Marriage of An Heraldic Heiress
If a heraldic heiress marries an armiger then, instead of impaling her arms on the sinister side of his as would be usual in the marriage to a woman whose father bore arms, he displays her father's arms on a small shield over the centre of his shield – an "escutcheon of pretence" for as long as there is no blood male in her extended family. Her husband never owns her inherited arms and they cannot pass on his death to any of his sons who are not also hers.
Read more about this topic: Heraldic Heiress
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or heraldic:
“With my desire to write he seemed in full sympathy, and in urging our early marriage he argued that my first necessity was leisure in which to develop and to master my craft. It appeared to me that with such a man as teacher and guide I could not fail, and it was in a queer mixture of young love and vaulting ambition that I became a wife.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)