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[Karnewarrior]

Ravioli Ravioli, the old broad died so now I play a Demon Loli.

Immortals are fun but at some point one of my mods bugged out and now the little lock symbol (for when armies are locked into moving to a province) has become what appears to be the default text box for the game. Just a giant blank box, blocking the whole of the screen. I tried to conquer the world, in order to stop this maddening, dizzying array of boxes, but then some nobody mayor somewhere blew up my immortally sixteen empress, so now I'm going to conquer the world as Lucifer's Daughter... And save Christianity.

Well, Demon Loli used her Devil-given powers a bit too much, and someone who obviously hates Jesus assassinated her right after she made a Satanist the Pope. Thankfully, the (Un)Holy Roman Empire remained intact, mostly, and Christianity had a whopping 91% Moral Authority, so the Jackson Pollock of heresies started to vanish pretty quickly as I zoomed on ahead in Observer mode. The Pope is now an official vassal of the HRE, which the AI Emperor used as an excuse to declare a Crusade for Saxony on Poland, which ate Eastern Europe like normal.

Poland responded by Soloing basically the entire Christian World for a good 20 years, burning down enough temples to tank Christ back to 19% MA, because apparently my secretly pagan twin from another universe is playing the Polish King. I responded to this slight against the One True Faith by possessing an infant and forcing him to marry a Nestorian girl, before hiring a massive army of angels Mercenaries and riding them up to the Polish Front, where they conquered 20 provinces and then got mulched by Poles.

Despite my lack of hesitation in giving myself not only Strong, Attractive, and Genius, but also 50k ducats, I spent the next ten years fighting Poland with the use of massive armies of mercenaries, struggling to win the war single-handedly because Christianity was shaking itself apart again. I finally won, granting the crusader state to my aunt, who's some whore from Ireland I don't care about and intend to murder the minute I become old enough to hire assassins.

The Demon Loli has now become the Christ-Shota. The Mission is still the same: Save Jesus by any means possible. The foes... Have changed. Poland. Must. Die.

[mightymushroom]

So I decided I'd fall back on the 'play Ireland first' advice – only in 769 rather than 1066. Fast forward 22 years. I'm puttering along, minding my own business in my little corner of the island. (Got a good candidate for sainthood, virtues just pile up for Benedictines.) I get an alert that I need a new commander. Who died? Aww, my husband is missing from that list, I wonder what happened. I go find his screen, but he's not dead. Wait a minute, why is he fighting in two wars without me? ??

HOLY COW!

The landless minor prince I married way back when, on the basis of being the first adult in the matrilineal list and a tolerable age match (historical bloodline boosting prestige & opinion was icing; no way I'm pressing claims on Bavaria from Ireland), just became King of West Francia! I've got three tribal counties, but my dynastic son stands to be sole heir to the close-second-biggest realm in the world! A push down Italy and it could be Holy & Roman, even. Holy Cow! And the only way I find out is because a commander seat is vacant!

I may have to reconsider my intent to play a succession of female homebodies in Ireland.

-----
fake edit: Since composing that, I ruined it a little bit by having another son who'll split the West & Central titles again. Well, I can probably work around that. It won't be nearly as even a distibution this time around, if it comes to a fight. But first hubby has to hold the whole shebang together a bit longer; right now we're putting down a rebellion on behalf of Charlemagne's – whoops, no, on this timeline he was Karl 'the Tormentor' – an uprising to install his hunchbacked bastard. At least with my baby popped I can use my teleportation magic to personally join my army as it disembarks onto the leader's home province.

[Karnewarrior]

You can always take a duchy from heretics and make your extra sons priest-lords there. It even comes with the in-universe justification of them doing god's work in converting the people there to the way of Christ.

[spazyak]

Ravioli Ravioli, the old broad died so now I play a Demon Loli.

Can I sig this?

[Egan_BW]

Only if you put it in your sig and not your sigtext.

[Kagus]

Y'know, I used to wonder why there wasn't more matrilineal succession in the real world... For people obsessed with bloodlines and families, there's definitely no doubt about who someone's mother is when they pop out. Daddy could be anyone for all they knew.

But then I remembered the rates of death during childbirth, and I recognized how unsustainable the system was...

[Egan_BW]

Hey cool, another thing we can blame on the design flaws inherent to human physiology.

[birdy51]

Huh. You know, I never really considered why matrilineal lineage wasn't a big thing, but that makes a helluva lot of sense.  O.o

[Karnewarrior]

Ravioli Ravioli, the old broad died so now I play a Demon Loli.

Can I sig this?

Sure.

[ZeroGravitas]

Huh. You know, I never really considered why matrilineal lineage wasn't a big thing, but that makes a helluva lot of sense.  O.o

no, it really doesn't. average medieval women had 6-7 live births, and only 1-1.5% of women died in childbirth. it wasn't a serious threat.

the simplest explanation for why you always see patriarchal lineages is because men are bigger and stronger than women, so regardless of any other social factors, men could, in general, enforce their dominance in any individual relationship through intimidation and violence.

[Retropunch]

Huh. You know, I never really considered why matrilineal lineage wasn't a big thing, but that makes a helluva lot of sense.  O.o

no, it really doesn't. average medieval women had 6-7 live births, and only 1-1.5% of women died in childbirth. it wasn't a serious threat.

the simplest explanation for why you always see patriarchal lineages is because men are bigger and stronger than women, so regardless of any other social factors, men could, in general, enforce their dominance in any individual relationship through intimidation and violence.

Hmm it's a mix of both I think for a number of reasons. Mainly, Patriarchal lineage is best because if the woman dies in child birth (taking the child with her usually) then the male can just try again, if it's the other way around the line just stops. On top of that, 1/1.5% is still a big threat when you're considering you also have all the other threats on top of that (dying of infection etc.).

I went to a really interesting talk on historical reporting ages ago, and one thing that came up was that all of the death rates for stuff were usually much lower than reality because no one really knew what people were dying of. Cancer wasn't a thing, and though a woman might be 4 months pregnant and die of complications, the local healer would put it down to 'demons' or something as they didn't know they were pregnant.

You're right though that it also helps that men are genetically bigger and stronger, but I think that's only part of it.

[CABL]

Cancer wasn't a thing...

It's complicated, actually: While the cancer wasn't as prevalent (according to some research) back then, there were also next-to-none means to diagnose it correctly. Like the answer in the thread says, it's impossible to figure out how really prevalent it actually was.

[Majestic7]

the simplest explanation for why you always see patriarchal lineages is because men are bigger and stronger than women, so regardless of any other social factors, men could, in general, enforce their dominance in any individual relationship through intimidation and violence.

That is a simplifacation that ignores the effect of Abrahamic religions on the mores of the people (although Judaism is generally matrilinear regarding who is considered Jewish). There have been several matrilineal societies like in much of Philippines, certain tribes in what is now Indonesia, some old kingdoms in China, portions of Africa and the Iroquis in Northern America. Not to mention the contested role of warrior women in Sarmatian/Scythian societies and other nomads. I'm personally interested in how recent findings regarding Viking burial mounds points towards females in leadership roles.

Of course, not all patriarchaic societies were created by Christianity/Islam, but it had a heavy effect on curbing the position of women. For example, the Spanish/Catholics tried to (with mixed success) limit the position of women in Philippines after taking over. Although to be honest, regarding Europe, it is hard to say what is the effect of Christianity and what comes from Roman influences. Romans, after all, were quite misogynic. In general, cultural constructions carry thousands of years of baggage and reducing them to unresearched biological factors is usually an attempt to make "nativity argument"; that is, saying that something is the order of nature that should be preserved.

Disclaimer: sorry if I came off snarky, not my intention, not blaming you for anything.

[Teneb]

the simplest explanation for why you always see patriarchal lineages is because men are bigger and stronger than women, so regardless of any other social factors, men could, in general, enforce their dominance in any individual relationship through intimidation and violence.

That is a simplifacation that ignores the effect of Abrahamic religions on the mores of the people (although Judaism is generally matrilinear regarding who is considered Jewish). There have been several matrilineal societies like in much of Philippines, certain tribes in modern Indonesia, portions of Africa and the Iroquis in Northern America. Of course, not all patriarchaic societies were created by Christianity/Islam, but it had a heavy effect on curbing the position of women. For example, the Spanish/Catholics tried to (with mixed success) limit the position of women in Philippines after taking over. Although to be honest, regarding Europe, it is hard to say what is the effect of Christianity and what comes from Roman influences. Romans, after all, were quite misogynic. In general, cultural constructions carry thousands of years of baggage and reducing them to unresearched biological factors is usually an attempt to make "nativity argument"; that is, saying that something is the order of nature that should be preserved.

Disclaimer: sorry if I came off snarky, not my intention, not blaming you for anything.

Very much this.

It should be noted however, that not all societies thought of people in the terms of male and female. The Romans themselves were one before Christianity. Specifically, they regarded people in the terms of Citizen or Not Citizen. Citizens could be men, but not all men were citizens.

It's just hard for us to grasp that because of how prevalent the current gender definitions are.

[Majestic7]

It should be noted however, that not all societies thought of people in the terms of male and female. The Romans themselves were one before Christianity. Specifically, they regarded people in the terms of Citizen or Not Citizen. Citizens could be men, but not all men were citizens.

Well, Romans had a very thigh grasp on what being a man was about, but it was possible to "lose" your manhood by doing unmanly things such as being at the receiving end of male sexuality. Fucking other men was fine and manly, but receiving the fucking was what women did. That's a fine example of how different the definitions of gender and sexuality were even for them. But yeah, the fluidiness of gender role is fascinating. There has been societies with very fixed gender roles, but you could socially switch gender by taking a role usually reserved for another sex. For example, a man could become a housewife, start dressing as a woman, marry another man and so forth. Or the historical Thai society with their magical crossdressing/trans/intersexual priest caste (which caused quite grasping of pearls among Western explorers and colonists).