Cultural unlikelihoods

[+Oltux72]

On the face of it. the cultures of the Cosmere seem extremely varied, with their own pecularities, languages, religions, customs, institutions and laws.

There is, however, a glaring exception: family structure
For starters, no Cosmere culture we have seen is polygynous. That is odd. Nobody is paying a bride price. Everybody looks to be living in a western style core family. The Kholins are the closest to an exception. Is that to just keep it family friendly or just too hard to write, if we look at it from a meta level, or is that deep Yolish influence?

[Honorless]

For polygamy, probably. For western-style nuclear family, it's a matter of convenient storytelling. Herdaz, possibly Teoish & other Arelish influence regions, plantation skaa did have extended families.

[Dunkum]

we also only get a handful of viewpoints for most worlds.  Roshar we get by far the most, but everywhere else its pretty limited.  On Nalthis and Sel, for instance something like 2/3 of the viewpoint characters are royalty, and most of the non-royal ones aren't exactly average people.  for that matter, we mostly only see 1 or 2 cultures on each of the shard worlds, with maybe small glimpses into others - Roshar again being the primary exception.

[Elegy]

I remember a WOB saying that there are cultures that work differently in the cosmere, but the stories are mostly from the perspective of those that are more likely to be digestable to his readers. On Roshar, for example, I could imagine the Reshi culture to be very loose, since a lot of people seem to go there specifically to escape the strict traditions of the Honor-soaked rest of Roshar. That said, I can't seem to find that WOB right now. It's hard to find the right search words for it...

[Karger]

On 6/8/2020 at 7:09 AM, Oltux72 said:

For starters, no Cosmere culture we have seen is polygynous

The Reshi might be actually.  They are pretty libertarian.  Also the Iriali would probably be fine with it. 

On 6/8/2020 at 7:09 AM, Oltux72 said:

Nobody is paying a bride price

The Alethi have dowries. 

On 6/8/2020 at 7:09 AM, Oltux72 said:

Everybody looks to be living in a western style core family. The Kholins are the closest to an exception

The Horneaters seem to have the more old fashioned extensive family structure.