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

Little is known about the marital customs of non-Meng groups that lived in Themiclesia. Meng people, as they began to settle Themiclesia in the 8th century BCE, must have brought with them their marital customs, as supported by the continuation of the terminology and material culture associated with marital custom in large part from the Meng urheimat to the colonized Themiclesia. Amongst its features is predominant and normative monogamy for most individuals. However, these customs are very under-represented in the historical record.

On the other hand, a more elaborate form of marriage is reflected in the earliest Themiclesian historical records. As it is usually accepted that this type of marriage occurred specifically between leaders of Meng and native kinship groups, it is commonly referred to as the "alliance marriage", though the political background is difficult to describe and verify. This early form of marriage is not directly attested but reconstructed through later and mutated information, and it is uncertain how stable the alliance marriage system originally was.

The foundation of the alliance marriage was the simultaneous exogamous marriage of multiple couples between cultural groups, who are moreover identified by an element of the 10-member sequence called the Heavenly Stems in Meng culture, called the Ordinal Name. The relationship that results from this exchange marriage dominates the sparse record of social, political, and religious customs of Archaic Themiclesian society. Yet it remains unclear how these identifiers are assigned to married partners: did the Tsinh kinship group provide only husbands, only wives, or a set or variable number of both; did the identifiers apply to spouses representing Tsinh exclusively, or did they also apply to those of natives? None of these questions are settled today.

It appears certain that this form of marriage is very much connected, on some level, with that practiced by some early Meng communities in the Gojun or Jun eras, since an identical set of terms describing parties to the union is employed. To what extent the Themiclesian alliance marriage remains true to the ancient Gojun or Jun practices and in what way native customs or internal evolution has influenced the same remains deeply divisive in scholarship.

Though a person's Ordinal Name is not determined by their participation in the the alliance marriage, it is ensured that Ordinal Names were inherited in a way governed by the alliance marriage. While not everyone participates as a partner in the marriage, it seems likely that the way one's lineage leader married does determine the Ordinal Name is passed on at least to their children.

Archaic Period

During the 660-year Archaic Period, the prehistoric exchange marriage seems to have evolved into the Rite of Congression (啇), as the political context that supported exchange marriage also evolved. The Rite of Congression was an indispensible element of political life as political power and leadership passed collaterally through it, unlike personal property which likely descended differently and linearly.

By the Late Archaic, the prehistoric exchange marriage seems to have concentrated or coalesced into a form of plural marriage, that is between one person simultaneously married to a group of persons. This accompanies the assumed shift from a kinship group with joint leaders representing multiple lineages, to one with a paramount leader with recognition for other lineages. As representative of the entire kinship group, the paramount leader would have desired to concentrate the marital connection onto himself as much as possible, both to secure external support and to repress internal challengers.

While it is known that this alliance marriage confers political authority, it is unknown if and for how long has a paramount leadership existed within the Tsinh kinship group during the Archaic Period. Much will depend on how one interprets the Royal Canon of Tsinh and if simultaneous leaders are permitted amongst the individuals mentioned therein. It appears, at present, most scholars hold that the earlier part of the Canon does recall simultaneous leaders who are legitimized by their participation in the alliance marriage, while a transition taking place in the Archaic gradually (and perhaps intermittently) eliminated simultaneous leaders and concentrated their positions on a single paramount leader who comes to be known as the Elder of Tsinh (㚾晉).

The best historical evidence of the alliance marriage system is the presence of the ′eng-women (嬴), who accompanied the paramount leader's spouse in the Rite of Congression. Some or most ′eng-woman were in a coital relationship with the paramount leader, but it remained customary that at least one ′eng-woman should be enter into a coital relationship with the paramount leader's paternal half-brother. Moreover, a child born of this union was considered a congression-child (帝子), that is capable of succession. In the historical period where successive rulers' relationships are known, a congression-child born of the paramount leader was preferred over a half-brother's child, but it is widely speculated that it was the half-brother's child that anciently had the higher right to succeed, as it is better interpreted as a legacy rather than an intentional measure.

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.

Forms of marriage

Historians hold that ancient Themiclesians recognized multiple types of relationships that could be considered forms of marriage in modern terms. These relationships were considered distinct, and a person can legitimately become involved in multiple relationships. Nevertheless, definite restrictions against bigamy existed, and some forms of bigamy were punished by death as a sacral offence.

Alliance marriage

The alliance marriage in its original form is reconstructed as involving multiple spouses (or pairs of spouses) entering into a higher-order system marriage, and the offspring of these pairs of spouses, even though genealogically unrelated, are considered metaphorical siblings to each other and eligible to take certain offices (including the chieftainship) in the clan-village-city continuum, possibly in turn or otherwise. A key element of alliance marriage is a moiety system, there being essentially two parties joined together through the simultaneous union of multiple persons from each party; this character leads many historians and anthropologists to hold it originated as a customary inter-cultural marriage lasting multiple generations.

The crime of bigamy originally pertained only to alliance marriage and refers to the state of being part of two separate alliance marriages. While simultaneous partaking in two separate alliance marriages was definitely an instance of bigamy, it seems it was originally a form of bigamy as well for a person to participate in two separate alliance marriages over their lifetime, even the two were not simultaneous. In the latter case, a more accurate description would be a broader prohibition of remarriage rather than mere bigamy, with simultaneous marriage only a sub-case of remarriage.

Cohabitation marriage

Cohabitation (妻昬) is the name given by modern scholars to a marital relation whereby at least the female spouse was said to "cohabit" (妻) with the male. Older texts, however, use this term for both spouses, and it seems the attachment to the female is a later development.

While the normal form of marriage between the ordinary people in ancient Themiclesia is thought to have been by cohabitation, it is scarcely attested in the historical record. Alliance marriages underlaid nascent statehood in Themiclesia and is found in a non-trivial amount of writing, but the cohabitation marriages of ordinary people went largely unrecorded, and its characteristics are even more elusive than that of the alliance marriage. Historians disagree over fundamental questions like who would have been acceptable marriage partners and whether the system of Ordinal Names had any relevance to cohabitation marriage, though cohabitation was an endogamous relationship within the kinship group, compared to the ostentatious exogamy of alliance marriage.

Archaeology suggests that cohabitation marriage was predominantly monogamous, but from the time of the Classical Period, polygamous cohabitation was well known. For some individuals, there was evidently no objection to having multiple cohabiting female spouses; nevertheless, marriage is recorded almost exclusively from the male perspective, so it is not inconceivable that women could have multiple male partners as well. As cohabitation was not part of the alliance marriage, the capital punishment for bigamy did not extend to individuals with multiple cohabiting partners.

As alliance marriage seems to have been progressively monopolized by royalty by the end of the Archaic Period, the

Concubinage

The concubine (嬖妾, spiks-tsap) is distinct from a slavewoman (妾, stsap) in that her relationship with her owner is based on a written agreement registered by the magisterial authority. Since this is a recognized relationship it has been considered a kind of marriage under some authors.

The Marriage Registration Act of 1882 forbids the drawing up and registration of concubinage briefs and contracts, whether of a permanent or temporary character, before a scrivener and administrative magistrate, even if the contract is made suo juris by the female party. A concubinage contract is any instrument, whether written or verbal, "which binds a woman to a man in providing her body for the Purposes of creating Heirs or of his carnal Uses."

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