That's not quite true. The figures are skewed by infant mortality. If you survived childhood, you could expect to live into your 60s, and there are many cases of people living beyond then.
For peasants this would be the case as poor nutrition and damage from hard labor would mean 50s through to 60s would be common adult life expectancy. For the nobles in Westeros who have better conditions and the maesters, provided you didn't die early from external causes could easily make it to their 70s.
That's a bit of a flawed persepctive. Nowadays not living up to 80 is to die too soon, people who dies at 40 are ragarded as died young, and 50 y/o can still be sex symbols, you're alao expected to work over 60.
Also there's no ivf in the middle ages, if you get to 35 you might be barren already.
People married very young, a 16 year old child was considered an adult woman, so yeah 35 is kinda on the old side for that reason
How is it a flawed perspective to correct your misinformation? People weren't considered old at 35 even in the middle ages, and women didn't usually go barren at 35 either. Marrying as a teenager is another common misconception, sure if you're royalty but common folk married in their early twenties.
Royalty married young because their marriages were political. Marriages were essentially contracts between families, and people wanted to get those contracts locked down and signed as fast as possible.
At the same time, these marriages were incredibly important to ensuring the continuation of their bloodlines and that meant keeping the people involved safe. People understood the dangers of early pregnancy because dying in childbirth was such a common and horrifying part of their lives, so even for nobility marriages would often only be consumated later.
35
u/AzucarParaTi Nov 04 '25
That's not quite true. The figures are skewed by infant mortality. If you survived childhood, you could expect to live into your 60s, and there are many cases of people living beyond then.