Worldbuilding: Culture and Rituals of Class Difference

A few months ago I witnessed something that is an uncommon occurrence in the States.  I was waiting in our favorite local Thai restaurant for our take-out order to be ready, when a young woman walked in the door.  This woman wasn't particularly remarkable: dressed in jeans and T-shirt, she looked like a fairly typical Asian-American college student.

But upon seeing her, the woman behind the counter bowed to her.  Almost immediately, one of the waiters did the same.  They stayed bowed until she acknowledged: a polite, even friendly wave that let them know, yes, they could get back to what they were doing.  Then she went on to join friends at a table. 

Now, being a writer, I immediately began to speculate on what I just witnessed.  It could have been as mundane as a sign of respect for the boss's daughter, or as elaborate as her being a minor member of the Thai royal family.  I had no clue.

But what was clear was that this was an overt display of class distinction, where two people showed reverence for a member of the higher class, and that person showed acknowledgment of that reverence.  Both sides followed the rules of what was expected of them upon meeting.

We don't see that in the States much, partly because our class distinctions are fuzzy, fluid and ill-defined.   As such, there are no hard-and-fast rules of protocol.  But that's a quirk of our culture.  Many cultures do have class distinctions where the lines are very strictly defined, as are the rules for interaction between classes.

So, how do your characters show that, especially in a way that shows that both sides of the table have rules and expectations.  Or, how do your characters subvert the expectations? 

Worldbuilding: Rituals for the Dead

I've gone over this before, but it bears repeating: cultures have rituals to mark almost every important occasion: marking adulthood or marriage, for example.  Or, it the case of the Minbari of Babylon 5, every single thing possible.

And then, of course, there are the rituals of death.

I've been thinking about this as something of a necessity for Banshee.  Without going into spoilers, various aliens die, and treating their bodies in a respectful manner for their cultures is important to the survivors.  

In coming up with rituals for the dead, be they for secondary-world human cultures, demi-human cultures, or alien cultures, you need to consider the purpose they serve.  On some level, you should address three elements of purpose.

Practical: The body itself must be dealt with.  Preserved, interred, cremated, otherwise kept from rotting on the floor.  It can be as simple as burial, as complicated as mummification, or somewhere in between.

Spiritual: On some level, the ritual should consider the intangible element of the deceased, matching the faith of the culture.  Does the lack of a proper burial mean the dead's spirit wanders the Earth, unable to reach the afterlife?

Emotional: Ultimately, rituals of the dead are for the bereaved.  They are how grief is processed, either publicly or privately. 

Ideally, your rituals address all three elements, or even better, integrate them into a unique whole. 

Consider, for example, the mummification rituals for the kings of ancient Egypt.  The actual mummification itself preserved the body, and it was interred in a tomb, designed for the purpose of giving the king everything he would need for the afterlife, allowing the people to process the death of a person they worshiped as a god, knowing that his time on earth was only part of his journey.

This is a pretty heavy-duty one, though.  You might want to come up with something simpler for the average person.

How do your cultures deal with their dead?

Worldbuilding: Marriage and Other Rituals of Love and Joining

Today is my anniversary (13th!), so it seems appropriate to talk about the worldbuilding aspects of marriage and other rituals of joining.  Marriage customs are rarely the center of any worldbuild, but they do add a certain degree of flavor and color to the cultures you create.

I think the first thing one should do when crafting the marriage customs of another culture is clear your head of morality and expectation of what marriage "should" be.  I mean, yes, of course you can keep the marriage in a built culture exactly the same as you see it here in your own.  But there are some questions you should ask yourself when coming up with How Marriage Works there:

• What kind of groups are marriages?
• What are the legal expectations of a marriage?
• What are the social expectations of a marriage?
• Who is allowed to enter a marriage?
• How is the decision to marry carried out?
• At what age do people typically marry?
• How can a marriage be dissolved?

At the core, there are four forms of marriage: monogamous, polygamous,  polygynous and polyandrous. The last two are subsets of polygamous, but it's important to make the distinction, though we often use the term "polygamy" (marriage of multiple people) when we really mean polygyny (a man with mulptiple wives).  Polygamy can take many forms beyond one person with multiple spouses.  It could be a group of people all married to each other (like the line marriages of Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) or one where each person has multiple spouses, but there isn't necessarily a bond between said spouses (like the Denobluans of Star Trek: Enterprise, where Phlox has three wives, and each of those wives has two additional husbands, and each of those husbands has two additional wives... and so on.)

Legal and social expectations get to the core of What Marriage Means for the culture.  For example, in my fantasy setting, the Xonacans are matriarchal polyandrists, and men are explicitly the property of their wives.  Similarl the questions about who is allowed to marry and how the decision is carried out informs a lot about the culture. Are certain social groups are barred from marriage?  Are marriages arranges?  Do the upper classes have arranged marriages?  Are same-sex marriages allowed?  Do people marry in their teens, their twenties?  As children?  Is fidelity expected? Are divorces common? Or is marriage binding until death?  Are marriages essentially business arrangements, or are they done for love?

Which then opens up another question: are there other rituals of love?  Or joining?  Adoption, for example, could be something that the culture ritualizes.  Another example from my setting: amongst the Ch'omikTaan, a feudal warrior culture, two men can bind their houses together by making themselves brothers-- a ritual similar, but not identical, to a marirage.

And beyond what marriage means, what does a wedding entail?  Is it a simple legal contract, or a seven-day ceremony?  These details can really help define the cultures of your world. 

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 And on another note, I've achieved an authorial milestone: fan art from one of the early scenes in Thorn of Dentonhill.  
Hopefully this is a sign that a deal is right around the corner.