On 25/07/2014 05:34, Freelance Traveller wrote:

> 1. Cognatic Primogeniture: Descent in the senior male line only. If the
> line becomes extinct, go back to the most recent generation where the
> heir had a brother, and follow the brother's line - through males only -
> to the present day. This was a relatively common pattern among European
> royalty. (An obvious variation on this could be FEMALE 'cognatic'
> primogeniture - which appears to be the canonical [or at least
> semi-canonical] mode for inheritance in the Matriarchy of Mora (and thus
> for the Duchy of Mora).)

> 5. Matrilineal descent can complicate matters, especially if power vests
> in the male. In matrilineal cognatic primogeniture, your son isn't your
> heir; rather, it's your eldest sister's eldest son that's your heir -
> and your son may be the heir of your wife's eldest brother. If it's not
> _primogeniture_, it can get even more complex. Or reflect that -
> patrilineal descent, but power vests in the female.

This is fairly common in parts of Micronesia and (according to a
flatmate I had who was from Vanuatu) it can lead to interesting family
politics, because while your sister doesn't own the family fortune (you
do), she is the one raising your heir and he will be managing day-to-day
running of the estate when you are too old to work. Be nice to your
(eldest) sister, or she might raise your nephew to hate you and give you
an unpleasant old age!

> 6. The way the Warrant of Restoration is written, there's no method
> specified of determining the heir (trust me on this; I wrote the thing),
> and the Moot pretty much is expected to confirm except in cases of
> obvious incompetence. That implicitly leaves it up to the dynast to
> decide, and the "current" Alkhalikoi dynasty appears to use absolute
> agnatic primogeniture. There's nothing to say, though, that the heir
> can't be determined simply by the Emperor nominating some individual he
> deems appropriately deserving, or adopting such a person. The adoption
> route wasn't unknown among the Romans, either; IIRC, Octavian was _not_
> related by blood to Julius.

It wasn't even particularly uncommon amongst wealthy Romans. In order
not to impoverish a family by having too many children (and their
children, etc.) to support, they'd try to have very few - a son a
daughter and a spare, say. Thus, given the high mortality rates even in
teens and young adults, it wasn't terribly uncommon to run out of hiers.
Adopting the son of a friendly family who had an extra was the obvious
solution - they got rid of a surplus child, you filled a gap.