Now there’s an image I’m going to have to burn out of my skull with a flamethrower.

@Kurt “Telas” Schneider – I like the “mark of infidelity” idea– makes perfect sense in a world with active priests and magic.

My Empire of Iron game also messed with dwarven culture and reproduction. I guess there’s just something about dwarves and sex in world building…

The modern insulting use of the term is probably just that – a modern usage, born of modern sensibilities to wedlock.

It hasn’t come into play yet, but only 25% of the Dwarves in my campaign are born female. Instant matriarchy (and polyandry)!!

Rationale: Dwarves are greedy and hard working so they can earn enough fortune/fame/talent to marry into a good family, and hopefully spread their seed.

Twist: Not every female Dwarf looks forward to the life of an (admittedly well-treated) brood mare. More than a few have ‘gone Yentl’.

@unwinder – The binding marriage is excellent– in fact, the great Skeeve of Possiltum presented rings linking the lives of two monarchs in Hit or Myth.

@Roxysteve – Being a bastard nobleman was better than being a commoner…

Matriarchal societies are interesting, and make great fiction. Ursula LeGuin has many novels setting up sex and society in interesting ways– if you haven’t already read her short story The Matter of Seggri, you might enjoy its take on a matriarchal society.

As evidence I offer up no less authority than Her Majesty’s College of Heralds who would (and still will) happily denote you as a distaff son (women didn’t count as they didn’t bear arms in the period we’re discussing)upon the heraldic device on your shield. Bastards were proud of their ancestry, or why would they announce to the world they were one? In a highly class stratified society such as Wars of the Roses era England the line of descent was important, even when it traced into the world of the wrong side of the sheets.

As for Matriarchal societies, I’ve often wondered why, if they have so much to offer a culture, they are virtually non-existent in this day and age. I don’t say that to be confrontational, just to point out that the benefits of such a society are apparently so volatile they don’t withstand contact with patriarchal cultures well.

I think that a funny thing to do with a fantasy marriage would be to make it magically binding. You cheat, you die, or something like that. It’d be pretty interesting to have such marriages as a part of an in-game culture, and see how differently the culture developed because of it.