AHC Succession Law

There are many variants of succession. There is elective, absolute primogeniture, male-preference primogeniture, salic-law, seniority...

And then there is "Ummm, not sure"

So the challenge is, with a POD 900 or later that doesn't butterfly Henry II of England's ascension (so no Cunte starts a super dynasty), make Denmark a whole kingdom (not having its territoriy chipped by neighbors) but it's succession law is "Ummm... someone related to the last monarch" with not even an elective system to sort it out.

Instead, by 1500 there is still no codified succession and there had been inheritances by oldest sons, middle sons, oldest daughters, brothers, nephews, son-in-laws, grandsons, and great-grandsons. Therese have been decided by willing the kingdom to a heir, ad-hoc meetings by royal family members followed by agreements, and sometimes a fight for Copenhagen as a... tie breaker.

Bonus points if the Sweden has male-preference primogeniture and there were three personal unions, with 2 of them dissolving not by Swedish complaints, but by the royal family picking a different heir to Denmark-Norway than the Swedish one. "Yeah, the Swedish crown goes to the princess, but we think her uncle will make more headway in Denmark."
 
So the challenge is, with a POD 900 or later that doesn't butterfly Henry II of England's ascension (so no Cunte starts a super dynasty), make Denmark a whole kingdom (not having its territory chipped by neighbors) but it's succession law is "Ummm... someone related to the last monarch" with not even an elective system to sort it out.

Therefore, you mean a POD no earlier than his conception in 1132 (EDIT - sorry :oops:), right? Since a POD any earlier would butterfly him away. :winkytongue:

Seriously, though, the earliest POD has to occur during the reign of Valdemar I of Denmark.

Well, the first thing I can see is more pretenders sticking around. Lots and lots of them. Succession crises up the wazoo. Either that or CKII levels of "I want to be king instead of the king, let's rebel against the king".

Valdemar himself had to contend with two other pretenders (Sweyn III and Canute V), and ended up on top when the other two were killed.

The only problem is how to prevent "what's to stop someone else from jumping in and partitioning the country during yet another succession crisis?" or "we can't be having with all this chaos - won't somebody bloody codify the succession already?" from happening.
 
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Therefore, you mean a POD no earlier than his conception in 1152, right? Since a POD any earlier would butterfly him away. :winkytongue:

The only problem is how to prevent "what's to stop someone else from jumping in and partitioning the country during yet another succession crisis?"

Yeah, getting the chaos was the easy part.

I said I wanted Denmark as a mostly intact kingdom. The Danish succession really early on really was "Ummm... someone related to the last monarch" but three things prevented from reaching my challenge. One, there was partial elective features (it was kind of murky... there was some jarl input into the hier). Second, it doesn't last long enough to reach the date. Third, I said Denmark as a whole kingdom. The OTL Succession wars don't disqualify it, but succession wars should result in a clear winner relatively quickly (even if the mop up drags on), and it should happen at every disputed succession and a POD with Valdemar having an unstable reign might very well make every succession disputed.

Also I wasn't thinking a switching back and fourth between two dynasties. The royal family isn't what was murky in the challenge, it was which royal.
 
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