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The course of true love never did run smooth, on a midsummer night or at any other time. The Church has its say, there are social conventions, and individual hearts ignore either at will. Some Definitions
Love is a loaded word. When the Church uses it, it usually means agape, a universal love that everyone is supposed to show everyone else. Fillial or familial love is occassionally distinguished.
Eros, or romantic love, is a contentious idea in Theah. According to the Church of the Prophets, it's nothing more than the sin of Lust. Poets claim it's something more, a calling of one soul to another.
Lust is a sin, one of the Seven Deadlies. Looking at someone with Lust reduces them to a coveted object. It also overwhelms good judgement. While both the Vaticine Church and the Objectionist Church acknowledge that a certain amount of carnality is required for the perpetuation of humanity, man's path to Theus is through reason. To act too often in Lust is to act as animals do, and to squander the Creator's greatest gift, that of rational thought, in favor of mindless rutting.
Chastity is an absence of Lust. A husband and wife are ideally chaste: they respect each other, enjoy each other's company and even enjoy marital relations in a temperate fashion.
Desire is the word poets like to use for what those in eros feel for each other. It connotes the same longing and hunger as Lust, but without losing sight of the humanity of the desired person. Indeed, ideally while eros may spring from an appreciation of physical beauty, with contemplation it evolves into a longing for the inner beauty of the beloved. The Church disputes that this is possible. A love of the inner self, they contend, would not result in such physical responses.
Celibacy is simply not having sex.
Marriage is a social contract on Theah, undertaken to form strong families. Husbands and wives are expected to love (agape) each other. Part of the social contract is sexual fidelity (except in Vodacce) to one's spouse.
Adultery is a married person having sex with someone who is not one's spouse. Both parties are guilty of adultery (even if one of them is unmarried). Because it breaks the marriage contract (except in Vodacce), it is a sin.
Fornication is two unmarried people having sex. It's not a sin in the eyes of the church. However, it strongly suggests that you're guilty of the sin of Lust.
Sex acts other than intercourse aren't explicitly forbidden but, like fornication, suggest Lust.
Maybe surprisingly, the local political situation can have as much or more effect on public morals than the local church. Western branches of the Church of the Prophets are fairly consistent on the sins and virtues; some Objectionist schools of thought are a little more or less permissive than Vaticine orthodoxy. The Ussurans, lacking the rules of the Second and Third Prophets, take the most negligent attitude of all. (And anyway, what else are they going to do during those long winters?)
But a local ruler can make or break local taboos. The youth of one Castillian rancho suffered greatly when a doña decided that all unmarried people should live discrete and chaste lives to benefit their souls - and created a special police force to make sure that no one was sneaking off to enjoy amorous embraces. On the other extreme, anything goes in Emperor Leon's courts, where concepts like "sin" and "moderation" are actively scorned.
So while traveling through Theah, would-be lovers should check the local customs. Although there are few strong sexual taboos in the Vaticine and Objectionist credos, local habit and preference can modify that.
Theah is a class-based society. There are nobles, there are gentry, there is a middle class of merchants, soliders and artisans, and there are the common farmers. There are distinctions made between and within classes.
Stereotypically, the highest and lowest classes are the most easy-going about sexual matters. The nobility do have to worry about legitimate inheritance, and this is dealt with in different ways. In Vodacce, the women are simply controlled. Eisen actually tend to expect faithful spouses. (If you don't like your arranged-mariage spouse, you suffer; it's the Eisen way.) Many of the nobles in other nations are happy to come to agreements - after some period of fidelity, during which a wife provides her husband with an heir and a backup son, either side is permitted to carry on discrete affairs. These are very broad stereotypes, though, and shouldn't be taken as a baseline.
The common folk are typically very easy-going about premarital relations, although if a pregnacy results, so does a marriage. Marriages are supposed to be faithful; if one or the other wanders, the local priest will try to set things right.
It's the middle classes who are usually most worried about their appearance of morality. The upper classes don't have to impress anyone; the lower classes don't have anyone to impress. It's the middle class that needs to create a respectable name for itself and so be discrete about with whom it does what.
While encounters and liasons across class lines expected, serious relationships are not. You dally with the maid; you don't marry her.
Vodacce is notable for its one-sided romantic noble culture. In Castille, at least, both men and women are more or less expected to have fiery, tempestuous hearts. In Vodacce, only the noble men do. They express these to courtesans, since their wives are of course good, chaste Vaticine girls whom they would shock and scandalize with such talk - never mind such behavior. It would be barbaric to subject a wife's delicate sensibilities to the untamed passion of the virile Vodacce man.
The wife's actual thoughts on the matter are, of course, never solicited.
There is an excellent essay on Thean romances in "Knights of the Rose and Cross" which I will not duplicate here, since it is copyrighted. In briefest outline: love and desire proceed from the good character of the beloved. Tests of love are expected. Rewards for passing tests are expected. Discretion is most definitely expected, as is kindness and tact if the romance is ever ended. Even in Theah, not every passionate affair is True Love Forever material.
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