Pony marriage customs. Make shit up some more. · 6:33am Jul 17th, 2014
What are the new ways of marriage for ponies?
Is monogamy normal for today's Equestrians and polygamy an old, possibly dead, tradition?
Has polygamy always been the norm?
Whatever was the norm thousands of years ago, that would be the preferred type of relationship structure of Princess Luna and Celestia. Is their way different from modern ponies, or is their way considered the "royal" or "upper class" way?
Do ponies engage in free sex with whoever they want, but property is only handed down to the foals of a legally bound couple?
It's been a long and in many ways unpleasant day... I just want to have a nice pleasant conversation about horse fucking customs with anonymous people on the internet to take my mind off of work. I hope you all understand.
I'd imagine that most would see the matter of polygamy vs. monogamy as a largely personal one. Creating or joining a herd is the traditional way but not everyone engages in it, with monogamy becoming more common as ponies continue to grow in number. Monogamy would also likely be more common in areas with a more balanced male-to-female ratio. As for royal tradition I'm thinking that if anything it would be multiple stallions to one princess as a sort of status symbol, Celestia and Luna being the ones that broke from tradition (perhaps due to the fact that they would inevitably outlive any nonalicorn mates or possibly out of simple disinterest) with Cadence choosing a single husband on account of her being born long after any controversy this would have caused had died off.
As for sex, I'd imagine the only major restrictions are that you keep to your partner/herd if attached and don't go fucking any kids. If you're single and you're into someone then you go for it. Absent religious condemnations, the only concerns would be pregnancy and medical issues.
Property... that's a tough one. If you're dealing with a herd then I'm thinking a will is of inestimable importance. In the absence thereof it would probably fall to the surviving members to decide what goes where. For the unattached who die without leaving a will I suppose it would go to the oldest child. Or to family if the deceased were childless.
Typically, ponies do not form permanent relationships, rather they just have a bunch of fuckbuddies they bang either for sexual pleasure, or to further the survival of their species. Emotional attachments do occur, and are quite common, but the two ponies usually maintain the mutual agreement that the other is free to bed with whomever they desire, should they feel like changing things up.
Only in very rare cases do marriages take place, and they are only performed if the two ponies have formed an inseparable connection to one another, where they are literally unable to bring themselves to have sex with other ponies, as it feels to them as though they are betraying the other.
If two ponies decide to wed, they must take it very seriously. After all, it's not an ordinary occasion to wed.
The wedding is a huge occasion, typically performed in Canterlot, and is very elaborate, expensive, and highly celebrated. They are also expected by the rest of the populace to maintain their loyalty to one another, and stay true to one another. Nowhere else is the phrase "till death, do us part" taken so seriously.
If the ponies do end up separating, they are usually shunned by society and no other pony will bed with them. They are essentially forced into abstinence and isolation for breaking their marriage vows.
2293779 You know I can really see a society forming like this, especially if it evolved out of wild herds. From their standpoint, they'd probably say something like "Well, it's not like you're only allowed one friend. It's not like you're only allowed to smile at one other person. So why limit yourself to sex with one partner?"
I think promiscuity is considered bad in our culture because nobody wants to get stuck with the bill of raising somebody else's child. If sex is something that's shared by all in pony culture, that kinda implies that the child will get raised the same no matter who the father is. That might mean that the whole herd raises foals or that it's solely the mother's responsibility.
2294738
You scooped me on a lot of things I was gonna say.
A few extras, because why not:
First off, I think a lot of it would depend on where you find yourself in Equestria...
Being on a completely different world and so having a completely separate cultural history (though I do prefer to think of them as literally being uplifted Earth equines instead of coincidentally equine aliens), they might have several different types of mate contract that don't have exact equivalents on Earth, just like they'd probably have types of businesses and officials we don't have words for—Imagine an orphanage that doubles as a salt bar, so foals can play with loosened-up adults who can in turn show off how good they are with kids, or all the ministers in charge of encouraging various forms of virtue in order to maintain the Harmony the climate needs, not to mention all the no-doubt maddening bureaucracy of weather scheduling.
So I think the unique nature of their society and world might create some social institutions that we don't see in either humans or horses... They're tough to think of because by definition they're more or less unprecedented, but what about a kind of combination of models, where herds fuse into larger herds by arranging marriages between their members, or/while two members of the same herd will get married in the more traditional human sense to go off and found a new one? They might go in generational cycles, even.
If a region like Ponyville seems to go in for pair marriage, it could very well be because it was founded by settlers: They all married their sweethearts to go found new herds, and when they gathered to build a town they found that's what nearly everypony else had done, too. That's what the foals grew up seeing, so when it became their turn, that's what they considered normal, and it just stuck. Cadence and Shining Armor might have gone in for a pair marriage because it was their role to bud off and spread modern Equestrian rule and culture to the Crystal Empire.
There was that Harshwhinney episode where the lady they picked up at the train station referred to herself as a "mustang from Mustangia," which seems to imply that there are other models of society around, if she's able to be "wild" by comparison. She had modern clothes and a suitcase so she's probably not a nomadic
hunter-gatherer, but that could still auger a kind of itinerant society of herds, with members splitting off via regular marriage. I like them as keeping the traditional equine lifestyle alive, actually, with grazing pastures they maintain for themselves, etc, and maybe rotating among several semi-permanent settlements via caravan. Foals might dare each other to venture into the mothballed Mustang camp in the off-season and touch some landmark or take a bite of grass, etc, so they might hire ponies to take care of it for them while they're away... Sorry, this is kinda running away from me...!Given how casual ponies are about nudity, I'd venture they're also pretty casual about who you sleep with. It might seem weird to us for a guy to just be walking around with a huge, obvious boner in public—which must happen—but of course it's no more unnatural or immoral a response than blushing or pupil dilation, and a society that has truly internalized this would almost certainly be down with Free Love. Maybe there's some ubiquitous herb that acts as natural birth control that you can just mix into your hay. Or that might even be the default, like water fluoridation, and you specifically avoid it when trying to conceive, or take something else that counteracts it. They might also just not be as libidinous as humans, either (or at least not all throughout the year).
2294738
my thoughts exactly.
2295224
In the case of Ponyville, which was recently settled, it's odd that 2 parent families would be the norm. For the settlers, more children would translate into more field workers, and one way to get more children would be to have multiple wives... or not keep track of whose wife you're screwing.
I can see pair marriages becoming popular if there's property that a mother wants her foals specifically to inherit. Pair marriages seem like it would evolve in places like Canterlot.
I especially liked how that non-Harshwhinney mare (what's her face) may have come from a subculture that's heavily into doing things unconventionally, presumably marriage and foraging. What I find interesting is that Mustangia was never mentioned before or after in the show. If ponies don't bring up this (city? Territory? Nation state?), then they might be keeping their mouths shut because it isn't politically correct.