Weaving the Family: Kinship, Alliances, and Mobility in Fantasy Cultures

Join Marie in discussing kinship structures, marriage, family alliances and social mobility in fantasy culture world building!

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Transcript

It is true that all of us have family and so, probably, do the people living in your fantasy world. Family, be it adoptive, by blood, or by marriage, shapes who we are. It shapes our identity, our outlook on the world, the religions we practice, and more. But how does a family come to be? What does the word mother and father mean when expressed within a different culture? How are possessions passed down familial lines and does it matter? These questions are deeply tied into building the cultures of your fantasy world. In the last episode of this podcast, we discussed status and hierarchy in fantasy cultures. Today, we’ll continue our exploration of cultural worldbuilding and talk about kinship structures, familial alliances and social mobility, with the purpose of building societies that feel alive and dynamic, where personal relationships drive political intrigue and social change.

Welcome to another episode of Worldbuilding Blueprints from Just In Time Worlds with your host Marie Mullany.  

If you're watching this on YouTube there is a playlist where you can watch the other episodes in the information card. If you're listening to this in a podcast app, the previous episodes are available there. And, as always, this episode is brought to you by the wonderful members of my YouTube channel who make this entire endeavor worthwhile and there are details on how to join their magnificent ranks and the perks you can get in the links down below. 

Alright, let’s dive straight in and talk about kinship structures.

[Kinship Structures]

Family really is the root of identity. Nothing is more formative in our early years than our family and as such, whatever you’re not born with, is shaped by your family. There is of course the whole nature vs nurture debate, but personally, I think this is somewhat of a nothing burger. We’re almost certainly born with certain traits and other traits are shaped by our environment and family, so the answer to Nature vs Nurture is “Why not both?”

Anyway! Cultures are made of characters, characters are shaped by their family and thus the way the family is structured is important to culture building. And that is what kinship structures are all about, defining what family is and what relationship people in a family have too each. 

But before we talk about the structures, we need to define what kinship actually means. There are broadly three types of kinship, or three ways to define a family if you prefer:

1. Blood Relationship or Consanguinity: This is genetic kinship, people who are related to the ego character, the central character in the kinship diagram, by blood. Examples of this are siblings, parents, cousins etc. 

2. Marriage: When two individuals marry, they create a new family in that culture and that is the second type of kinship: The bonds between spouses.

3. Adoption Kinship: This is when people are not related and not married, but still considered to be family due to societal, personal, or legal bonds. 

Or to put it another way, blood family, romance family and found family 😊

Kinship structures focus mostly on the first type of kinship, consanguinity. They define what is considered nuclear family and what is considered extended family. More importantly, kinship defines who is responsible for whom and how societies allocate roles, obligations, and authority within families. They also often determine who can marry whom, keeping track of what is considered incest and what types of matches are encouraged in order to consolidate family wealth.

From anthropological studies in our world, we can draw on three broad kinship models that will help you create kinship structures for your world. There are more kinship models than these three, but at a high level, these are enough for a fantasy world builder. The rest are pretty nit-picky. 

Okay, so what are these three kinship structures? 

One: Hawaiian Kinship. This structure is the simplest of the kinship structures and only distinguishes based on generation and gender. All blood relatives in a generation are considered brothers and sisters. From the perspective of the central character, everyone of their generation is a sibling, everyone of the generation above them is considered a mother or a father, and everyone below is considered a son or a daughter and so on. 

Family resources like land or grazing rights or other wealth generating assets are owned by the whole family and the elder generation generally determines the distribution of these resources. When someone marries and leaves the family to join a new family, they typically do not have dowries or bride price gifts, as their “assets” will now come from their new family. 

This kind of structure is ideal for cultures where extended families work together often, and family members most often marry outside of their family, bringing in new family members or joining new families. 

Two: Sudanese Kinship. This structure is highly defined, distinguishing between matrilineal and patrilineal family, including unique words for Mother’s Sister as opposed to Father’s Sister. So, your aunt wouldn’t just be your aunt, it would be either your mother’s sister or your father’s sister and so on. 

Inheritance in this model typically runs along status and hierarchy based familial lines. In our world, that translates in patriarchal lines, but of course in your world, the defining status lines for inheritance could be either gender, or even something else entirely, like what omens were present at the child’s birth, or any other element of the root of status, as we defined in the previous episode of this podcast. 

Typically, these kinds of kinship models encourage the use of bride price or dowries for marriage, so either the new family would compensate the old family for the loss of labor of the bride (or groom in a culture that practices matrilocality, which we’ll get to in the marriage section). Anyway! If the old family gets the gifts, it’s a bride price (or a groom price). Alternatively, the bride (or groom) might come to their new family with a gift to increase their status and wealth and that’s a dowry.

There is normally one family leader, whose nuclear family has the most status in the family, for example a clan or tribe leader, though elders of the family will generally serve as the clan leader’s advisor.

This kinship structure is ideal for a stratified society where, for example, either the maternal or paternal side of the family is more deterministic of status and responsibilities within the society. In addition, this kind of structure works very well to emphasize extended familial or clan-based societies, where a character’s place in the world is defined by their exact place and obligation within their family or clan. 

Having discussed the very informal and now the very formal, let’s discuss the somewhere in between.

Three: Eskimo Kinship. This structure is more formalized than the Hawaiian but not as highly defined as the Sudanese. Responsibility and inheritance can flow on either the matrilineal or patrilineal side of the family. In this model the nuclear family (mother, father children) is a strong concept and the extended family far less emphasized. 

Inheritance of family wealth is kept within the nuclear family and leadership of the family is typically shared by the parents, though in strict patriarchal or matriarchal cultures, leadership might default to either the father or the mother. 

Marriage typically creates a new family unit and either or both sides of the family might gift the new couple with wealth to help them get started. 

This kinship structure is ideal for a culture that places less emphasis on familial obligations and more emphasis on the individual. It also works well for meritocratic societies or cultures where co-operation between disparate individuals is key, so co-operation enforced by culture, rather than familial bonds. 

Now, as I said, there are more kinship structures, but honestly, unless family is going to play a very key part in your culture or story, these three should suffice for choosing a kinship model for your culture. Of course, feel free to tweak this however you need to, especially to fit in with your status and hierarchy determinants as we discussed in the last episode! 

Indeed, you might want tweak these kinship structures to cater to how you want marriage to work in your world. So let’s go into that detail of culture building next.

[Marriage Models]

In marriage models, there are a few elements to consider. Let’s start by talking about the actual pairings involved in marriage. 

The classical pairing is of course one man, one woman, but this is fantasy, there’s no need to be boring. You can have multiple partners, same-sex partners casual relationships or a plethora of different pairings depending on your world. For example, in my desert environment of Sangwheel Chronicles, I decided that the labor of two men were required to support the children of one woman, resulting in polyamory families. So in that culture, my kinship model involved two fathers, one of which is considered a marriage father only (not a blood relation) and the other is the “parent” father, the one who sires children. 

In your culture, conversely to mine, it might be a sign of wealth for a man to support multiple wives, resulting in harem style marriages. This could create a kinship structure where you have multiple mothers, but only one is considered a blood relation. 

Or consider the Mosua, a matrilineal ethnic group in China that practices a unique form of walking marriage called zouhun. Young people who have reached the age of thirteen are allowed to choose their own lovers or axia without any formal commitment or cohabitation. Men visit their axia only at night and they leave in the morning while women stay in their maternal families and the children are raised in those maternal families under the watchful eye of the matriarch. If you had such a marriage relationship, the paternal side of the kinship structure would be irrelevant so far as responsibility and inheritance is considered. Paternal family would be tracked only to prevent incest. 

If you have non-humans as a species, that can and should impact your family structure and marriage dramatically as well. Think about birds who are egg-layers. How much different would your marriage be if the female laid the eggs, but the male was the caregiver as is the case with the greater rhea and the emperor penguin? 

So definitely think about your pairings. But pairings are not the only element in a marriage. Even if you do go the classical one man, one woman, there are still many elements to think about in a marriage. For me, there five key questions that will guide you in creating a marriage that works for your culture.

Question One: Who marries whom and do any gifts flow to the families? Does the woman marry the man and enter his family? This is patrilocality and generally means the woman moves away from her family and loses her support structure. Alternatively, the man might marry the woman and enter her family, also called matrilocality and it means the man loses his support structure. Of course, this doesn’t need to be an either or process. In an Eskimo Kinship model, it might be that the couple move into a new house and both lose their support structures. Or it might be that who marries whom is part of the negotiation process that takes place before the marriage, and it defines the direction the dowry or bride price flows. I did this in the Empire in Sangwheel Chronicles, with noble marriages. One family gets the spouse and the children for the purpose of blood line continuance, the other family gets a monetary gift and which way that flows is dependent on the marriage negotiations. 

Question Two: How closely are kin allowed to marry? Bear in mind that in Sudanese style kinship models, the wealth of the family is kept in the family with cousin marriages, so they might very well be encouraged. However, it might also be that the culture prefers to spread the genes and bring in new blood. 

Question Three: How is divorce and death handled? Does the partner who re-located families return to their originating family? Who can initiate divorce proceedings and how? How does it affect wealth?

Question Four: How is marriage indicated (for example, our rings) and what ceremonies are involved? In the Empire in Sanghweel Chronicles, I built noble marriage into my sash as a line of gold lace that the partners sow onto each other’s sashes during ceremony, which tied the ceremony back to my social hierarchy and status symbols. 

Question Five: Is it more common to marry for love or by arrangement of the families? In the Hawaiian and Eskimo Kinship models, love is more common. In the Sudanese model, arrangement is far more common because familial wealth is so often involved in these pairings. The more wealth is in play in a marriage, the more arranged marriages will be. 

And if you can answer those five questions, along with the pairing question of course, I think you have a fair grasp on marriages in your culture and how they work. But speaking of familial wealth, I believe we should dive into the topic inheritance and succession next.

[Inheritance and Succession] 

When I defined my Sangwheel multiple partner marriage, I knew that I couldn’t have wealth flowing through the paternal line. After all, who were the fathers of the children? Despite the official designation as one being the baby-maker and the other being the parent by marraige, there are no physical guarantees of who the father is. So, I made wealth flow through the mother’s line in a matrilineal succession. 

Matrilineal succession means the mother’s bloodline determines who of the next generation inherits. In my case, I went with matrilineal meaning the mother’s children, so the father doesn’t own the family’s assets, the mother does. But there is another implementation of matrilineal where the man still owns the family’s assets, but it’s not his sons who inherits his title and goods, it’s his nephew, his sister’s sons.

Patrilineal means the same thing, but it’s the father’s bloodline instead. That’s the common inheritance model that we’re all familiar with I think. 

Matrilineal vs Patrilineal is an interesting choice in your society. Societies with matrilineal succession will tend to have less rigorous marriages and will control the sexuality of women less, because the father’s bloodline doesn’t determine wealth, only the mother’s bloodline and it’s easy to be sure who the mother is. 

But matrilineal vs patrilineal isn’t the only choice you have to make. You also need to decide how the wealth is divided, and if it is divided. This will very much depend on the type of wealth that is the basis for your cultures familial assets. If they’re an agrarian culture, where actual physical land is the primary assets, they’ll tend more towards a single child inheriting. This is because land gets less and less valuable when you divide it between heirs. If their wealth is more like livestock, likes heads of cattle, they’ll tend more toward all the children getting an equal share and this because if you divide say a herd of cows, it will not only recover eventually through breeding, but once it has recovered, the family will have two herds of cattle, not one. 

So consider the source of wealth in your culture. Cultures where the primary source of wealth is not divisible or gets weaker if divided would tend more towards conservation of wealth into a single individual like the eldest child or the youngest child, if the assets are not all held in common like in the Hawaiian kinship model. 

And that’s the kind of reasoning you need to go through in defining you inheritance models. So let’s briefly recap the types of inheritance models you can have:

•             Matrilineal: Through the mother’s line. 

•             Patrilineal: Through the father’s line.

•             Both: The new nuclear family is formed by the conjoining of the mother and father’s wealth and this is passed down to the children. 

•             Primogeniture: The eldest inherits more, or everything.

•             Ultimogeniture: The youngest inherits more, or everything.

•             Equal Division: The wealth is divided among the siblings. 

So what kind of inheritance works for the wealth type of your cultures in your world? How does their marriage and kinship tie into their cultures?

If you can answer those questions, you should have a fairly firm grasp on families in your culture, how they are formed and why they matter. Let me know in the comments what kinship models you use!

And let’s move on to the last section of today’s podcast, political alliances and social mobility within cultures.

[Alliances and Social Mobility]

Marriage, fosterage, and even hostage situations can be leveraged to form political alliances and create adoptive kinship relationships and it is worth considering how these relationships form and how they influence politics and wealth. 

Let’s talk about adoptive kinship relationships first.

Consider how the friendship between Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon shook the Seven Kingdoms of George R.R. Martin’s world. This relationship was forged by their joint fosterage with Jon Arryn and their subsequent friendship. So the bonds of friendship forged during their childhood are what enabled the rebellion that ultimately saw the Targaryen line deposed and the Baratheon line put on the throne. And it is why Robert turned to Ned after Jon Arryn’s death and why Robert trusted Ned so implicitly. That is the power of fosterage and why so many cultures employed fosterage of noble children. 

But fosterage is not the only way these bonds are built. There is a strong history in our world of taking the children of rebellious lords as hostages and pages and incorporating these children into the households of loyal lords. Out of these forced relationships, friendship may still grow. Indeed, the Mongol Empire used this technique to incorporate the skills of conquered people within their culture, with children taken as hostages growing up to be honored members of the Khan’s court.

This is a good place to consider social mobility. Social mobility defines how people move up and down within the pecking order of society and it is crucial to understand this in defining your culture. Even in strict caste systems, there is likely some mobility offered within the system. People might move up via fosterage, hostage situations or marriage, changing either their status, or perhaps their status won’t change, but their children might be born with a higher status, or a lower one, allowing generational movement in the societal hierarchy.

Also bear in mind, we haven’t spoken about economics and broader politics on this podcast yet. Those episodes are coming and you might want to revisit social mobility as a concept in your culture once we have discussed those cultural elements, so make sure you’re subscribed.

For now, consider the following questions:

How are marriage and adoptive kinships formed in your society and how does it impact your political alliances? 

And: how can people move up and down within your society? 

Incorporating the complexity of social hierarchies and family structures not only enriches your world but also provides endless potential for conflict, growth, and storytelling. By fleshing out these elements, you create a world with depth and a sense of lived-in reality that will captivate your readers.

And that’s a wrap for Kinship, Alliances, and Social Mobility! Next month, we’ll turn our attention to technology and magic levels in your culture, exploring what a day in the life of a character in the culture might be like. 

There is of course a worksheet that accompanies this podcast, which is available to all paying members of my YouTube channel and indeed, this podcast was brought to you by those members, who I very much appreciate, and a special shout out to Tony and Katie as members of stone and Dylan and Tiffany as members of Build it in Wood. You can join their ranks for as little as a cup of coffee a month, and also get access to all the worksheets for this podcast! But don’t feel pressured, you can also support me just by sharing this podcast around. And eventually, when this season finishes, I’ll publish all the worksheets and notes in a book on worldbuilding, so you have that to look forward to. And on that note, I will see you soon for another episode. Do remember: build what you need when you need it and happy worldbuilding!