NarniaMUCK

Hey folks, I've had a couple questions about romance lately, and with the new influx of players in Archenland, I reluctantly admit to it probably being time to revisit this topic. As ever, RP staff encourages players not to rely on romance as a central or driving force for plot, and especially for tone, as when we look to the Narnia books we always find it secondary to stories of friendship and familial love. That said, we must acknowledge that the Narnia stories are primarily centered on children, and you all primarily play 20-somethings, and romance is inevitably going to define some of the relationships between some of your characters. So, with that, guidelines.

First and foremost: please read our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), located in our info files (typing info will bring you there). We are a game that is meant to be safe for children and adults alike. I don't care if you've met the other player in real life and feel you know exactly what their limits are. Behave as if you don't. There's very little we are this strict on, but because we allow under-13s, among other reasons, we feel very firmly about this.

Now, to the cultural guidelines. Narnia/Talking Beasts are relatively straight-forward. I've never really seen anything between them that was liable to cause an unanticipated scandal. Stay within AUP and you should be fine. This is largely true for Narnian Wild Peoples as well, although I would look to Archenland standards for these romances in order to be most respectful.

Archenland
We had the last big Archenland romance talk about 7 years ago. At the time, things were set up very legalistically. Women and men not married to each other and spending any time alone together were painted as scandalous. Current staff feels that this kind of strictness actually encourages romance-driven plots and romance-related drama. We would very much like to encourage you to foster female/male friendships, and we recognize that friendship often includes time together outside of a group setting.
That said, Archenland does have some structures in place for respectful romance. We try to give you some liberty with these, but if you want to pursue a romance in a manner which you are sure the other character will be comfortable with, I recommend following the guidelines below.
1. Romances are unofficial until the courting/engagement stage. It's a kind of "you're in or you're out" deal. Courting is the same as engagement in Archenland. There is not a defined middle ground. You've perhaps heard people say of their spouses "s/he's my best friend". This kind of romantic relationship, grown out of friendship, is encouraged by such a system.
2. Because romances are unofficial until engagement, kissing is strongly discouraged until this time. It's not unheard of, but it's not really polite, and may make the other party uncomfortable. This would be especially true among nobles, for whom marriage is often a much larger contract. Archenlanders are not often public kind of folk, and so public displays of affection would be quite mild -- more associated with tender care for the other than with physical displays of affection.
3. Marriages do not always or solely arise out of the infatuation-type love that our society values most highly for marriage and romance. Some marriages will. Prince Caspian and Ramandu's daughter indicate that this kind of romance is acceptable in Narnia canon. But Archenland is ruled by the children of King Frank and Queen Helen, who were practical, no-nonsense sorts, and Archenland is a medieval society, if a far more ideal one than that in our world. Other considerations would include the spouse's ability to care or provide for children, table, and home. For nobles, it would also include an aptitude for supporting the nobleman or woman in her/his specific duties, whether that meant an ability to travel with or keep home for a knight, to deal graciously with the people under one's care, or to council on difficult political matters. The same would really be true of commoners... a baker will want a wife who can manage the storefront, a shoemaker will want a husband who doesn't mind holding a needle for her from time-to-time -- but it is slightly less critical for commoners because their duties tend to be less harrowing. Very poor commoners, of course, will just want someone around who's not going to burn the one loaf of bread they've got.

4. This is more about player etiquette, but we ask that you be thoughtful to each other about your characters making assumptions. If you see a close relationship that appears to you to have romantic elements, it may be within your character's personality to make assumptions, which you certainly can do, but we'd like to ask that you be careful not to make the players feel pressured or awkward about the direction of their relationships. We roleplay in a world where learning and growing up is not assumed always to result in falling in love, so just as romancers can expect people to respect and acknowledge their decision to romance, friendshippers should also receive the same kind of courtesy.

I think that's really about it for now. I'm afraid this may feel restrictive to some, for which I apologize. While legalism is certainly not our intent, we find that the balance between child-friendliness, Narnian tone, and a medieval society lead us to this system. Our hope is that you would feel very free to associate with one another, but that, in order best to value them when they arise, romances would be considered more serious contracts in this society than in our own.

If I may make a small unofficial note on an alternative that could be taken into consideration and that is, in some circumstances a "love match" may not be deemed politically, culturally or socially sound and an arranged marriage would be an option that could be pursued if you feel it makes sense for a specific character. I myself used this option for Sehsis because due to personal preferences I wanted to make myself unavailable to RP any romance plots, and as a Calormene it would be far more common for this to happen than an Archenlander.

Wether we are discussing Archenland, Calormen or the human minority in Narnia, what must be remembered is that marriage at this period of time was not just a matter of two people getting together, but a contract between families and even among commoners there would be a sense of marrying beneath one's status (A commoner from a wealthy family would likely be met with disapproval from their family if they wanted to marry someone who's family was deemed to be below them, or who had a menial occupation).

Calormen is an absolute monarchy ruled by a god-emperor and has a very rigid, very strict social structure in which hierarchy is far more important and pronounced than it is in Archenland or Narnia. You have the Tarkaan class who are the noble ruling elites who are at the top, then comes the common free men (and their minor subdivisions based on relative wealth) and right at the bottom you have the slave class*. Archenland is a feudal/semi-feudal absolute monarchy, and while it does does appear to be more liberal and less strict than Europe at the time it still has a defined hierarchy with the nobles on top and commoners (and their minor subdivisions based on relative wealth) underneath and all the little rituals and etiquette that go with it.

In both countries social mobility between nobility/common classes is very rare and is done via marriage (Lady Rosalind and soon-to-be Lady Arael) or by apointment of the reigning monarch (Ahoshta Tarkaan)- Likewise I presume such airs may be stripped on the whim of the monarch. Likewise In both countries social mobility while still remaining a commoner is possible based on circumstance, effort and life choices- You are free to make or break yourself or life may thrust you into wealth or poverty due to circumstances outside of your control. Of course, it is easier to break something than it is to build it in the first place so working your way up into riches from a poor start will be difficult while falling into poverty from wealth is easy.

Now onto marriage. As I have already mentioned, marriage is not just a matter between individuals, but between their whole families and socioeconomic factors are all very important in deciding whether a match is a good one. As such it follows that the higher up you are the greater the importance of a good match.

Royalty and nobility therefore would be the ones who would be the most likely to find themselves in an arranged marriage and these could be arranged with many things in mind: Building alliances between houses (or countries in the case of royalty), gaining advantages through the wealth and resources of the houses that are being joined, as a way of brokering peace between feuds. The political and economic reasons for a noble/royal arranged match are endless and are wholly dependant on circumstance. Unfortunately this means that they also have a lot more riding on the match and the freedom of the intended couple to say "no" is very very limited (Aravis and Ahoshta are a good example- Just because one side is fine with it, does not mean the other side is and the family of the reluctant side has too much at steak to allow dissent). of course, it doesn't always have to end badly and some may be quite happy (Dar and Honour are a good example, I don't know the circumstances surrounding their marriage save that it was arranged, but they are happy).

I believe it would feature for commoners, but the frequency would depend on your family's position. I also believe there is a difference between Archenland and Calormen here and I believe that in Calormen arranged marriages are FAR more common than they are in Archenland, nevertheless here we go. As the lovely Antheia has already mentioned "a baker will want a wife who can manage the storefront, a shoemaker will want a husband who doesn't mind holding a needle for her from time-to-time" this gets interesting when you consider the wealthier commoners would have a much higher incentive to match their kids for them for economic reasons- This is the angle that I used for Sehsis, he is from a wealthy merchant family and he was married to the daughter of one of his father's business partners, probably in some kind of business merger, or to ensure that the families remain economically linked. For middle income families, there would be a good push to marry their children off to wealthier families, so deals may be brokered there as a way for one family to climb the social ladder. Of course, the lower down your family is the less this would matter and the less opportunity you would get to marry your child higher as you would not be able to afford the dowry in the case of girls or would bring the other family down in the case of boys and as Antheia said, the only thing that would matter is someone who wont burn your only loaf of bread.

Please note that these are all my opinions and is not official, it was written merely as food for thought. If anyone has any questions, comments, suggestions, additions I would be happy to hear them!

Ps. Gosh my "small note" turned into a huge rant.

(*For the purposes of this post I will not be talking about slaves since they have no control over their lives and who they marry, or even if they marry, is down to what their master decides)

Thanks for the thorough analysis, Sehsis! I would also say that in Archenland you're more likely to have a 'semi-arranged' marriage. That is, unlike in the case of Aravis, the parents may choose a spouse for the child, but they would do so with the child's happiness in mind. That certainly includes the child having the resources to be well cared for, as in an arrangement for hierarchical ladder-climbing, but Archenland parents would also consider personality and already present friendships. The baker's parents might notice that their son is good friends with the shoemakers' daughter. Seeing that the other family is stable and able to provide for itself, they might arrange a marriage contract between them. Even in a such a case, the parents will probably look for the consent of the children. This kind of arranged marriage is common in south Asian countries today, and we can find historical reasons to believe it was not uncommon in medieval Europe. The idea of such an arrangement in our modern world is often that the children do not want to spend their adult lives alone, but also do not want to go through the often difficult and disappointing process of dating. Instead, they allow their parents to assist them. Often the parents provide a few options.
Additionally, while arranged marriages may happen and we don't discourage them, there isn't a huge precedent for them in Archenland. Even Lady Paige, who is certainly our most ladder-climbing character, has not forced Avery into a marriage. (Although I would categorize her a semi-arranger, Avery makes a lot of her own choices and Paige usually just helps her when she thinks those choices are good ideas and hinders her when she doesn't.) We've never had a commoner arranged marriage... which doesn't mean they don't happen, but it is reason to believe they aren't usual, or aren't usually very limiting.
You should never feel pressured to marry your character off, either to another player character or an NPC. Arranged marriages are one option, but please don't feel like they are necessary in order to avoid RPing a romance.

For future responses to this post, I think it may be best to limit ourselves to clarifying questions about the initial guidelines. While the traditions of marriage are complex and interesting, I don't want to get too caught up in history and contract and lose sight of the main principles relayed in the initial post.