: Really, I'm not entirely sure. A lot of good reasons listed here, though:
: companionship, alliances and politics, etc. It could also be a method for
: "claiming" a woman, as bad as that sounds: This is my woman now,
: stay away from her or we're going to have problems.

Isn't that ultimately reproductive control? She's going to have my babies and nobody else's. But in order to guarantee that you need to know for sure that her babies are all your babies.

Doesn't that conflict with the idea that a male shouldn't know who his children are?

OK she would be the only one laying his eggs if he can watch her round the clock. But then her eggs would be dropped into a communal nursery and mixed up with all the others. So if she was able to sleep around then he'd never know that she did it. It doesn't take long to have a quickie and Sangheili males can't spend all day with their wife. They have duties and distractions.

And if child rearing is communal then everybody puts the same amount of effort into it so there is no extra cost for a male to spread his seed as wide as possible. If 1 female can lay X eggs at a time then N females can lay X x N eggs. Monogamy doesn't seem to be the winning strategy given what we have been told of their child rearing practices.

-PS because love is so hooman.