From: David Dunham (ddunham@radiomail.net)
Date: Wed 02 Nov 1994 - 21:11:42 EET
What I'd like to know is, is RuneQuest Adventures #4 out yet in the USA?
Pam Carlson contends
>Marraige performs two
>roles in (most) societies: it ensures males that they have sole access to
>their wives, and that the children are their own. It also ensures females
>that they will have committed economic help raising their offspring.
From your individualistic viewpoint, you're forgetting another extremely important role of marriage: it forms ties between two families.
Also, marriage is a universal institution in human cultures (my anthro book says there's only one exception). Even in matrilineal cultures, where males could care less if the children are their own (they care about their sister's children). Or cultures where women own land.
Said anthro book explains marriage as solving 3 problems: sharing products of a division of labor by gender; how to care for infants dependent for a long time; how to minimize sexual competition.
Note that in King of Sartar, Esrolian women say that polygamy is acceptable [28]. As well as polygny [228].
BTW, my take on Esrolia is that it can't be all that different from Sartar, in that they're related -- Colymar, founder of the largest tribe, was Esrolian [130]. Which is why I've said before that "land of women" is something of a foreigner's stereotype. While many of the models proposed for Esrolia make sense, I think it's essentially Orlanthi (Theyalan) in culture, but ruled by a theocracy whose leadership is always female.
Richard Ohlson wonders
>wouldn't there be a flurry of spirits of reprisals when worships
>(worshipers,that is) ditch the big O?
Perhaps spirits of reprisal are really more concerned about bad worshippers who _stay_ with the cult -- if you leave, you're initiated somewhere else, and not really their concern; it's when you still claim to be Orlanthi but you don't behave anything like one that they get on your case. And even by the rules, Flint Slingers are annoying but not fatal. (Unless they attack at extremely inopportune times.)
>Or does the fall of Whitewall symbolize the end of Orlanth
I wouldn't imagine it would do anything to the worshippers in Ralios and Fronela...
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