"That'd be all right by me. So long as she can convince someone who knows it'd be rotten to get it wrong."

"I don't think women should have to go to a priest about it. If a woman is married to a man like that, and there's some delay before she can talk to one — over on Rights we were talking about how a lot of villages don't have a full-time priest right now — then she'd be stuck with a man who's a danger to her. If things are so bad that she'd rather divorce him, even though it'll mean getting by without his income, I think she should be allowed to. If a man wants to just abandon his family that's a different story."

"So, admitting that we tackled these topics in the wrong order, does Cheliax currently... have... a straightforward definition of marriage?"

"Round where I'm from it's pretty much moving into the same house together."

"Does this mean we are debating whether you need a cleric's permission to move out of someone's house, any time after you move into one? After how long?"

Sigh. "I suppose if I say how it works whereabouts I live you're going to have some dreadful news about everywhere else that a constitution can't hardly fix, aren't you."

"Most likely, Sower. I gather that Asmodeus's hold on the villages was always much weaker than the towns and cities, and if your village was one of the exceptions I daresay you wouldn't have been picked by Erastil. But please do."

"If one of my married kids tried to come back to me and their mama, we'd certainly want to know why. If I thought they ought to turn right around and apologize I certainly wouldn't let them in. And if my neighbor had their grownup married kid loitering around their house they'd know what i thought about that unless I had a reason not to think it, too."

"Ah. I wouldn't usually expect someone to move back in with their parents, in Egorian. It's - not uncommon to live with a rotating cast of different girlfriends at different points, or rent a room somewhere with someone who's no particular relation."

"—so, I think some relevant context here is — the divorce rights are a....... rephrasing....... of something I suggested. When I suggested them, I was thinking — at least back where I'm from, I don't know about where you grew up, there's no one that would stop you from getting divorced? Assuming you weren't trying to leave the lord's son or something, which is kind of a separate problem.

And I've heard, I don't know how true this is, that in Osirion women basically aren't allowed to leave their husbands at all, and that seems really bad, it's important to me that we don't say 'well, Asmodeus let people divorce, so no one should be able to' — some people in the pamphlets say that, I know the pamphlets can be kind of silly sometimes.

So when I initially suggested the rights, I said that women should be able to divorce their husbands no matter what, only they got written down a little weirdly so I don't think that totally came through. And then I was thinking, for men— well, if both of them agree on getting divorced, it wouldn't make sense to say they have to stay together. And if they don't have any children, and the wife's not pregnant, then... I mean, that's just normal, why would you want to ban that? And then— if they do have children he'd be abandoning, then maybe sometimes he has a good reason or maybe he doesn't, that's where I was thinking you'd bring in a priest to decide.

...anyways, the important part is, I was thinking of it as, obviously anyone can get divorced right now, when should we say they can't. And it sounds like maybe that isn't how everyone else was thinking about it." 

"Certainly that has never been true for nobility. And I knew it wasn't true for the peasant farmers in Andoran, even though the laws are permissive in theory, and it sounds like it mostly wasn't true for their counterparts here in Cheliax either. We are looking at culture as much as law, in this committee, and it is not true that divorce was permitted by culture even where it was permitted by law."

It's kind of complicatedly true for nobility but he doesn't really want to talk about that.

"And, on the other hand, there are plenty of other people who had weddings, and did not for one moment consider that it would prevent them from leaving, and left. And far more people who shared a house for a month, and then moved on to sharing a house with someone else."

"Where I come from, marriage is... an agreement. Between families, usually, as much as between two people. A husband and wife agree that they will have children together, and that those children will be cared for and taught the father's business, and usually that the wife will also assist in that business as much as she is able. Living together is normal, but not required, especially since business often requires that the husband travel. Even apart from travel, though, I know several people who mostly live in a house on the other side of town from their wives, with a mistress. They do not, in so doing, stop being married to their wives, and their children with their mistresses are mere by-blows and not entitled to a share of their legitimate half-siblings' inheritance."

Disapproving headshake.

"Nobility are similar, though I can't say I know any nobles who maintain their usual residence with their mistress. Noble divorce is breaking a treaty between very small nations, as much as it is a personal matter."

"Indeed. The scale is smaller, for us merchants, but the nature of the arrangement is much the same. Though I do not know that the law needs to recognize this, necessarily. Under the old regime, it was not particularly recognized, and for all the faults of the old order, I do not think that was one of them. When divorce is punished by social opprobrium and loss of reputation, it does not seem necessary for there to be a legal punishment as well."

Rich people are fucking wild. 

"At the point where a tenth of children are being raised by the state, our existing culture here is clearly not working."

"A tenth!"

Josep doesn't see why this should be his problem, or indeed why the state should be doing this in the first place. If mothers have no orphanage to abandon their children at, they'll either bring them up or smother them, and he is fine with either. Maybe fewer women of the working classes would sleep around if the crown was less determined to free them from the consequences of their actions.

Probably he should not say this in so many words to the orphanage worker though. She seems like the kind to feel so very sorry for the women who sleep around and are surprised when this lands them with a pregnancy, and she's better at talking than he is.

"Is it truly a tenth? Gods. Of course you're right that we should do something. I merely meant that, whatever our solution is, it should not break the part of the existing culture that does work. I do note that... if my daughter or sister were to sleep with a man she was not married to, and without any promises made to her about the upkeep of her children, I would think her unpardonably foolish. In my family, women are raised better than that. Perhaps we should try to emulate this spirit for the rest of the country?"

"Apparently at least a tenth of Chelish children are not being raised better than that!"

"Oh, do the men keep promises, where you come from?" She asks Roig, acidly.

"Perhaps we are considering different kinds of promise? Certainly if a man were to solemnly promise a woman marriage or support for her children, with witnesses, and then broke his promise, I would consider him at fault, and perhaps even consider it to be a proper legal matter. But if you mean the light promises that every man makes or implies when courting a woman, which are not truly meant to be kept... well, a woman should know better than to believe those."

Alonso is judging this man and an ambiguous number of other humans SO HARD. Obviously promises are meant to be kept. That doesn't mean they usually are, or that a woman shouldn't be careful about them or anything, just, also the man in this situation sucks.