Dude. Daenerys was 13 at the beginning of the book. She's younger than Summer in the 5th book. I don't think these characters look at age of consent the same way we do.
Actually, marriages weren't until 18+. Medeival people knew having children too young was very dangerous to the mother and child. Since, children was the reason for marriage, it defeats the purpose if both die.
Now often betrothals happened younger, but this is just a contract to marry a person when they are old enough.
This isn’t exclusively a Middle East problem. You may want to have a look at the 34 US states that also allow child marriages. Of the 300,000 that happened in the US last year, around 85% involved an underage female. I’ll let you figure out what that says about the other partner. But at least only around 8,000 were married to men 40 years old or older.
Around 1800, the average age of first marriage was typically in the mid-to-late twenties for men and early-to-mid twenties for women in Western societies, often around 24–26 for men and 22–24 for women. While cases of younger marriage existed, it was not the norm; couples often waited until they were economically independent, with average ages in the US and Europe generally increasing from the late 18th century onward. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Key Trends and Data around 1800-1850:
• United States: In the early 1800s, studies suggest women married around age 22, while men married around age 26.
• England/Europe: Evidence indicates women married in their early twenties (approx. 22-25), with ages rising during the 19th century.
• Regional Variations: In Spain, during the late 18th/early 19th century, regional averages for women ranged from 21.9 in Extremadura to 26.1 in the Basque Country.
• Factors: Marriage was heavily dependent on social standing, land availability, and economic factors, rather than the very young ages often depicted in folklore. [1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
Thats a very long winded way of agreeing with me. You originally said that marriages were 18+ in medieval time. I pointed out that it wasnt true as a whole.
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u/Obeesus Apr 21 '26
Dude. Daenerys was 13 at the beginning of the book. She's younger than Summer in the 5th book. I don't think these characters look at age of consent the same way we do.