I've been wondering about this.
One of the plotlines that we discussed involved a Vingan marrying a clanless woman to give her a clan. The Vingan would argue that she is ritually a man, that she does the work of a man in the stead, and that she is willing to take on the responsibility of a wife and children. When the couple decide they want a child, the Vingan goes off on an adventure and follows Orlanth's lead by entrusting her wife to an Elmali male of the Vingan's hearth and bloodline. ("Hara, who do you fancy this time?")
I don't think this would be a common arrangement, but we were talking about a very determined Vingan with strong protective urges who comes from a fairly unusual family background herself. It didn't happen, but I'm keeping it in mind.
> Though I don't think that's true, is it? Vingans must be initiates of
> Ernalda. As near as I can tell, they're regarded as women by themselves and
> by Heortlings, though they are seen as women doing men's work (thus their
> customary costume of a skirt over pants?). So they aren't really an
> equivalent to Nandans--they're tomboys, not transsexuals.
IMG Vingans get considerable sexual freedom but it can be tricky to form and sustain long-term relationships.
Relationships with spear-sisters tend to pull you into Vinga-bands, temple service or the military, which all take you away from the hearth and kin you protect. It's a life for young Vingans in training, and for those who can or must make their careers away from kin.
Marrying away is almost unthinkable for my Vingan (not to mention that it would be really difficult to play the character afterwards).
She'd like children sometime, but "not if it means the life of the loom-house in some man's stead". Despite Jane's "it takes a clan" theory of communal child-raising, which theoretically provides Vingans with the option of having ("fatherless"?) children raised within the stead, I'm still getting my head around the stead-politics of this. How well do I respect the younger wives who've married into our stead? Who's particularly looking out for my kids while I'm off ploughing/patrolling/returning the axe my Wind-Lord father "borrowed" from the Babeester Gor temple in Nochet?
There are reasons for forming long-term liaisons with other people who are slightly outside the mainstream, but you have to be creative to fit this into clan life.
There are times when it feels like you're devoting your life to protecting something that you can never truly be a part of. There are times when the future looks lonely: what happens to old Vingans? For that matter, though, what happens to old Orlanthi who don't have children? The stead still looks out for Old Uncle Ulf, but where does he fit in the scheme of things?
Cheers,
Jennifer
-- Jennifer Geard
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