Talk:Therese Sigrid von Philip/@comment-32598341-20200312231737/@comment-45880342-20200604205217

"she will actually OUTRANK Elise as the first or "head" wife if she marries Wend"

This is actually the main reason for marriage itself being a problem. The novels give at least one anecdote about a later wife of a higher social status becoming first wife, and the trouble that can cause. And we've seen the reshuffling of Wend's wives' ranks already with the later marriages. But it's more than just that she would outrank -- it's that being head wife is a position of power, and the more wives there are the more powerful they are, so having as a wife at all someone from a foreign kingdom with a title is bad, but someone from a foreign kingdom with a HIGH title, and also having them be all-important WEND's wife is intolerable. It would be interjecting interference into both countries at an unimaginable scale.

But a mistress wouldn't work either for most of the same problems (even though the head wife dilemma goes away that way), unless -- UNLESS -- she no longer is a power-player in her home country. By retiring and formally separating herself from the Philip household, she achieved the necessary distance to chart her own course. She can't be a wife, but without her retirement she couldn't be a mistress either.

And that retirement is what finally eases the other girls' minds. They know she actually cares for him. But now they know that she can't effectively be used as a tool by her country against Wend.