What You Have Lost

One major factor about the middle ages that was pleasant was its view toward relationships. This was before the reactionary and patriarchal laws of the early industrial revolution took hold; those were designed mainly to regulate women as a labor force, and had no bearing on tradition. Back then, the girls were a lot prettier than they are now, in part because they came from consistent ethnic stocks and in part because the criteria for selection were more rigorous. Sex and love were not these wide-eyed, holy ideals, but practical means toward a family, in which man and wife were equal partners of different areas of practice. Neurotic girls and ugly girls and dysfunctional girls got sold to gypsy traders, while they'd send their defective male counterparts off to the front line. The result was that people bred beter, and the result was many generations of beautiful and intelligent people; now, you're lucky to get one of those two, although most of the well-bred women I've met have had both. Since there was a consistent ethnic ideal, people were naturally selected to fulfill that standard, and the whining of "individualists" unheard from the distant gypsy cabins.