Dealing with stress: How ancient Princesses survived interplanetary Marraiges

To me, one of the most remarkable parts of the SkyPath scrolls is the role played by the almost angelic princess Shelah. She—not the crazy men battling hi-tech aliens with rusty swords—is the most courageous character in the entire story. She grows up on Earth, most of her life probably unaware that human beings have sailed to the other planets, and then, when she is a teenager, her father sends her to a moon where presumably some complete stranger is going to take her home to Venus, or Mars, or someplace, and marry her. No doubt the fear and frustration she must have faced were incredible, and yet somehow she is willing to accept this destiny and truly fall in love with Marcus. For many others suffering her fate, the outcome had less of a story book ending.

We do not have the full records of all the interplanetary marriages that took place between kingdoms, but we know there were a lot of them. Frankly, their success –rate was deplorable. Many of them resulted in death by suicide, and/or depression. It’s bad enough having to marry a man you’ve never even seen before, but it’s ten times worse when you have to relocate millions of miles away to a world where the gravity is different, the air is less dense, and the magnetic field exponentially varies from what you are used to. No doubt many died. The phsical changes in and of themselves were almost enough to kill them.

And yet sometimes, despite all these odds, love would find a way. For instance, Princess Regorix IX from the Egyptian side of Mercury is said to have married a Persian king on Jupiter’s moon of Callisto, and lived for 60 years afterwards in absolute bliss. Also, a beautiful but lowly peasant girl from Neptune’s moon Tritan is said to have found happiness raising 14 children for a Hittite noble on Mars in 150 AD, before the Romans invaded.

I guess, even in the most dire of circumstances, love can always pull through.

 

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The Return of the Muse is not a news source. This post relates to the imaginary universe of the The SkyPath Crusade epic poem

Or, for lots of laughs, click here to read an Autobiography: How I discovered that Romans used to live on Mars.