Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because once I asked it started to bug me. What are romantic relationships like for the other races? Sylvari I’ve pretty much got figured out, their social mannerisms are pretty simple. Humans too because, well, I’m human. But what about norn, charr, and asura? How do couples work with those races? Do they stick together in an actual relationship, do they hook up just to reproduce? And what about sexuality and cross species interactions? Can a charr be gay and kick it with a human? I’m looking at you, Rytlock and Logan.

I’m just super ignorant on this topic and not sure where to look up the answers.

Well, keep in mind that it’s really not complicated or set in stone for any race. Over-formalized issues like weddings aside, relationships really just fall somewhere on a spectrum, and while each race may stereotypically fall at a given point on it there are always exceptions.

Asura are more likely to break up than humans, but along with norn are also the only other major race that performs marriage. There was a great interview that hit on the topic pre-launch, so I’ll leave it to speak for itself.

Norn and charr tend to be more casual. I don’t have one go-to source for them, but the norn on the whole seem to be fairly monogamous, investing heavily in a single mate, but also very comfortable with the idea of living apart- Braham’s parents spring to mind, as do Knut and . We often see one parent left behind to tend the home with the kids while the other returns to a semi-nomadic lifestyle, but there’s no indication that such a split constitutes a break-up. We see a lot of instances of norn describing their partners as mates instead of souses, so it’s possible there isn’t as much societal pressure to marry and ‘make things official’, so to speak.

Charr, from what little we see in game, seem to gravitate towards serial flings. We do occasionally hear them use the term mate, but for the most part we see a very casual, possibly non-exclusive approach. Given that warbands are explicitly to charr society what families are to most others, that’s not too surprising. It’s also worth mentioning that charr… ‘courtship’ behavior, for lack of a better descriptor, is very confrontational. Galina Edgecrusher and Snarl Backdraft, who are the only prominent charr couple I can name off the top of my head, are a great example of this, so read through their dialogue if you want to get a feel for it. Aggression and competitiveness seem to be fundamental aspects of the typical charr relationship, perhaps another reason they don’t seem as important- a relationship that explosive, I imagine, could easily fall apart. Interestingly, I don’t know that I can name any examples of charr hooking up within their own warbands, but if that’s truly a trend there are more possible explanations than I have time to speculate on.

None of the races seem to hook up ‘just to reproduce’. There’s been some player speculation that perhaps that’s something that happens with the charr, but there’s no evidence for it; it’s just a guess based off their culture’s military values.

As for cross-racial relationships… thanks to aforementioned time constraints, I’m just going to link ya the latest thread on the topic . You’ll probably find the answers you’re looking for there.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

We see a lot of instances of norn describing their partners as mates instead of souses, so it’s possible there isn’t as much societal pressure to marry and ‘make things official’, so to speak.

From the wiki:
Two norn will marry, but only if they are of equal status. During the wedding, someone must speak on behalf of the couple in order to show that they are a worthy match for each other.

So it’s not that there isn’t societal pressure to marry; it’s that there’s societal pressure on who you can officially marry. But that doesn’t mean they won’t hook up and have kids out of wedlock, which would likely still be considered a norm.

About Charr, could also reference the one couple in a set of shorts they released. I think it was ash legion male, iron (or blood, I forget) female. Very hostile toward each other, but after the squad got wiped out and he died on the field, she arrived at an Ash legion Farhar with her child (fathered by the ash legion member).

Scratcherclaw.2713:

But that doesn’t mean they won’t hook up and have kids out of wedlock, which would likely still be considered a norm.

That’s what I was getting at. Norn are comfortable doing things that way, whereas human cultures tend to see marriage as ideally being a prerequisite to getting frisky. The stigma doesn’t seem to be there with norn. (Granted, I don’t know how much of that stigma we see with Tyrian humans either, but as the OP pointed out it’s a lot easier to use the real world to fill in the blanks with them.)