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[noodle0117]

So I just saw the Complete 249 year geneology thread and saw how it was indeed possible for dwarves to marry cousins. So if marriage between cousins is possible, is marriage between siblings ethically allowed for dwarves as well?
I've never seen a dwarf mother give birth to more than one child before, but then again my forts never grew more than 5-6 years old.
But assuming a dwarf mother had two children, can the kids marry once they grow older?

[darkflagrance]

Not possible.

[metime00]

It was in one of the earlier DF talks, probably in the range of numbers 3-7 if you want to verify it.

[Duntada Man]

I'm not sure about dwarves, but I have an entire city of humans telling me their father is also their uncle and cousin...

[Chessrook44]

Sure, but only if the skin under a dwarf's chin is a lovely shade of magenta.  Unfortunately you'd have to chop off their beard to check and that's a no-no.

[Gatleos]

We need an inbreeding mechanic to flesh out nobles.

[Ampersand]

I thought that there may be a way for half-siblings to marry, but then I remembered this.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34639.15

I'm not sure if that bug was ever fixed, and it's kind of hard to replicate, and therefore hard for me to test myself. Basically, if somehow half-siblings occur, they fail to ever acknowledge each others existence at all, either as biologically related or even as acquaintances.

I think Toady kind of went over such relationship issues in a DF talk some time ago. It's just flat out prevented from happening in the code.

But, when it comes to Nobles, I have to agree with Gatleos

[NW_Kohaku]

But, when it comes to Nobles, I have to agree with Gatleos

I'll point out that I think all of those are cousins or uncle/aunt marriages, which is what is already allowed in the game.

[Ampersand]

He was talking about an inbreeding mechanic, though, which I presume means degenerative genetic effects over time.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ah, sorry, I thought "inbreeding mechanic" meant that there was a special exemption for allowing nobles to marry brother and sister.  "Mechanic" is a bit of a broad term in programming language.

[Interus]

I thought that there may be a way for half-siblings to marry, but then I remembered this.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34639.15

That is some extreme sibling rivalry.

I'm pretty sure that the game checks to see if they're siblings, but doesn't check to see if they're related in any other ways.  I do wonder if getting kidnapped affects that at all, but it probably doesn't.  And it would be incredibly hard to find two siblings who got kidnapped to the same tower and lived long enough to marry.  Let alone enough pairs to show that they can't.

[Gatleos]

Ah, sorry, I thought "inbreeding mechanic" meant that there was a special exemption for allowing nobles to marry brother and sister.  "Mechanic" is a bit of a broad term in programming language.

Yeah, what I meant is that any creature would have the potential for inbreeding, but it would be added to the list of ethics (probably considered an abomination to all but goblins). It would only come up with nobles who, like our real-life "nobles" want to preserve their bloodline.

[Ampersand]

Ehh. In real life, noble inbreeding was really only ever uncles/nieces and such, and never really brother-sister, at least in Europe. Consanguinity marriage laws demanded several degrees of separation, though nobles were often exempted from this, but if an exemption was made for brother and sister, I cannot find it ever happening.

However, the Egyptians, at some points in their history, only permitted the Pharaoh to marry his sister, to preserve a pure godly bloodline. In the Imperial Period, Pagan Roman emperors tended to have few qualms about having sex with anything on two legs, and everyone ought know about Caligula and his obsession with his sister. That probably had to do with a complete lack of taboo, and sheer decadence more than anything else though.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, part of the reason that marriages between cousins were disallowed with most nobles was that they wanted to prevent any single family from intermarrying enough nobles in the same area that they could form a familial bloc of nobles that could make a power grab. 

The kings and queens of Europe were pretty much all cousins at some points.  I remember one Russian Tsar was a drooling idiot who happened to be part of the royal bloodline of about a dozen different nations, from England to Holland to Prussia to France, and several other nations. 

He was incapable of leadership, however, being a man-child who preferred to play with toy soldiers, and seemed not to understand much about the world around him.  A very ambitious woman managed to endure marrying him and bore children (probably with "outside help", since her husband probably wasn't up to the task) to get herself on the throne of Russia, and managed to rule with her token monarch husband.


Brother/sister incest was rare among nobles for two major reasons. 

First, daughters or little sisters are powerful bargaining chips in international diplomacy.  Marrying her off to a rival nation is a great way to cement an alliance. 

Second, as long as the children were raised together, humans have an innate distaste for incest, beyond even the necessity of a social taboo.  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect#Westermarck_effect

[noodle0117]

But if they were raised separately (as in the egyptians), they'd most likely end up having an even stronger attraction for each other compared to a normal couple due to certain similarities attracting each other.