Alle Kunst ist der Freude gewidmet

You make some really interesting points here and it reminds me of another conversation that I had on the FF.net forums, except that was in reference to some of the potential issues that could come from the apparent lack of marriage in Innes' and Vanessa's ending, specifically in reference to what would happen with the royal succession.

This kind of thing is so hard to speculate on for some of the games though because so little is given in those games on how political succession would function. Even how much acceptance non-married couples might find within society can be hard to speculate on, although I'd say that there is probably enough background in FE9/1O to say that gossip (A lot of it mean-spirited) is probably a given, particularly from the nobles that might still have issues with Elincia and might want to use this information to hurt her or her credibility (That, in itself, is interesting to consider because while I doubt that Lucia would be too terribly bothered by what people said about her, I do think it would bother her if her actions were used to undermine Elincia or Geoffrey.). I don't know how Bastian would fair with that kind of attention, although he also strikes me as the sort that wouldn't care too much that people gossiped about him (People probably already do >_>), but he would also probably be unhappy if the situation was used to hurt the people that he cares about.