Daxian people: Difference between revisions

Bigamy has been practiced in [[Daxia]] for thousands of years, going back to the reign of Emperor Chiliang of the Xie dynasty. An old man by the time he ascended to the imperial throne, Chiliang's progeny had suffered from great misfortune and he had no male heir. The emperor consulted with a great council of sages and their learned conclusion was that the emperor should be allowed to marry as many wives as he needed. Not lacking in wisdom himself, the emperor counseled restraint, were he to sire too many sons they would surely fight amongst themselves and tear the empire to bloody shreds once Chiliang passed on, and so two wives would suffice for his great need. So resolved, Chiliang set aside his aged wife and married two nubile maidens that beget him three strong sons to carry on his bloodline into the future. And so that none of his subjects had cause to complain that their emperor ate alone, he passed a decree that was carved in imperial marble: ''Let all the subjects living on my lands and under my sky secure the immortality of their names, as have I, let every man be entitled to marrying twice''; this is known as Chiliang's Pact. This decree was studiously respected by all succeeding dynasties for a number of reasons, the vast majority of the population worked in agriculture for a long time, having two wives meant more kids were available to add to a farm's labor pool. Abrogating Chiliang's Pact would be very unpopular, especially if the emperor continued the practice himself, which they would want to do given the high rates of infant mortality even among nobility. Bigamy was codified into law by every dynasty from Shang to Qian, all of which also made legal provisions for the caring of the numerous abandoned children and laws on the payment of pensions by the state to widows with small children. Bigamy continues to be legal in the modern era and [[Daxia]]ns continue to practice it but not to the same extent as in the past. The rising cost of living, insufficient social services, marital breakdown and the onerous expenses of having many children and also of divorcing dissuade many men from fulfilling their right to be bigamous.

[[File:英嫔春贵人乘马图轴.jpg|thumb|The two wives of Emperor Cao Meng, ninth emperor of the Shang dynasty]]

Endogamy is the practice of marriage within a certain ethnic, religious or social group. [[Daxia]]n people have for reasons of history and tradition, always frowned upon unions with non-Daxians. A partial explanation to this can be provided by the [[Zhangwo]] ideology, the core idea being that the Daxians have been so successful at building a bureaucratic empire because the divine have ordained them as a superior race. This idea has been both a curse and a blessing for smaller ethnic groups living in areas that border the [[Daxia]]n heartlands; a boon because the massive Daxian people could have absorbed and diluted them into the greater whole if not for the fact that it was seen as culturally repugnant to marry a foreigner, a curse because their inability to marry Daxians meant they would never be truly accepted in that society, dooming them to subservience, suspicion and cruelty. One well known example is that of the [[Degei Confederation|Degei people]], a nomadic people that lived in the grasslands north of [[Daxia]] for hundreds of years and interacted with and were influenced by it in many ways. The anthroposcopy of the average Degei has historically been considered to be close enough to the average [[Daxia]]n as to be distantly related, the pigmentation of the skin and the elongated epicanthal folds lending themselves to a certain compatibility, if traditional looks were to be preserved in offspring. And yet despite the physical similarities, the [[Degei Confederation|Degei people]] were never truly seen as anything but uncultured, foul and treacherous barbarians, useful in a fight if you could get them to obey by feeding them trinkets and lofty but meaningless honors. Some historians have posited that the great revolt of [[Darukh Khan]] started with his innermost, most secret insecurity, that he admired the Daxian people but could not and would not ever be accepted by them as an equal no matter what he did, leading him to despair and violence. The allure of endogamy within Daxian society has ebbed and flowed across history and its hold has not always been absolute or equally respected in specific geographic parts of the empire. The settlers who colonized [[Xisheng]] found themselves fighting the natives almost from the very start and this hostile reception shaped their own attitudes and sharpened their native xenophobia; [[Xisheng]]'s Daxian's took refuge in their redoubts and limited their contact with the [[Crona]]n peoples for three hundred years. Comparatively the explorers who discovered and colonized [[Peratra]] were received peacefully and traded in peace with many tribes for a number of years, this coupled with the great distances to the homeland softened and cracked the allure of endogamy; [[Timbia]] today is an example of a society with a great degree of mixing between native Polynesians and Daxians.

Emperors were not immune for this fascination with size, as not only the size of their palaces was used as a way to display their power and authority but to set themselves above their predecessors. During the Shang dynasty, emperors tended to disassemble the palace of their predecessor and use the materials to build a new, bigger one. The Zhong emperors stopped this wasteful practice, choosing instead to forever be building new additions to existing palaces, the Qian [[Palace of Columns]] was undergoing its 22nd expansion when the dynasty was overthrown. Current governments continue with the trend of giant buildings, the current seat of the Ministry of Information being 51-stories high and covering 493,000 square meters of floor space. The sinking of several [[Daxia]]n cities built in softer terrain is a direct consequence of Daxian Gigantomania.

The aforementioned [[Daxia]]n tendency towards endogamy, consequently a sizable percentage of the general population especially in the old empire is vulnerable to manifesting certain genetic congenital defects. Out of all of the nations of [[Audonia]], Daxians are overrepresented in sources that reference genetic mutation and related disorders; the heroic [[Daxia]]n haplogroups and their limited admixture are both a godly boon in traditional [[Daxia]]n xenophobia and a curse in practical genetic survivability. In ancient [[Daxia]], offspring born with crippling defects were often seen as 'a divine blunder' who were nonetheless not normally abandoned to starve or given to temples, [[Dwarfism in Daxia|dwarves]] were also spared these fates. These diseases and malformations affected the upper classes more frequently than they did the peasant ones, given the larger mating pool available to the latter group. For example the Shang dynasty members were known to suffer from a form of adrenal hyperplasia that resulted at times in infertility, children born with ambiguous genitalia and masculine looking women due to an excess in androgen production. The Shang dynasty deformities were less concealable as the years went by leading to a loss of prestige and legitimacy. The genetic problems of the Shang were partially alleviated by the Chen dynasty with their creation of an imperial harem that included voluptuous women of varied stock and race, injecting much needed outsider genes into the imperial pool.

Chongbai do not carry out traditional burials of the dead, Chongbai doctrine dictates that to truly pass on to the afterlife the body must be fully destroyed by being incinerated and the ashes scattered in the wild. Keeping the ashes of the deceased is seen as unorthodox and sinful, an attempt at tying down the spirit to a physical object. For this reason there are no Chongbai cemeteries, people might use the same place to spread ashes for generations and these spots might gain the appellative of 'respected ashery'.

Christianity has existed in [[Daxia]] since the early 17th century when it arrived with three missionaries. Following bitter disputes on canon and a lengthy epistolary debate with Pope Urban VIII, the priest Quintulo Batiato broke off all relations with the Holy See. He declared the throne of Saint Peter was vacant, due to Urban's 'Devil-induced insanity'. He sent letters to the College of Cardinals urging them to convene in session and elect a new pontiff, Church authorities responded in 1635 by branding him a heretic and excommunicating him. Batiato accused the College of Cardinals of 'being in the throes of sin' and decided then to form his own separate church to be the rightful successors of Saint Peter. Batiato's self-styled 'Church of the East' quickly gained adherents over the mainstream churches created by Batiato's fellow missionaries, especially because he had no qualms about playing politics with local governments and engaging in quid pro quo. In short order Batiato managed to get the mainstream Catholic Church outlawed, seizing their parishes for the Church of the East.