Talk:Alice/@comment-30688411-20161207031955/@comment-29602226-20161215215727

In Europe, the minimum legal age to marry was twelve for women and fourteen for men. You weren't supposed to have sex before marriage, and if you did, it was considered statutory rape (I think there was an upper age limit for statutory rape that was different in different countries, but it could be as high as 25 years old; people couldn't have sex or marry without permission from their parents before being 25 years in some periods in medieval Spain).

Also, while law forbade people younger than 12-14 years to marry, that doesn't mean that it was right for all 12 years old to marry; medieval people gave more importance to physical development than to chronological age or mental development... if a girl looked like an adult and was older than 12, then she could marry. If she still looked like a little girl, she wouldn't be considered fit for marriage.