>>(Of the named Thunder Brothers, only a few are notably married - mostly
>>those Allfather guys. And in most of these cases, you have to look up
>>their wives in the Ernalda section of Thunder Rebels to learn about the
>>marriage...)
>
> Or we just haven't been given their names yet -- I suspect that
>not getting married is odd in Heortling society. Some cults (notably the
>Death-aspect ones) don't, but they're weird. Having members get married and
>have kids is pretty important to the clan; a person has to be fairly
>eccentric to stay single. So unmarried gods should be fairly rare, even if
>their wives are little recorded in the literature yet. Think about the
>Norse gods -- they all had wives (to the best of my memory), but you have
>to dig around a bit to find them.
Well Vinga at least is not married so I see no particular reason for that not to be also true of some of the male Thunder Brothers. Indeed I expect there are myths about one who Ernalda keeps trying to marry off without success (if not there should be). Of course this partially depends on what proportion of the population which is male - in the combat oriented Orlanthi society I would expect a majority of females which mean it will be very difficult for men to avoid marriage entirely. Of course given the various possibilites of Orlanthi marriage that doesn't mean the commitment of a permanent relationship - I can imagine there are times when a short marriage occurs primarily to give the woman a child. Maybe one of the Thunder Brothers is the mythical origin of that practice.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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