Fae Marriage, Courtship and Gender Relations

This is just something that I've been thinking about for the past couple of days because it has a little bit of a bearing on Chapter 49. 

I should probably preface this by saying that men and women are pretty segregated in Fae society except for when it comes to immediate family. If you're seen frequently walking around with someone of the opposite gender- Even a first cousin, in most cases- People will assume that you're together in a romantic capacity. 

During religious services, men and women sit on opposite sides of the temple (with the exception of the Magi who lead the services). At dinner, men and women sit on opposite sides of the table. In school, boys and girls on different ends of the classroom. 

Women and men are on very different schedules during the day. Women don't work (with the notable exception of the queen, the crown princess, teachers and any female Magi there may be). A woman wakes up in the morning early (with the notable exception of Tara), gets dressed (a process that could take up to three hours), has breakfast, attends  a meditation or magical study, then gets dressed again for mass, attends mass, gets dressed again out of her temple gown and spends the rest of the day doing genteel things in the company of other ladies. 

Men get up, get dressed, go to work, go to mass, go back to work, come home, take care of the children (if they have any), eat, sleep. There isn't really a moment when your schedule would typically intersect with someone of the opposite gender that you aren't related to (for any considerable length of time). 

So when does the romancing happen? Courtship is generally viewed as a casual thing and ordinarily women make the arrangements, setting up their friends with their brothers, sons, etc. The men don't have much of a say in who they get to have alone time with. They're free to turn a woman down but not really free to pick a woman up. If things progress to the point where the couple starts going out in public together, then people will begin to consider them "official". Which brings me to marriage:

There is no formal system of marriage. Either you're casually seeing someone behind closed doors or you're out in the open- at which point, the two of you are considered "consorts". Consorts are expected to spend the rest of their lives together.

And that brings me to Proximus Deus. They operate by an entirely different set of rules where all of this is concerned (for reasons that will probably come up later in the story). But Kvornan could basically walk up to anyone (single or not) and say, "You, my room, tonight" and that person would be obligated to go.

But Kvornan wouldn't do that because Kvornan has a consort.