "Ah-ah! Only for NPCs, not for you!" like the apostraphes in 1.0 Miqo'te names.

[Anonymoose]

<,,,>

All true - but also too assuming that many of the things I said were connected as a whole. I was merely trying to list lots of possible examples. Some of this, some of that. Arranged marriages, dowries, parents forcing daughters to take proposals - all of these things are indicative of a culture that treats women as marital property. Therefore, it's likely that some marriages will be strategic for reasons of lineage or material. Some other marriages will be freely chosen. Some will be cross-race, some will be cross-clan. Some of those will be arranged and some of those will be freely chosen -get what I'm saying?

When the world considered women a monetary commodity for marriage, we saw a lot of marriages like those talked about in Eorzea now. It's a possibility worth considering that the goals might be the same - and if not, what they might be otherwise.

We also see marriages as social constructs, legal contracts, and religious covenants - the latter often being based entirely around "legitimate" procreation for the preservation of legal-hassle-free property and title transference. All possibilities are on the table save for maybe I just needed the Thalassocrassy's dental plan and once you're married, it's kind of a joint thing.

The last statement was more of a lighthearted joke about how once we start talking about pairing off, it's only so long that you can hold off the "HOW WOULD THAT WORK, GUYS, AMIRITE?" ... and there will always be those who cannot wait to answer that question for you.

TL;DR - The former was a list of possibilities, not a hierarchy progression - the latter was a joke about avoiding Rule 34 for as long as humanly possible, which is a separate possibility from people continuing to test where SE will draw the lines. ("Will there be marriage? Well, will there be same-sex marriage? If NPCs change surnames, do I get to when I get married? Can we look forward to roegazen? What about a same-sex marriage involving a roegazen and a vierafell!?")

[Verence]

Oh, you mean like Rule 34 toothbrushes?



...Yeah, let's not go there.