"If people had known that my father had taken up with a fox spirit, he would have been banished from the Capital, and I would never have been allowed in at all," Seimei says. "And at that time, having multiple wives was not terribly uncommon, at least not for the aristocracy. A court official might have two or three. The Emperor himself had several," he explains. "Although the difference between 'wife' and 'concubine' was not always that clear, especially where the Emperor was concerned."

Marriage meant something very different back in the Heian era.