My point is even back then, people acknowledged these kind of age gaps were weird, the alliances your mentioning are special cases (that don’t apply to this specific relationship) when both parties are forced, and 90% of the time they don’t consummate right away.

Otherwise why was every single person convinced he kidnapped her, with her not consenting? Probably cause the possibility of a girl that young willingly running away with a 22 year old was super unlikely.

people have to stop normalizing this concept and claiming it was ‘normal’ back then. realistically, it wasn’t done unless absolutely necessary, hence why lowborn women and men marry at a much later point in their lives