Gender and Sexuality

The cultures in Asyn have a variety of patterns by which they conceptualize gender and sexuality. "Sexuality" is a social construct, variable across time and space. Patterns of sexuality are not universal and objective constants, but have changed over time, and varied from one location and culture to another.

**Medieval people did not conceptualize the world the same way that contemporary people do.** They did not have an abstract concept of "the nation-state" or of a divide between "Public" and "Private" cultural spheres. This *does not* mean that modern society is some sort of culmination that previous social models were evolving towards. Modern social values and behavior patterns are not more "advanced", but simply different. Fundamentally, it is wrong to assume that medieval concepts of gender and sexuality were exactly the same as contemporary models.

Thus while there were certainly "men who had sex with men" in the Middle Ages, it would be inaccurate to even call them "homosexual", because "homosexuality" is a specific and subjective social concept. For that matter, "men who had sex with women" in the Middle Ages cannot accurately be called "heterosexual". The homosexual/heterosexual categorization scheme of contemporary cultures did not exist in their culture. They did have categorization schemes, but they had a different basis. Men who had sex with other men in the Middle Ages did not conceptualize what they were doing the same way that contemporary men who have sex with other men do.

"...'Homosexuality' [as a concept] is not a *thing* that one can find in all cultures...to label anyone in the past who had sex with someone of the same sex as 'a homosexual' would be to impose a modern category. The same argument also applies to other categories of sexual behavior: heterosexuality, bisexuality, prostitution, or any other; the acts may be the same, but each society will determine what the meaning of those acts is and whether they create identities."

## Gender and sexuality in the real-life Middle-Ages

### Patterns of sexuality in Medieval Europe

Two major factors affected patterns of sexuality and gender behavior in Medieval Europe:

* 1 - Religion was a very important social force and institution, and the Catholic Church in Western Europe had a celibate clergy, of male monks and female nuns.
* 2 - The medieval Catholic Church was dominated by an all-male priesthood.

These resulted in four major aspects of society in Western Europe in the Middle Ages:

**1 - Sex as a dichotomy between procreative versus non-procreative sex**

Sexual behavior and identity was not seen as divided between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but between celibacy and non-celibacy. In turn, because society was dominated by a celibate clergy, their writings praised celibacy as the ideal human condition, and proliferated the view that the *only* time people were supposed to have sex was specifically to produce children within marriage, as a necessary evil. Therefore, for the non-celibate in Medieval Europe, sex was not defined as a dichotomy between "heterosexual" and "homosexual", but as a dichotomy between "procreative" and "non-procreative" sex. A wife performing oral sex on her husband, or a man performing oral sex on another man, were both seen as more or less equally bad, because to the celibate clergy, *neither* act would result in children, which was the only permissible form of sex. Indeed, even woman on top sex positions were *also* described as "sodomy" and condemned as abnormal, because it was believed that (due to gravity) this was less conducive to procreation.

**2 - Sex as a dichotomy between penetrator versus penetrated**

Due to being dominated by an all-male priesthood, all social writing and circulated knowledge about sexuality was written from a male perspective (as it had largely been extending back into Greco-Roman times). As a result, "sex" was strictly conceptualized as "something a man does to someone else by penetrating them with a penis". Men and women were not thought of as performing the same act when they had sex with each other. Men "screwed", women "got screwed", but to say "a woman screwed a man" would seem a contradiction in terms to them. Sex wasn't something two people do together but something one person does to another. In this medieval conceptualization, if a man penetrated a woman vaginally, they were having sex. If a man penetrated another man anally, they were having sex. If a man performed cunnilingus on a woman, however, because no penis was directly involved they were *not* conceptualized as having "sex".

In turn, because sex was conceptualized of as "a man penetrating someone else with a penis", **they actually had little conception of homosexual relationships between women.** It was not condoned but it was not stigmatized either - celibate male priests who did all of the writing about sexual morals couldn't really understand how two women could physically have sex with each other without a penis.

**3 - Sexual orientation defined not by object choice but by role in the sex act**

Medieval people did not define their sexual "orientation" based on object choice the way modern Western society does, i.e. with a man being a "heterosexual" if he is attracted to women. Medieval sexual "orientation" (for lack of a better word), was based on *the role you play in the sex act*. Instead of a man thinking "I prefer having sex with women", he thought "I prefer being the penetrator in the sex act", and did not make much of a distinction between whether he was penetrating a woman or another man. Men who preferred to be the penetrator were seen as "normal", women who enjoyed *being* penetrated were "normal". The practical difference is that if a man penetrated another man anally, it wasn't seen as that much more out of the ordinary than if he chose to penetrate a woman anally - what mattered was that he was the one doing the penetrating. In contrast, a man who *enjoyed* and preferred to play the passive role in sex, and to be anally penetrated by another man's penis, was seen as abnormal.

**4 - Women and the European Marriage Pattern**

While having an all-male priesthood like Islam or Judaism, medieval Christianity was unlike these neighboring religions in that it had a celibate clergy of male monks and female nuns (even if women couldn't be members of the priesthood). Judaism and Islam had no equivalent to nuns. The existence of a celibate female clergy encouraged families to wait for better prospective suitors for one of their daughters, because if they ended up waiting too long and she became too old to bear children, they could send their daughter to a convent to become a nun. In contrast, the neighboring Islamic world did not have celibate clergy, and thus once a woman became too old to bear children, and was unable to marry, there were no viable social options for her. Therefore, families in the Islamic world had greater motivation to marry off their daughters as soon as they were first capable of reproducing. Men didn't tend to marry in their teenage years but when they were older and more financially established, so this model usually resulted in a wide age gap between an older husband and younger wife, resulting in a hierarchical relationship.

Because medieval Christian women could join the celibate clergy and become nuns (though not priests) if they waited too long to marry, women tended to marry at relatively late ages in Medieval Europe (usually between 20 and 30 years of age). Moreover, because they were older they also tended to be around the same age as established men considered to be of marriageable age - it wasn't even unusual for a 25 year old woman to marry a man who was a year or two younger than she was. This phenomenon is known as the "European Marriage Pattern", and was found in no other contemporary cultures. The result of this pattern is that when women spend many years being unmarried, they have a stronger sense of personhood distinct from their husbands, and when they marry husbands around the same age as they are their relationships are less hierarchical and more mutualistic. Christian women in medieval Europe therefore had a much higher social status and level of independence compared to most other world cultures.

### Gender binary and patterns of gender behavior

In the context of academic Gender Studies, the term "Sexuality" encompasses "Sexual Identity" but is an even broader term, referring to the entire realm of human erotic experience and behaviors. This can be further subdivided into three aspects: Sex, Gender, and Orientation:

* **Sex** - means physical/biological sex at birth, male or female.
* **Gender** - refers to patterns of behavior or identity, such as "masculine" or "feminine" (not necessarily involved with the sex act at all, but day-to-day personality and identity).
* **Orientation** - refers to what type of people a person is attracted to sexually: male bodies, female bodies, both, etc.

In contemporary usage, biological sex and gender are considered distinct and separate things. In contrast, people in the Middle Ages thought all three were not variable but inherently linked: a person of biologically male sex was believed to *automatically* express active masculine gender behavior - not just in the sex act but in all aspects of their everyday life - and to have an innate desire to be the penetrator in the sex act. A person of biologically female sex was believed to *automatically* express passive female gender behavior in everyday life, and to have an innate desire to be penetrated by a man.

As a result, **they had no concept of a "cis-gendered homosexual male"**, a homosexual male who behaved very masculinely. This is not to say that they would be "offended" by such a man, but rather that they would find it conceptually difficult to understand. If a knight was highly skilled at masculine behavior such as warfare and martial prowess, many would dismiss the suggestion that he privately enjoyed having sex with men – following the familiar stereotype that "he is too butch to be interested in other men", etc. Indeed, research by medieval historians has generally agreed that King Richard the Lionheart of England (1157-1199) was quite probably a homosexual - or rather, that he had sex with both men and women at different points in his life. Richard I was one of the greatest military leaders and warriors of his age, however, commanding forces in the Third Crusade, and in many ways was seen as a paragon of "active" masculine behavior - so few in his lifetime seem to have suspected that he would enjoy "passive" sexual behavior with other men in private.

Not every real-life society has a conceptual model of only two genders: some have more than two, and particularly in the developed world in the early 21st century, many now espouse that gender behavior is a fluid spectrum, not rigid categories. Some societies recognize a third gender of biological males whose gender behavior is commonly associated with females. Some societies have not only a third but also a fourth gender, recognizing biological females whose behavior is commonly associated with males (not every society that recognizes a third gender also recognizes a fourth gender). These societies "recognize" more than two genders, in that they consider them to be co-legitimate with the more common "masculine biological male" and "feminine biological female" (though what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine" behavior is culture-specific). Contemporary examples would be the *Hijra* third gender in the Indian sub-continent, or the "Two-Spirit" individuals in Native North American culture.

In contrast, Medieval Europe did not recognize more than two genders: a biological male who behaved femininely was not seen as a legitimate, separate category of gender - he was simply seen as a defective kind of "male". Similarly, a female who behaved in traditionally "masculine" ways such as participating in warfare (even if she was not sexually interested in other women and exclusively had sex with men) was not seen as a distinct fourth gender - rather she would be seen as a defective kind of "female", a bizarre aberration from the traditional passive gender behavior expected of women.

The strong belief in the Middle Ages about a direct link between physical sexual characteristics and gender behavior is exemplified by attitudes about eunuchs. According to widespread belief, if a male had his penis removed and was turned into a eunuch (or even if just his testicles were removed), he would therefore *automatically* exhibit effeminate gender behavior as a result. It was impossible to be "masculine", in their view, without a (functional) penis. Thus there was a widespread stereotype across Medieval Europe of effeminate eunuchs (which also extended to the neighboring Islamic world).

Another curious aspect of medieval sexuality is that while there are hundreds of religious or court records describing "sodomy", there are hardly any at all which mention fellatio, perhaps only a dozen or so (none mention cunnilingus). Oral sex was rarely if at all mentioned in medieval texts, even to be condemned. The ancient Romans seem to have considered the man whose penis was inserted into a mouth as the active partner, given that he was "penetrating". In the Middle Ages, however, in some circles at least, there seems to have been some debate in the other direction: in this view, the person *performing* the fellatio with their mouth is the "active" partner because "they're doing all the work", while the man's penis passively *receives* the fellatio. In effect, if a wife was performing fellatio on her husband, the entire active/passive roleset was suddenly reversed. This was not, however, a stable definition: the few records that discuss fellatio in the Middle Ages seem deeply confused about who was the active partner and who was the passive one - which was normally central to their conception of the act, as something one person does to another - perhaps explaining why they rarely wrote about it at all.

### "Homosexuality" in the Middle Ages

There is a widespread misconception that homosexuals were harshly persecuted in the Middle Ages, but major academic research from the 1980s onwards (by figures such as John Boswell) has found that this was far from the truth. Three main points that have emerged about homosexuality in the Middle Ages in the past twenty years of academic discourse:

**First, "homosexuals" were not conceived of as a distinct kind of person in the Middle Ages: rather, homosexual behavior was seen as a kind of *act* that people could commit, like adultery.** Therefore, clerical writings that denounce sins of the flesh actually assume that *all* men might be tempted to engage in homosexual sex, just as much as they might be tempted to engage in adultery with a woman outside of marriage. While medieval people did conceptualize of sex by the role played instead of object choice, they really did not conceptualize that there was a specific subset of males that *preferred* having sex with other men, either to penetrate them or to be penetrated by them. There were men who *at times* enjoyed having sex with other men, but they did not conceptualize of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of persons. Homosexuality was not an identity, but a sex act.

"To the extent that sodomy was an act, or a set of acts, which a man could commit, rather than an orientation, it was not seem as limited to a minority group but was a more generalized threat. Manuals for confessors for confessors envisioned it as a sin that anyone could commit."
On the other hand, unlike in the Greco-Roman era, while medieval people did not really conceive of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of person that enjoyed having same-sex relationships exclusively...they were *starting to* develop some vague sense of this. Major church writings and other official documents never treated "sodomites" as a specific kind of person, just as an action that people could commit - yet in medical writings and even the "popular culture" of courtly love poetry, some people at times speculate that certain people exclusively preferred same-sex activity.

**Second, homosexual behavior *was not* punished particularly severely - there weren't outright "laws" against it, as in secular laws - but at the same time, it was not something casually accepted either.** It was a venal sin of the flesh, loosely on par with adultery, fathering bastard children, etc. (and a man having anal sex with a woman was equally chastised). Just like adultery, being caught performing a homosexual sex act was not punishable by death, prison sentence, or even fines. It was seen as socially disgraceful, like adultery, and people did still try to hide it (a loose comparison would to how in the modern era a major actor might avoid being outed as homosexual: no "laws" would be broken but he might fear that it would disgrace and effectively end his career). Still, there were not mass persecutions of homosexuals - just like witch-burnings, such persecutions only really began in the era of religious hysteria following the outbreak of the Black Death in the Late Middle Ages (starting in 1348), and only became wide-scale during the greater religious hysteria surrounding the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.

**A third point is also that homosexual relationship patterns tend to mirror the patterns of heterosexual relationships in their society.** In the southern areas of Medieval Europe, older and economically established men tended to marry young women, leading to uneven, hierarchical relationships. In the northern areas of Medieval Europe, the "European Marriage Pattern" predominated of women marrying in their mid-20's to men of roughly the same age, resulting in less hierarchical and more mutualistic relationships (it would be more accurately called a "Northwest European marriage pattern").

This north/south difference is known observational, and is theorized to have been due to agricultural patterns that affected kin-group structure. Similarly, court records about homosexuals in the Middle Ages reveal that in southern Europe, homosexual relationships mirrored what they saw around them in heterosexual relationships: older and economically established men had relationships with young men. Their relationships were similarly hierarchical, with the older man being the active/masculine/penetration partner and the male youth being the passive/effeminate/penetrated partner. At the same time, in northern Europe, mirroring the patterns of *non*-hierarchical heterosexual relationships they saw around them, homosexuals tended to be the same ages as their partners, and in more mutualistic relationships (without a clearly defined active/passive, top/bottom divide). Indeed, this top/bottom or butch/femme self-organization in homosexual sub-cultures continued through the early 20th century, and only began to fade when the extreme dominance hierarchy in heterosexual relationships began to change after the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s.

## Gender and sexuality in *Asyn*

As with the real-life Middle Ages, social constructs of gender and sexuality vary extensively across Soothereos, Avlyrra, and the rest of the known world in the Asyn world. They may have also changed over the centuries within the narrative. It is extremely difficult to examine such values beyond Soothereos itself, because so much of the narrative is focused on Soothereos. So what follows is an examination of the evidence about gender and sexuality *in Soothereos*, and a few notes about what has been briefly described in the rest of the world.

### Overview of Soothereos

The Faith of the Vecronasl is the dominant religion in Soothereos, having been introduced to the continent 6,000 years ago during the Andal Invasion. The Darades migrated to Soothereos about 1,000 years ago and settled in Khoroth. They did convert to the Faith of the Vecronasl - but ignored many of its prohibitions on sexual behaviors, making the culture of the modern Khorothmen quite distinct.

The core regions of Soothereos, the populous and wealthy kingdoms south of the Great Expanse, follow the Faith of the Vecronasl and broadly fall into the same cultural sphere. Khoroth and Belhelm are actually stated to have the smallest populations of any of the Five Kingdoms, with Belhelm not having one of the more populous ones, due to its vast size, it has a very low population *density*. Of the five settlements large enough to be called "cities" in Soothereos, four of them are located in this central region (Throes Peak, Stonesguard, Graybridge, and Stormfront Keep). The fifth and third largest is Los Cerith, located on the headwater of the Whitepearl river.

### Gender and sexuality under the Faith of the Vecronasl, in most of Soothereos

The key factors that shaped conceptualizations of sexuality in real-life Medieval Europe are that it had celibate clergy of both genders (monks and nuns), but an all-male priesthood. This led to a dichotomy not between homosexual and heterosexual, but between celibate and non-celibate, and in turn, a dichotomy between procreative and non-procreative sex. Officially, non-clergy were only supposed to have sex for the explicit purpose of producing children. Meanwhile, because there were no female priests writing about sexual morality, sex was strictly defined as penetrating someone else with a penis. While there were instances of female clergy writing about sexuality - such as the famed German abbess and polymath Hildegard von Bingen - this was much more of an exception than a rule. The result was a pattern of conception about sexuality based on role in the sex act instead of object choice.

In contrast, the Faith of the Vecronasl *does* have a gender-blind priesthood, accepting both men and women without distinction. Men become septals and women become septas, but these ranks are apparently the same (it's just a gendered word, like how a man is an "alumnus" from a university but a woman is an "alumna"). Women are also members of the Most Devout - the ruling council of the Faith of the Vecronasl, which is basically analogous to the College of Cardinals in Catholic Christianity.

Therefore, *unlike* in the real-life Middle Ages, in Soothereos:

* 1 - Because there are female priests in the Faith of the Vecronasl, they probably don't strictly define sex as "penetrating someone with a penis", but a wider range of behaviors.
* 2 - Correspondingly, sexual relationships in general are less hierarchical, because sex isn't thought of as a thing a man does to a woman but a mutualistic experience they do together.
* 3 - Sexual relationships between homosexual women were barely understood in the real-life Middle Ages, even to criticize them. In contrast, homosexuality between women is probably criticized in Soothereos as much as homosexuality between men - because the female priests understand that women can give sexual pleasure to each other without a penis.
	+ Septals have tried to admonish the Khorothmen because they feel it is "no cause for concern" if a man lays with a man, or a woman with a woman - real-life medieval people would probably not even have mentioned women laying with women, finding it conceptually impossible.

On the other hand, the Faith of the Vecronasl still has a celibate clergy overall, so they would still have a basic dichotomy between celibate and non-celibate, and thus procreative and non-procreative sex.

Therefore:

* 1 - Men who have sex with other men probably are not thought of as a distinct category of person, because *all* non-procreative sex is considered bad.
* 2 - Homosexual sex is probably not viewed as particularly worse than other venal sins such as adultery.

This is the pattern that would be *expected* of having both a gender-blind priesthood of both men and women *and* a celibate clergy overall.

Same-sex relationships are not seen as any sort of heavily vilified taboo, but as expected a venal sin roughly on par with adultery. No actual "laws" against homosexuality have ever been written. It is simply seen as socially disgraceful.

Therefore, in general, views on sexuality and gender in Asyn are somewhat closer to modern patterns than to the medieval model - but, the presence of female priests in Soothereos is a drastic change from how real medieval society operated. The differences observed compared to the real-life Middle Ages - sex is not hierarchical but mutualistic, not strictly defined as something a man does to someone else using a penis, greater insight into female sexuality, etc. - are all things that would logically result from having female priests.

#### The Darades

The Darades ancestors of the modern Khorothmen came from distant lands not specified in history. There they intermarried with the local population - a mix of First Peoples and Andals like the rest of Soothereos- to form their own unique hybrid culture. The Khorothmen converted to the official Faith of the Vecronasl(note that while many practiced belief in similair gods, their practices weren't always the same. The Faith of the Vecronasl established that consistency) when they migrated to Soothereos, but in many ways they just ignored the rules they didn't like. As a result they have very different attitudes about sexuality compared to the rest of Soothereos- despite the fact that they nominally follow the same religion of the Vecronasl.

A major distinction about Khoroth is that unlike the rest of the Five Kingdoms, which practice male-preference primogeniture, Khoroth practices gender-blind primogeniture. The reason for this is that Khoroth managed to resist conquest by the Sootherian dynasty and their dragons through resorting to guerrilla warfare, and remained independent from the Haven Crown for the next five centuries. Khoroth and House Nortale only united with the rest of the Five Kingdoms about five centuries prior, not through conquest but through peaceful marriage-alliance with the Sootherians. As a result they were allowed to keep many of their distinct local laws and customs, such as the head of House Nortale being styled a "Prince" or "Princess" instead of a "Lord Rhaek", and continuing to practice gender-blind inheritance law.

While daughters do sometimes inherit land and title in the rest of Soothereos, it is less frequent, because they only inherit if they have no living brothers. Khoroth, in contrast, Calorin Nortale heir-designate is his eldest child, who happens to be a daughter, Maria Nortale. The previous ruler of Khoroth before Prince Calorin was his *mother*, who inherited rule from her parents in her own right. Khorothmen consider women to be the equals of men, they are treated equally under the law and in inheritance, and they wield political power just as often as men do. The Khorothians thus have very different attitudes about the status and role of women than in the rest of Soothereos.

In the rest of the Five Kingdoms, the Khorothmen have a reputation for being hot-blooded and sexually licentious. Indeed, Khorothmen have more "relaxed" views towards sexuality and love than the rest of Soothereos. They are quite tolerant about sex outside of marriage, and even have a system of formal mistresses or concubines called "Paramours." Paramours can be held in quite high esteem in Khoroth, publicly and openly acknowledged, and in some cases is treated as a lord's wife in all but name. For that matter, it is not considered unusual for noblewomen to openly have their own paramours.

Similarly, bastards do not carry the stigma of shame in Khoroth that they do in the rest of the Five Kingdoms for being born out of wedlock. In fact, bastards are often raised along their trueborn siblings and cousins, and out of proportion to the other Five Kingdoms, bastards in Khoroth much more frequently rise to important positions such as castellans and stewards. One slight disadvantage that bastards have in Khoroth is that they are still considered poor matches for marriage, since they are much less likely to receive inheritance from their parents. The Khorothians also have no particular stigma against homosexual behavior, considering it no great concern "if a man lies with a man, or a woman lies with a woman".

The Khorothian don't really have a conceptual divide between "heterosexual" and "homosexual" behavior, and in modern terms many might be called functionally "pansexual" (though this is not a term in the storyverse - "bisexual" would probably be an inaccurate term as well because the Khorothian don't even recognize a categorical divide between the two).

Thus a Khorothian noblewoman can inherit rule in her own right ahead of her young brothers, and while technically married to a man to produce children, also openly keep a female paramour in a deep, loving partner-relationship. The Khorothian, however, do not see this as a matter of the object choice dichotomy: they just have a very fluid and non-binary attitude towards sex.

The Khorothmen inherited their relaxed attitudes about sexuality from their Darades ancestors, but little information has been provided about the cultural factors that made the ancient Darades like this. What is known is that the Darades lived an urbanized lifestyle in mercantile city-states along the Darades River, in contrast with the agrarian culture of the First Peoples and Andals which was much more focused on direct inheritance of land. It is possible that this more "cosmopolitan" city-culture led the Darades to be more tolerant of sexuality and treat the genders equally.

The attitudes of the Khorothmen towards gender and sexuality don't seem to be based on any direct counterpart from the real-life Middle Ages. Khoroth itself is loosely inspired by Medieval Spain, which was ethnically and culturally different from the rest of Medieval Europe due to the Muslim conquests. While the Darades did migrate to Khoroth, they converted to the local official religion of the Faith of the Vecronasl centuries ago, peacefully, which is different from the drawn-out Reconquista period in Spain (though in some respects it might still be similar to Spain a few centuries later, after the entire peninsula was reconquered by Christian kingdoms, but the Muslim presence still left behind many unique cultural aspects).

A stereotype that Christian Western Europe had about the Muslim world was that they were more licentious, due to not practicing clerical celibacy and thus not possessing such a religiously-based negative view of sexuality, and stereotypes about Khorothmen in the narrative *loosely* echo this to an extent (though real-life Muslim writers also accused Christians of being licentious; it was just a standard insult). On the other hand, *unlike* Khoroth, real-life Muslim Spain didn't treat women as equal under the law to men, and did not practice gender-blind inheritance law (so women didn't really wield political power very often). Women in Khoroth can inherit land and political power, and rather openly engage in sex outside of marriage with other men - not only did nothing like this happen in real-life Muslim Spain, medieval Christians didn't even have a *stereotype* about them that resembled this. As evidenced from medieval literature and popular epics, medieval Christians never seem to have believed that Muslims practiced equal inheritance law or that Muslim women had a drastically higher degree of sexual freedom.

The popular troubadour poetry contains stories of brave Christian knights seducing the daughters of Muslim princes - not seducing Muslim princesses who ruled in their own right. In that respect, these aspects of the Khorothmen seem to be a pure fantasy construct without basis in reality - Khoroth *is not* meant to have a one to one correspondence to any real-life culture: it is *loosely* like Medieval Spain, with some aspects of Medieval Wales (a semi-independent territory on the fringe of the kingdom).

*Arguably*, the one region of Medieval Europe that had the attitudes about gender and sexuality that the Khorothmen have in the fictional narrative was actually Ireland (prior to the English invasions beginning in the late twelfth century). Even after converting to Christianity, reliable records such as the Brehon laws evidence that women were treated as the equals or near-equals of men in Celtic Ireland - which the Romans and their successors in Continental Europe found to be quite unusual. Moreover, although less well evidenced, some ancient historians described that the Celts in Ireland openly had same-sex relationships (though the true extent of this is unclear and still debated academically). As English domination in Ireland grew, however, English cultural patterns and inheritance laws subsumed the earlier local Irish laws and customs.

### The definition of Incest

*See main article "Incest"*
The Sootherian dynasty practiced heavy incest between members of family, to "keep the bloodlines pure". House Soothereian was a Avlyrrian noble family that departed to expand their reach. The Plight of Sixteen brought Veryis I Soothereos and his dynasty to what they named Realm of Soothereos. As a political expedient they converted to the Faith of the Vecronasl, but they continued to practice incestuous marriages. This led to conflict with the Faith of the Vecronasl which was only decided through civil war.

The Sootherian dynasty's brother-sister marriages may have affected how incest was defined in Soothereos. In the real-life Middle Ages, the Catholic Church defined incest as any marriage between relatives who were third cousins or closer, i.e. marrying a fourth cousin or a third cousin once removed was not incest. **In Soothereos, however, it is apparently not uncommon for members of major noble Houses to marry their own first cousins.**

To clarify for those who remain confused: you don't have "cousins" then "first cousins", then "second cousins", etc. "First cousins" are the closest kind of cousin: the child of one of your parent's siblings. Your "first cousin once removed" is the child of your first cousin. The child of your parent's first cousin is your second cousin.
The incestuous brother-to-sister marriages of the Sootherian dynasty were still seen as very unusual by Sootherian society in general, however, and they primarily got away with it due to their royal status and power, which they felt set them above the rules of normal men. Even after centuries, brother-sister relationships were still condemned and not considered "normal" in any of the other noble Houses in Soothereos.

Polygamous marriages were practiced in the old Sootherian stronghold - it was not universal and frequent, but it was not uncommon either. Only King Gaearon II of House Soothereos was known for taking part in a polygamous relationship with his twin sister, Princess Galadrielle, and Sylveria Lamanhouse, a lowborn.

The Faith had not openly criticized the polygamous or even incestuous aspects of Gaearon's marriages, and in return he tread lightly around them, making all of his children marry one each from outside of their immediate family. After his death, however, his firstborn son Aurelius the Black, a rather odd but prominent king, has a wife and married his own mother, leading to a war with the Faith Militant that lasted the entirety of his twenty-nine year reign. After his death, his successor and younger brother Solarius I negotiated a peace with the Faith, and the dynasty never had a polygamous marriage again. They did continue to practice brother-to-sister incest marriages or other, but apparently their rationale was that they already had an incestuous bloodline even if they stopped wedding brother to sister - though they could actively choose not to take multiple wives.

The definition of what marriages were considered incestuous in real life actually changed over time. During the early Middle Ages it fluctuated considerably, with instances of first degree cousins marrying, but other instances in which seventh degree cousins were forbidden to marry.

The Catholic Church only officially set the definition of incest as marriage within third degree cousins or closer at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Study of the definition of what constituted "incest" in the Middle Ages is considered significant in scholarship because it is further evidence that there was never a single "traditional" definition of marriage, but rather, that the definition of marriage changed considerably over the centuries.

### Patterns of "masculine" and "feminine" behavior in Soothereos

In the Middle Ages, women who transcended the weakness of their femininity to exhibit positive masculine traits were called "manful"- this was not meant as an insult, nor did it mean they were suddenly conceptualized as "non-women" (given the contemporary conception of a strong gender binary). Rather, it was simply understood that women were capable of rising to such modes of behavior. The difference between a woman exhibiting positive masculine traits and her outright "acting like a man" was very subtle, and ongoing academic scrutiny about the nuances of everyday gender behavior is intense. Basically, a woman could give orders with firm and quiet determination, but she couldn't shout out orders assertively the way a man could - in short, if a woman's behavior became "bossy", she was no longer behaving in a proper ladylike fashion. One of the more interesting examples of this phenomenon was Matilda, who fought against her cousin Stephen for control of the English throne, a period known as the Anarchy (1135-1154).

Matilda was daughter of the previous monarch, King Henry I, and following the death of her brother as a young man, she was Henry's only legitimate child. Contemporary accounts say that because she expected to be her father's successor for many years (and indeed, Henry had taken official steps to help secure her succession), she grew arrogant, and in many ways was perceived to *act* like a man, because she openly yelled commands at followers and wasn't demure about it. Following Henry's death, the throne was usurped by Matilda's cousin, Stephen, whose supporters preferred to have a less closely-related man on the throne than to endure the abrasive personality of a woman.

Education for aristocratic boys and girls in Soothereos generally matches real-life patterns from the Middle Ages. Malor Meneset serve as tutors to children of the lord they serve, boys and girls, in core topics such as literacy or arithmetic. When boys are old enough they also train with their castle's master-at-arms in the martial arts. Using a sword is a developed skill, like Olympic-level fencing - you can't just pick up a sword and hack at your opponent like children with wooden sticks.

Girls, meanwhile, are taught in the "womanly arts" such as sewing, by septals who serve their family as governesses.

This is not to say, however, that girls' educations shape them to remain trapped in a castle all day, sewing, praying, and breeding as necessary. Some other traditional "womanly" skills include mathematics and arithmetic, because they are expected to co-manage their lord-husband's household - a position of relative social power.

The Lady of a noble House rules over the domestic sphere; the Lord's Steward is expected to work with her, but this varies on a personal level: if a Lady is good at math she may want to oversee the management personally. Girls are also taught basic horseriding, because it is the primary means of transport.

Malor Menest also give boys and girls lessons in foreign languages: High Sothet is the highborn language of the realm, used by scholars and intellectuals, as well as the highborn. Most, if not all, of the books and readings of the realm are written in High Sothet, and while readable to those who speak only Low Sothet, many lowborn do not read normally.

Both boys and girls receiving religious training, reading the *The Texts of Vecronasl*, the holy text of the Faith of the Vecronasl. Boys' education tends to provide more focus on politics, history, and rulership.

Many young girls in Soothereos, look forward to a life of sewing circles, sitting around drinking tea, gossiping, and eating lemon cakes. Others such as are not satisfied with this, and would prefer a lifestyle away from these traditions.

Some local cultures in Soothereos have a tradition of Warrior women, different from the mainstream standard of femininity. Tribes in Khoroth have all-female communities, and mercenary companies, such as the Sisterhood of Solitude, are all female.

### Marriage, bastardy, and inheritance

*See main articles on "Marriage", "Bastardy", and "Lordship".*
In real life the exact definition of marriage changed every two or three centuries, and it changed significantly throughout the medieval period. The real-life Middle Ages, it is by far the norm for the nobility in Soothereos to enter into arranged marriages, not for love but to secure political alliances, saying: "Marriage was a way to bind two families together, it was a form of political alliance, and royal marriages are one of the ultimate examples of this."

Children growing up in the Middle Ages actually had a much better level of sex education than children in twentieth century industrial nations. Children growing up in modern cities and suburbs aren't as exposed to the physical mechanics of sex - which correspondingly makes sexualized mass media much more "forbidden" and exciting. In contrast, *most* people in the Middle Ages either grew up on farms and dealt with livestock, or in towns dealing with the products produced from farms in the countryside.

Therefore, from a young age, most children could observe the breeding of animals as part of daily farm life. Especially in peasant households, where space was often at a premium and heating was poor or non-existent, it was common for the entire family to sleep in a single bed, or at least in the same room (often with the animals). In such close quarters, sexual activity was much harder to conceal. The result is that medieval people probably grew up with greater knowledge about sex, and therefore had a more matter-of-fact attitude about it (instead of treating it by Victorian standards, that it was something forbidden and exciting).

In part because of these factors, the association between a marriage ceremony and sex on the wedding night was also quite openly and frankly acknowledged. Because the main point of marriage was to have procreative sex to produce confirmed heirs (to unite the families of the bride and groom through their future children), "weddings typically included the couple being placed in bed together, naked, in front of witnesses" (who then left before they actually engaged in the sex act).

"Divorce" does not exist in Soothereos, though annulment does. An annulment can be requested from the hierarchy of the Faith of the Vecronasl due to several factors, such as if the marriage was never consummated (the couple never had sex), if it is later discovered that one of the two was already married (bigamous marriage is forbidden), or if it is argued that the marriage was made under duress, because officially no one can be forced to take a holy vow against their will.

In practice the daughters of noble Houses are often pressured by their families to marry against their will, but forcibly marrying a woman held hostage against her family's wishes is generally seen as grounds for annulment.

Bastardy - when children are born outside of marriage - is considered so shameful in Soothereos that the acknowledged bastard children of the nobility have to use special bastard surnames, one surname for each of the Five Kingdoms. Bastards from the North use the surname "Snow." Bastards from the desert kingdom Khoroth use the surname "Sand." Khoroth has different views on sexuality than the rest of Soothereos, and unlike the other kingdoms the Khorothian's don't consider bastardy to be particularly shameful.

Only bastards of the nobility can use these surnames. Bastards are excluded from the line of succession, though on rare occasion a king might grant them Legitimization.

There are three major systems of inheritance law practiced in the Five Kingdoms, all variations on the winner-take-all rule of primogeniture. In real life, primogeniture was actually not universally practiced in Medieval Europe, and inheritance laws varied considerably from one sub-region to the next. Most of the Five Kingdoms follow male-preference primogeniture: sons rank ahead of daughters in the line of succession.

Khoroth is an exception: due to resisting conquest by the Sootherians and only joining the realm one century ago through marriage-alliance the Khorothian's were allowed to keep many of their local laws, including gender-blind primogeniture. As a result, Prince Calorins heir apparent is his daughter Maria, not her younger brothers. In both of these systems, a lord's younger brother only inherits after even the lord's last daughter is dead.

Charts of the three inheritance systems:

Andal inheritance law (followed in most of Soothereos): male-preference primogenitureKhorothian inheritance law: gender-blind primogenitureRoyal inheritance law, only for the Haven Crown: extreme male-primogeniture, putting female heirs behind all possible male ones
### Prostitution, contraception, and abortion

*See main article "Prostitution"*
Prostitution, of course, existed in the real-life Middle Ages and throughout history. In Soothereos, as in Medieval Europe, a general "boys will be boys" attitude of male privilege predominates, and men are not particularly criticized for having sex with prostitutes. In contrast, women who have sex outside of marriage are stigmatized and severely punished.

Due to the high infant mortality rates in the Middle Ages, the nobility as well as commoners actually wanted to produce as many babies as possible, since it was never certain if all children would survive until adulthood: for common laborers, each new child was a potential new worker that could assist them on their farm or in their trade; for nobles, more children meant a firmer guarantee that their lineage would survive. Therefore, prostitutes were the only women in the Middle Ages who regularly practiced contraception: any scholarly research into the history of contraception - women's reproductive rights and control over their own bodies - which extends back to look at the origins of these practices in the medieval era, has to examine records about prostitutes.

Prostitution is practiced throughout the continents of Soothereos and the rest of Asyn. It is tacitly legal in the Five Kingdoms, as kings and lords usually find it more profitable to simply tax brothels than to ban prostitution outright. Every now and again a particularly pious ruler (such as King Orinthal I Soothereos) will attempt to shut down the brothels within his lands, but with varying degrees of success.

Abortion is quite commonly practiced across Soothereos. To induce early-term abortion, women in Soothereos can drink a medicinal concoction known as "moon tea", which is a combination of several different kinds of herbs (the main active ingredient is a flower called "tansy", but it also includes wormwood, mint, honey, and a drop of pennyroyal). Most if not all Palor Meneset how to make moon tea upon request, as do many woods witches or local apothecaries, etc. What isn't clear is whether making moon tea is openly legal, or, if there are technically religious and/or secular laws against making moon tea, but they are just very frequently ignored on an everyday level.

### Transgender people in *Asyn*

A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from the gender they were assigned at birth. Medical gender transition apparently does not exist in the modern sense - that is, no culture seems to have the surgical means to carry out gender reassignment surgery, nor can this be done through magical means, etc.

While there probably are some transgender people in Soothereos, but like real-life Medieval Europe the culture of the Five Kingdoms only recognizes a gender binary between male and female. There are records of transgender people in Medieval Europe (that is, those who openly lived this way and did not hide their feelings) but they were found shunned on the fringes of society i.e. a few court records note prostitutes that were actually transgender females who were engaging in survival sex work.

## References

1. Ruth Mazo Karras, *Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others* (Routledge, 2005, 2d ed. 2012), 7.
2. Karras 134-135
3. Karras 158
4. Karras 79
5. Karras 109
6. Karras 6-7
7. Karras 6-7
8. Karras 43
9. Karras 39, 130
10. Karras 84
11. Karras 140
12. Karras 137
13. Karras 136-137
14. Karras 24, 141-145
15. Karras 127
16. Karras 62
17. Kimberly A. LoPrete, "Gendering Viragos: Medieval Perceptions of Powerful Women," in Christine Meek and Catherine Lawless, eds., Victims or Viragos? Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women, 4 (Portland: Four Courts Press, 2005), 17-38).
18. Karras 81
19. Karras 154
20. Karras 74
21. Karras 73-74