Commoner Life

 

Growing Up in a Farmer Family

Children are expected to help around the house, farm or workshop as soon as they can talk. There is no formal education, everybody at a farm works the land.

Whether from boredom at staring along furrows all year or out of desperation at having no future without a farm to inherit, farmers’ children frequently pack up and leave home sometime in their teens. Some leave with their parents’ blessing, others without. These children may become warriors (or bandits, if there is a difference) sailor or artisans’ apprentices, but the most common fate is to become day labourers or servants. Girls rarely succeed at becoming apprentices, and usually wind up as servants (including serving wenches) or (a bit more rarely) labourers. Either sex may quickly wind up as beggars.

 

Growing Up in a Burgher Family

As the oldest son will inherit the workshop, other sons are sometimes apprenticed to other men, especially ones who lack sons of their own. Apprentices often marry the daughters of their masters, whether from convenience or emergency. It is less common for young burghers to strike out on their own, but when they do they are usually more successful than farmers’ children.

 

Growing Up in a Rich Family

The children of the rich receive a more pampered upbringing, and are usually taught to read passably well. Sons are taught the trade of their father (there usually being enough money/land for all of them) and girls are primarily groomed for their marriage to some rich sob or lesser nobleman. If a son of a rich family passes up his father’s trade, it is usually to get a higher education or to seek his fortune as a mercenary officer.

 

Marriage

Arranged marriages are the norm, but less common than among the nobles. A man needs to be economically established before taking a wife, and for this reason men usually marry younger women, whose chief assets are beauty, good-temperedness and childbearing potential. Death in childbirth is common enough that a man may go through several wives. The age difference may also leave a young widow inheriting her husband's property and business.