Skip to main content

a song of ice and fire - Does joining an order that requires celibacy automatically annul your marriage in Westeros?


I am wondering about the marriage laws of Westeros. To keep this question from being too broad, let’s discuss only the case of the prevalent religion of Westeros, the Faith of the Seven.


We do know that a marriage of people adhering to Faith of Seven can only be annulled by the High Septon or a council of faith if it hasn't been consummated.


The following orders require vows of celibacy in Westeros:



  1. Kingsguards

  2. Nights Watch

  3. Order of Maesters

  4. Septons and Septas of faith

  5. The Silent Sisters



We do know Ser Quentyn Ball sent his wife to join the Silent Sisters so that he could be free to take the vows of the Kingsguards, since he couldn't get his marriage annulled as it had been consummated. That implies that simply swearing the Kingsguards vows won't automatically annul his marriage.


So what happens if a married man is made to join the Nights Watch? Does his marriage get annulled automatically or is his wife bound to be alone for the rest of her life?


Also what happens if a married man takes the vows of Citadel to become a Maester or becomes a Septon?


For women adhering to the Faith of the Seven, the situation seems clear that joining the Silent Sisters will annul their marriage. It is not so clear as to what happens when a married woman wishes to be a septa? Virginity might not be required to take a Septa's vow because we know Septa Lemore has childbirth marks. (But that in itself means nothing, she might have gotten pregnant after taking a Septa's vows. That is of course if she is not what she is suspected to be).


I have also created a Reddit thread for it here, but there are not really many insights there. But do check it in case there might be some comment which might help you form your answer.



Answer



I will try to answer the question in general but just note that different orders probably have different rules on marriages. Also it likely depends on who you are: high-born/low-born, male/female, noble/peasant etc.




We do not know and there appears to be people on three sides of the argument with:




  1. No you're both still married

  2. No but it does mean that an annulment is possible

  3. Yes you are annulled


The biggest group of people seem to believe that option 3 is the most likely; especially when considering the Night's Watch. This is because joining the Watch essentially means that you are dead to the world. You give up any titles or lands and leave your place in the world, it would make sense that you also give up your wife. However, as others have pointed out before, the oath is expressed in terms of not doing anything in the future so it does leave way for the Watchmen to still have a wife.



Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.



I've had a brief conversation with Elio, one of the co-author's of The World of Ice and Fire, on twitter and he seems to be in camp 2 for someone joining the Night's Watch.




I think someone could take the black without necessarily annulling the marriage, but their having taken the vows would give grounds for the wife to get an annulment. Just my guess.
Twitter, @westerosorg



In this conversation he's also stated that Fireball sent his wife to the Silent Sisters to annul their marriage so he could become eligible to be a member of the Kingsguard. This theory means a man must not be married before joining the order but the implication is the same as you state in that joining the Kingsguard likely doesn't annul a marriage. It would even seem, from Elio's answer, that it is impossible to join if you are married.



Marriages must be annulled before one can become a member. Fireball forced his wife to become a silent sister, apparently, which allowed him to get the annulment that would make him able to take the vows of the Kingsguard.
Twitter, @westerosorg



From Elio's above tweet it would also seem that a wife joining the Silent Sisters means their marriage became eligible for an annulment not that it was an automatic process.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...