Interfamily marriages: 1st cousins

[bumbershoot]

Thinking about all these first-cousin marriages among the royals, I really wonder how they did it.  I have a vast raft of first cousins on both sides of my family and I love many of them dearly, but marrying any of them? Ewwww! They're too much like siblings. We know too much about each other.  I realize we don't have dynastic or political or economic reasons to motivate such alliances and maybe those are what come into play with the royals, but frankly, marrying one's first cousin does not sound like a lot of fun.

[Principessa]

Remember at the time of their marriages many haven't seen each other that often or were that close with their cousins. Some hadn't even met before. Due to the distances and the large families.

[bumbershoot]

Yes, you do have a point about distance causing what might perhaps be a welcome unfamiliarity with one's first cousins in terms of future intimacy. I hadn't thought of that. I grew up in an area of Seattle known as Capitol Hill. I had two complete sets of first cousins in the same Catholic parish and they had multiple sets of first cousins on the other sides of their families, all also in our same parish. So I was inundated with family--aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins' cousins, and cousins' cousins' parents. Knew them all so well. Nowadays I tell people I grew up in the ``village'' of Capitol Hill. And no way would I have looked at any of my cousins at all in terms of dating or marriage. They were all too much like brothers and sisters. But in Queen Victoria's time, and even, in some cases more recently, things were clearly different for the royal families.

[CyrilSebastian]

Edward of Woodstock (1330-1376) was the eldest son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa of England. He was the Prince of Wales.   
Edward married his first cousin once removed, Joan, Countess of Kent (1328-1385), on October 10, 1361. She was the daughter and heiress of Edmund, Earl of Kent, the younger son of King Edward I and Queen Margaret of England.     
Edward and Joan had two sons: Edward and Richard.