Twenty-fourth of Rain's Hand, 4E 198, Wayrest.
Alys,
Here's an oddity that may stoke your interest. The other day an enraged Thalmor Emissary entered our chapel and demanded that we "do something" about this pamphlet I'm sending you. He'd found it under a bed in a local inn, and was shocked to his core by "this horrid blasphemy against Lady Mara."
After I'd calmed him down somewhat, I pointed out that while the pamphlet was in very bad taste and did not represent the orthodoxy of our Order, neither he nor I, nor anyone in Wayrest had jurisdiction over some back-country "divorce temple" that might possibly exist up in the Western Reach. I did tell him I'd keep my eye out for someone leaving these around town, though I'm beginning to suspect someone planted it in his room as a prank.
Does such a place really exist?
Your loving brother, Nicolas
Mara the Sunderer: The Lady of Divorce
Mother Mara is the goddess of the tender love between spouses, between parent and child. So it is taught in every temple and chapel, and so it is.
But does that mean that Mother Mara would abandon us to the miseries of a cold or cruel marriage? Has she no mercy on those who have made mistakes?
No. Let no one say that Mother Mara is so unmerciful. For Mara is a Sunderer as well as Uniter. We "civilized" folk may have forgotten this. But they still know this well in the Western Reach. Along the Upper Bjoulsae, there is a temple to Mara where men and women go to end their unhappy marriages before the statue of Mara.
For they still remember there that Mara herself was once a wife tied to a cruel husband. Long before she was the wife of Our Father Akatosh, she was the wife of the Betrayer. She bore him children whom he stole from her and gave to another to raise. In her own household, she was humiliated and made a handmaid to the warrior he called his chief wife. Her place in her own marriage bed was taken by yet another: a debauched concubine who enflamed the lusts of her husband.
Bereft of her husband's embrace or the respect of her children, Mara wept. She watched her children turn from her gentle teachings and follow in the wicked ways of their father and stepmother. She loved her children still, but she could not abide their cruelty. At last she dried her face and resolved to leave her husband's household. She was love incarnate, but love cannot dwell where it is not returned.
Her husband took no notice of her leaving, wrapped up in the attentions of his concubine. But the one whom he had appointed Mistress of the household discovered soon that Mara had left, and she was enraged, for she prized nothing in life like her own dominion over others. Taking the form of a bird of prey, she flew out after the fleeing Mara. She meant to rend her with her cruel talons, and thus drive her back to their home.
Mara saw the bird hurtle down from the sky, but her heart was steadfast. She would not turn. The bird tore into her shoulders and scalp, and her blood fell upon the grass, mingled with her tears. And yet Mara pressed on.
All who saw her then shared in her sorrow, and some of her children followed after her, awoken once more to their mother's love by her sufferings. But they could not shield their mother from the wicked bird's attacks.
But one heard Mara's weeping from far away. Akatosh swept down from his perch on wings that overshadowed her tormentor's. He bore her away from her husband's land and promised her that if she would take him instead as her husband, she would have his undivided love, and the love of their children, for all ages.
Gladly, she gave her hand to the Great King, and in time she bore him children who revered her as their beloved mother. As for her first husband's children, the few who followed after her entered into her new household and Akatosh took them as his own children. She still grieved for the children she had left behind, but their hearts were darkened, and they never returned to her.
As Mother Mara once fled a hateful marriage, so do supplicants come to the temple of Mara the Sunderer to be released from their bondage. They come to this small temple not to dishonour Mara's love but to fully embrace it. Just as Mara gave herself to a better spouse, they pray before her statue to do the same.
Woe to those clerics who claim to worship Mara and yet uphold families that have nothing of her tender love within them. Seek Mara's mercy and know that she will cut away all your guilt, all your resentment, all your suffering. What she has once united can be sundered once again by her holy hand.
Second of Last Seed, 4E 198, Markarth
Nicolas,
My apologies for the late reply. I'd left Evermore before your letter arrived and they forwarded it on to Markarth via Solitude of all places. Shows how dangerous travel has become in the heart of the Reach, that no one would take a letter straight through. Don't worry for me, though. I've made some friends whose names I won't mention here, but know a lot about the old ways and stories. I have enough already to write a whole book on Finn, for one thing.
Yes, there is such a temple somewhere up the Bjoulsae. I won't name its exact location, since the Priestess there is already weary of their reputation and does not wish to attract trouble. The temple doesn't endorse the pamphlet your Thalmor Emissary found, but its Priestess said that the story of Mara the Sunderer is well-known in the area.
Both men and women travel long distances to the temple to perform the devotions they believe will put an end to their marriages. Since most marriages in the area were never officially registered anyway, they then feel quite free to form new attachments without any legal bother.
The temple's caretakers do not encourage or hinder such private devotions. But the temple does take in women fleeing mistreatment from their spouses. Once the temple's offered their protection to an applicant, an angry spouse or outraged family has to let the woman go. In such cases, the woman spends a year in service at the Temple and after that, no one will dare drag her back.
"It's not as if marriages don't end in other places," the priestess told me. "People here are a bit more honest about it."
She did add that she herself is in no way encouraging couples to disregard their vows before Mara. She usually deals with marriages where the bond has already been severed in practice by the violent deeds of a spouse.
I presume you sent me this pamphlet, though, because it's fascinating from a folkloric standpoint, not that you wanted me to expose heresy against Lady Mara. It is indeed fascinating: a blending of Aldmeri and Nord religion into a very rational but alien mixture. I find it ironic that it so offended your Thalmor Emissary, for it seems as if some long-dead Altmer missionary did a very good job undermining the Nord pantheon here. They couldn't convince the locals that Mara wasn't the wife of Shor, or untangle her from Kyne's service, but they divorced her from that household.
And yet, the text you've found doesn't call out Kyne or Dibella by name, since the author is quite aware that in our own cult, Kynareth and Dibella are honoured members of the Eight. I doubt that the original version of this story would be so kind. I also doubt such a version was ever written down, as the first tellers were not likely literate, and the implications would be as pleasing to a Direnni scribe as it was to the Thalmor Emissary. Mara as Lorkhan's cast-off wife, men as her first batch of children. Neither would a Nord scribe see fit to record such a vicious attack on Shor, Kyne and Dibella.
With love from your little sister,
Alys
There's one direct reference to divorce/a I've found in the Elder Scrolls (from the ESO quest Blood and Sand), though that doesn't mean there's no divorce in Tamriel. There are plenty of busted-up marriages, separations, and infidelity in lore, just oddly enough, I've rarely run across mention of someone remarrying while their first spouse is alive. It's a bit of a blank spot.
Tamriel on the whole takes marriage very seriously, with quite a few transfers of power and property taking place through marriage: Katariah, Elisif, Brara Morvayn, Arianna Valga, and possibly Millona Umbranox inherit their husbands' positions in their own rights. (And if Millona was actually the hereditary countess, she said she wouldn't be able to do anything about her husband becoming Count again, other than deny his identity. So either way, it's an example of how serious marriage bonds are.)
There's a lovely rant against the Divines in ESO Falsehoods and Fallacies of the Eight
That calls out Mara for exactly this:
"I spit upon Mother Mara and her conditional interpretations of love, and her laughable reverence for family even when said family is rotten to its core."
A more measured critic might indeed appeal over Mara's clergy's heads to the loving merciful mother.
But there's advocating for divorce, and then there's pissing off *everyone* with your Shor/Mara/Auri-El love triangle fanfiction . I mean, it's a logical conclusion for a population that's had both Nord (who see Mara as the tear-wife/concubine of Shor and handmaiden of Kyne, Shor's war wife/ head of the Nordic pantheon ) and Altmer (who see Mara as the wife and queen of Auri-El, head of the Aldmeri pantheon) rulers over the centuries, but it's not really going to be appreciated by outsiders.
The divorce temple is based off similar institutions in Edo-period Japan. It''s a completely different society than the Reach, so it wouldn't work the same, but the idea that a religious institution could disarm dangerous tensions in a community by overseeing divorce is the key.
When I posted this piece on the teslore subreddit, it spawned a massive discussion on divorce and marriage throughout Tamriel. I wish this site would allow links. Since it doesn't, I'll just say that my name over on reddit is NientedeNada if you're ever interesting in reading my teslore posts.