Book III, Chapter 22
One particularly thorny problem that faced the Imperial Assembly Of Law was the question of legal definitions of marriage. At the time of the Assembly, there were no less than twelve legally and culturally distinct practiced forms of marriage within the bounds of the Empire, and the general legal chaos this caused was part of the impetus for the Assembly in the first place. The jurists thus assembled faced a significant problem in trying to reconcile the various forms. Consider the difference between Latin Catholic marriage, which did not allow for divorce, and every other form, which did allow for divorce (and several forms were, in fact, explicitly temporary unless renewed).
Divorce was just one area of consideration, albeit a contentious one. The necessity of witnesses (needed in Christian forms, not needed in Judaic forms), multiple spouses (allowed in Norse, Islamic, and Gaelic forms, recently outlawed in some Judaic forms, and strictly forbidden by Christian forms), the necessity of clergy or ceremony, the obligations of the spouses to each other, the allowance of same-gender marriages, and, most contentious of them all, mixed marriages between members of different groups… all of these and more were potential problems that needed to be overcome.
The solution which was eventually adopted was, in the general vein of the Assembly's solutions, a broad secular code that stepped back from the religious arena and concerned itself strictly with recognition by the state. Under that code, any consenting group of adults (barring certain degrees of consanguinity, itself a topic of debate) could choose to register as "married" in the eyes of the state, so long as the group—ranging from the typical two to a record nine—had an agreement arranged beforehand on the particulars of their nuptials in regards to divorce, inheritance, descent, and marital obligations (there were a number of rules instituted there as well, to avoid cases of marital slavery and other abuses).
A number of standardized formulations were likewise hammered out to suit the needs of particular forms of marriage, but these were not required by the law, and it was completely within the realm of acceptability to submit more esoteric arrangements (and often needed in the cases of the larger marriages). In effect, it was the official legal position of the Empire that the relationships between the marriage participants and their religious and social home groups were not a concern by the Imperial state, at least not beyond how those relationships informed their marriage contract.
While this was strongly opposed by social conservatives, the fact was that bickering between the conservative groups sabotaged their efforts to stop it. No one group of them could get the rest to agree on which implementation of marriage they desired to be backed by law, even as all of them agreed that they did not approve of the more broadly defined version. This strife among those who wished to have marriage be more narrowly defined according to their own desires allowed for the passing and implementation of the law in the Grand Thing. And while this did not bring an end to strife regarding marriage within the Empire, it at least allowed for a legal unity in terms of recognition of what a marriage was and wasn't.
—Origins Of The Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631
Tropes That Appear In This Chapter:
- Altar Diplomacy: Earl Godwin's daughter Gytha becomes a concubine to Fishswill clan Ingerman, giving him a tie to Berk.
- Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: Hiccup invented the elevator, over eight hundred and ten years before it was invented in real life.
- Author Filibuster:Ruffnut: Turns out that the ancient Greeks and their plays aren't really a thing anymore. I guess that's what I get for going off of old books.Magnus: What do you mean? There are some plays out there. I've seen a few!Ruffnut: Yeah. Christian plays, pageants and morality stories. Done by the Church for teaching people who can't read the Bible. But those are a few specific stories told by the Church a couple of times a year. There apparently just aren't actors—trained and practiced actors—like there were back in the Greek and Roman days. The Emperor Justinian apparently ordered the theatres of the Roman Empire closed five hundred years ago because they were 'too pagan'. So you can imagine the reaction when the 'pagan queen of Norway' sent around letters asking if there were actors available to put on plays in the north.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While he briefly considers it, Mac Bethad decides that passing the secrets of anti-dragon defences to the Romans is too hasty an action.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Mac Bethad continues to view everything relating to Berk from the perspective that it's only a matter of time before the island starts trying to attack him, rather than recognising that Stoick and Hiccup aren't that kind of ruler.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: Evidently this trope applies to Sophia. Best summed up by the below quote from the author.athingofvikings: And she's viewed as unladylike and having the wrong interests, so essentially she's too much of a tomboy for them to be interested
- The Paranoiac: Mac Bethad sees everything the Hooligans do as some kind of act of intimidation no matter how innocuous the action is.
- Rule of Symbolism: Upon seeing a juggler struggle with juggling several balls and failing, Mac Bethad draws an explicit comparison to himself and hopes he doesn't fail either.
- Stating the Simple Solution: As Magnus worries about how he can be a good king, Tuffnut suggests one step is to figure out what a bad king would do and then not doing that.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Mac Bethad continues to think he's in a Game Of Thrones-esque story with ruthless politicking and backstabbing and unable to comprehend that the genre shifted with Berk joining the political dance.
