>>714597089If you've done enough research to know this, then you should also know that you're describing specifically the western european marital pattern that developed in the high middle ages. in southern and eastern europe, women married in their mid to late teens, well into the modern period.
Before then, literary and funerary evidence indicates that southern european girls married around 14yo, which is also the age of menarche noted in medical texts of the time. We have less evidence from the lower classes, true, but what we do have mostly suggests marriage in the mid to late teens for women.
In northern europe, funerary evidence suggests that girls were considered women beginning around the age of 12, and presumably would have been considered marriageable then or soon after.
Men would have been in their twenties.
You don't have to be comfortable with the past, but these were the realities of marriage.
>>714614948also wrong. there's no evidence that the lower classes had looser standards around premarital chastity. It was always supremely important for women, and at least commendable for men.
If casual sexual relationships or dating like we have now were socially acceptable, it would show up in the genetic record more often than it does