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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2878055" data-attributes="member: 7240">Thanks. Sometimes the longer stuff I write is too far out of context. I'm glad this worked for you.Given that my last set of observations was so welcome, maybe I can give you some helpful advice on what you have written below.This sounds an awful lot like 3rd century imperial Rome. The idea that the basic unity of society is family rather than the individual is very Roman. Indeed, one of the biggest Roman criticisms of Christianity was that it undermined family values by placing the individual apart from the family. For other societies similarly obsessed with honour, I recommend you also take a look at the Cherokees and Early Modern (15th-18th century) Hispanic societies. There may also be some valuable parallels with Imperial Chinese society but I don't know as much as I should in this area.Are you using the separate spheres model? If not, I recommend you make use of it. Here's a brief summary from of it that I recently posted to another board on another matter:At around the ages of 14-16 children will typically find themselves being prepared to enter an arranged marriage.  All children are expected to get married, and polygamy is quite common among commoners and sometimes among the high nobility.</blockquote>I would like to stop you here. Your society is seeming a little too flat. In other words, your aristocrats and your commoners are perilously culturally similar. Generally, adolescent marriage and arranged marriage, like early literacy (above) have tended to be common aristocratic customs that have rarely filtered-down to lower levels of society. Non-aristocrats, even if they have strong views on whom their children should marry lacked the resources, financial motivation and social support necessary to compel marriage. Similarly, because commoners have rarely gained any tangible benefit from early marriage, have also eschewed this practice. On another matter, do you mean polygamy or polygyny? In other words, are there situations where women have multiple husbands? Also, I think it is important for you to sort out whether family is patrilocal or matrilocal. In Mormon polygamy, for instance, family was matrilocal in the extreme. Each wife had her own separate household and which she administered on behalf of her husband. On the other hand, in Hindu polygamy, family was patrilocal but matrifocal -- the mother or first wife of the husband was in charge of the family unit and new wives were required to basically sever previous family attachments.Why would this be the case? Do they have a role in choosing wives? This seems really weird; in most polygynous systems, women are competing to be wife #1 and tend to direct most of their anger and competitive energy against their husband's other wives. I don't understand why these women would have such harmonious relationships. Sociologically, this just doesn't ring true for me.The only example I can think of historically for such harmonious relations are medieval Lithuanian polygamy. But this domestic harmony was achieved by men marrying all the sisters in a particular family at the same time. Needless to say, the incest taboo pretty much took care of any questions of same-sex relations in these marriages.In what sense? I'm assuming it's the husband who does the courting and the choosing. Even if this is true on paper or in public rhetoric, I don't see how this would shake down as the actual case.Also, I just don't buy a society with this many people into same-sex relations.This seems a neat idea -- like taking Platonic love to its logical conclusions and implicating families in it. This rings much truer for me than the lesbian aspect of your story.You could solve the exogamy problem by overlaying a clan system onto this. There is ample evidence that into the classical period, Athens had an exogamous clan system.The sexual part of this element rings true but I have to wonder what society's view of these orders is. Basically, they bust families -- if families are the most sacred institution in society, why are these orders not roundly despised? How are the orders sufficiently protected from people wanting their wives back for this to work?This sounds consistent with an honour-focused society. But again, I recommend that you think a little more about making the society a little more pyramidal and less flat. A lot of these expressions of affection in honour-driven societies also connote relationships of dominance, submission, patronage, clientage, equality, etc.[/QUOTE]

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