Bohandi marriages

In response to my post about Bohandi culture, one person asked about Bohandi marriages. I answered him, but now I think the issue deserves a post of its own.

I will not be reiterating everything once more here, so here are links to some places if you want to read more on the Bohandi:

Star Home: Bohandi

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Sk28e7-VyrF-fxqEDhgyWBtTzBak6E0kQcEN7GxH70/edit?usp=sharing

Bohandi backstory

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xjKhBBZxcN3CVy9OVcdr9CZykWTIlwZVZ4yNpNPj3XQ/edit?usp=sharing

They are not exactly books, more like records of events. Keep that in mind.

An overview:

https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1iid1vq/bohandi_and_ansoids_my_original_alien_species/

But I will reiterate what I wrote about their culture before:

They are supposed to be rather close to "human" in the way they think, but more unified. They also enslave other people (my thread about "why aliens would take slaves" was inspired when I began thinking why woul;d Bohandi do that). They place great value on military service and are a lot about control, but, surprisingly, they also allow individual Bohandi a great degree of individuality. Also, they generally do not expect loyalty, "just" obedience. They won't care what you think, as you do what they say.

Oh, and they are very much anti - arranged marriage (especially among slave species - partially so no Bene Gesserit - like breeding programs can be established to breed people more tailored to fight the Bohandi) and any form of population control (more Bohandi citizens and more slaves leads to more people to serve the Empire).

Now, what we do know about their marriages is that, at least for some of them, they are monogamous and egalitarian (that is, no spouse is more important than the other for being male or female). They can and often do serve together in the military, even on the same ships. I would envision (but this is not “canon”) that Bohandi commanders encourage marriages heavily and discourage unofficial relationships so it will be easy to keep track who is with whom so any conflict of interests can be easily taken under consideration by any commanding officer. And, since Bohandi always focus on helping the Empire in some way (even if minor one), only opposite - sex would be allowed to marry, to keep Bohandi numbers growing.

There is only one Bohandi marriage I wrote so far, G’Rot and F’Lara. G’Rot is chief engineer of Sta’Bird, one of the Bohandi Heavy Cruisers that survived the Destruction of Bohus and is now on the run from humans. F’Lara is the first officer of this ship. They have two children, who are also aboard that ship. They work well together and there was never any conflict of interest, although it may be because of Captain P’Tak, who is their friend and supporter.

Of course, Bohandi discipline and “the Empire’s priority” doctrine would help minimize the conflict of interests.

Still, I think there is a lot of room for maneuver here and to talk about. There may be, of course, also some minorities that have different rules for relationships and marriages.

So, I would like to ask you what do you think? And, if you were to write about a Bohandi couple/marriage, how would you do it? Please, leave a comment below.