Nyx in the House of Night

other. The whole not-being-honest thing doesn’t ever go over very well.) My mom and I are often asked when we will make her choose just one guy to be with forever and ever and ever and ever. I can tell you that won’t be happening anytime soon. She’s a teenager and it’s unhealthy for a teen to be focused on one guy and one guy only. Girls shouldn’t spend months, weeks, or even days obsessing over boys they won’t remember in five years. But, when Zoey is mature and experienced and truly knows herself, she’ll pick just one guy . . . maybe.
    I say that not only to tease you, but also because within the vampyre society of the House of Night, Zoey doesn’t have to choose one mate forever if she doesn’t want to. As a High Priestess, she can have a human consort, a warrior, a vamp boyfriend, or any combination of them. In our heavily matriarchal vampyre society, the practice of having multiple partners has been going on for hundreds of years, so it’s completely normal!
    Shocking, I know, but being in a relationship with multiple partners and having society think it’s “normal” isn’t some crazy new idea we created for the series. Most people are familiar with the word polygamy, when a man has multiple wives or a woman has multiple husbands—though it’s often confused with polygyny, which only addresses a man who has more than one wife. Polygyny has been around for hundreds of years, appearing in many cultures for many reasons. Some factors that might have contributed to the development of polygyny include there being significantly more women than men in a particular society, practical household reasons (women are able to divide tasks in polygynous relationships, and having extra parents around may benefit their children), and plain old egotistical reasons.
    Prior to Christian colonization, various African cultures accepted this practice 100 percent (and many countries in Africa still do today, though that acceptance isn’t absolute; the controversial Jacob Zuma, who was elected president of South Africa in 2009, has come under heavy criticism in regards to his having three wives).
    In places like western Kenya, a man having many wives and children was seen as a symbol of status and wealth, and he could have as many as he could afford. Men had to pay dowries for each wife, so the more wives a man had the more obvious his wealth was to the people in the village. Following old traditions, the current king of Swaziland, Mswati III, has fourteen wives and twenty-three children. And if you think that’s excessive, by the time his father King Sobhuza II died, he had amassed seventy wives and over a thousand children!
    Polygynous arrangements usually started with what we now think of as a “normal” heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman. The first wife, also called the senior wife, would help her husband look for a second wife if she was getting older and/or needed help meeting household needs such as farmwork, child rearing, and just plain taking care of the husband. Even though the husband could make the decision on his own to find another wife, he would have to consult the senior wife beforehand on things like familial reputation, beauty, values, mental stability, and physical strength. As the senior wife, her position was always respected, and she would always be involved in the addition of subsequent wives. Rarely based on love, the foundations of these marriages instead were based in mutual respect and support. Each spouse’s role and status had to be clearly outlined and acknowledged to maintain a harmonious balance, though obviously, this was not always the case as jealousies and power trips understandably resulted in tension.
    This way of life changed drastically for many Africans once Christian settlers and missionaries began to arrive on the continent, but don’t let their lofty goals fool you. Officially they were monogamous and held the strong belief that God had declared that men were to only be with one wife because “the two,” not three, four, or five, “will become one flesh,” but they definitely were not innocent. The settlers who came to Liberia came up with something called Chrismonopoly. (Ooooo! Sounds fun! Let’s all play!) This hodgepodge of a word is not like your favorite fake-money board game, but if you’d like to play this historic game, go ahead!
    The rules:

Be a Christian settler.
Involve yourself in a monogamous marriage with a Christian wife.
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