More sexually permissive? It was probably because they didn't care. All their gods did it, and they looked up to the gods!
Medieval Catholic Christianity even had a rulebook for when you could have sex during the week, afair.
[Old Gods] Would Pagan polygamy be implemented?
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More sexually permissive? It was probably because they didn't care. All their gods did it, and they looked up to the gods!
Medieval Catholic Christianity even had a rulebook for when you could have sex during the week, afair.
A medieval chronicler Gallus Anonymus claimed that the Mieszko I had 7 wives before his baptism, so I wouldn't say that the idea is particularly modern. Whether it's true or not is a separate issue.
And the internet doesn't know what enacy is!
Not sure Enacy is even a word, it's not on Dictionary.com (and before you say it, Anacy isn't there either). He probably meant Enate or Enatic. And yeah, I hope that will be part of the Old Gods. The Celts certainly had plenty of women in political and military power.
Fallatic > Fallacy
Enatic > Enacy, Agnatic > Agnacy
Derivational analogy and diachronics ftw
Implement this for MEIN ISTARI MOD. Istari often had multiple wives, who had multiple husbands, who had multiple wives, ad infinitum....
The Romans had very unpermissive public social mores (not always followed indoors, of course, as always) and their gods messed around a lot. Read Tacitus' Germania; while not entirely without agenda he does utterly remove the notion that the Ancient Germanic peoples were sexually open in any way. Maybe to men having semi-secret mistresses, but that's about the end of it.
There's a huge difference between how ancient kings and their gods (mis)behaved in myths and how people were expected to behave in the present. Mythology always become more fanciful and fantastic in the telling; don't forget that there weren't many other venues into escapism.
Medieval Catholic Christianity tried to control sexuality as much as possible ('twas quite totalitarian in nature) and (for religious reasons) tied sexuality very strongly to family and reproduction. Some vestiges of that can still be found to this day.
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Rather sweeping quote, but probably generally wrong - largely because the Catholic church in the middle ages (hell most ages!) wasn't comfortable with the idea of sex, and really loved cutting down on people's opportunities for it. By contrast, a pagan priest probably wouldn't have the authority to tell a king he's only to have just the one wife and no nookie if its not been the common practice. There's historical accounts of some form of polygamy (or 'official mistresses', 'harems' etc etc) across many cultures. Frequently limited in practice to the wealthy.
Main reason why kings tended to abandon polygamy was where land and titles started to become an issue. Having 8-9 potential heirs to one king title, or splitting land among 6 sons was basicly a recipe for rebellion (and impoverishing each member of the dynasty), so cutting down on the number of people who had an entitlement to them was a good idea (CK2 is also fairly bad at modelling this, so you have nobles spitting out kids simply because they can, instead of getting less enthusiastic after the 4th or 5th son)
To the OPs question, yes they probably will implement it in some form where appropriate, but there will be a limitation in practice on wives, simply to stop the game choking on having too many characters. They also will probably not represent cases where the children that result have no real inheritance rights for the same reason.
Even if you go back to the pre-chrstian kings you will find that they had one wife, they are even mentioned now and then as powerful characters in their own right, but it was apparently not seen as something downright bad if the king had bastards. You could say like a harem but without the exclusivity. To make this into polygamy would be wrong. It is more the cultural acceptance of bastards and a more 'open' approach to marriage... for the men at least.
By the way, Svend Estridsen was a particular case, no other Danish king had as many legitimized bastards. You could even say that his lack of legal children could be the cause of his many bastards. However this practice of getting bastards isn't something tied to that age. Christian IV of Denmark, in the early to mid 1600s, had at least 24 children, most likely many more, of which 6 from his wife (he had a lefthand marriage as well later on, which kept the wife from any official position, but the children were considered legitimate).
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I never really saw any example of polygamy in the sagas, but maybe I just haven't seen that many sagas... @.@ What I did see is one saga called the Saga of the People of Laexardal, that has a guy buy a slave-girl that would work on his house but would also be his mistress... His wife hated her guts out and treated her very badly, but the rest of the comunity was quite fond of her, because she happened to be the daughter of an irish King... So, in general, the way norse pagans saw marriage is a little hard to grasp for me sometimes @.@
EDIT: But the Jomsvikings Saga does show that a bastard can only inherit his part of the father's inheritance if the legitimate heirs agree to it. Which caused some big fights among bastard and non bastard brothers...
One thing I'd LOVE to see in this game is the notion of foster-brotherhood and foster-fatherhood. THAT would be interesting...
EDIT: But the Jomsvikings Saga does show that a bastard can only inherit his part of the father's inheritance if the legitimate heirs agree to it. Which caused some big fights among bastard and non bastard brothers...
One thing I'd LOVE to see in this game is the notion of foster-brotherhood and foster-fatherhood. THAT would be interesting...
Foster-brothers and foster-siblings would be interesting, but care would have to be taken to ensure they didn't just provide an easy way around the crappy heir problem.
As for mistresses and stuff, bear in mind that just because a few pagan rulers had mistresses who were well regarded, that doesn't mean the religion as a whole didn't believe in monogamous marriage. I mean, as the game stands, christian rulers are allowed to take mistresses and the only penalty is that their spouses dislike it. There's no general "OMG DISREGARDING THE SACRED BONDS OF MARRIAGE" penalty. I mean, I could find multiple examples of christian rulers with lovers who they semi-publically acknowledged and who were popular and well-liked. It doesn't mean that christianity accepted polgamy.
We don't know a huge amount about pagan religious practices, but there's a temptation, partly because people tend to idealise them, to just assume they were the opposite of christianity in every way. I hope the game doesn't succumb to that.
As for mistresses and stuff, bear in mind that just because a few pagan rulers had mistresses who were well regarded, that doesn't mean the religion as a whole didn't believe in monogamous marriage. I mean, as the game stands, christian rulers are allowed to take mistresses and the only penalty is that their spouses dislike it. There's no general "OMG DISREGARDING THE SACRED BONDS OF MARRIAGE" penalty. I mean, I could find multiple examples of christian rulers with lovers who they semi-publically acknowledged and who were popular and well-liked. It doesn't mean that christianity accepted polgamy.
We don't know a huge amount about pagan religious practices, but there's a temptation, partly because people tend to idealise them, to just assume they were the opposite of christianity in every way. I hope the game doesn't succumb to that.
Well, as of the last patch Norse pagans are able to have multiple wives. So, I'd guess it will be implemented fully. (Check out Erik after a few years, he should have a few wives).
I hope so too. I'd like it if PI actually introduced (to everyone, including the norse pagans) the idea of mistresses, having them be able to have a number of mistresses depending on, I dont know, their prestige or wealth or something, having their wives hate their guts out but having no more real implication (except for bastardry and etc)
About fostership, there would be no problem with crappy heir exploitation because a foster-son would be only a kid who grew up with you caring for him (the tutor, for example), and their relationship with his sons would be only that of familal love, with no title claim granted. It was actually a quite powerful relationship, if you take the Sagas into consideration. Fosterbrothers could be more trustworthy then any bloodkin, but they didnt expect to inherit anything from their foster-father...
Some Vestiges? That is an understatement. Have you seen how America flips out if a stray boob is shown for a split second on TV?
In my research for my current aar, I found something interesting in relation to this. Now, Harald Hardrada, after escaping his term in Roman service, passed through Kiev and married his "great love" Ellisiv, daughter of Yaroslavl the Wise. Thats confirmed in all the records and sagas. She produced the two daughters you see in-game in 1066. The sagas then go on to say that upon gaining the crown of Norway, he married Tora Torbergsdatter as a political sop to the nobles; by her are born Olav and Magnus. No death of Ellisiv is mentioned, in fact she is recorded in the Heimskringla as accompanying Harald as far as Orkney on the way to invade England. No big deal is made of this by the contemporaries, despite Harald, both wives, and the kingdom already being 'Christian.' To be noted, thought, is that only Ellisiv, the first wife, was Queen, Tora was only a wife. So perhaps even early Christian Scandinavian and Russian princes should have some sort of limited polygamy.
Perhaps. It was known that the Franks continued polygamy even in the time of Charlemagne, and only the later intervention of the pope stop this.
Don't need to wait for Paradox to do it; if you want, you can mod in polygamy for other religions (go to the religion file in common, I think that is where it is located.) You can even make Christians polygamous, if you like. And also, these polygamists will marry a number of wives based on their tier; barons will have one wife, counts two, dukes three, and on up.
I think you're confusing sexual permissiveness with polygamy, and vice versa.
Stop it.
darthfanta said:
B-but...King of Swaziland is a Christian.