by Emma
What is a Noble?
Start with the basics. A noble is someone who is of, or belongs to, a hereditary class that has special social or political status in a country or state; of the aristocracy. In Tortallan terms, that means a noble is someone from a family that has lands and a title. For the vast majority of people, that means that they are born noble though there are recorded cases of people being granted lands by the King, usually as a reward (George and Raoul are two examples, as well as the Mindelan family).
Nobles are always named for their fief, so their name is always X of Y. For example, Alanna of Trebond or Raoul of Golden Lake. There is a complete ban on using any fief listed in the books.
Childhood
Most noble children would not have been raised by their parents. It would very likely have been common for babies to be wet-nursed (though there is no direct reference to this happening in Tortall, it was common in Medieval Europe). Small children would have been cared for by a nurse,
like Maude cared for Alanna and Thom. Once noble children were older they would also have been likely to study basic mathematics and literacy, along with subjects such as basic fighting for boys and household skills for girls.
Around the age of ten, many noble children would be sent away to continue their education. It is clear from the opening of Alanna: the First Adventure that for girls this meant going to the convent and for boys either being sent to the palace or to Mithran priests.
Noblemen
Most families would pay for the eldest son in the family to undergo knighthood training, but not all of them could afford to pay for all of their sons to do so. That left several alternatives. Younger sons could go into priesthood by training at a Mithran temple. If they had the Gift they could also train at the University in Corus, the City of the Gods, or the Imperial University in Carthak. Other young noblemen might have tutors at home until they were of an age to marry.
A nobleman's task was to protect his fief and his family. Most men would be involved in the politics of court life, trying to advance themselves and their family. Many would also be knights and therefore required to fulfill their duty to the crown. Others might become diplomats, judges, or advocates (lawyers). Whatever their role at court, it would be common for noblemen to spend many months away from home.
Noblewomen
We don't know much about the experience of girls at the convent, but it definitely involved both academic classes and training in etiquette, dancing and other 'feminine' pursuits. Girls left the convent around the age of sixteen to go to the palace. There, they were presented to the court and other nobles. The vast majority of noblewomen needed to marry, after all, and the palace in Corus was the social center where they could meet eligible men, young or otherwise.
Of course, after marriage, the next duty of a noblewoman was to have a child to carry on the family line. Boys were preferable, as they carried the family name. In Tortall, a new law states that the eldest child inherits rather than the eldest son. This has had a huge impact on the nobility and their attitudes towards women. It also led to a number of legal problems. Even still, noblewomen had an awful lot of power in their own way. They would spend most of their lives managing their husband's fief. Even those who were married would still be in charge of the day to day running of their home and lands.
Note: If your female character is over the age of about thirteen, she can't be a knight, as there is no mention in the books of any other women training aside from Kel and Alanna. It goes against the canon of the books, so female knights will not be accepted as characters. Female pages will have trouble being accepted for the same reason as male pages--there's just no time in a page's schedule to be running off to hang out at the Little Court or the Inn. It is possible that a character might have a daughter training as a knight, but this would have been rare and highly unlikely. The family would have faced huge prejudices from those around them, and even somewhere moderately progressive like the Little Court, many people would be appalled by the idea of someone actually letting their daughter train as a knight.
Marriage
The focus on marriage in Tortall was money and politics, not love. Arranged marriages would be common, many having been arranged while the children concerned were still in the cradle (Cleon and his wife are a good example here of what was 'normal'). Marrying for love was a luxury few could afford. Girls would be raised with the expectation that they would marry in their teens, probably to their parent's choice or at least to someone that their parents approved of. For a noble girl to have a choice and the final say in who she married would be almost unheard of. Those who did marry for love would often face huge objections from their family and risk being cut off financially through disinheritance.
Virginity would be highly prized for noblewomen, mainly because the theory was that if a girl was a virgin at marriage, there could be no doubt about who had fathered any children. Of course, this would not necessarily have been what happened in practice. Both men and women would probably have had affairs if their marriage was unhappy, rather than getting divorced. We don't know if divorce was even legal in Tortall, but it certainly wouldn't have been an easy process if it was.