(no subject)

[iniquiticity]

Anonymous asked
How exactly is Washington's and Hamilton's marriage viewed by everyone? We obviously see it from their point of view, but what does everyone else think?

this is a fun question because there’s a lot of angles. because basically a big part of the story is tha - washington’s a weird guy in the public image? but he’s managed to make all his weirdness seem actually pretty impressive, and because of that, it takes a lot for an image issue to affect him. like, he’s a recluse? it’s because he’s hard at work! he’s tired. and for a while i think his unmarriedness was actually like a badge of honor, that he required no family or husband or wife to help him with anything. or like, as they say, his distance was interpreated a wise, stern aloofness, and not really anything like… anything terrible.

so it took a while for this one significant trait (his unmarriedness) to be like, a downside. like, how long can you be unmarried before it’s a wierd thing?

and like the story says, for a while it was just sort of assumed he was going ot marry martha. like, obv? because they had previously been connected, and the relationship was good, and they were both single, and it was like, a new way for the washington name to grow, that kind of thing.

but i imagine that marrying alex is very - generic, really. marrying your friends’ kids is pretty boring and common. and alex is kind of past marriagable age, sort of. so there’s a couple of ways to look at it right?

a. how thoughtful of the general to take his friend’s older son off his hands. the son is also a recluse so they’ll be compatible.

b. marrying alex is safe - like, washington has a fair bit to risk by marrying an asshole (ha ha!!), or someone who he’s not politically safe with, so by marrying a schuyler kid, that’s not someone who’s going to take advantage of him and his name, you know?

c. alex isn’t a well-known, so he’s a nice easy person to have as “oh, that’s george washington’s husband.” there isn’t a lot of questions about who’s got the higher rank, what their names are going to look like, who makes the decisions - that kind of thing. like i’m sure when angelica and john church got married, there was definitely like “so who’s kind of the leader here?” situation. not a prob with washington. important to washington, who’s leadership can’t be questioned.

and while you might think there’s a forced-marriage type of element to it, i don’t think that comes up. among washington’s caste, arranged marriages like this are probably pretty common. i imagine people do get married to people they didn’t want to marry on a somewhat regular basis. (as i indicated in another ask, i don’t think peggy shippen and eliza schuyler were very sweet on each other when they first met.) so this wouldn’t be something that would get a lot of gossip.

i think the most bad-interesting thing which might be muttered about is that alex isn’t very sociable. something that washington being married that people wanted to resolve was for him to get out more, to learn more about him - and they were hoping someone nice and domestic would kind of bring him out of his shell. there is *something* about him marrying a recluse younger son that people might think doesn’t solve the problem, if there was a problem.

but that’s the wierd thing about social customs, right? like, really people just wanted him to be married so they could imagine he was living happily ever after. obviously being married wouldn’t solve most of his problems - trauma, the govt, etc. but now that he has SOMEONE, it’s nice and easy for the gossip to be “oh, his husband will solve his problems.”

(little do they know.)

wow, that got long and rambling. i hope that answers the question… haha.