Themiclesian harem system

The Themiclesian harem system was a unique and elaborate development, within the context of Themiclesian monarchy, from the pluralistic marital relationships that are more broadly practiced in pre-modern Themiclesia.

Basis in marital customs

An Themiclesian man in the Archaic Period might have participate in as many as five or six types of coital, long-term relationships which historians term "marriages". All these marriages may legitimately give rise to offspring, whose relationship with their biological parents also depends on the type of marriage that produced them. Some of these relationships appear to be monogamous, while others are potentially polygamous. These marraiges were considered to have been different and independent of each other, and eligibility in one does not affect elibility in another.

Group marriage

At the centre of scholarly attention is a hypothetical but very plausible group marriage custom involving several pairs of spouses, from two moieties, simultaneously married to each other. In this group marriage system, a person's spouse is always from the other moiety, which explains the nomenclature arrived wife (帝婦; in classical Menghean style 適婦). The exact number of simultaneous pairs of spouses married this way is disputed, but in view of the connection of this marriage system with naming custom, it appears five pairs of spouses was normative. The selection of individuals from each moiety was not arbitrary: there were five subgroups in each moiety, and each had a fixed counterparty in marriage.

Since the completeness of the group marriage depended on the completeness of each of its five theoretical pairings, it was evidently common practice to provide substitute spouses in case a main spouse perished. These individuals were called liq (弟). Given their position as potential substitutes, they were also necessarily carried the same moiety and subgroup designations in order not to violate the completeness of the group marriage. The liq did not need to "wait" for their turn as a substitute in the group marriage and could freely enter personal marriages with other individuals of the opposing moiety, yet when they were needed, they are believed to have been expected to leave their personal marriages and take up their roles as substitutes in the group marriage.

Private marriage

Aside from participation in the group marriage, Themiclesians also had unregulated marriages. A woman may simply cohabit with a man and by doing so enter into a stable, marital relationship with him; such a woman is said to be a "cohabitor" (妻, tsei), and a husband relative to her is a "helper, worker" (夫). This is the form of marriage that the majority of Themiclesians, not participating in a group marriage, are believed to have participated in. It is usually thought that the terms referring to wife and husband in this relationship indicate a mutualistic relationship: the cohabiting wife agreed to bear children for her husband, while the husband promised work and upkeep for the wife.

Given the mutualistic, economic relationship that seems implicit in private marriage, it did not conflict with the more ritualistic and political group marriage. It is true in the historical period only men in group marriages seem to have enjoyed unfettered private marraige (there being no obvious examples of a woman in a group marriage being joined to another man in a private marriage), but most scholars think this situation stems from increasing patrilocality giving women less impetus to seek a conventional "helper, worker" partner in addition to their group-marriage spouses. Thus, in an earlier period where women did not automatically acquire a stable economic partner through group marriage, it seems entirely plausible they would have unfettered private marrage as well.

Since the relationship underlying private marriage seems to be economic in origin, private marriage is plural in Themiclesian history. It is a known practice for two or more women to live as cohabitors with a single man, if he is able to support them. The opposite situation, where a woman enjoys two or more helper husbands, is much rarer but historically attested: the ngar-pu basin from the Middle Archaic identifies its female owner's five husbands by name. This bronze vessel was the epicentre of a controversy in the 19th century as the text on the basin itself permits, at least theoretically, the conclusion that the female owner had five successive husbands but was never married simultaneously to any two or more of them. Yet the basin's lid, discovered in 1903, unambiguously said two of the husbands went to a distant town to fashion a lid for the basin, conclusively showing at least two of these husbands must have lived and have been married to the basin's owner at the same time.

Concubinage

Ancient Themiclesians permitted the practice of chattel slavery that treats reduced some persons to possessions of others. In this respect, slave-owners of any sex were legally and socially accorded sexual access to their own slaves of any sex. Such sexual access, often casual or even violent, cannot be automatically construed as a marital relationship, but it seems in some cases they could become longlasting or even somewhat romantic. During Antiquity it was not typical for slaves to become recognized lovers to their owners, but into the hegemonic period such become more common, especially in major households where slaves may gain recognized status and thus be deemed distinct from other slaves.

General description

The many kinds of sexual relationships permissible to a sovereign eventually coalesced into a more formalized set of rules governing the relationships that the Themiclesian monarch may legitimately have, as at the same time the insitution of marriage moved towards simplification for other members of high society. In this sense, it may be said that the sovereign's sexual liaisons preserve a more archaic state of affairs once accessible to more individuals. The disjunction of the marital possibilities of sovereign and subject seems to have solidified as the distinction between sovereign and subject itself solidified. Nevertheless, the two kinds of marital arrangements continued to influence each other throughout history.

Empress-consort

The empress-consort is not canonically considered part of the "harem" in sensu stricto because she forms her own household and is not within the household of the reigning emperor. She is joined by the ancient rite of arrival to the emperor, meaning she cannot become part of his household or thus nullify the union.