THE ECHOES OF ETERNITY.

somewhere in the memes tag // @maeikar

On his ninth nameday, three days hence, he was to be crowned king, with Visenya as his queen - the only thing that made it even slightly better. For now, everyone told him that all he had to worry about was serving as his uncle's squire, learning to fight and lead as the great Bittersteel did - actually being king would come later, as would his and Visenya's real marriage. For now, it was all just for appearances - problems for the Daemon of future years.

It should have been a relief, but he kept thinking that if his father hadn't been king, then he wouldn't have died. He had surrendered, and his cousin, the Pretender's son, had killed him, while Aegor Rivers had fought to the last and been taken alive. Or maybe it had been for surrendering - maybe they had just thought him weak enough to kill.

If that were the case, then Daemon could never be weak.

But his father wasn't weak, either, so it must have been because he was king.

Blood, his uncle said. Blood was what bound them - the blood in their veins, and the blood they shed for each other. When Visenya had pushed him down a week ago and he skinned his knee, did that count? When his mother had handed him a shard of dragonglass and he lightly scored his palm with a shaking hand, when Visenya furrowed her brow and made a quick cut to her own and pressed their hands together while tears welled in her lavender eyes, surely that did.

The cut on his palm still stung, though it had scabbed over quickly and Visenya's had had to be bandaged.

Whatever he was, whatever he would be, he would not be weak.

Westeros has a dowry system, where a woman is given wealth (commonly in the form of portable property) by her father’s family upon her marriage; in medieval Europe the property is usually hers or her children’s to use, but in Westeros her husband has significant rights over it and can be the chief reason for their marriage. The most notable example is Walda Frey’s marriage to Roose Bolton, where the dowry was her weight in silver paid by her grandfather Walder to Roose. Furthermore, Lord Lyonel Corbray is even more “well pleased” with his second wife’s “immense” dowry than with the girl herself, as she is the daughter of a wealthy Gulltown merchant. Westeros is based on medieval Europe and is clearly patrilineal (lineage is traced from father to son) and patrilocal (the family resides near the husband’s parents); dowries were offered in such societies where land is valued more than manual labor, due to the concentration of land ownership in the hands of the few (the aristocracy). 

We don’t have many detailed instances of Tyroshi marriage, but the cases we do know about seem to indicate that Tyrosh has a system of bride price, where a man or his family give a woman (or, more specifically, her parents) property or service either just before or even during their marriage. Aegon IV explicitly promised some form of wealth to the Archon for Daemon to marry Rohanne of Tyrosh, which Daeron II had to pay for the marriage to take place; Yandel referred to the exchange as a dowry, but he is clearly looking at this situation from a Westerosi lens, as dowries outside of the Daemon/Rohanne marriage are only mentioned as being settled on women. Rohanne’s bride price may seem like a special case akin to Daenerys’ wedding to Hizdahr zo Loraq, where the bride is of a much higher status than the groom and so their union necessitates a reversal of custom, but Fire and Blood introduces another Tyroshi wedding that seems to follow the practice of bride service: that of Orryn Baratheon and the Archon’s daughter. We are most familiar with bride service from the biblical Genesis, in which Jacob serves Laban for seven years in order to marry Laban’s daughter Rachel (although Laban tricked him into marrying his eldest daughter Leah, so Jacob had to labor seven more years for Rachel’s hand). Orryn, exiled from Westeros for 10 years, took service with the Archon and within one year had married his daughter, although after the marriage he continued to serve the Archon until his term was over (in real-world societies including in ancient Jewish law, sometimes the service/price is not paid all at once and the groom enters a contract where he promises to pay what he owes). Orryn’s exile status meant that he had no family to pay bride price, so he needed to take bride service under the Archon to wed his daughter. Bride price/service occurs in societies where manual labor is more valuable than land, and we can infer Tyrosh, a heavily urban, small, “bleak and stony island” does not value land as the main source of economic wealth; rather, manual labor seems to be essential, whether through the institution of slavery (slaves are said to outnumber freeborn Tyroshi three to one) or from mercenary companies. According to an evolutionary psychology theory, bride price also originates from polygamy since there is a relative scarcity of unmarried women, and we know from Racallio Ryndoon’s dozen wives that some polygamy is practiced in Tyrosh.

Some inferences about how Tyrosh’s bride price custom and how that may have impacted Tyroshi-Westerosi relationships under the cut: