How does the Unathi family unit work?

[Jboy2000000]

I know Unathi have clans, that's basically a large group of a family plus some, but do Unathi have families within their clans? Id always just assumed extending the clan was just a matter of meet'em, breed'em and leave'em, when a male finds a woman, gets them pregnant, names the kid so they know it's their's, and thats all. But, recently Ive seen Unathi dating, talking about getting married, asking permission of the father to take their claw in marriage, stuff like that. So, do Unathi usually have a family inside the clan that stay together like modern families?

If so, Im totally going to make an ex-ganger Unathi with daddy issues.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

To make it simple, imagine you're playing Crusader Kings II. If you haven't played CKII, just imagine feudal Europe and you'll be in the ballpark.

Imagine two castles in which live two different families, the Harmbatons, and the Liggers. I'll bring them into examples to help explain.

Clans are predominately a family unit, but they can also mean political ties. It depends on context of how it's meant - you can be in your family clan, and a part of the 'bigger clan' that your clan is a vassal to. For example, all clans in the Hegemony are vassals to the Izweski, and though no one says it outside super specific legal and technical settings because it can be confusing unless you know the full context, all Hegemonic unathi are considered to be in the Izweski clan, but in the sense of being vassals and not family members. Confusing? Probably! That's why it's not that necessary to understand the full concept; only the old farts actually interested in politics and legalism care enough. So there's no drawbacks to players not getting the full scope.

Back to the actually relevant concept:

Marriages are arranged most of the time. Either the parents of Hissandra Ligger would propose her as a match to Jeremy Harmbaton, or the elders would tell the parents to do it, or any combination of 'people older than Hissandra' in the family pecking order would work to get her in a marriage. It's also equally possible that a Harmbaton boy would slither on over and request to marry Hissandra, but it still needs the approval of Hissandra's father. (The opinion of any female is only given as much weight as the dudes wanna give it.) Then the old dudes from both clans get together and talk about the benefits and drawbacks of a marriage between them.

Once they marry, Hissandra becomes a Harmbaton, and the children of the two take the name of the father's clan unless, for some weird reason, they decide to take the females' clan name instead. So now Hissandra Harmbaton and Jeremy Harmbaton are having little harmbatons running around.

This also means that the Harmbatons and the Liggers are allies, and will fight for one another or generally respect one another and help each other out.

If Jeremy Harmbaton went through all the trouble of arranging a marriage then just dropped Hissandra, that'd be real bad news because the Liggers would get offended and it would probably spark a war between the two clans, or just intense bitching and feuding.

Since Unathi clans are so diverse, marriage/dating rites themselves are whatever their clan decided to roll with and turned into a tradition. Which is the IC way of explaining I like the creativity of what people come up with.

While 'love' and 'affection' are important, the most important thing that unathi females gotta look for is that the dude can provide for them. Since you're going to legally be subservient to your husband and women legally can't file for a divorce on Moghes, it would really suck for him to be a deadbeat.

[Killerhurtz]

Question answered. Locking and archiving.