Treadmill Thoughts

Jun 17, 2011 15:46

 If I were doing a Game of Thrones-type series:

King dies (of testicular cancer) leaving no heir of the body. Under the succession law, the next king must be a male heir of the body of (Q, ruler several generations ago)* and king was the last one; the only remaining heir of the body is a second cousin girl child. Dynastic crisis. "Regency council" ( Read more... )

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jeffr23 June 17 2011, 23:03:50 UTC
You've got a lot of plot points hanging on a degree of legalism that is alien to the psuedo-medieval-Europe type of setting you're evoking. More likely to sort out who has the most swords and money and pile on the justifications afterward.

Also, it's tough to position Q's reign where this can work: either you've got a long, long succession of kings being totally irresponsible about the 'heir and a spare' thing to account for the lack of cadet lines [and simultaneously extremely responsible about not fathering any bastards], or else whatever family it was that ran the show before Q should be a player. (Or, if none, then dissolution of the kingdom into smaller polities should be a position with some popularity.)

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drelmo June 17 2011, 23:21:54 UTC
The relevant succession law dates to 1701 (descendants of Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of James), so it's only a couple of generations removed from the English Civil War. Which is sort of the point -- if you're trying to evolve out of an era when swords and armies decided things, that's what you do. So what happens when the founder turns out to be something of a whiffer, family-wise? Lineages die out all the time; the population geneticists tell us that in humans, either a lineage dies out in a few generations, or it spreads out and becomes part of the background. A few unhappy marriages, a few plagues, a few unlucky accidents, a few celibate family members, a few infertilities*, and suddenly there are no direct descendants of the founder. There are an epic number of Roosevelts and Kennedys; there are no Washingtons or Lincolns.

*I forgot to mention, the cancer comes from an undescended testicle.

As I say, Faction 1 and Faction 2 have the best other claim on the throne, dating from lines collateral or prior to Q.

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jeffr23 June 17 2011, 23:48:47 UTC
At a certain level of responsibility-pressure, lineages will probably tend to do a lot better than the general population at large of same. Even if they have to cheat shamelessly [look the other way at or even encourage the wife's infidelity if the husband is suspected to be infertile, acknowledge a bastard or two, discretely adopt a foundling after a miscarriage and declare it to be the natural child, even fake an entire pregnancy to adopt such a kid] (we aren't positing magical DNA tests here, are we?). And that level of pressure is probably going to kick in at least at the "last surviving cadet line" level even if the royals themselves are under un-cooptable scrutiny at all times...

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immlass June 18 2011, 00:30:06 UTC
.... and this right here is part of the reason why I don't want to read GOT now.

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