Indulge in Life in America

Chapter 2075: The marriage of nobles

"I have heard your Highness mention you a long time ago. I finally met today. I am glad to meet you." The baron looked polite and spoke authentic English accent, which made people almost forget that he was a native German.

"It is also my honor to see you, sir." Yang Cheng replied neither humble nor arrogant. His first impression of this funny-looking and contradictory baron was good. It seems that William also knew his appetite. I will not introduce myself to those unreliable arrogant nobles.

The meeting place today is the property under the name of the baron, a humble mountain house, a three-story villa in the shape of a wooden castle, located in a mountain range in the Black Forest.

"Recently, Otto is worrying about the marriage of his younger generations. It is not easy to come out and meet." William can naturally call his name directly, and judging from his casual ridicule, the relationship between the two should be very good.

Yang Cheng asked, "Oh? Is it because there is no suitable marriage partner?"

Marriage between European aristocrats is nothing new.

The baron smiled bitterly, "My little daughter is not cold about marriage, but this is a custom for thousands of years, and I have no right to change, let alone she.

Of course, finding a suitable marriage partner is also very helpless. "

Yang Cheng nodded in understanding. In order to continue his power, the superior would always come up with various methods, and marriage is undoubtedly the most cost-effective one.

True love is worthless among the nobles!

Of course, the nobles are more passionate seeds. Like Prince Charles, Europe has a lot of them.

Those familiar with German classical literature may know Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, one of Schiller's early patrons.

The duke is very literary and artistic. In addition to his love for Schiller’s poems, he also studied keyboard music with the son of the composer Bach, and was keen on plant cultivation.

Karl Eugen was educated at the court of the famous Prussian monarch Friedrich the Great. He participated in the Seven Years’ War in the Prussian Army. He was a typical man in the era of the struggle between the monarchy and liberalism. A ruler with both colors.

In terms of private life, Karl Eugen has a series of mistresses and eleven illegitimate children, causing many scandals.

But his true love is a woman of low status: Franziska, the daughter of a baron, and the wife of another baron.

For the general public, the baroness and the baroness are of course superior, but for the duke who rules an important German state, the baron is too low, so he insisted on marrying Francis in 1785. When Skar, encountered a lot of resistance.

Even if the Ming media is marrying, the marriage between Karl Eugen and Franziska is still considered an intermarriage. An obvious manifestation is that Franziska cannot use the title of Duchess of Wurttemberg, and the children born to them do not have complete inheritance rights. .

This is a bit like Charles' situation.

But Karl Eugen is more particular about it. In order to improve Franziska’s status, Karl Eugen asked the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II for love (hui), and in 1774 obtained the "Countess of the Empire of Hohenheim" for her. "The title.

Karl Eugen also wanted to upgrade her status to the marquise, but the emperor refused. The coat of arms used by Franziska, Countess of the Hohenheim Empire, was the coat of arms of the extinct family of Hohenheim Bonbast.

Even so, Franziska never won the title of "Duchess of Württemberg", and her children with the duke were excluded from the succession order, and in formal ceremonial occasions, her priority was lower than Karl Eugen's sister-in-law.

Franziska’s story is very typical. This is the marriage of a German nobleman. It can be said that it is full of inequality, not to mention between nobles and nobles. In fact, a single noble family is also full of inequality.

Boys and girls, the eldest and youngest children have very different educational opportunities. For the benefit of the family, someone in a family must make sacrifices.

For example, in another major event in life, marriage is very unequal within aristocratic families, and it also requires a lot of sacrifices. The marriage between aristocrats pays attention to a good match.

The most important thing for a family to pass on from generation to generation is to ensure that there is a legal heir. In other words, it is to give birth to as many boys as possible within the marriage to resist the "loss" caused by diseases, wars, turmoil, accidents and other catastrophic factors. This is a nobleman. The main function of marriage.

However, if many boys are born and they grow up healthy, it will be a heavy burden on the family's economy.

Even if most noble families want to treat all their children equally, they cannot do it. This means that while the eldest son inherits the family business and property, the younger sons can make a living on their own;

While the eldest son gets married and has children, the younger sons may not have enough financial strength to find the right people to build their own families.

However, it should be emphasized that this is not because the young children of the nobles cannot marry, but because they cannot get married. From the perspective of a long historical period, the long house and the young house of a family often have the marriage ratio and the right to marriage. There is a big gap between the number and the number of children.

Under the pressure of aristocratic society, many young aristocrats were forced to remain unmarried for life. Of course, this does not mean that there is no xing life and no children. In the Catholic area, some aristocratic boys were arranged by their parents to follow the religious path and became priests when they grew up. It means being single and keeping virginity, but if the long room changes and no one inherits, even the old male uncle Chu who has been a priest for decades may be pulled out of the church to return to the secular life, get married, and have children.

Marriage inequality has led to an imbalance in the aristocratic marriage market: there are too many women in the boudoir, and too few men are able to marry. Only women with prominent status will not encounter difficulties. Women often marry men whose status is the first rank. This is conducive to the wife’s family interests, because it can closely link the son-in-law and the woman’s family.

The eldest son and the youngest son are not equal in marriage, and men and women are even more unequal. Women generally do not have the opportunity to choose a spouse, and in most cases they must obey the arrangements of their parents or other elders.

If you dare to resist, it will cause an uproar. The Rhine Palace clerk, the daughter of Conrad of the Staufen family, Agnes, originally destined to obey the arrangement of Emperor Henry VI and marry King Philip II of France, but she secretly married He was the eldest son of Henry the Lion (the Welf family, an opponent of the Staufen family). Emperor Henry VI was furious and asked the Royal Family of the Rhine Palace to dissolve the marriage, but it did not succeed.

Therefore, on the one hand, "competition" refers to social status and the connections it can bring: aristocrats only marry aristocrats, and there are few intermarriage among aristocrats of different levels. For example, high-level aristocrats rarely intermarry with low-level aristocrats;

On the one hand, it is related to religious factors. For example, Catholic aristocrats generally do not choose Protestants or Calvinists, and Protestant aristocratic men east of the Elbe generally do not marry Catholic aristocratic women.

Of course, money is a very important factor, but if you marry a low-born girl for money, you will be despised in the aristocratic circle.

In the late Middle Ages, if marrying a woman of the bourgeoisie, male aristocrats would be discriminated against in many forms, but not without it. Most intermarriage between high and low is the male partner’s higher status, and the female can get income from her husband’s family but cannot enjoy the corresponding society. Status and privileges, the husband’s title cannot be used, but a lower new title may be obtained.

Children born in marriages between noble and low cannot enjoy complete inheritance rights, but they can be counted as "spare births." If there is no more legal heir, such children may also inherit titles and family business.

Therefore, "the marriage of aristocrats must be matched by each other" is not only a matter of personal courage, but also a legal issue in many places.

Once, the laws of the Kingdom of Prussia explicitly prohibited aristocratic men from entering into marriages that were inconsistent with aristocratic honor and decent, but allowed them to marry "upper bourgeois" women.

This rule was only valid in Prussia and lasted until the second half of the 19th century. In the whole of Germany, generally speaking, nobles need the permission of their family patriarch when they get married.

If you insist on marrying someone whose status is far below you, then male and female aristocrats will be greatly negatively affected, such as not enjoying full rights and interests in inheritance of property.

After the 19th century, the rule of nobles only marrying nobles was gradually relaxed. Unconventional marriages would not be punished by the law, but they were still discriminated against in social situations in the upper class. Therefore, many noble families still only Looking for marriage partners in your own circle, of course, it would be great if you could get married with a higher-status family. U U Reading www.uukanshu.com

This is not over yet. After having the right marriage partner, two noble families about to marry will begin a series of negotiations.

The marriage of aristocrats in the Middle Ages is rarely directly related to love, mainly due to ZZ influence and economic transactions.

It is the families of both parties involved in the negotiation. Sometimes the bridegroom and the bride’s father talk directly. It is very common that the finger belly is married and the child is engaged by the parents. Some couples do not meet for the first time until they get married.

The main content of the negotiation is the wife's dowry, and how much money the father-in-law should give to the son-in-law in addition to the dowry. If the husband dies and the widow enters the monastery, how much financial support the widow's father should provide;

There is also the woman’s pocket money, which refers to the money that the husband gives to the wife freely on a regular basis; the property inheritance arrangement, whether the woman has the right to inherit the husband’s property, and how much can he inherit; the guardianship arrangement, if the man If the man dies prematurely, the child belongs to custody; the maintenance of the widow, if the man dies early, how does the widow make a living, whether the widow has the right to continue to live in the husband’s house, how much living expenses and physical closeness the widow receives from the man’s family, etc.

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