Quote:
Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
But I'm hoping BRC has some answers, as the resident Salic Law expert.
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Not I, but I'll ask the Mr. He brought the whole thing up noting that women of childbearing age brought significantly higher weregeld than freemen (with some caveats about concealing the premeditated murder of the king's agents or something).
I'll bet it was some sort of an "unjust enrichment" thing - if you have a huge kidnapping party, you shouldn't all get off on the cheap for 30 shillings for the whole lot of you. Similarly, one family shouldn't necessarily be made rich just because a large group carried off just one of their women. A given woman can only breed so many children, and so has inherently limited value. I do note, for the record, that in practice this all really didn't matter - if you stole someone's wife or daughter, you usually got a blood feud regardless.
