![It's almost as if kids have no idea wtf is going on [540x1326 - 971KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/Uq7M4M.png){kind=link}
It was not. It virtually only occured in the upper classes, especially in northern europe.
The law allowed for couples to marry without parental consent. That was what age of consent meant. It was the age at which you could marry against your father’s wishes.
In sweden arranged marriages were very common. When you have land and animals, you're going to need heirs. Generally women weren't pushed together with someone they weren't happy with, but marriage was still a family matter, not an emotional one.
The same is true for Germanic peoples. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)
I'm not calling you a liar, but can you provide your sources? The research I have done runs contrary to your claims, and I am willing to have my perception changed on this topic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern
The church also clipped the ability of parents to retain kinship ties through arranged marriages by forbidding unions in which the bride did not clearly agree to the union. ....
About 1140, Gratian established that according to canon law the bonds of marriage should be determined by mutual consent and not consummation, voicing opinions similar to Isaac's opinion of forced marriages; marriages were made by God and the blessing of a priest should only be made after the fact. Therefore, a man and a woman could agree to marry each other at even the minimum age of consent- fourteen years for men, twelve years for women- and bring the priest after the fact. But this doctrine led to the problem of clandestine marriage, performed without witness or connection to public institution.[37] The opinion of the parents was still important, although the final decision was not the decision to be made by the parents,[38] for this new consent by both parties meant that a contract between equals was drawn rather than a coerced consensus.[39]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line
Class differences played a great role in when a couple could marry; the wealthier that a couple was, the likelier that they were to marry earlier. Noblewomen and gentlewomen married early, but they were a small minority;[24] a thousand marriage certificates issued by the Diocese of Canterbury between 1619 and 1660 show that only one bride was aged thirteen years, four were fifteen, twelve were sixteen, seventeen were seventeen, and the other 966 of the brides were aged nineteen years or older when they married for the first time. The church stipulated that both the bride and groom must be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their families; the most common ages of marriage were 22 for women, 24 for men; the median ages were 22.8 for women and 25.5 for men; the average ages were 24 years for women and nearly 28 years for men. The youngest brides were nobility and gentry.[25]
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