Editing The Peony Chronicles:Main Page (section)

==On Marriage, Lovers and Homosexuality==

When Toturi Kenji married Shosuro Amika, the Imperial Court was set alight with gossip. The marriage had not been arranged, and it was widely believed that they two had married for love, setting off a short period where this factor was in vogue before traditional arranged marriages reasserted themselves. Likewise, when Amika died a few years ago, another wave of similar marriages for love crashed against the cliffs of tradition, but again this has now waned, and arranged marriages are once again the most common form of marriage amongst samurai.

One of the duties of all samurai is to their own family, which means that they should marry and have children to continue their line. Since most marriages are arranged, this frequently leads to unions where one or both partners do not feel love for their spouse, or where one or both spouses has feelings for another. The taking of lovers is thus somewhat common in Rokugan (and indeed many couples have arrangements and understandings on this matter, where both are aware of their spouse's lovers but do not bring attention to the fact). The taking of lovers is not in itself dishonorable, but it should remain discreet. Any public revealing of such affairs is something that adversely affects honor and glory.

There is no stigma against homosexuality in Rokugan, but gay samurai are still expected to marry members of the opposite sex in order to fulfil their duty to their house as mentioned above. Since many arranged marriages between men and women are loveless but done for the sake of politics or creating social ties and alliances, and for procreation in order to provide heirs to the family name, Rokugano society expects gay samurai to similarly marry spouses who they do not share any affection for, and must similarly do their duty. Homosexual samurai almost always take gay lovers in the same way as their heterosexual kinsmen and kinswomen take lovers, and again are only stigmatized when their illicit affairs are revealed. There is no greater stigma for homosexual samurai found to have a secret lover than for heterosexual samurai found to have secret lovers. In both cases, affairs are to be kept discreet and social penalties only affect those who have their private affairs made public.