Waffen8888 said:
As sick as it sounds, for realism's sake I agree. Let the inbreeding begin!
Sick? Modern laws on consanguinity are
far more lax compared to the medieval ones... Roman civil law (which was adopted by the Church) did not allow marriages within
four degrees. In the nineth century this was changed to
seven degrees, while in 1215 it was returned to four. The degree was found by counting generations back to the first common ancestor. If two individuals descended in an unequal number of generations from a common ancestor, the more distant descent governed the degree of consanguinity. So what does this mean?
A relation in four degrees would look like this:
Code:
x
__|__
| |
x 4
__|__ |
| | |
x 3 4
__|__ | |
| | | |
x 2 3 4
|__ | | |
| | | | |
ego 1 2 3 4
This ment that even after the loosening up at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 you could not marry someone you shared a great-great-grandparent with, or a third cousin.
General practice was to marry anyone who suited, though, and very rarely did the Church intervene if both parts in a merriage were content. It was an often used exuse for annulment though, to "accidentally" discover that one were too close related...
