![]() ![]() Went for a ride but the horse returned alone. There were mysteries went to bed seemingly healthy, but never awakened. First are the myriad of medical maladies - take your pick! Another is an accident tournament injury, drowning (few knew how to swim), falling off a horse. Many things could carry away an unwanted espoused. It is highly likely her one pregnancy, & its birth trauma, destroyed her ability to bear further children. Sadly, for Margaret Beaufort, such protections did not exist to keep her husband away. Some loving & caring parents insisted on the separation until their daughters seemed strong enough for child-bearing. Because consummation was the final, unbreakable act, couples were kept in separate households if the guardians had doubts. If it could be delayed, no betrothal was inviolable. Even knowingly cruel or unstable men were espoused to little girls. Less important was the temperament of the groom-to-be. Parents, guardians, even monarchs would break betrothals AND marriages! Changing alliances or better offers broke up many. Though it’s a later example, it’s certainly not an uncommon one. A quick one to mind is Katherine of Aragon, who was married to Arthur of Wales before she married Henry VIII. ![]() I can see your dilemma! One acceptable, although sad, option would be for the heroine (and hero) to have been widowed once, or more, by the age you require. Unless they were the oldest son and going to inherit everything from their father, fourteenth-century men had to find some way of securing enough money to buy property so that they could marry. I’m not quite running out of ways to explain away the heroines’ single status when they’re past marriageable age, but it’s something to be considered with each novel. One of my heroines is a nun, removed from her convent just before she can take her vows, and one of them lives as a man. The other was betrothed to a man she loved who died in France, allowing her to fall (gradually) in love with another man. One of them was betrothed as a young teenager and more or less abandoned by her much older husband before the marriage could be consummated. ![]() Two were betrothed before the start of the novels, but the betrothed husbands went off to fight for a couple of years. In a couple of the novels the heroine’s father has used her dowry for something else and she grows older without a husband. When the heroines are older than they should be I have the problem of explaining why they’re not already married. By the time she was widowed ten years later she’d had three children. I’ve just started reading a book by Christine de Pizan who was married at the age of 15 in 1379. Edward III’s wife, Queen Philippa, was a few days short of 16 when she had her first child. Many women had had two or more children by then. In order not to offend sensibilities my female protagonists tend to be in their late teens or early 20s and the males in their early to late 20s. The marriage would not have been consummated until she was fourteen or fifteen, but that seems to be unacceptably young for the heroine of a romantic novel. Recently I read about a noblewoman who was betrothed at the age of three. Most women of the class and status I write about would have been betrothed at a young age. I have usually taken the easy way out and made them older than they would have been in the fourteenth century, although I’ve been vague about the heroine’s age in a couple of cases. One of the main problems is the ages of the protagonists. I didn’t start this blog to write about writing, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss some of the difficulties of writing historical romances set in the Middle Ages when you want to get the details as accurate as possible. ![]()
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