For the next couple of weeks, as lead-up to the release of my novel The Faithful Heart, second in the Noble Hearts trilogy, I'm going to take a look at the historical facts for some of the key topics raised by the series . What more relevant topic could there be for a historical romance novel than that of marriage and sex, eh? So here we go….
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The Middle Ages is a great big huge long stretch of time that covers the entire land mass of Europe. Obviously laws and customs changed drastically throughout that time and the regions it covers. Since my novels take place in England in the years around 1191-1195 that’s what I’m focusing on.
You might be surprised to hear that the concept of marriage in this period of the Middle Ages was a whole lot less strict and structured than marriage is now. Sort of. I’ll explain what I mean about that in a second. But to start with, marriage as a concept is the focal point of family life. In the world of the upper class, marriage meant the successful continuation of the estate or the alliance of one family or estate with another. It was an important political bargaining chip, used to make or break peace with neighboring people of power. Did the bride and groom have anything to say in it? Well, not really. A little bit.
In the centuries leading up to the 1190s many noble marriages were contracted when the bride and groom were still children. This was so prevalent, in fact, that there were all sorts of rules and laws about what one family or the other would do if the bride or groom died after the contract was made but before they reached an age when they could consummate the marriage. It was all about alliances and dowries. Furthermore, the rules about what one side or the other had to give back if either the bride or groom died depended on whether they had ever kissed, if they had embraced, or if they had had sex before the final marriage ceremony.
Yep. Having sex strictly after the marriage ceremony was a done deal is a fairly modern invention. And being officially, legally married didn’t mean you automatically had to have sex. Although from what I’ve read it was incredibly unlikely that married people wouldn’t have sex, even if it was a contractual marriage. You needed legitimate heirs to keep the system going. But it was very common for the bride and groom to sleep together before the wedding, especially if the process of marriage took years and went through so many stages between the time when the parents arranged the matches to the time they were legalized by the Church.