While marriages were closely linked with political solidarity and alliance, political considerations often changed rapidly and flexible marriage strategies had to be followed. One component of this flexibility derived from the systematic demotion of women’s status, so that even princesses could marry a wide range of aristocrats. The other component stemmed from the Makassar’s eschewal of prescriptive or preferential marriage, as indicated by the enormous sweep of consanguineal relationships which, from my database, can be reconstructed between wives and their related husbands.

Far more relationships trace their closest common ancestor through step siblings born of a single polygynous man (Table 5) than to a conjugal pair (Table 4). Since divorces occurred frequently, we might expect that some of the consanguineal spouses shared, as their single closest common ancestor, a woman who mothered children to different men; but I could not find any examples. Both points emphasize the structural importance of noble and especially royal polygyny.

Because almost all male rajas belonged to an unbroken royal patriline, a mala raja rarely married a related woman unless their closest common ancestry involved one of the raja’s royal forefathers. 28/55 of the marriages between recorded relations were of this type. The royal forefather was two generations back on both sides in 13 cases and no more than three generations back on either side in 23 cases. That is, the royal lines frequently intermarried (Figure 1) to maintain their position as the ruling class distinct from the nobility. Men removed from a royal core could strive to marry a raja’s daughter, but the enhancement of their own prospects then became dependent on the authority of the daughter’s royal core. The Malay ruling class maintained its central position in the same way (Gullick 1958).

N.B.    The “FZD & MBD” relationship involved three common grandparents.

N.B.    “FS” stands for father’s son’s, i.e. step-brother’s, and “FD” stands for father’s daughter’s, i.e. step-sister’s. The “FFDD & MFSD” relationship involved two polygynous grandfathers as the equally closest common ancestors.