Was there a universal minimum age for marriage?

[Zepheyr]

Im tired of people sprouting the whole " oh Mohammad married a 6 year old" line, as if they think that therefore Muslims are supportive of pedophilia, It's often used over here to stir up religious tensions by far-right groups.

You are the only one stirring up tension here.

I have also heard that commoners typically married in their late teens and early twenties, but the nobility married younger for many reasons, such as political alliances, the need for heirs of a particular house, so forth. I also gather there is this notion that marriages happened at a younger age than they do today because people generally didn't live as long. That may just be speculation though.

[Bad_Haggis]

I can't even decide what's more fail - to fail reading the OP or to jump onto someone because of your own problems.

Fine, I tried to diffuse the situation but apparently you aren't interested in that.

I also can't decide why you think it's okay to decide to call Muslims "primitive" but each to their own.

[MannheimCouncil]

The Western European Marriage Pattern, which holds true in most of the catholic areas of the game, actually indicates an average marriage age of about twenty-five for both genders with men tending to be married a bit later and women a bit earlier. This includes the nobility (though they are, of course, not a significant contributor to the average) and a substantial number of people got married even later or not at all. This is mainly a consequence of ordinary people having to work hard to provide a dowry for their daughters and having done this objected to prospective sons-in-law who were not settled and could provide for their spouses.

[binTravkin]

Fine, I tried to diffuse the situation but apparently you aren't interested in that.

I also can't decide why you think it's okay to decide to call Muslims "primitive" but each to their own.

Look, I'm not native English speaker either, but if I can't understand a sentence, I don't invent it's meaning.

[Moltke]

In my view your comment's tone indicated derision, although as I have just woken up, I may have misread this, and if that is the case I apologise. If I was slightly more awake, I would have asked what It had to do with the time frame.

Right...

The age of 16 works pretty well as a generic "age of consummation" in CK2; along with betrothals it gives us the creepy "sell off your kids vibe" without rankling our Puritan sensibilities too much. As noted above though there are many historical cases that are exceptional. And we judge them to be gross.

[Closet Skeleton]

For non-nobles during the Middle Ages, the average age of marriage was actually a lot higher than commonly thought. From what written records we do have, it seems that most European peasants married in their early twenties. On the other hand, it was much more common for the nobility to marry at younger ages, for a variety of reasons, but regardless, marriages and child-rearing especially before around 16 years of age were fairly uncommon.

Peasants married late because they weren't financially safe enough to do so until late in their lives. Nobles could easily support their children and grandchildren before they died so could afford to marry earlier.

I also can't decide why you think it's okay to decide to call Muslims "primitive" but each to their own.

Calling anyone primitive is usually baseless and just a form of elitism, but we are talking about the past here. Everyone in the middle ages was 'primitive' in a way from modern standards.

[Manic Eskimo]

It could be quite cool if your betrothed came to live with you at a certain age. So you could train them in whatever you wanted and maybe even change their culture. That could be a good fix to represent the earlier marriage ages. That is if it needs fixing.

[Closet Skeleton]

It could be quite cool if your betrothed came to live with you at a certain age. So you could train them in whatever you wanted and maybe even change their culture. That could be a good fix to represent the earlier marriage ages. That is if it needs fixing.

They used to do that in China. The result was that the betrothed imprinted on each other as siblings and had no interest in having sex with each other once they were old enough to marry.

[yabba]

It still happens in China to some degree in the poorer provinces. It'd be an interesting topic to research.

[Prime624]

Fine, I tried to diffuse the situation but apparently you aren't interested in that.

I also can't decide why you think it's okay to decide to call Muslims "primitive" but each to their own.

What's you issue? You are the only one saying anything racist. STOP!!!

[Leviathan07]

In game the age where a character changes from a child to an adult seems to be 16 and thus no one under the age of 16 has the legal age to marry. But 16 seems a bit old for those days - especially for Muslims. I don't know about any Christian examples but didn't the Prophet Mohammad marry Aisha when she was around the age of 9? So yeah, just wondering if Paradox added that age for some kind of legal reasons or if, at least in the Christian world, there was a specific age of adulthood?

A marriage would only be consummated when the couple was ready to have kids. Puberty arrived later for them than it did for kids in our time (worse nutrition, even for nobles) so as was already said, 14 or thereabouts would be a possible date but if they wanted to go easy on the couple they would give them more time since pregnancies at age 14 or even 15 are still very high.

Generally, since marriages were political affairs, there could be pressure to consummate a marriage earlier (or later), because a marriage that is not consummated, can be annulled according to church law.

For example if you married the only heir to a fortune, you would want to consummate as early as possible so that "the deal is closed". You would not want to wait many years because the heiress' family might get cold feet and seek for a better partner while the marriage was still not consummated. Terrible for the children, of course (try to imagine a family pressuring their 13 year old son to have sex with a 11 year old... actually, better don't try to imagine it.)

For peasants, if the parents had material reasons to see their kids married they might also do it as early as they like (within the bounds of church law of course). But if there were no pressing material reasons, I would find it hard to imagine a farmer wanting his son to marry early and burden the household with additional mouths to feed. I would think he'd rather have his sons (and daughters) stay at home, and work, until they were 20 or maybe older. With daughters of course you wouldn't want to wait too long (lest you be burdened with them permanently) but even there I would think a household needs working hands so they'd not give her away so readily.

[CB60]

Yeah, John of England went nuts for a 12 year old girl, stole her from the Lusignans, but I sure don't want to see it.

[Veldmaarschalk]

Some off topic posts have been deleted.

This is a final warning to stick to the topic of this thread.

[Jorlaan]

I have read fairly extensivly from multiple periods in history, and during this time commoners got married in general around the ages you still see today, early to mid twenties. Someone made a comment about dowry and needing more time to save for it, this is a factor for sure. For many commoners then, as now, they married who they wanted, when they wanted. Nobles may have been bethrothed at a young age, but in European culture the marriage ages were usually held till the later teen at the least. It is true that some married earlier, but most people rich and poor waited till 20's.

[Vortex_13]

Commoners married when they could afford it. Nobles married whenever they felt like it as their was noone to tell them otherwise.

[Arilou]

You are the only one stirring up tension here.

I have also heard that commoners typically married in their late teens and early twenties, but the nobility married younger for many reasons, such as political alliances, the need for heirs of a particular house, so forth. I also gather there is this notion that marriages happened at a younger age than they do today because people generally didn't live as long. That may just be speculation though.

From what we can tell at least in the early-modern era, commoners married in their mid-twenties.

[liamgamer55]

Im tired of people sprouting the whole " oh Mohammad married a 6 year old" line, as if they think that therefore Muslims are supportive of pedophilia, It's often used over here to stir up religious tensions by far-right groups.

The quran does say stuff about muhommad's life being the example you should live by.

So yes it is a legitimate statement to link muslims with whatever practices he did.

[Mr_B0narpte]

The quran does say stuff about muhommad's life being the example you should live by.

So yes it is a legitimate statement to link muslims with whatever practices he did.

Lol, people never know when to stop....

[Veldmaarschalk]

The quran does say stuff about muhommad's life being the example you should live by.

So yes it is a legitimate statement to link muslims with whatever practices he did.

Don't ignore warnings by the forum-staff.