An interesting scenario came up in my campaign. I have a PK who was heir of a Pagan knight with two wives. The PK was a vassal Knight that married an heiress with an additional manor, and left behind a surviving daughter (age 2). He also has a half -brother from his father's second wife. The way I am understanding inheritance law, in KAP, the two year old daughter would be an heiress of both the mother and father's estates. My question is whether the PK's half-brother (from the PK's second wife, he is polygamous remember) would have a legal claim to the (dead) PK's estate while the PK's daughter was alive?

My gut feeling is that legally the daughter has the strongest claim, the half-brother would probably challenge that though (creating a fun little mini-plot). If the daughter were to die, the half brother would inherit the PK's original manor and the "wife's" manor would return to her (legally, the half brother might try to claim otherwise again).

Am I understanding this correctly? The fact that the PK's father was polygamous wouldn't matter (unless one mother was an heiress which in this case neither were), what is important is the birth order of the children right?

As far as I understand it all:
- The manor of the PK would revert to the closest male, in this case being his half brother.
- The manor of his wife would remain with his daughter. As his wife was the heiress there is no male heir in the family. As I understand it the PK only holds the manor of his wife for his children. He does not inherit it in his own right. So the half brother could not lay claim to it. Of course this could get messy when the wife marries again (she is still the legal heir) and gets a son.

You have it right, luckythirteen.

The PK, as the eldest son, inherited his father. The half-brother (here after the Uncle) doesn't signify here, since he is the younger brother. Not dissimilar to a half-brother from a subsequent marriage.

Now the PK is the Vassal knight. He marries an heiress and gets a daughter. He then dies. The daughter is the heiress for both her mother's manor and her father's manor. Only if she dies, does the Uncle get an unambiguous right for the dead PK's manor.

With the daughter being only 2, the Uncle might have a good claim to be assigned as the guardian for the girl. On the other hand, this depends a lot on the period and the liege lord in question. During Anarchy and in the absence of a liege lord, grab what you can. Historically, the liege lord would grab such an heiress with both hands, a valuable marriage counter and/or ward to reward favorites with. Also, that means the liege lord continues to enjoy the income from those manors. However, he might be willing to 'sell' the wardship to the Uncle, if the Uncle can pay for it.

Also, in Uther's time, an argument could be made that an under-aged child, especially a girl-child, cannot possibly defend the manor's lands from raiders, so it would be better to give those lands to the Uncle. But it wouldn't be automatic; after all, the girl's mother was an heiress as well even though she presumably had other family as well. If you go to the closest male relative and only consider girls if there are no males in the family at all, then you won't get more than one heiress in a generation, and this is not what the situation looks like in most of the campaigns.

The inheritance rules are these:
(by bloodline, so you'd trace the mother's and father's manors separately)
1) Eldest son (or his heirs, if predeceased his father/mother) inherits it all.
2) Younger sons (or their heirs) inherit in the order of age.
3) If no sons, the daughters (or their heirs) split the inheritance equally.
4) If no children, the previous holder's siblings inherit (eldest brother first, then the sisters share).
5) If all the previous holder's siblings are dead, look for cousins.
6) If there are no cousins either, at this point, I think the liege lord says 'enough' and takes the manor.

For gameplay, it is better if the liege lord waits until step 6 before repossessing the estate. That gives the players some 'spares' to run, and it matches well with the case of the Pembroke earldom (2nd creation), which William Marshal's five sons each inherited in turn and died childless, thus passing the title onwards to their younger brothers. Finally, with the last brother dead, the sisters split the estate between themselves.

You can see that it can get really gnarled up, especially if you have a situation where you have daughter-descended grandchildren (or sister-descended cousins) starting to bicker about how the inheritance should be split. What do you do if one claimant is a male and all the other claimants are female? Should it all go to the male? Some would say yes, but strictly by the rules, it should be split equally between the female-branches and THEN that branch's lot goes to the male rather than to his sisters. I.e. lets imagine an estate of 4 manors and two sisters (A and B), both now dead but with two children (2 daughters A1 and A2 for sister A, and 1 daughter B1 and 1 son B2 for sister B). The manors would initially be split equally between A and B (so 2 manors each), and then be split between their descendants. A1 and A2 share A's 2 manors equally, so each gets one manor, while B2, being male, gets both 2 manors and B1 gets none.

In any case, the above rules work pretty well in establishing 'how it should go, absent any other influences'. In practice, it can get pretty messed up. Also, from gameplay perspective, it may be better to let the Uncle (especially if he is the new PK) inherit rather than leave the inheritance in the hands of a girl-child. You might ask what the player wishes to happen: would he rather keep the estate together (potentially playing the daughter's husband 15 years down the line), or would he rather 'write-off' that daughter as a dead end, and restart dynasty-building with the Uncle?

Finally, inheritance disputes and usurping uncles are very much in keeping with Pendragon's setting, so feel free to do what you wish. :)

In our campaign:
1) Father of a daughter predeceased the grandfather: the daughter's claim was put aside in favor of an adult, knighted Uncle. (UTHER)
2) Eldest son lost & presumed dead: the 2nd eldest inherited. When the eldest came back a couple of years later, after negotiations he accepted a manor as a recompense for losing the (bigger) estate, to avoid family/legal strife. (ARTHUR)

I am sure there would be others, but that's what I can recall of the top of my head.

Thanks Morien. Glad to know I understood it correctly. The Polygamous business is what was making me doubt things since that isn't really a scenario that came up that much from what I can see in history (bastards and affairs yes, multiple wives at the same time, no).

I think I'd handle it by naming one wife as the primary wife, and judging those kids 'legitimate'. The other wife would be a concubine and her children acknowledged bastards for inheritance purposes (coming after legitimate children, if the liege lord agrees). Especially if the liege lord is a Christian; no need for the liege to acknowledge both marriages as equally valid.

The medieval Welsh had very interesting inheritance laws, with all the acknowledged bastards and legitimate children being given a share of the father's lands, no matter by which mother. Needless to say, this often led to weak kings and rounds of civil wars between the brothers.

In our campaign, it is quite common for the father to split off a manor for the second son, especially if the said manor is located farther away and was awarded to the father due to some heroics. Not that this always happens, just something that has happened a few times, depending on the personality of the father (and the player).

Played through the session this weekend. For those who care, here's how we ended up playing it. It ended up even better than I was hoping.

1. Each player in our campaign uses the "Heir and Spare" concept for his PKs. He always has two active PKs and can run one at a time during a session, keeping the other back "at home" in case the "active" PK dies. During the winter phase we run the "spare" through some solo events so that they still have some development and progression. It's worked really well for us. Not only does it give the "spare" a chance to gain a few skills,etc. so they are more "useful" when they become the "heir", the solo events have also given us some fun story lines. I highly recommend it.

2. We are in the Uther era (starting year 488, so still very early). The PK that died (leaving the 2 year old daughter behind as his heiress) died at sea in "The Battle of the Wash" raiding with Prince Madoc. The Player's "Spare" was the half brother of the "Heir" making him the 2 year old daughter's uncle. We had previously said this "Uncle" was one of Roderick's household knights, so we said that Roderick (having a strong interest in keeping those 2 manors in his control since he would be able to marry the daughter off) made the "Uncle" the "Ward" of the daughter (and the 2 manors).

3. For his new "spare" the player rolled up a new PK who he said is the oldest child of the *other* side of the family (from the "grandfather's" 2nd wife). This makes him a "half uncle" of the 2 year old heiress. What is even more fun, the player said that in reality, this PK is actually the *oldest* son of those brothers. Apparently the "grandfather" (who had two wives) didn't bother telling anyone in Salisbury about his other wife and that he had a son from that side of the family. He basically treated that side of the family as unrecognized bastards. This means that the new "half uncle spare" has a very strong legal claim to the original manor at least. It's the perfect situation for me to put those new legal rules from the Book of the Warlord into practice. Can't wait!

4. To make things even more awesome, I asked the player who his new "spare's" liege lord is, and he said that side of the family is from Silchester, and his Lord is Sir Blains, Steward of Levcomagous!

5. I am also going to present the "Heir" (the uncle from the Salisbury side of the family) the opportunity to kill off the daughter and claim the manor (or perhaps manors) for himself. I doubt this will happen because he has a pretty high loyalty to Roderick and I don't think Roderick would be too keen on this, but greed can be a powerful motivator. Also, we are still making child survival rolls so who knows what will happen to the daughter.

So in short, we now have two sides of the family both making claims on the manor(s) of the 2 year old heiress, *and* the player managed to weave his own personal story into the Roderick/Blains/Salisbury/Silchester plot line. Oh, and I just "happened" to make the "Heir's" squire the 3rd born son of Sir Bedwor, the Sheriff of Salisbury.

And then in the random solo events, one of the other player's "spares" was captured by knights from Silchester. I think we are going to see something come of this soon!

This awesomeness all happened because we didn't shy away from allowing PKs to be killed. Having gone through several sessions of play (we are averaging around 4 two hour sessions per year right now), the player is much more familiar with the setting and plot lines and we were able to work together to weave the new character into the game's fiction in a way that we never could have if I had "fudged" my die rolls and allow the original PK to live.

This brings up a new question for a different thread about how Roderick and Ulfius would handle this sort of dispute.

Sounds like you are having fun with it. :)

The Salisbury Team would argue probably along this vein:

1. The Grandfather's liege was the Count of Salisbury (Roderick?) who approved the marriage they knew about. The other marriage they didn't know about and hence, in their eyes, it is invalid. Besides, bigamy is a sin in the Christian environment, so the Silchester line has no standing above that of unacknowledged bastards in Salisbury. Case closed.

2. Even if that were not the case, the time to argue who is the GRANDFATHER'S heir should have been when the Grandfather died. The previous PK was the acknowledge heir and the Grandfather didn't say a peep about his other family. Hence, the heirdom has already been decided. Roderick accepted the PK as his vassal and the PK did his bit. Now Roderick will guard the rights of the PK's heiress. You snooze, you lose.

3. And it will be a cold day in Hell before Roderick will let a manor of his be taken over by a liegeman of Sir Blains! Release the hounds on that villain!

Now, from Levcomagus side, the trump card could be the date of the Silchester marriage. Since the New Spare is the eldest son, this may have happened before the second, Salisbury-approved marriage. Now, they might try to paper over the fact that the Grandfather was a pagan and try to rally the Church in their side. After all, only the first marriage is valid, the second one is the bigamous one, and hence the eldest son's claim is valid. Why didn't he come out before to claim his inheritance? Who knows, but this injustice needs to be addressed!

However, if the Silchester marriage was the second one, even if it produced a child earlier, it is immaterial, IMHO. The liege lord doesn't have to accept that, and definitely not after one generation in. Certainly it would weaken the Silchester claim, and also make other lords even more uneasy about having claimants popping out of the woodworks... For truly Machivellian twist, the Silchester Spare could try to arrange an accident for the young heiress, and then frame the Uncle... (who is the Guardian, not the Ward). (Quick sideline of that... If the Uncle is the Guardian, then in principle he also is the one getting the income from the lands and decides the girl's husband. If the Count wishes to keep those rights to himself, he ought to keep the wardship of the girl for himself and just appoint the Uncle as the caretaker for those lands or even that single ancestral manor meanwhile.)

Anyway, just a couple of comments off the top of my head. :)

Yes, Silchester side was actually the "first" marriage, making them have a legitimate (but weak) claim IMHO. I didn't realize the difference between guardian and ward. The purpose was for Roderick to take the income himself, and just assign his household knight as the protector, so I guess guardian is the term I should have gone for.

So yeah, basically it's 2 year old daughter (with Roderick getting the income) vs. Blains.

Started a new thread for the legal claims here: http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2627.0