#damarian courtship rituals

[words-writ-in-starlight]

also hey tell me about damarian courting rituals, I am intrigued

A long time ago I made this post and it had this comment from @amusewithaview:

Um hi yes please give me ALL OF YOUR DAMATIAN COURTSHIP HEADCANONS.

Please tell me about ALL OF THE MULTITUDE OF STEPS that Corlath either skipped or did out of order. Please tell me about all of the unsubtle commentary and mostly irrelevant advice ‘gifted’ to him by his Riders. Please tell me all about his inherited Riders telling the younger crop ALL ABOUT his father’s exploits and comparing the two.

So what I am saying is: let’s talk about Damarian courtship.

We know that gift giving is, and has been, a big thing in Damar ever since Aerin’s day, and we know that giving gifts in an attempt to convey interest was a thing at the time (Tor, poor beautiful Tor who keeps trying to convey his affection to a sol too enamored of dragon slaying to realize, she figures it out eventually), so like.

Gifts.

Damarian courtship is BIG into gifts, but it’s a desert, so normally these are things like services.  Food is also popular.  You start with a few small gifts or helpful actions, things that could be brushed aside as friendly solicitousness, and then once you’ve gotten up the necessary courage and sussed out that this person probably does not hate you, you pull out all the fucking stops and Go Big Or Go Home.  

Now, the key here is that the gift is theirs to keep regardless of what they say.  The gift is theirs.  You gave it to them because you’re generous and trying to prove a point about how much you care.  The gift is also a contract--they have to be nice if they let you down, and you have to be civil about taking the disappointment.  The gift is a big shrieking neon sign that says “don’t be an asshole” to all parties.

But so anyway, you’ve plucked up your courage and now you’re gonna give them the Dopest Present You Can Find, along with a statement of intent.  Generally there’s an exchange of gift giving up to this point, and sometimes if people are already aware of what’s up, you and your potential honey kind of race to reach the Big Gift first.  But regardless.  You give them an elaborately embroidered robe that you stitched with your own hands while you tried not to go insane from being cooped up during the rains.  You give them a saddle blanket woven out of bright red and white to make their horse look like a living flame.  You give them the best and nicest sword you’ve ever seen.  You make them an elaborate four-course meal with all of their favorite foods and serve it to them personally and eat with them and give them your best wine.

Or, if you’re really hardcore and very sure of yourself, or alternatively extremely rich and incredibly intense, you give them the most important thing Damar has going for it at any given time.

You know.

A horse.

A whole entire war horse, hand-selected to suit their temperament and match their visions of the future.

Plus tack.

Now...this is where Corlath gets into trouble, you see.

Because he has this girl in his tent.  And he’s already been giving her a lot of things--robes and food and being waited on hand and foot by his own hafor.  All of that is not helping his Riders’ opinion that the kelar is trying to get their king laid, because it looks like he’s trying to woo this girl even though--well, she needs clothes that suit the desert, not some six-layered cake of a nightgown, and she’s obviously got to eat, and she’s been kidnapped by people she can’t even talk to.  He’s trying to make her feel at ease.

Normally, no one except the royal family gets this kind of treatment from the hafor, so by the strictest traditions Corlath may have slightly declared her his fiancee, but it was with the PUREST intentions.

But so, he concludes, the girl has to be trained as a warrior, and therefore she needs a horse and a sword and a teacher.  The teacher and the sword he can justify as her nominal lord, but the horse is dicier--she’s not technically his subordinate, and he’s not adopting her, which would be the other two circumstances where it would be socially acceptable to give someone a horse.  

To hell with it, though, he’s the king and she needs a horse so he gives her a horse.  He sells this lie to himself with extraordinary success, but not so much to anyone else.

“That’s a beautiful animal, sola,” Faran says very neutrally, watching the Outlander girl as Tsornin more or less flirts with her.

“Yes,” Corlath says through his teeth.

“The best in our herd, probably, excepting yours.”

“She needs a horse,” Corlath repeats for the fifth time in an hour.

“Mmmhm,” Faran says, and arches an eyebrow very slowly at his king.  Corlath resolutely does not blush, because he’s a king and he made a completely reasonable and legitimate gift based on the needs of someone who could help his country.

And then, of course, Harry up and leaves for six weeks to train with Mathin and the entire camp kind of observes Corlath while he Refuses To Pine and goes “Yeah, okay, sola, a totally logical gift, we believe you.”

So when Harry comes back to the City, triumphant, literally no one is surprised when he gives her the blue stone garden.  It was his father’s gift to his mother when they got married, so obviously Corlath will want to give Harimad something equally dramatic when they get married and this is just...the Damarian equivalent of a DTR talk.  

Corlath knows what he’s doing with this one, and feels kind of guilty.  The Outlander--Harimad clearly doesn’t know what the gift means, and it’s unfair of him to expect anything from her (he did kidnap her), and even more unfair of him to be disappointed when she doesn’t reciprocate the gift giving as the social structures dictate, because of all the things Mathin taught her, courting rituals probably weren’t among them.

But he does still give her the room.

Gonturan doesn’t count as a gift because Gonturan would be mortally offended to be pawned off as a possession, and Corlath knows it, and also Harry is now a soldier in the king’s army and can receive a sword from his hands without any baggage.  But the room and the horse and more robes and more meals that Corlath quietly edits to remove foods Harry doesn’t like...can you blame people for whispering?

And then she disappears during the army’s march and their king is wearing her sash.

By the time they actually get married, Harry has sussed out that the majority of the population believes they’ve been engaged since she arrived in Damar, largely because Innath finally took pity on her.  

She goes to an enormous amount of trouble to buy Corlath a hand-worked leather breastplate for Fireheart on rush order, complete with the royal crest worked in red to flatter the bay’s coloring, and shows up with it in hand and a smug look on her face as she shoves it at him.

“This is for you,” Harry says, triumphant.  “I would be extremely honored if you would marry me.”

Corlath blinks at her.  “Hari, love, we’re getting married in a week, everything is already planned.  But the breastplate is very nice,” he admits.

Harry’s grin widens.  “Ah, but it’s not really polite to do half your wooing when your target doesn’t even know what’s happening.  I have to admit that I don’t actually know the proper forms for how this should go, though.  So.”  She gestures to the breastplate and says, “Will you please marry me, Corlath-sola?”

Corlath is laughing when he kisses her.