Heir Selection as Primary Succession in Western Europe, Central Europe, and Medditerranean

[Alex Zetsu]

A well-known succession plan is male-preference primogeniture. There is a "reference ruler" who starts the dynasty. His oldest legitimate son inherits. If all his sons have no legitimate heirs, his oldest daughter inherits. Then do this recursively each generation down. And in OTL if your parliament have something inconvenient like James II in the way, just kick him out of power and rewrite the laws of succession to disqualify anyone of the wrong religion. Essentially primogeniture is searching the family tree delph first, with some modifications (valuing males put females lower in the order but they're still there, disqualifying Catholics is essentially introducing a new rule that prematurely prunes some branches the same way death would).

Roman law was different. The oldest son did not automatically inherit, the wealthy landowner decided who got the most land, and the other sons would sometimes get small leftover that still made them quite rich. The reason Nero was Claudius's heir was not because he was older than Britannicus but because Empress Agrippina the Younger convinced Claudius to favor Nero, which was very easy given that Brittanicus's mother fell out of favor of Claudius after having some extra martial fun.

So how to we get most of Western Europe and the Mediterranean to accept heir selection by kings as the primary method of heir selection and go to primogeniture as a fall back option if the king (or queen) should die without a heir? And if you're wondering how there can be a ruling Queen since "why would a King select a woman as his heir?" the answer is "A king wouldn't select a woman, even if liked his daughter he'd select his son in law. You'd have a ruling Queen when some monarch died with no sons or his oldest son was dead and had only daughters, or his oldest son had descendants but the senior branch of his oldest son's line ended in a girl"

 

[Fabius Maximus]

The problem is that people seem naturally wired to think in terms of family succession, so even if the king nominates someone else as his heir, his son would inevitably represent a rallying-point for malcontents. (This was a problem even in the Roman Empire, and part of the reason why designated heirs tended to kill off natural children pretty soon into their reigns.) So I think you'd need an absolute "No close relatives" rule to make heir selection stick.

 

[Lalli]

The problem is that people seem naturally wired to think in terms of family succession, so even if the king nominates someone else as his heir, his son would inevitably represent a rallying-point for malcontents. (This was a problem even in the Roman Empire, and part of the reason why designated heirs tended to kill off natural children pretty soon into their reigns.) So I think you'd need an absolute "No close relatives" rule to make heir selection stick.

Exactly. This is major problem whole appointing of heir instead just make clear succession order like OTL monarchies. And another problem is that ruler might die before has appointed someone. So it would cause even more troubles.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

(This was a problem even in the Roman Empire, and part of the reason why designated heirs tended to kill off natural children pretty soon into their reigns.) So I think you'd need an absolute "No close relatives" rule to make heir selection stick.

I mean the Roman empires lasted quite some time, a lot longer than I would have given it credit for given its civil wars. I'm not even asking for the Roman Empire itself to last but just its inheritance laws. A lot of Roman law was copied and pasted into the Holy Roman Empire, but not succession.

 

[Carp]

In a sense, heir selection was common earlier in medieval Europe through the means of co-regency - crowning your heir as ruler along side you. In such a system there would (in theory) never be an interruption in rule, as the elder ruler's death would simply reduce the number of kings from two to one. In such cases, however, it was usually the eldest son who was selected as co-ruler, because if you didn't do that then as @Fabius Maximus mentioned you tended to end up with a contested succession anyway. Otto the Great offers an example: When his father Henry died he split his inheritance between all of his sons, but arranged for the crown to be given to his second son Otto rather than his first son Thankmar, supposedly because his marriage to Thankmar's mother was considered uncanonical. As a result, Thankmar rose in rebellion with other princes. Then Otto's younger brother Henry rebelled a few years later, on the basis that although Henry was younger, he deserved to rule because he was "born in the purple" (that is, he was born when his father was actually a reigning king, unlike Otto). Certainly there were other reasons for these rebellions and they might have occurred anyway even if Otto's brothers weren't able to come up with these pretexts for why they should rule, but the goal of strict primogeniture was to avoid giving such pretexts at all.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

In a sense, heir selection was common earlier in medieval Europe through the means of co-regency - crowning your heir as ruler along side you. In such a system there would (in theory) never be an interruption in rule, as the elder ruler's death would simply reduce the number of kings from two to one.

Unless a ruler was so young he didn't have a co-king yet. But yeah I can see there would usually be no interruption in rule. So in some sense there was sort of heir selection, but everyone besides Otto the Great picked the oldest son. Thankmar disobeyed his fathers will but I can sort of see where it's from. Henry was a jerk*** since there is no Latin or German precedent for his logic and Greek precedent is irrelevent. He'd have a better excuse if "I was with my father when he died and he changed his mind" which might not be a good excuse but a better one.

 

[Carp]

Elder sons were not always picked, but there are only a few exceptions that occur to me off the top of my head from the area of history I'm most familiar with (10th-12th centuries).

• The succession of Frederick ("Barbarossa") in 1152. On his deathbed, Conrad III supposedly chose his adult nephew Frederick to succeed him over his own son, also named Frederick, who was only six years old. This did not actually have legal force as the German monarchy was elective, but the princes accepted Conrad's will (or perhaps just saw the benefits of having an adult king) and crowned the elder Frederick rather than following the custom of primogeniture.
• The succession of Manuel Komnenos in 1143. Also on his deathbed, Emperor John II selected his younger son Manuel over his older son Isaac. There was no particular reason to exclude Isaac from the succession; for whatever reason, John just seems to have preferred Manuel as his heir. The subsequent relationship between the brothers was understandably tense, and Isaac vanishes from the historical record around 1146.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

This did not actually have legal force as the German monarchy was elective, but the princes accepted Conrad's will (or perhaps just saw the benefits of having an adult king) and crowned the elder Frederick rather than following the custom of primogeniture.

So in some sense Conrad wanted Frederick the adult to succeed him, the by this point his will is more of a suggestion and he can't will his title the way he could his furnature for example.

 

[Carp]

So in some sense Conrad wanted Frederick the adult to succeed him, the by this point his will is more of a suggestion and he can't will his title the way he could his furnature for example.

Yes. The king's will was an important consideration, but the princes of the empire (the formal system of prince-electors did not exist yet) were not obligated to follow it. Conrad may have believed that his nephew was the best choice to lead the kingdom, or he may have suspected that the princes would not elect his six year old son anyway.

Neither of the cases I just mentioned involved co-regency, which is particularly notable in the case of Manuel because co-regency was something the Byzantines normally practiced. In fact John II had crowned his oldest son Alexios as symbasileos (literally "co-emperor"), but Alexios died of a fever in 1142 (along with John's second son Andronikos), and John does not appear to have made anyone else symbasileus prior to designating Manuel to succeed him on his deathbed. Then again, there was only about a year between the death of Alexios and that of his father, and formally designating someone as symbasileus seems to have involved a whole coronation ceremony in Constantinople, not just signing a piece of paper or something. As John was on campaign in the east at the time, it may be that there simply wasn't the opportunity to do this, and if John had lived longer he might have formally designated Manuel as co-ruler. This, then, is potentially an illustration of a time when co-regency fails, although in Manuel's case he was nevertheless able to succeed his father without a civil war, as John's dying wish was honored even without a formal investiture of Manuel as co-ruler.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

I mean the Roman empires lasted quite some time, a lot longer than I would have given it credit for given its civil wars. I'm not even asking for the Roman Empire itself to last but just its inheritance laws. A lot of Roman law was copied and pasted into the Holy Roman Empire, but not succession.

Yes, but the Roman Emperors were generally succeeded by their sons -- either the eldest son, or (especially in the fourth century) partitioning the Empire between them all. When Emperors nominated someone other than their son (or nearest biological relative), the designated heir generally ended up murdering the relative pretty quickly (as Tiberius with Postumus Agrippa, or Nero with Britannicus). Cases of successful, non-murderous heir selection were generally only possible when the Emperor had no surviving close male relatives (as with the Five Good Emperors, who all died without sons -- apart from Marcus Aurelius, who was succeeded by his son Commodus).

 

[Falecius]

Formal nomination and appointment by the predecessor was supposed to be the default and legal way to choose a Caliph.
In purely legal terms, ancestry was only marginally relevant, and a notional 'elective' system also was there.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Formal nomination and appointment by the predecessor was supposed to be the default and legal way to choose a Caliph.
In purely legal terms, ancestry was only marginally relevant, and a notional 'elective' system also was there.

Yeah but wrong location for the OP

 

[Falecius]

Yeah but wrong location for the OP

They mentioned the Mediterranean.
Also, despite nomination being the default, the nominated heir very often happened to be (and was _expected_ to be) a son of the predecessor.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Are we looking at tanistry where someone with the dynasty is selected as effectively "deputy king" and is designated the eventual successor to the king?

 

[Alex Zetsu]

They mentioned the Mediterranean.
Also, despite nomination being the default, the nominated heir very often happened to be (and was _expected_ to be) a son of the predecessor.

I did motioned the medditeranean, but the calpih only reached 1 out of the 3 places not all of them.

I menan if you have an idea on how they can "transmit" its inheritance system to the other two places, I'm open for suggestions, but I think you just mentioned it as a "oh here we have a heir selection example" and not "here we have a heir selection example that can reach all the places" maybe I'm wrong on what you were going for but I think that was what you were going for

At least Roman law might plausibly reach the whole area. Either the Roman Empire itself survives, or the kingdoms the aucceed it copy and paste the inheritance law.

Or maybe do what Otto the Great and Charlemagne do and come up with the idea independently (which didn't actually work for their chosen heirs, but if it did then maybe it could work?).

Ways I see for this working are Roman Empire surviving, more Roman laws are copied into the kingdoms that occupy the old Roman land (Like I said the HRE copied and wasted a lot of Roman law... just not he inheritance ones), or the idea to come up independently and spread.

I don't really see the Caliphate reaching Germany in any plausible way, maybe as far as France. And if they don't militarily conquer Germany and Britain, I don't see how they can "transmit" heir selection as an idea. Even if Islam spreads beyond the political control of the Umayad Calphiate and go to Britain (not implausible since sometimes Chirsitan missionaires were able to spread their faith beyond the political control of their rules), wouldn't any British Emirate just behave like any other inheritance based Emirate?

 

[Falecius]

I did motioned the medditeranean, but the calpih only reached 1 out of the 3 places not all of them.

I menan if you have an idea on how they can "transmit" its inheritance system to the other two places, I'm open for suggestions, but I think you just mentioned it as a "oh here we have a heir selection example" and not "here we have a heir selection example that can reach all the places" maybe I'm wrong on what you were going for but I think that was what you were going for

At least Roman law might plausibly reach the whole area. Either the Roman Empire itself survives, or the kingdoms the aucceed it copy and paste the inheritance law.

Or maybe do what Otto the Great and Charlemagne do and come up with the idea independently (which didn't actually work for their chosen heirs, but if it did then maybe it could work?).

Ways I see for this working are Roman Empire surviving, more Roman laws are copied into the kingdoms that occupy the old Roman land (Like I said the HRE copied and wasted a lot of Roman law... just not he inheritance ones), or the idea to come up independently and spread.

I don't really see the Caliphate reaching Germany in any plausible way, maybe as far as France. And if they don't militarily conquer Germany and Britain, I don't see how they can "transmit" heir selection as an idea. Even if Islam spreads beyond the political control of the Umayad Calphiate and go to Britain (not implausible since sometimes Chirsitan missionaires were able to spread their faith beyond the political control of their rules), wouldn't any British Emirate just behave like any other inheritance based Emirate?

Right.