I might be using the wrong term about what kind of hood's Im refering to: the time period around 18th and 19th centuary or just before the techlogy started. This thread is about the marriage regarding that kind of hoods (or similare) where people lived off the land, mostly as farmers and merchandiser - living quiet poor and had bigger families, where many knew eachother. that kind. but it could also be a hood located very far away from the cities, like suburb areas---

For those who have read my previous threads, you probably know that I don't play with townies/npc's so I prefer my sims to reproduce and marry other playable sims and this time Im finally setting up a hood, that I got attached to. So the amount of sims they can actually mate with is quiet small, they cant mate whoever they want. Rather than adding all families at once, Im adding them slowly and then add more when needed so I've enough to avoid intermarriage/inbreeding which is something I hate unless playing polygamy hoods. (Most families are family oriented so they usually have at least 4 kids and get married off early (if taking realism into this, their children get married when they are around 15-18.), but Im not sure about marriage.

If townies/npc's and intermarriage (or breaking up their family tree to woohoo their 1st-2nd cousins/siblings) wasnt allowed, How would you set up this sort of medival and pre-historical non-fantasy) kind of hoods do you have any sort of playstyle when finding a suitable spouse for your simmies? Match making, roll a dice, most boltz, their parents choice, etc?

I'd probably have a matchmaker in the community, who makes matches based on who can actually marry whom as well as the relationship score between the father of the bride and the father of the groom, and the relationship score between the father of the bride and the groom. (In that order of importance).

I play the Capp's in Veronaville in a 18th centuary kinda way. Consort (the head of the household) decides who gets married and when. Such as when Juliette found out she was pregnant with a Monty child, Consort married her off to the heir of the Tricou's (Orion Teens) before she gave birth, and therefore she was no longer eligible to be the heir of the Capp family. He also decided recently that Ariel Capp would marry Saturninus Capp (1st cousins) so they had a 'betrothal ceremony' as children (using the hacked wedding arch) to be married when they became adults. Ariel being the Capp heiress, because 1. She's female, 2. She's going to be a fortune aspiration and 3. No-one else was eligible (being that Juliette had a Monty child, Hermia is marrying the heir of the Summerdreams (Puck), Miranda has had 'relations' with a Monty and Desdemona... I can't remember why). Saturninus was chosen due to him also rolling Fortune aspiration, and Cornwall (his father) really wants the Capp fortune, but they had two sons: Saturninus and Bassianus, thus meaning no eligible heirs.

Consort bases these arranged marriages on royalty. He arranges marriages with only rich families or those of high class. The Landgraab's just had a son, which Consort wishes to marry Desdemona off too, but by the time Malcolm Landgraab V is an adult, Desdemona will already be middle-aged and therefore not 'young and fertile'. Other families Consort is keeping an eye on include the Goth's, DeBateau's, Roth's, Baldwin's and maybe some other middle class families which might inherit more money in time. Tybalt is engaged to Lilith Pleasant, which Consort didn't arranged, but given that the Pleasant's are of upper-middle class standards, and Lilith is educated (in university), he approves.

For an arranged marriage to actually happen, Consort has to have a 100/50 relationship score with the father of the possible-husband (or in the Tricou case, the possible-husband due to all the other Tricou's being deceased) and when that is reached, Consort invites him over for dinner where they 'discuss' the wedding. Consort tried marrying Miranda off to Carlos Contender recently, but the two just didn't get on... resulting in Consort attacking Carlos at a Landgraab dinner party. Oops

I go with most bolts and use Cyjon's pizza box to look up precise chemistry numbers to determine which sim is liked more among those with three bolts. To find candidates with highest chemistry I use a magic ball object, it searches for highest chemistry among all sims in the megahood. This matchmaking service is provided by witches who're kind of illegit in megahood but are trying to earn themselves a good name.

The only hood I play as medieval is Veronaville and I go with parents' decision, not bolts. Unless they're trying to marry kids off to a non-medieval hood, in that case both chemistry and money\power\connections go into account.

Fascinating thread! It almost tempts me to play pre-modern myself. But the more I think about it, the less certain I am how to play it. The age was definitely patriarchal, with men making most of the decisions, unless the women were smart enough to work on their menfolk behind the scenes. You might want the traditional marriage hack (I can't remember who made it), which makes the bride always take the groom's surname. It would be very unusual indeed back then for a woman to propose marriage. In farming communities a woman's perceived ability to work on the farm, and bear and suckle children would be more important than her good looks. In upper class, royal, and even middle class families, dynastic marriages would often be the norm. What could be better for two wealthy and ambitious merchants, than to get their son and daughter to marry and create a bigger united business? Occasionally the young people might actually love each other, but that would seldom be the concern of their parents. You can forget about lightning bolts for such marriages; the balance sheet was what mattered! Generally such marriages would hold together, no matter how unhappy. They were too important to fail. The husband might seek pleasure outside the marriage. The wife would generally just have to accept her lot. Wife-beating was almost socially acceptable then. She would gain some social standing from having made such a "good" marriage. And that was about it.

But that's not all there was to it. The 18th and 19th centuries were also the golden age of the Romantic movement. Our ideas of romantic love mostly stem from this period. Some people did marry for love, with or without the approval of their parents! If you think that young people always did what their elders told them in those days, you should try reading Jane Austen! Customs change, but people are much the same!

An 18th century community, especially a village or a really small town, was closer to the "closed system" that we inevitably have in our Sims games; people didn't travel do much. By the latter part of the 19th century, with the coming of railways and steamships, they could be almost as mobile as people today. But even in the 18th century some people did travel; strangers would sometimes arrive in the village. So, especially if you're playing without townies, don't make your system too closed; include some outsiders who don't quite fit in. Perhaps an itinerant young labourer, with no money or social standing, but devastating good looks. Or, better still a shepherd/poet, with little formal education, but able to compose irresistible love poems. To really meet the romantic ideal of the period, he should also be slowly dying of consumption, so the girl that falls for him knows from the beginning that their love is doomed. There is nothing more romantic than hopeless love (but I'm not sure how you'd do a long slow death in The Sims!). Or how about a gypsy family camping just outside the town? they could have both sons and daughters to entice the local youth.

All told it seems a fascinating period. Let us know how you get on playing it.
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@Bigsimsfan12: (A little off-topic) My game is modern, but I do play Veronaville, and the Capps are am old local family with strong, long-established traditions. In my game Juliette is the heiress and Consort, a Capp only by marriage, has no legal authority to disinherit her, even if he wanted to. (Such an action would be held to be ultra vires.) As heiress she has an absolute title to Capp Manor and its lands, and Consort merely holds it in trust till she comes of age. Only her predeceasing Consort can prevent her inheriting. In this (unlikely) event the succession would pass to Hermia, and then to Tybalt (who, unlike Consort, is a true-born Capp in the blood line). Then it would pass to Goneril, then to her female children and then to her male children. Only then does it pass to Regan, to her children (as yet she is without issue) and finally to Kent, who I reckon is 12th in line to inherit Capp Manor, and therefore is never going to get it. So, it doesn't matter a wit that he's in a gay relationship that is never going to produce any children. Because he's never going to get Capp Manor anyway! I believe this byzantine rule of female primogeniture, in which females are preferred, but males are not absolutely excluded, is the mirror image of the one that applied to the British Royal Family until last year. The position of the money is less clear, as I believe Consort earned much of it, and it is even possible that he might lose it. But, if he were to lose Capp Manor, he would go down in the family annals as a Disgrace To The Family, and I'm sure he wouldn't like that! Land is more important than money to these old families. It's an oddity that none the adult men who are so keen defend the honour of the Capp name when the game opens (Consort, Albany and Cornwall) are born Capps -- they all married into the family.

At the snail's pace my game goes at, there's not much sign of impending marriage in the Capp family yet. Tybalt will likely be the first as he and ex-Downtownie Lexie Kauker are madly in love with each other. She's Fortune and she's mean (a bit) and Consort approves. Juliette has two boyfriends and wants to go steady with both of them. Hermia has had boy trouble since she found Puck playing around with another boy. She failed in her attempt to find a replacement boy, so she's trying to make up with him. Maybe Consort is going soft in his old age, but he's remarkably tolerant with his grandchildren, who frequently create mayhem and fill the house with their teenage friends. Maybe it's no wonder he's sometimes short with people outside.

Is the females inheriting a rule you made up for your game or does it suggest that in Veronaville (I haven't played it enough to remember)?

Ever since I read about the Royal kingdom challenge about social classes, Ive been inspired to create a victorican-ish neighboorhood (except I wont pay that much of attention to cc for their houses and clothing, its the way they live Im interested in). The hood Im setting up is inspired by that challenge and that time period.

AndrewGloria: I will only play that time period as an inspiration, not playing it exactly how it was during 18-19th. :-P
At the moment, Ive only 4 founders families (who are related to eachother in some way) - they are all partriarch farmers/fishing sims or working on different type of hobbies - sewing, toy arrangement, flower arrangement, baking, some painters and some interested in music. The wife will focusing on housework and taking care of kids (or helping the guys with the gardening/crafting/cooking).
Later on, they'll start running businesses based on those hobbies (the kids will following their parent's footstep.), so they are not allowed to have a "real" job (I use either housesim custom career for this, but I might remove job wants alll together with Phaneoh No-Maxi job mod). I wont pay attention much about their income right now, but later when I have added more families, I will give them social classes, probably based on their aspiration and adjust their funds to it.

Many of the born in game sims will follow their parents 2nd aspiration and focus on that in the future. Like most of my founders are family sims with either knowledge, fortune and later popularity 2nd aspiration. Based on their personality, hobbies/interests and such stuff, their kids will follow one of these three aspiration. (The first generation focusing on family life). So a fortune teenager might end up becoming a merchant in future generations. Nobility will be added much later. They live in such as a small town, I dont see the point of having those around but I will eventually create a royal family and relatives to them later representing the noble class who might will take multiple wives from the other classes or I might create a brothel where husbands seek the "pleasure" outside their marriage. Only rich sims may have pleasure/romance aspiration,

I dont have much knowledge about the 19th centuary, but I did remember there is a epedemic, cholera, and something else that killed alot of the population. In a few sim generation, I might add this to reduce the amount of sims. (every family have 4-6 kids each and in order to avoid intermarriage, i will need quiet a lot of families in this hood to make this work. So in a few generations, there will be alot of sims lurking around in the hood. The epedemic sounds an interesting storyplot to reduce the population. ;-) and since the technology wasnt so advanced at that era, I might also add a risk for childbirth.).

I dont really have exact plan for this hood, I will just set it up slowly but adding some guidelines for the sims to go by. I doubt there were plantsims and alien around during 1800-1890). But its marriage, Im still trying to figure out.

One pair of my grandparents were forced into arranged marriage when they were 14. At first they were really shy of each other, later they fell madly in love. :lovestruc

Sometimes an arranged marriage can be lucky.

The neighbourhood history describes Juliette as the Capp heiress although her brother Tybalt is older. And the family tree shows the Capp surname passing through the female line, with husbands marrying into the family taking their bride's name. So the idea of female succession is Maxis'. The emphasis on Capp Manor as the family pile and the detailed order of succession are my contribution. The Wiki describes the family as matrilineal but gives a different line of succession (which I've only just seen this morning!), completely excluding males, and putting Goneril as head of the family. However I'll stick to my own version with Juliette as the nominal head of the family, but with Consort acting for her till she reaches her majority. (For this I must believe that Cordelia, Juliette's late mother, was older than Goneril, but I understand there are inconsistencies with their memories. Anyway Juliette is living in Capp Manor and it says she's the heiress!)

I don't think there's any hint of the Capulets being a matrilineal family in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet so I assume the idea must originate with Maxis. In Shakespeare's version Tybalt is Juliet's kinsman but not her brother.

I'm sure they can be happy, anyways arranged marriages are not unusual even nowadays, a couple of years ago I overheard some young people talking about arranged marriages, I was at one of my jobs. I turned around and looked at them, they were from Bangladesh I think, but their Swedish was perfect. One of them said "my mother did not get to choose" or something like that.
Anyways somebody can marry someone from Russia or Thailand via an agency. It costs money. It's called wife trafficking or something. The wifes sign up voluntarily of course, but it's still a kind of arranged marriage.

Arranged marriage ... fine. Being forced into it or made to marry at 14 ... not fine.

The interesting thing about marriage customs of the 18th and 19th centuries to me is that, in fact, marriage - or full marriage - was actually much less common for most people than we tend to assume nowadays with our notions of traditional marriage and romantic love (which as someone pointed out above, is a fairly modern idea too). The fact is, in Europe at least, a marriage licence was expensive and only affordable by the relatively wealthy. There was a roaring trade in fake licences in 18th century London, for example.

Hmm, I never thought about Goneril being the head of the family. I guess because she's not living in the Capp Manor. To me, it always automatically goes down to Consort's grandchildren. I presumed that either Cordelia was the original heir and died, passing it on the her oldest daughter (being passed on down before across) OR that it skips a generation and the heiress to the Capp Manor doesn't get 'officially chosen' until the previous heiress and her husband pass away. I like to play a combination of both, meaning heiress is Ariel in my game.

I worry about accidentally turning all my Veronaville Sim's into Capps. Juliette kept her name, Tybalt will be keeping his name because Lilith doesn't want to associate her family with the 'Pleasants' due to how they treated her and Hermia might keep her surname because it's matrilineal traditions for the Summerdreams too, but then I'll have waaay too many Capp's, and not enough Summerdreams as Bottom will be the last. Then there's Miranda, Desdemona and Ariel - all keeping last names too. Anthonio Monty fled Veronaville for fear of being killed by the Capps, so there's only really: 1 Monty family, 1 Summerdream family, and 4 Capp Families.