In addition to the chimney and potato issue from my earlier post...

[conuly]

northern Europe (including the British Isles) did not have eating forks until the 17th century at the earliest. The eating fork wasn't commonplace in Italy until the 14th century, and it took a while to spread out from there.

I don't care how refined and polite your character is, if your setting predates the arrival of forks in her region she washes her hands and eats with her fingers the way God intended. You can show her good manners by demonstrating that she will "let no morsel from her lippës fall, Nor wet her fingers in her saucë deep". Probably she doesn't double dip either.

Comments

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Granted. But how they were violated tended to be intentional. Or pointed to a custom that authorities were trying, possibly futilely, to change. In any fantasy setting one is free to create sumptuary laws to fit or discomfit world building.

Laws typically point to things that people do. If no one does them, no law is needed to prohibit the things.

[gwydion]

This, this, this.

[conuly]

Laws typically point to things that people do. If no one does them, no law is needed to prohibit the things.

IDK. The annals of stupid laws suggest otherwise. Then again, we can assume that one person did whatever-it-is, and it caused a whole thing, and then they said "It's a free country, there's no law saying I can't!" and now there is one.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Most stupid laws are ones that have been retained well past their use by dates, were constructed to allow someone to say they took a stance or tangle up an adversary in a difficult to parse law or are for something normal people wouldn't think people would do and are sadly mistaken (cf. Having to prohibit stowing hazardous materials in crew quarters.)

Not being even legal adjacent, there may be options I'm unaware of.

[conuly]

The two which spring to mind are one about it being a crime to carry food in your backpocket, and another about it being unlawful to let your donkey sleep in a tin bathtub on a porch.

The first, at the core, turns out to be a law against luring horses away from their property and then claiming them as "your" horse, after all, it followed you home.

The second is because one person did it one time, and there was a freak flood, and it took a long time to rescue the panicked donkey, and this could all have been avoided if the animal had been properly stabled.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

That first one is an interesting way of legislating without point blank Saying Something. I am intrigued.

If the donkey had been properly stabled, would it have drowned, and thus not needed rescue? I'm wondering if that law was the best they could compose to make sure the pain of an ass endeavor would not be forgotten.

[conuly]

IIRC, the animals in the stable were all fine, because they weren't floating around in a bathtub, and so they were able to simply walk to higher ground.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Oh, good. I do wonder if that donkey was special needs that it was sleeping on the porch in the first place? But I am no expert on equines.