One thing that struck me, rather than the formal vs informal commitment thing, was the striking *lack* of any kind of lasting, non-blood-kin commitments for any of the main characters except Gan. One can make out reasons why none of them show signs of serious relationships, whether legalised or not ...

Jenna and Vila have rather precarious and unstable lifestyles, which might make maintaining one harder;

Cally? Well, we don't know that one-on-one relationships are something an Auron telepath would even consider, and as a guerilla, she might fight shy anyway;

Dayna was too young and isolated on Sarran (I do not *want* to call whatever she had with Justin a serious relationship);

Soolin - like Jenna, an unstable lifestyle plus (possibly?) serious trust problems arising from the trauma in her childhood;

Avon was involved with Anna, but that seems to have been a covert relationship, since she *was* married; also, he does not commit at all easily;

Tarrant was in the military (that normally doesn't preclude marriage, but might make meeting the right woman harder); Travis as well, plus he's wedded to his obsession.

Servalan's wedded to power;

Blake's devoted to the cause of the common man, and would be too aware of the dangers inherent in his chosen path to risk it.

All quite good reasons, *but* the overriding impression I get is that real, open commitment of whatever kind might in fact be less common than in our own society.

JMO. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.