chocolatepot | (Reply)

From:

Oh, interesting that it's 1:100! I had always heard 1:3, but I was trying to figure out how to find out when/where that statistic came from and had no idea how to do so. 1:100 makes a lot more sense. I think that's about the proportion of deaths Martha Ballard had.

Even in the upper classes/royalty there seems to have been a lot of "I've got a kid, they can marry your kid, sweet,", but I suspect it has to do with who was available - if a king/nobleman was aging and had an unmarried heir, that was probably the best situation, but if he doesn't have a son the next best thing is himself. Now I'm trying to remember where I heard the statistic that marriages were usually 25yo/18yo. Hm.

I tend to think that we project greater tendencies toward sameness on the past than were usually there.

Very true!