Trigamy Affair
The Trigamy Affair was a Themiclesian society scandal that unfolded between 1876 and 1878, built up around successive allegations by Lord Mreng Truk Krin-mak and the Baron of Kit against each other, mainly of a sexual nature. The two had been political enemies since the 1860s. The affair led to a serious public-relations setback that nearly ended Truk's political life and culminated in the dissolution of Kit's marriage and his bankruptcy.
In mid-1876, Kit instructed his associates to publish a carefully-authored series of articles in various newspapers that built a credible-sounding case that Truk was a homosexual and had sexually abused his subordinates while he was a military officer and later minister overseeing the armed forces. Later that year, Truk was first openly questioned in the House of Commons about first his sexual orientation and later whether any improper thing has taken place between him and his subordinates. Truk saw little problem admitting his homosexuality but strictly denied impropriety. Then, Truk retaliated by alleging Kit (who sat in the House of Lords) was the real abuser of power as he compelled his subordinates to support his fictitious allegations.
As Kit continued to arrange for publications of speculative and lurid details of Truk's sexual life, including potential partners who were actually his political allies and not his subordinates, Truk proclaimed in March 1877 that he had found evidence of Kit's secret, morganatic, and consummate marriage to a Gothian serving-girl whom he employed while staying in Gothia. This allegation caused major alarm because Kit was the husband of the Baroness of Ter, who held an independent barony and also sat in the House of Lords and was a major financier of Kit's political activities. Before Kit could respond, Truk had Kit's portrait published as a full-page engraving in the first edition of The Times of Themiclesia on April 1 with the titles "Bigamist, Fornicator, Fraudster".
Several weeks later, Truk claimed that Kit travelled again to Gothia after marrying the Baroness of Ter and, in an effort to confirm his marriage to the Gothian serving-girl who had become restless about her matrimony, re-performed the marriage openly in a cathedral while concealing his marriage in Themiclesia. Thus, Truk had Kit's portrait published again, this time in the Recorder because the Times refused to continue covering the affair, with the title "He That Married Thrice Between Two Concurrent Wives" (厥三昏于並帝二). Many tabloids took to speculating how many more wives Kit may have in secret while writing about Kit and Ter as "the baron and one of his wives". Ter became incensed at both Kit and Truk, despite protestations by Kit that he never married the Gothian serving-girl "even once".
Eventually, Ter became less trustful of Kit and wanted him to pay for his own reputational defence. Kit scoured his contacts in the marine corps for anyone who, for a bribe, would attest to Truk's depravity, but the tabloids were far more interested in his predicament, as it involved a peeress and a marriage hanging in the balance, than whatever stories he could provide. The press was seized by this rivalry, and according to some memoirs barely a single day would pass in a salon without some talk about the "trigamist". In October 1877, the most damaging allegation was made by Truk, namely that Kit had taken Ter's jewellery as gifts to the Gothian serving-girl during his absence. Using one's wife's dowry (which became a shared estate by virtue of marriage) was not illegal if done in good faith, but its application towards a secret, other spouse was at least morally unacceptable. Many think this scandalous allegation was published to force the baroness's hand in divorcing Kit, by making her not only a moral but financial victim of her husband's conduct.
In response, the House of Lords suspended Kit from the house pending an official investigation of a bigamous and fraudulent marriage to another member of the House and of embezzling her dowry. Moreover, the House sent an official message to the Gothian minister to ascertain whether Kit had indeed trigamously re-married the same person who is already married to him, after bigamously marrying a different person. Ter confided in her friend the Duchess of Nar that her marriage had become "completely unbearable" and in early 1878 filed a writ of dower with the Supreme Court of Themiclesia to reclaim her dowry and thereby divorce the Baron of Kit. Yet, unable to find money, Kit could only confess that he had spent most of her dowry on his political activities; he would, however, swear that her money did not go towards "a fictitious marriage now widely printed in the less respectable presses".
Truk was delighted by Kit's confession because, inasmuch as Kit had sought to discredit his masculinity by portraying him as a homosexual and abuser of other men, Kit must now discredit his own masculinity by admitting himself as an incompetent spender of his own wife's money. Kit, who borrowed under his own name to assume the image of responsibility and independence and was wherefore pursued by his creditors, left Themiclesia for Camia's silver mines and to track down the serving-girl whom he had never been able to contact during the affair. By May 1878, the affair was all over, and the Recorder used the title "Game, Set, and Match" to describe Kit's comprehensive destruction.
Two years later, Kit wrote to Truk asking if it was out of his own initiative to persecute him so thoroughly. Truk responded that he had not intended to retaliate if only for the allegation that he was a homosexual, because most of his inner circle understood it anyway and did not think less of Truk for it. But then Kit implicated Truk's friends as his potential romantic partners, and those friends insisted that Kit should be thoroughly keeled as a punishment for his unscrupulous newspaper offensive. Truk regretted (but did not apologize) for taking advantage of Kit's former "dalliances" and occasioning in the innocent Baroness of Ter as much distress as she suffered.