"In a healthy society some women would prefer to be the mistress of a wealthy and powerful man than the wife of a social equal, but how many women prefer this is kept in check by, yes, the fact that most other people won't think much of their decisions and that many will consider them merely a special class of prostitute.  And so most men and most women ultimately marry and certainly a man will have to marry if he wants a woman who is a social equal. I don't think anyone needs to be cruel to make it work, but it does in fact function off their willingness to judge each other, and off the fact a woman will lose standing if she's having children out of wedlock. I will make no claim that this system is perfect but it does not leave millions of dead and abandoned children in its wake and its participants get to Axis." 

"I see. If the women in question are all of much lower standing in the first place, I think that is probably the answer to my question."

"In the culture we are discussing if a man seduces a woman who is his social equal her family and the surrounding society will try quite hard to shame him, and potentially to duel him, into marrying her."

That just seems like being a sore loser??? 'awww, you did something meaaan, make it right!' Like you're three.

Paladins may not be good at dissembling but they can still attempt tact. Or distraction.

"Lastwall does, in fact, discourage and punish men for infidelity as strictly as for women. And it strongly discourages seeing prostitutes, though they remain legal and have all protections of law. This is a difficult standard for many to meet but I understand we largely succeed."

"I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that no men should have mistresses, though the church has made the case to me. But I'd not go that far because, in some places, many men die. I have heard the suggestion that excess women should join holy orders, but they largely do not exist in Cheliax, and existing ones would seem not to work very well for widows with children. In Kantaria it is very common for a widow to become the mistress of another man after. It is precarious, but not necessarily shameful, unless he makes it so. Others marry far below their previous status, sometimes legally and sometimes only socially."

"An order for widows with children wouldn't be a bad idea."

"There used to be a great many such. Orders for widows, orders for women whose husbands' conduct towards them or their children was criminal, orders for the raising of orphans much better than the present orphanages, orders for repentant prostitutes..."

"With the state we have now, we'd need others. Some more like guilds, really, for self-supporting women. I'm not sure it works out to being the right way to help."

"The Osirian on the family committee briefly made a case for allowing men to legally take multiple wives. He did not actually go so far as to suggest allowing it in Cheliax, only to legally recognize marriages from allied countries which do practice it, and I do worry about what the effects might be if we did allow it, but - if a man does have reason to commit to more than one woman, it seems to me more honorable for him to be held to both sets of promises."

"I have a slight allergy to introducing any Osirian institutions, lest they come with the general status of women in Osirion, but it does seem to me that if a man has two families it is better for him to have made commitments to both of them than to have one of them - precariously. And in principle I don't see why a man having two wives would go along with female seclusion, which is an abhorrent practice and the real core of the thing they're doing wrong."

Emphatic nod at that first part, and more thoughtful for the rest.

"Would you marry yours, if you could?"

That the flash of panic is almost completely concealed doesn't mean it isn't there. But - Narikopolus would not ask unless he thought it made them safer, here. 

"Monica was my wife for thirty-two years. I have never broken a promise to her, and I never took a mistress in that time. She does not need papers to know that her position is secure. But - it would be very unfair to her, if other people were to assume that the lack of them meant that she had done something wrong."

...did she... die... and then he remarried... and then he had her resurrected when Naima started operating in Cheliax...? It's not even that much cheaper though...

Pretty sure it was an insult before, too, although not one that suggested that her mother had done anything morally wrong, that not previously being something you could insult someone for.

....executed under the old regime and he had her raised once he could, but had remarried by then? 

No, no, he divorced her because it was safer. Probably she was from a family that the Queen almost but not entirely annihilated. 

She'd heard there was a first wife and no recriminations. She hadn't realized quite how deep the feeling went.

"There are not very many men who can say that in any country. I think I would go ahead and get married and then dare the convention to specify that men with two wives have to pick one."

"Marit and Arn were ultimately of the opinion that shaming or hiding the existing mistresses would do far more harm than good for all of us, even in cases far less sympathetic. It's not that they loved the situation, but over and over, they had to tell us that hiding or burying the results of our decisions would make things worse, not better. The things that most deeply concerned them were hardly related to the things that most embarrassed us. It is still legal, in this country, for a man to force his slave to sleep with him, or to trick or threaten a woman into an employment contract which denies her the right to prosecute him for what would otherwise be rape. There are still marriage contracts in effective use which enshrine one party as less than a slave. I think Marit and Arn would tell us to look there, first, if we wanted to fix things. They would certainly not tell us to hide or be ashamed of the parts of our families that we managed to genuinely protect and honor through infernal rule."

" - Slavery should probably just ban forcing your slaves tomorrow. A ban on contracting to someone the right to have sex with you even if you later withdraw permission - outside marriage, obviously - would be the business of some other committee but I would support that too." 

"I would put a bit more thought into it than that, though banning it on the same terms as forcing oneself on free people would probably not be especially destructive. Marit and Arn initially recommended banning all free people from sleeping with slaves, but naively implementing that in my household left quite a lot of the slaves justifiably angry."

"That does seem like it might create a bunch of headaches, but 'if it would otherwise be rape, the victim being a slave or a servant doesn't obviate that' seems like it would at least be better than the law explicitly permitting it. I am worried that part of the breakdown of marriage might be that by such contracts men can secure the rights of marriage without any of the responsibilities."

"It's standard practice to ensure it in domestic service contracts. Not necessarily using those exact words. You get a fair number of orphans and I assume infanticides that way, if the employer effectively requires it, but also effectively bans keeping or caring for the child in the house."