Paksworld

Not talking here about the obviously fantasy weddings we usually see (in pictures in the paper announcing them, for instance) between the beautiful bride and the handsome groom who might as well be made of sugar icing because they’re going to melt in the first heat of difficulty.  No, talking here about the weddings in fantasy fiction…since there’s going to be one (though not yet…don’t start making the cake now.)

Fiction allows the writer to propose better pairings, with more mature and capable partners…or to go with the conventional (prince and princess,  knight and lady, peasant and peasant)…and then treat the resultant match with either a positive or negative bias.   The writer can opt for realism or fantasy-fantasy, and a lot will depend on the writer’s own background and attitude towards not just marriage but many other things.

In my case, the experience was assumed, early on, to be all bad: my parents were divorced, my father lived far away and showed up only rarely and unpredictably.    He had another family, and it was made clear to me that his primary responsibility was there.   I married a man whose mother was a widow with three boys.  Yes, hands were raised in shock and horror.   How could two people, neither of whom had a father in the house, possibly make a good marriage and be decent parents?

I’m a bit grumpy about that presumption: we did it the same way ALL successfully married people and parents do it, whether or not they had a father around, with that familiar old four-letter word “Work.”   Our mothers worked at being good parents; we expected to work at being good partners and (if we had children) parents.    I’m also a bit grumpy about all those questionnaires in magazines on finding the right partner, because (opinionated old lady that I am) I think there are three essentials that are almost never mentioned, in the lists you see:  integrity, courage, and capacity to love.

No marriage is trouble-free; life throws hard fast curve-balls at everyone.  To survive as a couple requires both integrity–so you can trust one another–and courage–to deal with the troubles that will come–and the capacity to love, so it’s not all just jaw-clenching endurance.    I have seen the marriages of friends and acquaintances founder on every broken leg of this triad:  when trust is betrayed, when one or both partners can’t handle tough times, when one or both are cold calculators instead of generous lovers.

I’m lucky: forty years, five months, 14 days of what I consider a good marriage.  We’ve dealt with some big problems, starting with a year’s separation right off the bat–his deployment to Viet Nam.   We are not fantasy people, all perfect: we have both been angry, disappointed, frustrated, and imperfect in multiple ways.   It’s been work as well as fun; tears as well as laughter.    A lot of experience, in those years, months, and days, and the experience is still building.

So, when my characters start making sheep’s eyes at one another,  I have the duty to figure out whether the romance will move toward marriage, whether that marriage serves the story, and whether that particular partnership serves the story best.   Do I meddle?  You betcha.    In Vatta’s War, Stella was never going to get Rafe (“He’s wrong for you, girl!”)  and though Ky and Rafe have their flings, marriage is not happening.

Characters, as well as writers, have a past.    They should not be forced into a “convenient” match (unless the story calls for it, but I don’t write that kind of story), or  kept from one that’s part of their true nature.   Like real people, characters can change with time–their priorities, their understanding of themselves, their reasons for marriage (or no marriage) and children (or no children.)    In their history are the marriages (or at least congress) of their parents, those also shaping their attitudes…and that’s particularly true for the half-elven, children of mortal and immortal.

This is leading up to Kings of the North, of course…a major subplot of that book  is, as you’d expect, Kieri’s search for a wife.   When he agreed, back in Tsaia, that yes, he would marry and provide an heir,  that was in the context of discovering that he was Lyonya’s king.  He was, as it were, in shock–amazed,  even somewhat confused.  He knew, as anyone would, that one of a king’s or queen’s duties was to provide an heir–to secure the succession–because that prevents the confusion and possible conflict of an undetermined succession.   But he had no idea–since he had never considered remarriage–what kind of woman he might now marry.

The trip to Lyonya was so eventful that he had no time to think.   So his consideration begins after his arrival in Lyonya, and he has many other urgent concerns besides marriage.   As time goes on, and he does think more and more about it,  he is constrained (as are we all) by his past experience…something he needs to get beyond, to see clearly.   His only model for a wife is Tammarrion (who would now be much older and very different–but he has never tried to imagine how she would be in the present, decade by decade.)    He is not the hot-blooded young man he was then…much has happened to him, and around him…so he has to understand himself better, before he can think clearly about what he wants or needs.

Mikeli, King of Tsaia, is  where Kieri was 25 years ago…only not even that, because he’s a king, not a new-minted lord that others look down on.  There’s no defensiveness about his position: he knows he can marry any girl in the kingdom, or a foreign woman (though this will cause comment–but he can do it.)   As a prince, he and his close friends flirted with the young women who came to the palace  but–since his mother had died and there was no queen in residence–there were not the young women of rank who might have been there as his mother’s attendants.

Mikeli knows he should marry in a few years, and expects he will marry some girl from a noble house in Tsaia–possibly one of his friends’ sisters–but he’s not in a hurry.   Even though he’s been the target of assassins, he’s got the confidence of youth that he’ll live to have some fun before he marries.   (This may or may not be true, or he may–since he’s not stupid or lazy–make the decision to do it sooner rather than later and marry within a year.   I don’t know yet.  I’m nudging, and trailing two appropriate young women past him to see if he looks up and notices.)

Then there’s Arcolin, who also needs to marry for political reasons.   Whatever he said, his long unrequited romance with Aesil M’dierra never really ended…softened, but didn’t end until that dinner…and still lingers as a faint perfume.   Arcolin is not loath to marry for political reasons, but he’s honorable enough to care that he’s fair to his future wife, and she’s comfortable with what he has to offer.  He’s had brief encounters (hardly even affairs) and does not aspire to the kind of marriage Kieri had (or wants.)   He expects to be a faithful partner, nothing much more.   At the moment (early in Book III) he also has other things to worry about, and I have no idea which baron’s daughter he might end up with.   If indeed he marries into the nobility and does not find someone else.

In Kings, you’ll meet several much younger people–teenagers, in fact–who are too young (in that world) to marry, but looking around with wide eyes at new possibilities.  Not so much romance, as a wider world than two of them have seen heretofore.    What will they be like when they return to the capital from their time as a duke’s squires?

Kings will answer only some questions–the long arc is longer than that–but I hope you’ll enjoy following the characters through their own processes of growth-by-choice, and the fantasy weddings, when we get there, will be satisfying.