Hainish Culture

Roses, rainbows, knights. Honor, chivalry, noblesse. Cheerful toasts to glory and solemn chalice oaths. These are the aesthetics that come to mind when most outsiders think "Hainish culture". But beneath the obvious aesthetics and stereotypes is a complicated cultural sphere with many subgroups. This article will not be able to capture them all - not only does every region have its own permutation, but every town and village (and social class therein). But there are norms and ideals that transcend locality and shape what many Hainish groups think society "should" be. Hainish culture permeates the the Kingdom of Hain and the elite classes wherever Hain dominates - Andrig, Tugrek, the Kingdom of Gennorholn. Anywhere Hainish language dominates, one should also consider the norms of this culture group.

The Hains

The most important basic concept, before we get into this, is the Hain Garden Structure. Basically, a "Hain" is a walled garden that serves as the nucleus of a Hainish community. Even the smallest hamlet has its own Hain, which serves as an emergency bunker of sorts. These gardens are regarded as the fundamental building blocks of Hainish culture and society - beneath the feudal lords and kings, Hain sees itself as a network of walled gardens in a hostile world. The hains are a basic unit of community, which designates clear communal roles: are you one of the community members guarding the walls and keeping watch, or one of the vulnerable community members who are there to tend the plants and keep protected from danger. These roles have been idealized and codified into the Hainish Code of Honor- a cultural standard for behavior that defines ideal social roles for farmers, visitors, and warriors. It beautifies the strict militarism and hierarchy that serves as the foundation for Hainish culture. Beneath all the romance and chivalry is a fundamental principle: that to deviate from social norms is to put the community at risk of death or worse. If you cannot fight, you must serve; if you cannot obey you must leave.

Naming Traditions

Family names

For Hainish naming conventions, see: Hainish language

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

Most Hainish people speak both Wakingtongue and the Hainish language. This doesn't mean they all speak and sound alike; these are dialect blobs, not languages with clear rules and boundaries. This makes it incredibly obvious where any individual is from - every region has a distinct dialect and accent, and an astute listener can typically figure out where another person is from with surprising precision. Merchants and seasoned travelers may speak in with deliberate slants to try and suggest a certain social class or regional background - typically a Southern Urban dialect/accent, reflecting the shared linguistic traits of Ozaren and Vruhafen. Accents/dialects from anywhere in the Hainish Heartlands will project status and refinement, though. These tend to be called "true Hainish" or "pure Hainish" languages, even though they are mutually intelligible with the just-as-valid Andrigan, Graefsher, Delent, Wasteland, and Northern dialects. As discussed in etiquette, speaking Hainish is considered much more polite than speaking Wakingtongue; Hainish language use is valued as a sign of respect and hospitable warmth. An inability to speak some kind of Hainish dialect will make you a perpetual foreigner in Hainish culture, even if you share the faith.

Culture and cultural heritage

"Cultural Heritage" is a weird idea, isn't it? The idea of a collection of material things representing a shared past across the entire culture is rather nationalist - the people of Hain lack clean lines around their cultural identity. There are religious artifacts, political artifacts, local artifacts, family culture. And yet, there are certain common stories, sagas, places, and art pieces that vaguely correlate with an ambiguous sphere of Hainish customs. To the Hainish culture:

Artoril represents an ancient sanctuary that all people of the kingdom have some ambiguous ancient tie to; this is largely political, but has religious and cultural overtones
Vruhafen represents Hainish political and economic superiority, the strength of arms and coin that all people of the Great Garden draw from.
Ozaren represents Hainish sophistication and high culture, a bastion of pure chivalry
Spring Knights represent the ideal knight, the paragon that Hainish culture aspires to and fights to become
The Autumn Court represents Hainish religious superiority and supreme piety

These places and groups become symbols of strength and pride that even reach the common people in a diluted and distant way. These symbols don't really get a lot of use in domestic discussions, though; they mostly get articulated as general symbols of power when Hainish people are confronted with foreigners. That tends to be how "Hainish identity" and symbols of identity work: as a reactive thing to be haphazardly brought to bear when constructing insider-outsider hierarchies. Going beyond places, Hainish culture also has a fixation with The Kofalin Stories - a series of tales that describe the founding heroes of the earliest Hainish tribes. Other lesser pan-Hainish sagas exist - The Saga of Arvarad the Magnificient and his Spring Warriors, for example, or The Saga of Endrig the Honor-Given and the First Kingdom. The former tells of the Spring Knights' founding; the latter, the founding of the first Electoral Kingdom of Hain. Both are explicitly political and religious before they are cultural. And then there is the art. Hainish elites love themselves some fine art preservation. You might call that "Cultural Heritage".

The Starlit Communion is a massive mosaic in Artoril depicting the creation of a united Uvaran faith. Unknown artists, created in 1200s.
Salvation's Dawn is a mural in the Autumn Court by the artist Kogain the Sparrowhawk in the 1600s, depicting the coming of the Irunek.
Ustav the Enchanting is a statue in the Autumn Court by an unknown artist in the 1400s. Depicts the God Ustav in an exaggerated and jagged style, and has some kind of magical property.
Vetka and his Students is a statue in Ozaren by an unknown artist in the 500s. Depicts the first druid, Vetka, in an earthy and half-simplistic style
Ertinar's Journey is a painting by Lady Yamandra DevTrolden in the 1900s, depicting the God Ertinar venturing South into the Chaos Wastes in search of the spirit of his dead father, Ustav. A painting known for its great use of lighting and contrasts, containing elements of both melancholy and hope.
Kragen Resting is a statue by unknown artists, dating back to the 400s. This statue of unusual realism and ambition depicts the Goddess Kragen resting and shielding a sapling with her body, surrounded by a ring of broken weapons. This statue was made by the ancient artists of the Kingdom of Nidever, but was taken from the ruins of Nidever to the Hainish sanctuary of Kragen in the 1700s.
The Divine Seasons is a painting by Hobbska DevZinduhl from the 1800s - in fact, it is often seen as the great work that glorified canvas-based paintings in Hainish culture. This massive painting is technically a calendar depicting time as a wheel moving through the four seasons, though the emphasis is on the symbolism and stories surrounding the wheel rather than being usable as a calendar.

Let no one forget the many local Hainish Questing Chalices as well - large ornate cups to be sworn oaths on, essential for any knight who wishes to make a sacred pact to undertake a quest for goodness.

Shared customary codes and values

Honor

Hain is a culture where reputation and honor are the foundations of true status. An man of honors will find many more doors open for him than a man with coin but a terrible reputation. Among aristocrats and merchants, "Honors" with a capital H are recorded and inherited marks of great deeds that serve as a kind of currency and measurement of family glory. Hainish fixations on honor transcend the formal "Honors" system, though - even the commonfolk can get very fixated on one's honor. 'Honor before coin' may seem like a social compass that values individual morality, competency, and integrity over inherited wealth, but that would be a naive acceptance of 'Honor' as true goodness. To be frank, 'Honor' is a currency most efficiently collected and held by those who keep to social norms. It also subtly ties one's social capital to social tradition, encouraging anyone invested in the system to fervently defend tradition and the social status-quo. Honor also absolutely collects in the hands of old and powerful landowners; the formalized 'Honors' system makes glory inheritable, and it is always easier for social elites to uphold the traditions and norms tailored to them.

Values

There is a militaristic bent to Hainish culture; strength, optimism, courage, and stubbornness are all valued as warrior's ideals. The warrior drives society and acts; agency is tied to strength. A gardener, a passive civilian, is an object to be saved and a resource to be utilized. But cruelty towards those below you - particularly if they are of the Hain - is not idealized. Bullies are to be stopped by the strong. The ideal knight is benevolent and paternal towards their lessers. For gardeners, the Hainish ideals are of humility, industry, and quiet grace. Be hard-working, do not be proud, and find beauty in your position. In warrior and in gardener, there is a call for kindness and gentleness - but this is only towards those who are part of society. Outlaws, outsiders, and deviants are not protected. Hainish culture isn't exactly "xenophobic", though - while outsiders are not given the protections of grace and chivalry, hospitality is still a binding concept. Should a visitor act as a proper guest, you must act as a proper host. A guest must be friendly, must do their best to provide for their hosts (bringing a gift if one can), and must give respect. A host, in turn, must provide what they can and return the guest's friendliness. It is when an outsider fails to act as a guest that they become unknown - they become a beast. In Hainish culture one must be gentle and kind to animals, but one can be downright cruel to beasts. Simply put, an animal does what it is supposed to do; a beast acts against society in some way. An obedient dog is an animal, but it becomes a beast when it bites unexpectedly; a rabbit in the woods is an animal, but becomes a beast should it steal from the garden. This attitude of conditional kindness is deeply entrenched in how Hainish families treat children, how Hainish communities treat deviants, and how Hainish lords treat foreigners. The theoretical agency of the sufferer - that they could simply act correctly to avoid this fate - changes everything. It is wrong to treat a child cruelly if they are trying and failing to act right, but willful rebellion places them outside the protection of morality. In Hain, family is sacred. Kinslayers are wretched, unless they were answering a higher calling to justice or piety in their slaying. Piety is the greatest calling of all, though - Uvaran religion is basically inseparable from Hainish culture. Individual ambition in Hain is demonized, though ambition for a greater communal calling is romanticized. In terms of species-preference, Hainish culture is generally quite open but quietly tends to reinforce a divide between mineral-eaters (prisms and prism starspawn) and organics (everyone else). Prisms are often not prioritized here, as shown by the cultural emphasis on color (which pure prisms simply cannot perceive).

Common Etiquette rules

There is a default optimism and cheer considered polite in Hainish society. You present the best parts of you outwards, and conceal the negative. The discussion of money is almost always impolite and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. One should avoid drawing attention to oneself in public unnecessarily. One always gives a greeting before entering conversation. Physical touch is acceptable and considered normal; cheek kissing is an acceptable form of greeting, as are handshakes and hugs. Maintaining eye contact is polite. Spreading one's legs is unacceptable unless in a purely informal and familiar space. Timeliness is not a Hainish value, and is actually somewhat sneered at. Most commonpeople measure time in chunks rather than hours, and meeting times are typically vague and meal-oriented. Burghers and nobles have access to clocks, but consider living by them to be a gross thing reserved for truly important and large-scale events or meetings. Clocks make money out of time, it is said. While balls and other elite social events often are given start and end times, it is a Hainish custom to always start and end late to spite the rigidness of the clock.

Common Dress code

Colorful clothing is preferred in Hain, to better display one's piety. To wear only black, white, and grey is to be either destitute or impious. If you can afford it, poofy or flowing clothing is fashionable. Flamboyance is strength.

Art & Architecture

Buildings tend to squat low, with large basements of sunken floors to conserve heat in the wintertime. Buildings are commonly of wood, plaster, brick, or thatch. Stone is used for elite buildings, and brick is common among the middling classes. Steep gable roofs are most common, often constructed of thatch for non-monumental structures. Buildings are often painted bright colors, and a lord will often encourage or support this to show off the prosperity of their lands. Rather than having all structures be the same color, Hainish standards find beauty in the clash or vibrant hues - a city should be a rainbow. For inspiration for the architectural techniques and styles of elite structures, I recommend looking at Romanesque and Pre-Romanesque buildings from Germany, France, or England. Paintings, frescoes, murals, mosaics, and other permanent art forms that foster bright colors are valued. Statues are included in this, and it is expected for statues to be painted for them to be "complete". Writing is not quite as prestigious, but gets close - poetry and sagas are beloved here. Performance arts are not treasured like arts that "add value to the world" through permanent creation; they are either seen as religious or 'frivolous'. A frivolous thing can be valuable and expensive and beloved, but it simply lacks the respectability of "high art".

Foods & Cuisine

Rye bread, porridge, vegetable soup, maybe a little chicken or fish; these are the cornerstones of everyday cuisine. The commonfolk don't eat these things exclusively, of course - farms and gardens produce quite a variety of things to throw in there, especially in Stildane. But before we get into idealized cuisine, we should remember that daily life is driven by black breads and pottages. But by Ustav, the rye here is good. Fish is the winter meat, salted like snow-fallen Ustav. Pork and beef are the meats of spring and summer; pork in particular carries great religious meaning as the Divine Flesh of Resurrection, as pigs are the default sacrifice of the Frelden Festival. Eating pork marks the end of winter, so the taste of pork becomes the taste of spring. And spring means things here; it means resurrection, salvation, survival, and divine aid. Beef may be richer and demonstrate abundance, but pork is given to all members of the community during the feast and is the common language of cultural union. Fish, of course, also has its meaning - a melancholy acceptance and humble hope, survival during winter. Among the elites, it is considered fashionable and flavorful to make "parti-colored dishes" - meals that physically display clashing bright colors on different parts of the dish (like red on one half of the plate, green on the other). Egg noodles are a common side dish, or are placed underneath main courses to absorb the sauces or fats. A famous Hainish soup contains egg noodles, ox-meat, and potatoes - a hearty stew indeed. Maultaschen, or dumplings of onions, meat, spinach, and soaked stale bread, are another big thing in meals and are often put in nicer soups. Schupfnudel, or thick rye-potato noodles that kind of look like fat fingers, are a popular dish frequently served with sauerkraut (fermented cabbage). Schupfnudel-and-sauerkraut is known as the "Warrior's Meal", as it is often served on campaign as a way to keep morale up on the march. The Ozaren Quiche, a cream-egg tart with diced and roasted ham, is another big Hainish dish of the Heartlands. Garlic aoili is a favorite Hainish condiment.

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

There are too many local customs to really give a proper voice to, and Hainish culture is deeply variable and local. But a few notable customs can be found across Hain:

It is considered normal to give prayer before a meal and before sleep
Should you hunt a beast with tusks, antlers, or horns, you should gift those horns to another. To give such a thing as a pure gift without expectations will give that person a blessing and shall demonstrate your prowess in the hunt.
Sneezes or coughs should be countered with a blessing, to ward off plague
Snow is an ill-omen. Unseasonal snow is a sign of great evil or tragedy

Birth & Baptismal Rites

When a child is born, it is blessed by a priest or acolyte and placed within a ring of flowers for its first night. This is considered less important than the rituals surrounding whoever gave birth; the mother is washed and their face is painted with the colors of Honor.

Coming of Age Rites

At age 17, Hainish children are welcomed into adulthood during the Frelden Festival - where they don costumes and become sacred initiates for the days of celebration. The particular moment when a child becomes an adult is when they leap through the fires of renewal. Participation as an initiate in the Frelden Festival is perhaps the biggest milestone in a child's life. If a child is being prepared by their family to marry a particular person, their first festival dance as an adult is considered their fest step towards marriage.

Funerary and Memorial customs

Funerary customs in Hain are diverse; some bury their dead, some cremate. Leaving the dead out in the open is considered deeply blasphemous. During the first part of the Frelden Festival, communities hold formal memorials for all members who died that year. If they can afford it, most families also conduct independent funerals.

Ideals

Beauty Ideals

Hainish beauty standards are not particularly strict, like any Stildanian beauty standard; a hyper-diverse demographic landscape of frequent mutation will do that. There is still a generalized beauty ideal, but it has a lot of flexibility.

Species Specifics

For humans and human hybrids: Bright, light-hued hair is often portrayed in art and stories as desirable. Blonde hair is the typical ideal, though pale hair of other colors is also considered beautiful. Hair should be long and have volume. Braids and other decorative displays that restrain the hair are considered good. Facial hair and body hair is acceptable and even desirable in older people, but is entirely considered inappropriate for younger people; it is a symbol of retirement, and anyone who just fails to shave when they are young is simply unrefined and slovenly. Among dryads, bright-colored flowers are valued, as are open flowers; if one's flowers are closed, decorating yourself with plucked flowers is considered prettying oneself up. False flowers alongside your real ones are generally considered good accessories. For prisms, a pale body with pale and bright gems is considered good - "marble-hued" and "a body of moonstone" are both considered poetic lines that communicate beauty. Among Kobolds, bright white fur is desirable over darker hues; painted horns (golden if you can) are also good. Starspawn face the most looks-oriented scrutiny of anyone. While most starspawn are fine, inconsistent mutation - a sign that it is probably recent - is considered ugly. Starspawn that are consistent and "whole" are fine usually, but may face scrutiny and derision if their mutations are radical and unusual - a person with antlers is fine, but a person who slithers over the ground like a snake isn't. What defines "radical and unusual" is entirely arbitrary, of course. The other part of this is symmetry - asymmetrical mutations are almost always considered less beautiful. All of this is far more likely to affect Wasteland refugees than any starspawn born in Hain, and that is the point - all these subtle rules are carefully engineered to target traits that are typically caused by heightened irradiation, while being much more forgiving towards anyone who is a few generations away from it. Starspawn in the "safe areas" tend to "stabilize" and manifest their changes in more consistent ways than those who are still being mutated; this becomes more true over generations. So, basically, it is hard to separate starspawn beauty standards from general Hainish attitudes about the Wastelanders being inferior; Hain looks at the wastes as uncooked and uneaten food, valuable only to be "cooked" into Hainish culture and then consumed and eradicated.

General Norms

Muscles and height are both valued as ideals of beauty in Hain. Fatness or leanness don't matter as much as muscle, but the current fashion trends are leaning 'lean'. Unscarred and unblemished skin is greatly valued. Among humans, there is a slight beauty preference towards tanned skin or sometimes light brown skin, as intermarriages with Southern Stildane have become more favorable among the nobility and Southness has become correlated with wealth and noblesse. Prior ages have seen a valuing of pale, untanned skin (a sign of life away from farmwork), particularly for those whose jobs were partially their beauty - but the Hainish court now associates paleness with decadence and Northern subjects. Gender norms do not have notable sexual divergence, as Hainish ideals tend to value the "beautiful androgyne" - the idea that secondary sexual characteristics obscure beauty more than they enhance it. While we might consider Hainish beauty standards somewhat "masculine" by their intense value put on athleticism, their ideal men would ironically be considered "girly" in the aesthetic language of our world. Get yourself an anime pretty boy who can bench-press a car.

Cosmetics

The most popular Hainish cosmetics are foundation/"face paint", blush, and hair dye. The first of those is the most critical in court; blemished or scarred skin is a clear sign of a lack of healing magic and a lack of victory. Blush that is well-made and well-applied is highly valued in Hainish high culture, but poorly-applied or poor-quality blush is synonymous with "decadent poser". Hair dye is extremely common among those with hair; it is considered basically necessary to enter Hainish high society as a human-adjacent person. For a dryad or prism, painting one's flowers or gems to paler, brighter colors is also considered good.

Gender Ideals

Hainish Gender Roles

First, we need to answer the elephant in the room: are there gender roles that mirror our world here? Not really, but if you look for it you can find it. Hain is less into gender roles than it is into the "on the wall" versus "in the garden dichotomy". There is a masculine coding to the first one, and arguably a feminine-ish coding to the second, but neither is biologized and both can be negotiated. Certain species may find certain pressures to send certain assigned genders "into the garden" - if a species has a physically taxing and vulnerable one-sex pregnancy period (like humans), families of that species that want to prioritize heirs may be inclined to push childbearing members into "gardening" domestic positions, or take on lower-class concubines that can do that job for them. That is to say, humans with uteri may still get the short end of the stick from their families. However, dominant Hainish culture tends to find that kind of gender-based assignment to be amoral and irreligious, and the legal and cultural systems outright ban the most egregious forms of the practice. In short, misogyny has been largely rolled into social class and is not really present in any culturally dominant form that would be encountered by an adventuring party. To one who seeks it, there is a lot of gender weirdness in Hain though - be it constraining or be it liberating. [DISCLAIMER: In gameplay, gender discrimination should be left well enough alone regardless of "canon" unless everyone in the whole group has agreed explicitly to explore those themes together].

Gender Plurality

Hain is a gender-plural society, shaped by numerous mutations and species. Simply put, there are so many sexual manifestations across so much of society and with such capacity for change that sex has failed as a simple categorization system useful to dominant systems or everyday life. This has provided a lot of agency for people to choose what gender they present as. Gender assignment still does exist, it is simply recognized as deeply imperfect and deeply alterable once one comes of age. The vestiges of the old gender-sex system still exist (and shape the four-gender Hainish mainstream), but are no longer enforced. The two most common genders remain male and female (though, as stated, they are now much more voluntary), though a third gender originally correlating to dryad or kobold multi-sex-ness also exists. In their language, Dahn is male, Fod is female, Flent is third/"both", and Soln is fourth/"neither". Flent is considered a common, accessible choice. Soln is typically associated with monasticism in mainstream Hainish culture, but has been adopted as a fully accessible gender expression more and more over time. The four genders are represented in Hainish culture symbolically by the four cardinal directions; Flent is North/up, Soln is South/down, Dahn is West/left, Fod is East/right. To symbolically designate something as gendered, adding a cardinal arrow with a squiggle like a tilde intersecting it is the way to go visually. What it means to grow up one gender instead of another is highly unstable; some communities assign work by gender, others do not. The labor expectations of gender tend to be more or less equitable - the category is too unstable to really work well as a social or economic control system - but they can be different, as parents assign children of different genders different tasks. So much of the nuance of gender in Hain boils down to personal experience, community relationships, and family dynamics. While people have agency within their gender in Hain, each category does come with its own set of expectations, fashions, and expectations. These displays of gender are really weird and messy and tend to be subordinated by things like social class, occupation, and religion. From a gameplay perspective, I have no idea how to effectively implement this. Fantasy pronouns? Putting Flent and Soln as "they/them"? What about other words - Flent siblings, Soln parents? You can go hard on finding an answer for your group if you think it will add texture and appropriate pluralism to your world, or you can ignore this and cater to what your players find familiar.

Courtship Ideals

Courtship in Hain has two layers: the formal layer ("Day Courtship") and the informal layer ("Night Courtship"). The formal layer is the communal part, where a third party (or several) mediates a series of controlled meetings, exchanges, and rituals designed to test compatibility and encourage a bond. This formal layer is highly controlled and monitored. The informal layer is a kind of expected rebellion against this intended to demonstrate the "true passion" behind the courtship. Partners must make an effort to visit each other in secret, flirt, and make an effort to evade monitoring by the parents. Lower-status partners are expected to put more effort into this, and status uncertainty between the two parties can create tension or awkwardness. Even this courtship has overseers - each party typically has "companions" who assist them and support them if something goes wrong. A courtship companion is expected to not only keep secrets and guard the door, but to avenge their friend should they be taken advantage of. There is also an aspect of testing a partner in this - some families will go to great lengths to make "secret meetings" highly inconvenient or even slightly dangerous as a way to filter out non-committal candidates. The divide between day and night courtship, and the elaborate tests involved, is far more pronounced in elite courtship. Among the rural poor, courtship is a lot more casual and less formalized if someone is courting another community member. These ideals and rituals do get broken out if the person someone is courting is outside the community, though; then the courtship is expected to somewhat mirror the elite forms. It is believed that this will filter out "seducers, concubine-takers, predators, and scoundrels who lack commitment" - a bit of a strange idea, when those groups would surely know how to play this game quite well, but the notion persists. Hainish courtship highly values chivalric symbols of love: poetry, hard-won tokens, and extremely dramatic antics. Unsurprisingly, many duels come from this culture of love; among the poor, "duel" might mean "brawl", as both parties levy groups of other youths using their tales of sympathy and then fight out who was right and who was wrong in the relationship in a big tavern brawl. Duels and brawls are both considered good as long as they don't kill or severely injure people, as they demonstrate the passion and fighting spirit of the youth.

Relationship Ideals

Hainish culture deeply values commitment and fidelity; once a romantic bond is forged, it is expected to last until one party dies unless something truly terrible happens. Divorce tends to be a difficult thing in Hain, and it is often a black mark on someone's reputation unless there is a clear "offending" party. Adultery is considered extremely immoral, though there is a double standard at play: if a warrior is in a relationship with a "gardener" (especially a lower-status one) and they are on righteous campaign, the warrior is likely to be given unusual social forgiveness for "indiscretions". Polyamory and same-sex relationships are both acceptable in Hainish culture - and are actually seen as answers to one another. If your family needs an heir but you love someone who cannot produce a child with you, enter either a plural marriage or a short-term surrogacy relationship. While the latter may seem to contradict the strict attitudes of Hainish fidelity, there are ritual navigations around this; everything is simply formalized and physical relations are kept entirely within that formalized un-emotional space. People still have emotions about it, but they aren't supposed to. This is also not to say that polyamory is only weaponized against infertile unions; there are happy multi-polar marriages in Hain that are non-utilitarian. Hainish relationship ideals can seem flexible, sweet, and kind - full of passionate romance and a system capable of accommodating a range of personal needs. However, the important thing to remember is that no mainstream Hainish relationship is entirely driven by the individuals in that relationship. Love marriages are idealized, but actually acting on love alone is for sloozies with no sense of self-control. That is part of why fidelity and formal recognition of relationships are so important here - the culture is full of thrilling ways of saying "yes", but can be very restrictive about people's right to say "no". I don't say this to paint Hainish relationships as evil, but to fully break down the idealism of this cultural toolset. For all that is wrong in Hain, there is also a lot that is appealing and inspiring. There is a legitimate element of choice involved, as well as a flexibility that can allow some people to love more freely than in other cultures. Social position colors this, but where doesn't it? To linger on the positive, Hain's love culture encourages emotional communication, expressions of affection, and honesty in love that other cultures would find unorthodox; the flexible plural-marriage of Hain allows for a variety of family structures shaped by individuals. Hain's relationships, like their courtship, represent a compromise between individual passions and the needs of family and community.

Related Organizations

Related Locations

Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild