Marriage and Partners
What a marriage is
A Tileth is a marriage, and no city makes one or can end one. There is no license, no petition, no decree, and no magistrate with authority over whether two people are married. A Tileth is made by the two people in front of witnesses, and exists because everybody around them treats it as existing. Cities record it as they record a birth — Clearhold exactly, Eldershore in the line, Shining Reach in the civic registry, Forgegate's guilds beside the members' names — and none of that makes the marriage. What gives it weight is the Oathbond: two Family aspects are joined, each now answers for the other, and breaking faith inside a marriage is a failure witnessed by everybody who matters. No law would be heavier, and the philosophy would not permit one; binding two people by statute to a bond their natures have outgrown is the tyranny of conformity the Pact was written against. Property is handled separately, by agreement beforehand, and a magistrate will hear a dispute about property and not one about a marriage.
Joining a house
A person holds one Family aspect, so a marriage joins one of them into the other's house; from the Goenidd onward that house answers for them and their sigil carries its emblem. Which joins is settled between the families. Most cities default to the wife entering the husband's house; Eldershore defaults the other way, the line running through the mother; where one line needs continuing, the husband joins the wife's, which Eldershore does constantly and the northern cities whenever a daughter is the last of hers. The name follows the house: family names are trade names, place names, descent names, and in Eldershore the names of founders, and after nine centuries a name nobody can parse is an old one, and families are proud of those. Two people with no Famrae found one rather than join one. Joining a house means joining its liabilities — a person who married into a house whose debts exceed what it can pay is inside the reckoning — which is why families negotiate beforehand.
The Goenidd
The ceremony, and every city does it differently; what does not differ is that it happens in front of people. Shining Reach treats it as a performance — declarations before as many guests as can be seated, speeches from both families, and the clothes discussed for a month. Forgegate marries through the guilds and the families together, at the guild hall, with the master speaking as often as the father. Stormharbor swears it before the community at the Thing ground or the Skald Hall, a Gothi as spiritual witness, the whole street present. Eldershore joins two lines rather than two people, at a lineage hall, the ancestral keepers attending and the ancestors addressed directly. Clearhold does it exactly and quietly, before witnesses, over in a Maerk, and written down by the end of the day. The Iron Coves have no ceremony worth the name: two people say they are married, and they are, for as long as anybody believes them.
Who marries
Most people in their mid-twenties to early thirties, once a person has a station and something to bring. A marriage is recognized in all six cities whoever the two people are — two men, two women, a man and a woman — because marriage is a household matter and no city has standing to say otherwise. How warmly it is received varies; see Outside the Pattern. A slave cannot marry; she holds no Family aspect to join.
Courtship
Mixed, by class and city. At the top it is arranged or as good as, Eldershore's lineages most openly. In the middle it is supervised without being decided: guild dances, festivals, a neighbor's table, the Therplae where everybody's family drinks. Among working people it is free and always has been. Soyl is the festival of courtship, and most of the world's proposals are made before its dawn; Rwyth is when the weddings happen, and a couple who proposed at Soyl waits three quarters of a year and everybody counts it.
A Boedra is a sweetheart, a partner nobody has married. Some couples never do, live together thirty years, and are treated as a household by every neighbor; the world does not moralize. What they lack is the joined Family aspect: neither is inside the other's house, neither can be taken for the other's debts, neither family owes the other anything, and property stays with whoever brought it unless something is written. The hard part is death — the survivor inherits nothing by default and the dead partner's family takes everything — and a great many couples never write the instrument until somebody they know has died without one.
Separation
A marriage ends when the two of them say it has. No decree, because there was no license. Property goes as agreed beforehand; children stay with whichever household can keep them best, and both parents go on answering for them. What the world judges is how it was done. The Famrae is the part that hurts: a separation puts the joined spouse out of the house, and what happens next is the birth family's decision. Most take them back and think nothing of it. A family refuses when it has a reason it can name out loud — and then the refused person holds a Personal aspect and a Station and no Family at all, which is exactly where a freed slave stands. Everybody knows this before they marry, which is why a number of marriages hold together that both people would rather end.
Inheritance
Shining Reach and Forgegate divide among the children with the shop or house going whole to one. Stormharbor divides by the Thing's custom and keeps the boat whole. Clearhold does exactly what was recorded. Eldershore inherits through the mother's line. The Iron Coves have whoever takes it.
Attachments and slaves
A slave cannot marry, and attachments happen anyway. Two slaves in a household attached to each other are permitted or not by the owner; in practice two contented slaves work better than two miserable ones, and selling one of a pair is a thing a street remembers. A slave attached to her owner is the commonest version and the least discussed: he may free her, she may refuse it, and a freed woman may marry into a Famrae, including his. A man who frees and marries his slave has done a thing the world finds slightly romantic; a man who loves his slave and marries somebody else has done something the world also understands, and his household will feel it for years. A slave attached to a free person who does not own her is at both parties' discretion, and most such attachments end when he marries, which everybody knew from the beginning.