Well, to be fair, in games where I have an actual harem, I don't 'court' (woo with the intents of marriage) any of them, I just go do stuff with them. You don't usually 'court' a harem girl, you just have fun with them. You don't generally marry the women in a harem, romance is not part of the deal in many cases. Sex is not love, and love is not sex, it is nice when they overlap, but friends with benefits should work, as should a sex slave (in the right genre), or any other form. There are any kinds of harems, and they are not all the same as a fully polyamorous relationship/marriage.
True, but all of them again have something of a "lasting relationship" (where relationship does not have to mean marriage, engagement, or going steady). Also, for me a harem needs a "center". Just some commune of 8 people who will "benefit" each other but are free to do whatever they want with whomever they like is an okay style of living, but to me not a harem. So as of now, possible oversights notwithstanding, I'd say for a constellation to feel "harem" to me (individually) needs to have a couple of things going on:
1) More than three people involved (I agree with the definition here).
2) One central person in whom everybody else is interested.
3) Everybody knows everything about the constellation and is okay with it.
4) Other persons of the harem may have relationships of any kind between them but not outside the harem, and they wouldn't usually have this relationship without the central character (some exceptions may exist, but "everyone with everyone" is not a harem to me). The central person may or may not pursue external relationships with or without approval from people in the harem.
5) A "long term commitment" - not necessarily from a legal point of view, like marriage, but the idea that for the forseeable future at least this arrangement will continue.
So for now for me, 1 and 2 look set in the long run, 3 has yet to materialize, as does 5. 4 would be a bit complicated to judge for me with Sally/Izzy if Izzy won't go for the MC.
I don't think anyone is openly courting the HM... Sally made it clear she isn't interested in a relationship. I think Claire is power drunk, Rachel has an infatuation on the HM but I don't think she sees her as his girlfriend, Debbie likes Sally, Amy likes sex, Liz is captain horny but she gets off on the reaction of others about her nakedness, she doesn't care if the HM is the one watching her naked or not and Lucy is in love with money. As for the consensual sex part, it's hard to say 'cause the only one you can have regular (butt) sex with is Amy and she herself has multiple consensual sexual partners... so maybe we're looking at this the wrong way and THERE IS AN HAREM IN THE GAME; AMY'S. (and we are part of it)
