Nickolai77 said:
Well, what you're saying here largely applies to the aristocracy who would have been mindful to advance up the social and political ladder through marriage, it doesn't account for the other "99%" of the population who were ordinary farmers and small time shopkeepers.
True. However, they weren't the ones having bardly tales written about them, which is how the concept that the OP is referencing entered the collective consciousness.
As for the other 99% - I'm sure some of it was love. Some of it was also probably "you knocked up my daughter so you'll marry her or I'll cave your skull in!" Which is marriage due to sex, but not necessarily what modern viewers would necessarily consider love.
Nickolai77 said:
I'd drink to that! The social emphasis on males impressing females has always really annoyed me. I agree it's probably rooted in our evolution but it's very much reinforced by popular culture. It encourages some dickish behaviour in males, encourages women to be romantically passive and it disadvantages a lot of other males who arn't so forward in their nature. I'd love to see dating conventions become more egalitarian, but even in an age after feminism it hasn't happened.
After feminism? Feminism is still around, and still working to bring equality to women. We're better than we ever have been, historically, but better doesn't necessarily mean good or done. The world has changed a lot for women in the past 20 years. We aren't there yet, but we're closer than we've ever been. We need to keep going another few decades or so.
To that point, when I was in high school, the idea of asking a man out (to say nothing of a woman) was insane. That was the early 90s, mind, but I still wasn't going to be asking anyone out.
By the early 2000s, just 10 years later, I was asking people out without difficulty. The social landscape changed that much in just 10 years.
So yeah, give it time. A decade can make a huge difference.
