#W for Abigail Pent: somehow managed to “not until after college” her way into a love marriage at 27

[katakaluptastrophy]

The concept of the sexy soldiers is all fun and games until you remember that Pal was worried about losing Cam to their ranks before she became his cavalier. She became his cavalier when she was 12...

M. Bias' discussion of marriage patterns is fascinating, but seems to suggest that the more titillating patterns are historical practices, and that even when "atrial" marriages - where the cavaliers of two married necromancers were married to each other - were practiced, it was only done in-House, which sadly nixes many of the exciting fic possibilities, though I bet provides a steady stream of plots for House historical romance novels.

Rather more concerningly, he suggests that what is still common is essentially trading cavaliers between Houses in "bruise" marriages that strengthen political ties.

Given how Judith casually talks about the idea of Abigail planning an arranged marriage for Isaac, and how Babs (who apparently had a hopeless romantic track record) remarks that he "should have stayed home and gotten married", you get the sense that arranged marriages are not unusual amongst the nobility and their cavaliers.

And in light of this, and given the age at which necros and cavs are paired in many Houses, atrial marriages start to sound much less like exciting queer polyamory and rather more like two pairs of relative strangers given very little real choice about marriage to consolidate House power...

so are we ready to talk about the sixth house sex soldiers who use erotic poetry to seduce people in the name of genetic diversity or