Sex sells. It's the cliché advertising slogan that comes to mind every time you turn on the television, and it's true. From soap operas glorifying the drama of an affair to daytime talk shows mediating jilted spouses to news shows exposing womanizing politicians, the more illicit the relationship, the better. The same maxim applied to medieval Occitania and to the words of the troubadours. Married women were frequently the subject of these songs, portrayed as the neglected wife, the frightened victim of a jealous husband, the passionate lover, but still idolized by the voice of the troubadour. With stolen moments and secret glances, the noble woman plays modesty and resists the advances of her suitor. Or her? In the absence of her husband, what will prevent our noble heroine from falling into the arms of a smooth-talking artist? Although adultery is not always explicitly mentioned, the vivid descriptions of sensual trysts do more than suggest illicit activity. This fascination with unavailable women is curious but not inexplicable, whatever the truth behind the songs. To understand the interest in married women, we must first understand what marriage meant to the nobility. Far from the happy stories of romantic fairy tales, marriage in Occitania was a commercial arrangement with very little, if any, attention paid to the emotions of the couple involved. “On the whole, marriage was for them only an economic and political enterprise: its objectives were the expansion of the fiefdom, the consolidation of power and the continuation of their lineage. » Land and power were accumulated and passed down within the family and, as such, a woman's ability to bear legitimate children was extremely important. “…[T]he aristocracy, which in the 12th century...... middle of paper...... Paden, William D. and Frances Freeman Paden. Troubadour poems from the south of France. Cambridge, UK: DS Brewer, 2007. Paden, William D. "The Beloved Lady in Medieval Galician-Portuguese and Occitan Lyrical Poetry." La Corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2004): 69-84. Accessed April 2014. doi:10.1353/cor.2004.0031. Paden, William D., Jr., Mireille Bardin, Michele Hall, Patricia Kelly, F. Gregg Ney, Simone Pavlovich, and Alice South. “The Lady of the Troubadour: her marital status and her social rank.” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11, no. 2 (1999): 221-44. Accessed April 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173861. Paden, William D. "The Lady of the Troubadour Seen Through Thick History." Examples 11, no. 2 (January 1, 1999): 221-44. Accessed April 2014. doi:10.1179/104125799790497060.