Arranged Marriages in SF/F.

Bolero

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Two things related to comments earlier in the thread

1. Saw a documentary about arranged marriages and love matches in Indian society (including Indian in Britain) a little while back. There was one love match that had failed because they came from different backgrounds (can't remember the details) but it was the details that ended it. They couldn't agree on whose tradition/belief to use in things like cooking, house layout etc.

2. Skill sets - Guilds allowed wife and kids to work in Guild registered husband's business without having Guild accreditation themselves. Also, a woman's skill was her dowry. Wasn't always taking a skill useful to her husband's business, sometimes it was running her own business alongside. Either way, she was of economic importance. (Later with factories, women lost that economic importance particularly if at home looking after kids but making no money.)
 

Roxxsmom

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Add me to the list of people who despise those versions of arranged marriage plots.

I've got an idea brewing for a novel that revolves around a woman rejects an arranged marriage that doesn't fall into the parameters of how things are normally done in her culture (and with disastrous results--her entire kingdom is conquered by the country of the spurned suitor), but suffice it to say that it contains none of the usual cliches, and she ends up being rescued by nobody.
 

TheMirr

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Bit of a change up? My villain is from a society that considers a lot of cultural things, like arranged marriages and the idea that children are tiny adults meant to earn their keep, outdated and no longer relevant. Her father spoiled her rotten up until she was a teenager, then expected her to agree to an arranged marriage with a foreign prince for political gain.

Needless to say, she doesn't take it well. She gets out of it by purposefully committing infidelity on the wedding night. She doesn't get into plot-relevant villainy until twenty years after this, however.