When you are creating your setting, it is tempting to use either what you experience today or what you may know about Medieval Europe as your default when it comes to the family. When it comes to your setting, you can start to push the parameters of reality into areas that may make more sense in a fantasy world.

I am only aware of one culture in reality that practiced polygyny, which is one woman having multiple husbands. It was typically a group of brothers who would marry a single woman. This arrangement prevented dividing the farm among multiple male heirs, allowing the wealth of the family to continue for generations. Polygamy is actually pretty common outside of Medieval Europe. That said, it was not uncommon for men to have a wife and a mistress, particularly in the upper classes. I’m not aware of any cultures that have allowed both types of polyamory or groups with all genders in the same marriage, but there is no reason for that to be the case in your culture. Same sex marriages have been documented since writing began and in multiple cultures throughout the world. In some cultures, marriage as a concept didn’t even truly exist. People would simply start living together. Sometimes, the ruling agency would require formal ceremonies while the lower classes wouldn’t necessarily need to do anything at all.

How people actually get together can include very specific and formal courtships rituals, arranged marriages, loose dating rules, or even all of these depending on the culture. Perhaps the parents have to arrange all the dates, but it is up to the daters to determine if there is a match. They may even be seeing multiple people at a time until a relationship gets serious, then the real relationship rituals begin, where the couple goes through a specific set of activities to determine if there will be a marriage. Perhaps the rules change based on your station, with lower classes having few formalities but the upper echelons of society having extremely strict requirements, which happened in Europe with nobility and royalty using arranged marriages to seal alliances and the like.

The ending of relationships is also an important aspect of your world. Can marriages end? Wars have been fought over that question. If a marriage ends, does that end an alliance? A friendship? Have any effect at all? How difficult is it to end the marriage? There could be ceremonies and rites that need to be performed that are just as or even more formal than the courtship and wedding. It could be as informal as the woman leaving her husband’s shoes at the door. The rules could also apply during courtship or betrothal. Perhaps the woman can refuse the arranged marriage, but the man can’t.

As with all aspects of worldbuilding, use this as a tool to create interest and conflict in your setting. It could be something alien that your protagonists suddenly have to deal with or the cause of the civil war. Maybe it isn’t particularly important, so you can leave it loose or fairly standard. My advice is not to ignore it.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.