Do you want statistics? No, we know the state of the affair well enough. Misery. And what then? Does the heart move across the sky? I thought not. And yet…

Across the land, across the nation and further into the next, I have been bound. For other nobility, marriage is a very public and procedural matter. How can things like divine providence contend? Does one wake up to their soul mate on the other side of an arranged marriage?

There is the argument, of course, that there is no such creature; the soul mate. Proponents of deism, and late deism, those lulled from reality, of course lose this idea along with everything else, their souls included. And in losing the notion, they also lose their hold on long-standing relationships. Whose statistics were those? The immense modernist failure of marriage; who was it?

We are men, we are nature, and nature is limited.

Surely not I, your King. I am no man, I am Janna Rhye, Second King of the Solune, perhaps the first female King anywhere; certainly in this land. Certainly, I am unnatural, and certainly the soul is unlimited except by the body.

If the union between a man and woman is natural, then like nature it is limited, and prone to withering; prone to ceasing.

Yet, if there is such thing as a soul, then must it not be so that we are more than nature might imply and impose?

And if we are souls, whence do souls originate? The divine? It must be. Without the hand of the Creator, there would be no notion of the soul. Would we invent such a thing? …A discussion for another time.

And the Creator, is He not clearly the matchmaker of His world? Is it not asked by the Galuth; What has the Creator been doing since he set Creation in motion? Sustaining it, yes, but also, pairing this man with that woman, pairing him with her. For, the Galuth answer, joining a match is as difficult as the parting of the sea. Further, before a soul even leaves the place of souls, a voice rings in the heavens, that this one, he will marry the daughter of that one.

And thus, we have souls, and their mates. Let us now take this and bring it down.

If Marriage is earthly, then it will wither like those other things in earth’s nature. But if Marriage is divine, then like the souls who dance inside the union, it too can be eternal.

And so, I look at my own union; on the face a strategic marriage, it may seem. Did I truly marry a foreign Prince simply to end a war and make peace between our nation? Who forced me? Why…no one. It was simply, perhaps, sudden circumstance.

Does the heart move across the sky, across the land and into another nation? Well…perhaps. I must admit, I was smitten, and the union is good, yet on occasion I had my doubts. In my mind, a little, in the moody heart, quite a lot. How could he by my heavenly ordained match if the circumstances were so tight? Yet…all this thinking brings me a new, more warming conclusion.

Was it not written, it is like parting the seas? And for me He parted two armies, a sea of warriors; parted me and my enemy. And here we are. I am comforted by the theology.

I am comforted by my Prince.

Janna Rhye, second King of the Solune
(Previously, Fourth Prince[ess] of the Solune)

(Daniel Triumph.)

Credit to Rabbi Simon Jacobson for formulating the basic core idea that marriage may need to be greater than us, be divine, to truly last.