Firstly, let me say that I think the situation David describes makes a fair amount of sense as it applies to the East Wilds, since (as I understand it), the position of women is "less equal" there than in, say, Sartar, so this (additional) assymetry between the sexes in marriage sounds perfectly plausible, in this and similar contexts.
But in the general case, yes you should be able to get support from your family (and your family is entitled to support from the clan as a whole), but no, I don't think this means that one must change clans to do so. That the responsibilities within a family aren't legal ones doesn't mean that they don't exist, but rather that they're not necessary. If one finds oneself frequency filled with an urge to take one's spouse to court, one should perhaps be considering the canonical such legal procedure.
> As I see it, your new clan is responsible for honor-price, wergild, etc.
I don't think these are legal "rights" as such, so the matter of where they fall is more a question of who's most eager, or feels most obliged to pay up.
> While you are still a member of your
> original clan, you would be well-advised to act as if you're a member of
> your spouse's.
Indeed you would, at least in cases where you're "heavily married". If you're a year-spouse, love-spouse, etc, or you or your clan has significant influence (and is near at hand enough to exert it), then this is less of a factor. If you're of explicitly lesser status, whether by being underspouse, or because this is implicit in the "default" local marital arrangement, then it's even more true. This doesn't mean that as a legal matter, you actually are in your "married into" clan.
To take the question further, what bloodline (by the DP definition) does a married woman belong to? Is she still in the bloodline of her birth? (This is almost tautologically true, I would say.) If so, she's now in a clan to which her bloodline doesn't belong. (Note that this doesn't apply to David's Ralians, since he uses a quite definition of bloodline, so this problem would not arise.)
> If my married sister is killed, I might be upset and want to kill her
> killer, but legally that responsibility is her husband's (and his clan's).
> If the killer chooses to pay wergild, it goes to her husband's clan, not
> mine.
I would say it goes to her (immediate) _family_, not to her clan. Wergild is a whole can of worms unto itself, which I'll manfully refrain from getting into here. (I'm surprised that David doesn't (apparently) use the Irish model, eineach, for the "wergild" of his Ralians.)
> Now replace "married sister" with "Humakti brother" and "husband's clan"
> with "Temple of Humakt" and this is more or less how I see it working in
> Sartar.
I'm confused by now as to what's cause, and what effect. Are you saying that they use the legalisms associated with marriage to frame the basis of the rights and duties of (non-severed, I presume) Humakti, or are you making an after-the-fact comparison?
My feeling is that in Sartar, kin-severed Humakti have their temple as their "new kin", while others remain within their own clan. You may have various claims on the temple and it's other members, legal and otherwise, but not those of kin.
> >Even if this were so, it still seems a very loose comparison, since
> >in a "normal" Sartarite marriage, it's the wife who goes to live with
> >her husband's clan.
> And doesn't the Humakti usually leave his clan home for the temple?
No, I don't think this is necessarily the norm. I think its quite common for Humakti to remain with their clans (or at least, tribes) as the chief's weaponsthanes, even if this means a Commute to worship (at least for seasonal ceremonies). And for other cults, moving to a non-local temple may be at least as common, but so far as we know, only Humakti have a conspicuous difference with respect to their formal, legal clan identity.
The point I was making here is that it's the _wife_ (as in, female spouse) who does so, while most (indeed, "all") Humakti are male. So having them be "brides of Humakt" sounds a tad improbable. (They could be "under-husbands" of course, which doesn't much more fitting.
Alex.
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