Re: Heortling hitches

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 15:23:07 +0100 (BST)


John Hughes:
> I play seven year kingships among most tribes. (See TR 44 'a king in his
> sevens') IMG to replace a king mid-term would be pretty drastic, and the
> reasons would be spelt out clearly in tribal law. You would have to prove
> him or her unsuitable for the job, in effect by taking him to court and
> proving a suitably serious misdemeanour. As with any Heortling court case,
> the politics and numbers game would be subsumed within the legal procedures.
> Good luck! And consider the implications for your clan if you happen to
> lose.

This is a good point. A "lame-duck king", running out both of term-limit and political capital, would serve my story purposes just as effectively.

> Seduction is seduction, part of everyday life. Rape is rape, and a
> capital crime.

Gee, that was a big help...

> If you're married, any extra-marital
> cigar swapping is hearth breaking - see the two applicable laws in ST 162.
> (The law codes are spread through both books: TR 42, 84, ST 61, 162.)

The culprit in question is not (hence the lack of an "adultery" question, to which I already know the answer(s)).

I'll restate my question (since it didn't get answered). Is sex obtained "by fear or favour" open to accusations of actual rape, or of any accusation of improper, immoral, illegal, or "unHeortling" conduct?

> > What if one fathers a child on a thrall -- does one have
> > a moral or legal responsiblility to raise the mother from thralldom?
>
> Heortling childrearing is profoundly communal. You share a hearth with
> uncles and aunts and numerous cousins, so the lack of a father (or even a
> mother) isn't so noticeable or profoud as in other cultures with more
> nuclear family arrangements. Because of this, I play that having a child out
> of wedlock isn't a matter for great concern, and certainly isn't a social
> stigma: the child is raised communally at its mother's hearth.

I entirely agree (but again, that wasn't the question...).

> Once again, thralls complicate things. Sex and marriage are very different
> in the Heortling mind. Marriage is about alliance, and marriage partners are
> often selected or prescribed from a particular group of people. Taking care
> of someone and marrying them are two *very* different things to Heortlings.
> Freeing and marrying a female thrall wouldn't normally even be considered.

Since the (alleged) culprit has (allegedly) done this several times, marriage isn't an option. Or at least, what does he do for an encore?

> Freeing her and bringing her and her child to your own communal hearth
> would be *possible*, even quietly making her a bed mate, but the resistence
> given by your own hearthmates, and the reception accorded the ex-thrall by
> the other wives would be *major* factors to consider. The other wives were
> courted and gifted and persuaded to leave their families, suddenly there're
> asked to regard this pig-slop thrall as one of their own!

This isn't necessarily a huge problem if the infractor is the head of the household, though. (Depending on the constitution of the household...)

> So in short, no obligation legally. Morally, no great shakes either.

I don't understand this comment. In all your options you've _assumed_ that the thrall is freed. Are you saying it's a viable option not to do so, after all?

(Incidentally, the back-story here is that the "thralls" were captured by the individual concerned in raids -- so there's a degree of "ambiguity" at work, potentially, about whether this was really a case of (I nearly said wife-taking) "bed-mate capturing", rather than thralldom per se.)

> The sweetest grass, the *only* grass lies beyond the tula.

Well, _that_ I think is nonsense (if it's now Canonised nonsense), but that's a separate, or at least a separable, discussion entirely. (I was happy enough with the suggested compromise of "no ban on intra-clan (but extra-bloodline and extra-stread) procreation", but 'marriage' within a clan being a legal impossibility, or more to the point redundancy, however.)


End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #547


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