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archersgoon · 1 month

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ok so. royal succession in skuldenore.

first off i think it's reasonable to assume that pre-unspeakable lumatere, belegonia, osteria, charyn and maybe sarnak & sorel function off at the very least quite similar laws of inheritance that are basically semi-salic. i'm going to talk about them mostly separately but that's the assumption i'm operating under. i'm putting the rest under a readmore

I'm covering Belegonia first, since they're the only ones with explicit coverage of succession laws within the text.

(from Ferragost)

So what I think is happening here (I spent most of the morning reading up on various systems of succession but i remain a novice) is a semi-Salic succession, in that women cannot inherit the throne, but male claimants through their maternal line are considered valid.

So Tolliver is enough of a threat to the duchess that he'd be killed if she was aware of his existence (although this is due to his & Tildie's potential inheritance of what are currently her lands rather than royal succession; this also implies that inheritance outside of the succession is governed differently but we'll discuss that later), and it's mentioned that it would be very plausible to build up a power base in his favour if there were no legitimate male heirs, even if there are legitimate women within the family. I think some level of primogeniture is also a reasonable assumption, because otherwise there's no way in hell the duchess would be a duchess when she could've been queen. Although arguably she is cool with murder, kings probably have better security than bastards though. Actually Celie says 'oldest daughter' specifically let's make the assumption based off that. Anyway that implies that with the current law the eldest son is expected to inherit. To recap: in Belegonian succession, the eldest son of the current king is expected to inherit. If the king has no sons, or male heirs via any daughters, then his eldest brother will inherit, followed by male heirs of his body, etc. You get the picture.

Women are able to hold land in some capacity, although I'm not as certain here. Certainly the duchess maintains her husband's holdings after his death, and any illegitimate child regardless of gender is considered a threat (although this may be the threat of male offspring -- from memory, it's not super clear). I don't really have great evidence here, but I would favour something resembling male primogeniture.

Lumatere:

This one's a little shakier, and mostly goes off various implications. I think that prior to the days of the unspeakable Lumateran succession was the same semi-Salic system as Belegonia, and post-curse-breaking is now based on the same male primogeniture system used by the Flatlander nobility.

My key evidence for this is Tilda and Carles' need for a son. I think if they were in a position where their daughters could inherit, they probably wouldn't have kept trying, after Jasmina at least. This is mostly because we know that their trying for a son was very difficult on Tilda, and the impression given of Carles is that he isn't the kind of man who'd kill his wife for a son. However, if we assume that they have the same rules as Belegonia, if Carles lacked heirs then the throne would go to his cousin upon his death. Given his knowledge of his cousin's nature, plus Tilda's stated dedication to the royal house's survival, and the imposter functioning as a puppet for Charyn, if this were the case it makes a lot of sense that they were so set on a son. Additionally, they stop trying immediately after Balthazar (Isaboe being an accident), so I do think this is the situation. I know the other kingdoms back the imposter as king between the assassinations and the curse, but this isn't really useful given that that was based on the belief that everyone else was dead.

As things stand now, I do think the succession is different. First and foremost, Isaboe is queen regnant. To be frank I'd argue that she had to kill the imposter quickly with plausible deniability and no trial (sorry Finn!) to protect her claim, because her larger neighbours may have seen him as the better option (Charyn certainly would have), despite everything. Anyway. She's queen, and I think Jasmina is probably heir presumptive. I say presumptive rather than apparent because the succession still clearly prefers male heirs. Before her son is born she explicitly parallels him to Balthazar and refers to him as a king, meaning that he would displace Jasmina. When she's worrying about possibly having no other children, there's no mention of a succession crisis, and while it was a personal and emotional moment she's practical enough that she'd have that in mind regardless. Also, Celie mentions changing the law in Ferragost like it's obvious. Because it is. Because that's what Isaboe, her closest friend, has done.

Flatlander inheritance also seems to be male primogeniture. Celie never even thinks of inheriting she is getting married off, but Beatriss inherited her father's estates with seemingly no trouble. Although it is unclear when this occurred, I think it was probably prior to the curse given that no mention of her father is made when Seranonna claims she's dead, or prior to that when she's arrested.

Charyn:

The situation in Charyn is so fucked, but we'll try anyway. It's mentioned that there's no way in hell Charyn would accept a woman as monarch, but Tariq's claim is primarily through Quintana, as they would've made him king even if his legal father wasn't ofLascow. However, it's not clear if this was due to the extenuating circumstances. From memory, there's no mention of the gender of ofLascow's royal grandparent from which his claim derives, so we can't use him either. I think it's most likely they do semi-Salic normally as well, but I'm not discounting their being previously Salic, given that they aren't really as closely intertwined culturally as Belegonia and Lumatere seem to be. Also the whole not marrying the mothers of their children thing the monarchs have apparently been doing for the last couple of generations makes things even less clear, but let's just assume they had no legitimate children and were legitimising their bastards so I can move on.

As for other inheritance and titles, it's uh. Even less clear. Provincari are primarily by some form of primogeniture (given that Orlanda was able to become provincara in Jidia), but the extent to which this is gendered is unclear (Phaedra doesn't seem to have siblings, but also seems to have never been in the running; it's probable this was related to her lastborn status and resulting foreign marriage), plus if they don't like you the locals can do inheritance via election. There's mention of provincial nobility (Sol of Alonso's nobles were going to send his ass to hell), and I'm going to assume they also do male primogeniture, because frankly they get very little mention. No one's talking about whether or Florenza would've inherited her father's title, or if that's even how it works.

Osteria: there's mention of a prince (I would assume a younger son, because a Philip/Mary situation would have been deeply inadvisable), an archduke and his niece. Given that it's Osteria, they're probably just doing the same thing as Belegonia. I really can't be bothered here.

Sarnak: while they clearly have different customs relating to marriage (age-related at least) I think they probably function similarly as well, given we know they have a king. They're portrayed pretty similarly to Charyn and Sorel as well (within FotR at least). Not exactly. Feminist.

Yutlind Nord: their king is a warlord who only recently established control over the country. Given that they did rock up to the husband-choosing event it definitely seems that they aim to legitimise their ruling house in the eyes of the rest of the continent. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that they'll be following the established succession laws upheld by most of the continent. So, semi-Salic. I don't know if there are any other nobles who need to worry about inheritance, so I won't.

Yutlind Sud: I'm not sure what their inheritance would look like. We know they have a king, and his son is his heavily-protected heir, so that pretty much rules out inheritance by election, and we see no women in positions of power. So even though culturally they are pretty different from the rest of the continent I think at least the royals and some of the tribes within the country use similar succession laws to the rest of the continent, they just developed them at least partially independently.

Avanosh: they are trying very hard to marry off Feliciano. I think the implication is that he's his uncle's heir. Given that they were previously part of Charyn (maybe the provincari evolved from dukes of some kind? A common origin? IDK) I think the succession is probably basically the same.

Sendecane: lol. lmao, even

Sorel: Probably Salic or semi-Salic. Given how Isaboe's treated in Sorel I think it's pretty safe to say there's no context (outside of the slave-master and noble-commoner dynamics) in which women are on equal footing with men (assuming they are otherwise social equals).

Anyway, to conclude: I think the primary method of succession is that described right at the start in the Belegonia, with Lumatere as the only notable exception, and everyone else mostly unclear but favouring the semi-Salic system.

#ok it's done #god knows how they run sif and pietrodore #lumatere #trying to write 400 words for my german portfolio: screaming crying throwing up #writing 1500 words of mush on a deeply whatever ya series from a decade+ ago with frankly horseshit worldbuilding if you think on it too--#long: easy peasy: 👍#<- that's not true actually i had to go read forty pages of historical succession structure in europe for this

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