(08-14-2019, 07:36 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: In the past, mortality was way higher. So we probably had more men who had lost all their female relatives and didn't have a wife (anymore) either. I guess this might have to do with the fact that there was more rape in the past.
No. The ravaging soldiers were usually young men promised the opportunity to loot and rape. If successful at looting they would return rich enough to attract the extremely materialistic girls, the ones most voluptuous and desirable, to become wives.
In those times people were extremely materialistic. Wealth may have been rare and may have all either glittered or implied food (land and livestock)... paradoxically there was little commerce with which to get rich. A good marriage for a girl was one that would assure that, because her husband had adequate land, that she would never go hungry or inadequately clothed. Love was a rarity. Even among the aristocrats, including the monarchs themselves, marriages were often intended for cementing alliances -- a practice blatant enough when Louis XVI of France married Marie Antoinette of Austria in modern times.
In view of all the wars, male mortality was surely higher than that for women.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.