I have a bit of a dilemma in my campaign, concerning inheritance.

A player knight (a vassal with a single manor) had originally married a commoner woman out of love, and the poor girl croaked after giving birth to a son. The boy, however, managed to survive into adulthood. The knight later married a wealthy heiress, who had 4 manors as her dowry. This particular lady managed to give him several sons.

Now the player knight is dead - after having his head bashed in for him during the Grail Quest - and I am faced with a problem. Does the knight's first son inherit all of his father's five manors, or do the four manors included in his step-mother's dowry go to his oldest half-brother, leaving him with just his father's original manor?


This puts me in mind of a situation looming in my campaign which is actually almost the perfect inverse...

We have a widowed lady with a single manor and a daughter. She is about to marry a knight who holds five manors. Due to a meddling faerie (but generally unknown), the lady cannot produce any sons. What does her daughter, by her first husband, stand to inherit? If she eventually has other daughters, who stands to inherit what?

Simple, just look at the bloodlines. Eldest surviving son inherits the lot. Then it becomes a bit more of a hassle if the eldest son has already produced heirs and then predeceases his own father... Generally, I think the heirs of the eldest 'line' would inherit, but especially during the Anarchy, the eldest uncle of the heirs would be well positioned to do some quick usurpation. If there are no sons, then daughters usually inherit -equally- and the estate is split between them.

Husband knight: 5 manors. Those belong to his bloodline. I.e. his eldest son from whichever marriage.

Wife: 1 manor. That belongs to her bloodline. I.e. currently to her only child, a daughter.

1. Husband has no children yet
- They get a son: the son inherits the lot, since he is the eldest son of both the husband and wife.
- They get a daughter (or more), but no sons: the wife's eldest daughter is a co-inheritor to the wife's manor, which she would share with her little half-sister(s). The husband's daughter(s) would inherit the 5 manors, the wife's eldest daughter has no claim.

2. Husband has daughters.
- Husband's current and future daughters would co-inherit the 5 manors, IF there are no sons born. Wife's existing daughter would not inherit any part of those. Wife's eldest daughter and her future daughters in the marriage would co-inherit her manor.
- If they get a son, the son would again inherit the whole lot.

3. Husband has sons.
- The husband's eldest son inherits the 5 manors. The other existing sons get nothing. None of the husband's sons from previous marriage have any claim on the wife's manor (Anarchy + usurpation exception).
- The eldest son of the new marriage with the wife would inherit the wife's estate. The wife's daughter from the previous marriage gets nothing.
- If there are only daughters in the new marriage, they would inherit equally with the already existing daughter from the wife's previous marriage.

Any more questions? :)

Just one, if they have no future children, does the eldest daughter by the previous marriage have any claim to the knight's 5 manors... or do they just revert to his liege?

OK, two questions... :)

If the knight wished to include the eldest daughter among his heirs (out of love for his new wife... they had an amor during her prior marriage), would he be able to "adopt" her or pursue some other legal/customary method to include her among his heirs?

I agree with Morien. You will have to look at the bloodlines, except that as far as I know only the eldest daughter inherits. It is not divided equally among daughters. (this is as I use it, but YPMV)

As for the two questions:
- No she has no claim to the 5 manors and they will revert to the liege. Of course a good relationship between the lady and the liege may help in securing the manors.
- Also remember that women are always a ward of someone. Usually the closest male relative or maybe the liege. He is the one who decides whom she marries. If the liege wants the manors to stay together he might have the daughter inherit and have her married to a knight of his own household.
- Of course you could point to an old Roman practice of adoption, but it would make everything even more muddy.

In the end it all comes down to power. The one holding the manors will be the one who can lay claim to them. Of course you would probably need a powerful lord as a liege to hold on to it.

Btw these inheritance problems are a great source for trouble. ;)

Cornelius got here first, although sharing equally amongst the daughters was the usual custom: the eldest got no preferential treatment. (In our campaign, the rule of thumb is: Eldest 2/3rds, need to provide a knight, others share 1/3rd without the need to provide a knight. This is to ensure that there will not be too much trouble with who is in command & responsible for the knight duty.)

To repeat: the eldest daughter of the wife, who is no relation to the husband, has no claim on the husband's manors.

He is also correct that it is all up to the Liege. Of course, the Liege has very little to gain by allowing adoption, although this depends a lot if there are other inheritors waiting in the wings (brothers of the deceased knight, for example, or acknowledged bastard sons?), in which case he might prefer to have an heiress to tempt his knights and vassals and potential allies with. Since if the knight has no heirs, his 5 manors would revert to the Liege to do as he pleases, which would be better for him. Of course, could be that he owes a big favor for the PK, in which case, that heiress solution still sounds pretty good. So you'll have to keep that in mind: the Liege BENEFITS from heirless knights so he would have a good incentive to NOT allow the knights to stretch the inheritance to cousins and adoptees.

All of this, of course, is in aid of a much more complex situation...

The lady in question (who is a player), has a pact with a local faerie. A neighboring baron offended the faerie, who choose to express her displeasure by laying a doom on him and his entire male line. Our lady, Rosamund by name, convinced the faerie to spare the baron's line, but only if Rosamund's daughter married the baron's heir... else the doom on his line would be renewed. Alas, the widowed Lady Rosamund holds only the one manor... not much of a prize for the baron's estate. We had hoped that, by wedding her amor - Sir Bertram, they might make the young heiress a richer prize and make the bargain an easier one to fulfill. I guess it won't be that easy. Now I'm thinking they must convince their liege - the Bishop - to support their scheme... whereby the future baron might hold Rosamund and Bertram's manors as a vassal of the bishop. All without telling anyone about the actual faerie pact, of course.

If I've got this right, that sounds like fodder for a few adventures...

Edit: Thanks guys, for your very good and informative comments!

"Rosamund's daughter". So would a new daughter with Sir Bertram fulfill this criteria, or is it that specific, eldest daughter? Because if any daughter of Rosamund's will do, then they can hope that they'd get a daughter who survives, and if she is the only child, she would inherit all Sir Bertram's five manors. And five manors would be something for a Baron to take a keen interest in, as I think even an Earl's daughter's dowry is in the viscinity of a dozen manors or so...

That being said, they do need to get Sir Bertram's liege lord aboard this plan almost certainly. After all, he does have some say in who he will accept as a vassal and definitely he will be able to decide who the heiress will marry, if Sir Bertram is dead before she is old enough (unfortunately common amongst the PKs).

If it is that specific eldest daughter of Rosamund, all is not lost. At the very least, Sir Bertram could, in principle, give money as dowry. Not as good as land, and of course squeezing peasants gets some ugly trait checks and Hate, but with 6 manors to squeeze, he could quite easily raise like extra £20 / year. Do that for five years and you have £100 dowry to offer, plus Rosamund's manor, assuming that there are no other children. (And loads of surly peasants, but they are not revolting just yet...) Depending on just how big a baron this guy is, he might be tempted already.

And finally, I don't think there is actually any rule AGAINST giving your lands away. Again, the liege lord's permission would be needed for this, but if Sir Bertram says that 'right, I wish to give 2 of my manors + Lady Rosamund's manor as the dowry for this fine young lady here', and his (and Rosamund's) liege lord(s) agrees, then it is a done deal if the Baron accepts. Granted, your family and other children might yelp at the thought of you blowing the family's wealth away on your Amor's brat who is not even your own flesh and blood, but they are your lands and your wealth, so you can do it. And from what I was given to understand, Sir Bertram doesn't have any children to yelp, and he likely has gained most of those manors by the strength of his own good swordarm, so there is even less of a family 'estate' with long lineage to safeguard.

(In our campaign, it has happened a few times that the inheritance of multiple manors have actually been divided between sons rather than everything being given to the eldest. Granted, the most vivid example of this was because the now-dead Count of Mortain had lands in Salisbury, Hampshire, Marlborough and Mortain (Normandy), and figured that his three sons would be happier with one of them a Count in Normandy, the second a Banneret in Salisbury (+ owning two manors in Hampshire) and a third owning two manors in Marlborough. Actually, now that I think about it, it seems to be more of a general rule of thumb at least in some families: the original banneretcy's three demesne manors were going to be divided 2 for the eldest with the title and one for the second eldest in the previous generation. And in two 2-manor cases, the split was/is going to be 1+1 for the two eldest, and knightly equipment for the third. And the 4-manor knight was going to split his inheritance amongst his three sons by having one take the two manors in Salisbury and Hampshire, second oldest the one manor in Lambor, and the third to marry the daughter of his vassal knight in Mortain. So yeah, our tendency seems to be to give the eldest most, but not the whole lot, so that the second eldest gets a bit of land, too, if the family is rich enough.)

Thanks, sounds like my players have their work cut out for them...