Okay wait. My first thought was “those knives are cool but if someone is gonna spend a fortune on a knife for me I’d rather they get me a chinese cleaver or a santoku” and okay. Type of knife has meaning.
Proposal knives and wedding knives aren’t the same, as wedding knives are to be forged together but for proposal knives:
Traditionally given by travelers to their non-travelling partners. It is also a common engagement knife during wartime.
Meaning: “I want to be your strength”
Historically associated with working and middle class.
Meaning: “I want to be your home”
Traditionally given to travellers by their non-travelling partner, or if both are to travel apart from each other.
Meaning: “I want to be with you always”
Long associated with the nobility, industrialization and the loss of perceived value of usable knives made them grow in popularity.
Meaning: “I want to watch (over) you”
Mostly common in rural communities, often seems to fall out of popularity but tends to regain meaning and use in recessions.
Meaning: “I want to work with you”
“You are my partner in all things”
Now for the wedding ritual.
One thing about rings is that they are visible and knives can’t always be (don’t know how weapons legislations keep up with this), so maybe being unmarried is what is visible: I offer a ribbon over one’s neck, a closed circle meaning you are for yourself. (I think the ribbon would likely fall out of use at some point, and might be reclaimed by some aros/aces later)
As a show of absolute trust, spouses hold wedding knives to each other’s throat and simultaneously cut off the other’s ribbon.
(yes, some political assassinations were carried out like that. Maybe Judith beheaded Holofernes not in her tent after the wedding but during the ceremony. Or maybe she didn’t and the duality of earning his trust by offering her throat/not cutting his and her beheading him later on is a whole motif)
A married person must be buried or incinerated with their wedding knife through their heart, so that their soul finds their spouse in the After. The widower is the one to plant it here, and when the widower dies in turn, either witnesses to the wedding or officiants carry on that purpose. If the widower remarried, their widower has to put both knives through their heart, and refusing to do so is a great disrespect.
Blue Beard’s last wife had a great many knives to push through him and maybe she had too much fun stabbing his corpse.
Before gay marriage was legal, we vandalized morgues and pushed a knife between our own’s ribs. There was this lesbian mortician, during AIDS, they threatened to take away her license but nobody wanted to touch these bodies - she was an angel amongst many and held so many shaking hands when they stabbed goodbye. One man had so many lovers they said it was never gonna fit, it was gonna be gory and wrong as everyone said they were, but she found them the thinnest knives and they all fit and it was a lot but she said it was beautiful his body went away with so much love it could barely contain it.
I’m making myself emotional.
The knifeplay porn in this universe must be wild.
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