For harem writers, how do you decide which girls actually get into a relationship with the MC?

[StrongArm]

Not a harem author, but a huge fan of history documentation, so I'm on the team "fantasy harems are impossible" for historical reasons. Historical harem lords are pretty much legalized slave owners since the girls were objects their families gave away for more power. And the girls were pretty much snakes in a henhouse, minus the hens. So all fangs and poison, and cloak and dagger. Imagine dirty politics crossbred with gang wars but everyone lives in the same house. And now tell me people actually want something like that?

Funny enough the Chinese harems are the most realistic fantasy harems since girls are pretty much just objects given away by their families for more power.

Also for most harems the rule of thumb is the more boring and traitless a character seems to be the higher the chances of ending in the harem. Prove me wrong ?

I agree with the snake pit part, anyone who reads history knows how vicious those girls could be.

But there had to have been at least a few that werent evil, like a lecherous lord that takes care of women who are in desperate financial need or in need of saving (yes, he takes advantage - but the girls are still saved). There had to have been at least SOME harems that were consensual back then.

Also, 'impossible' is a bit much. There are a few ways a guy can have harems both nowadays and historically. One is through money - having enough money to provide for multiple women. Another is through personality - this would work less back in historical times than it would today, but it should still be possible under the right circumstances. Annnnnd the most evil way, which happened the most back in historical times is a conquering warlord who takes girls from the people he conquered. Thankfully, we dont have too many of these assholes in modern times.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

Building Harem is harder than building a company, as it produce less profit than a company while being harder to maintain than a company.

You can't own multiple harem group and child harem group like you're going to own multiple company and their child company.

selling the assets of your harem is hard and will be met with worse backlash than you would if you're going to sell assets of your company.

You can't just sell your Harem group like you would like selling your company, and selling one or two Harem member to someone else isn't feasible either. You can't just get one guy owning 27% of your Harem either, or even worse : you can't sell 91% of the Harem stick to bigger company and keep owning the company while keeping the rest 9% stock as proof of ownership.

You also can't declare bankruptcy with Harem like you would with a company.

Employing people to be co-owner of your harem is hard, as getting people trustworthy of taking care of your wives is harder than getting some estabilished merchant to take care of your company.

The legality of harem is so hard, that you need to Power over law, Or at least have the power to rule the law, or have some power or saying when the ruler write the law, and maybe being able to bend the law with no backlash, if you want to be able to build a harem.

Social impact is also hard. Owning company is a undeniable sign of success, people will hate due to envy and jealously. But good people will simply think of company owner as the big shot.

But Owning harem is a controversy good for Conversation material and gossips, and even many good people will dislike them due to Harem considered contemptible and unfaithful (although it's actually more faithful and fair than cheating).

Getting break/vacation is harder, Retiring is near-impossible, and the backlash is usually accompanied with disaster or war. Unlike companies which could just peacefully being forced to closed or liquidated once it achieve it's purpose.