Marriage in Themiclesia

Marriage in Themiclesia is regulated by both customary and statutory law. Each of the parliaments in Themiclesia has power to legislate regarding the definition, registration, and solemization of marriages within their respective jurisdictions. Polygamy is forbidden in all jurisdictions and a criminal offence in Themiclesian-proper, Estoria, and Helia. Same-sex marriage is legal in Themiclesia and granted the same protections as other marriages.

In 2020, there were 123,000 marriages in Themiclesia, down from 129,000 in 2000. Marriage ceremonies in Themiclesia can be either civil or religious. In the former case, marriages may take place before certain courts of law or registrars in local administration, and in the latter recognized religious institutions or officials are legally competent to conduct and validate marriages. Divorces are only recognized when registered by the civil authority, regardless of religious ceremonies performed.

History

Prehistoric marriages

The early records of marriage in Themiclesia are found on oracular tablets and bronze vessels, dating to the 5th century BCE. Oracle tablets record questions about the auspiciousness of a marriage and the suitability of a potential spouse, posed by the bride's or groom's clan patriarch to the clan's ancestors. In the bronze record, hundreds of vessels have been recovered bearing the specific inscription that the vessel was made for a woman's marriage, typically by her parents, siblings, or husband. While it is not totally unknown, a woman can also cast bronzes for her husband. Such bronzes were made specifically in a marital context, but other bronzes often obliquely or directly reference marriages or married individuals. It should be noted that oracular tablets and bronzes nearly always record the marital customs of the ruling class or otherwise the very resourceful, as ordinary people had little to no access to bronze during the Dark Ages.

In the archaeological record, marriage is often inferred through joint burials and well-preserved domiciliary buildings and remains therein showing co-habitation. A common burial includes a male and female skeleton interred next to each other, at different times. As most Themiclesian eating vessles are assumed to serve an individual's portion, given the typical diet, the presence of multiple sets of utensils and a larger communal cooking vessel is often considered indicative of marriage. Size, enlargement, or compartmentalization in domiciles can also be interpreted as signs of marriage or childbirth. In general, inferring marriage and related customs in less privileged social strata often is more challenging and controversial than the same through oracular and bronze inscriptions. Bronzes in particular are more easily traced to their origins through art style and practices in combination, while pottery vessels usually exhibit fewer traceable factors.

At the highest levels of power, marriages are recorded through regular sacrifices to deceased rulers and their consorts. In Tsins, deceased consorts were deified spirits who could affect the health or wellbeing of living members of the ruling clan; they were commemorated in temples of considerable scale and interred in tombs that contain gold, bronze, and jewellery, in addition to human and animal sacrifices. The sponses of clan patriarchs were called stik (奭), which has the basic meaning of "peer, friend", a high status that is corroborated by the richness of their burials. It is notable that in the cultic, context one patriarch is always paired with the same consort, even though from large-scale burials it emerges that rulers had access to multiple consorts.

Marriage in the historical period

Some of the earliest received histories dealing with marriages are found in the Springs and Autumns of Six States (六邦春秋) and the Antiquities of Themiclesia (震旦古事記). The former, which lacks commentary, is a collation of purported annals from six states, spanning the 3rd c. BCE to 256 CE, while the latter was written around 500 CE, narrating the history of Themiclesia up to that time. The Springs and Autums contains references to 510 marriages between states and the identities of their spouses, but little other information. The Antiquities informs about the motives and results of a smaller number of marriages in biographic detail.  In Tsins, more texts survive from the 2nd c. onwards, referencing marriage contracts, marital life, and the milieu of marriage.

As a continuation from the prehistoric period, marriages appear to be monogamous for most people.

Laws forbidding morganatic marriage became common in Themiclesia starting in the 1st century BCE. These laws generally restricted noble households and is considered to have suppressed probate or succession disputes. In a marriage between spouses of unequal status or wealth, some feared that a family's property and privileges would transfer to the guardianship of a different family; this was termed a "false" marriage. The monarchy feared that a baron's allegiances could shift if his spouse did not originate from another baron's family and therefore forbade marriages between them and commoners. At the same time, royalty married with royalty from other states, creating alliances that may last generations; many argued that morganatic marriages undermined alliances and were thus prohibited.

Polygamy

The practice of plural marriage or polygamy is historically attested in Themiclesia, mainly through the variety of polygyny or a relationship between one male and two or more females. Elaborate means of defining relationships between male and female partners developed as early as the Archaic Period, but these were common only within the nobility, and marital relationships in commoners are assumed to have been ordinarily monogamous.

From the earliest period of marriage practice in Themiclesia, it seems group marriage was a feature amongst the nobility. In this political arrangement, a number of pairings between clan boundaries were agreed upon. The clan leader was often paired with more than one consort, so that the alliance would not be severed in the event the primary consort dies. There is some disagreement whether the practice of pairing multiple individuals across clans or that of marrying multiple consorts to the clan leader was older; possibly both were practiced to create a maximally secure alliance. The former seems more in agreement with the idea that early Themiclesian clans seem to have multiple siblings together in charge.

It is known in the late Arcahic Period (1st century CE) that kings possessed multiple female sexual partners within legitimate relationships. These females were termed peks (配), meaning "consort", with the king. However, a king was epxected to continue an existing or forge a new alliance with a foreign state by means of marriage with a princess from the foreign court, who was especially called "arrived consort" (適配). The king's other consorts, who could come from any origin, were "other consorts" (柁配).

To consummate the alliance, the king's offspring through the arrived consort inherited the throne; in time, this became a cultural requirement as much as a political one. In the Archaic and Classical periods, the bloodline of the arrived consort was an absolute requirement to inherit the throne; if the arrive consort did not bear offspring, the throne would pass to the king's brothers from the same mother (who was an arrived consort), in default of which it went to his uncle, and so forth. After the rise of the Empire, in the absence of an heir from the arrived consort, the child of an "other consort" could also inherit with the permission of the arrive consort.

See also

• Themiclesia