Divorce

[TancredTheNorman]

Just a funny thing I realised, but in reality many leaders in EB's timeframe had many wives, and divorced regularly for all kinds of reasons. Romans used to divorce to be able to forge new political alliances with other families, and even people like the Gauls are said to have done this. In the game this does never happen (I'm not asking for this feature to be added, because I'm 99% sure that it 's impossible).

Just wanted to say this, it kind of struck me that I realised it this late, after many hours of RTW / EB.

Vale amices !

Actually with the Gauls we have virtually no evidence for any of their society, archaeology can give us a guess but there is no substitute for written documentation.

That said the Romans divorced for a wide variety of reasons I will go over only a few. Remember though that Roman Law does not require a reason to divorce for most of this time period, the Roman Marriage was just an agreement between two people, a wife or husband could end his or her marriage at any point for no reason at all, there are obviously thousands of reasons lost to history.

1. "Honey I'm hopelessly in love with a much younger woman then you"
2. "Sorry but I can't afford the suspence of thinking about you in battle (Roman Law openly recommended that a wife divorce a husband called to the front)
3. People in it just couldn't get along
4. The husband handled money horribly (Cicero praises divorces on those grounds)
5. (Allegedly from Cicero) Wife handles husbands estate for the purpose of increasing her own

Those are five known reasons, there are a lot more mentioned and possibly more unmentioned. Egypt was pretty free with divorce to, although we know a lot less about that then Rome. The Greeks had divorce to, but that was just a way a husband could punish a wife and if Athens is a representative example a wife never under any circumstances had an option of divorce.

[Brennus]

archaeology can give us a guess but there is no substitute for written documentation.

pffff... Historians (Archaeologists rule!)

Imagine trying to replicate the polygany that Caesar describes the coastal Britons using, the family tree would be as bad as the Ptolemies.

[AncientFanTR]

I think that the reason that generals in TW only have a few children is that they are the "main" children who will grow up to be politically or militaristically active. Not every bastard of Genghis grew up to be a great war leader and forger of nations. Ghenghis probably had hundreds of children... but only the children from Borte will be remembered: Jochi, Chagatai, Ogedei, Tolui...

[Huene]

wasnt Jochi a rape child?

[Zradha Pahlavan]

Funnily enough, a project in one of my classes involves looking at family trees and this thread has kinda inspired me to look at the Ptolemaic Dynasty for that project...
I found this, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a more detailed tree, though this may be suitable if nothing better turns up:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[AncientFanTR]

wasnt Jochi a rape child?

That's one theory, but who knows? Anyway, I think it's because those were the children of his first wife, so it's only legitimate children that count in the game.

[Fluvius Camillus]

@Zradha Pahlavan.

That one gives pretty much a good general picture.

I almost finished reading Günther Hölbl's HIstory of the Ptolemaic Empire and I learned a lot about it, in the back is a better viewable tree than the one you present.

I don't know if you have Peter Green's The Hellenistic Age but it has 3 great family trees in the back, of the 3 main dynasties of Hellenism, it is good at showing the connection between the dynasties (also the ones who are no more at EB's timeframe).

~Fluvius

[antisocialmunky]

One circle is too many. They have like 5.