Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: tired
  • Music: Britney Spears, "E-Mail My Heart."

Questions and answers, #7: Who gets your stuff?

As stated in this post, I am answering ten questions about Toby's world in preparation for the release of A Red-Rose Chain. Please note that these are questions about the world, not questions about individual people, things which have not yet happened in the series, or what is coming up in the books. I am still taking questions in the comments on the original post.

Our seventh question comes from greenhafling, who asked...

"How does one inherit a title or fiefdom in the October-verse? Does blood count more than power?"

This question highlights probably the biggest difference between the Divided Courts (Seelie, Unseelie, and Oberon's) and the Court of Cats. Among the Divided Courts, blood counts. Among the Court of Cats, power counts.

Functionally, this means that changelings can never inherit lands or titles from their parents, regardless of Court. The Court of Cats would absolutely respect a changeling Prince or Princess who challenged for the throne, but the chances of a) such an individual existing (there is no record of such) and b) winning are vanishingly small. Really, a changeling could challenge, but would lose, because they wouldn't have the power for it. The power levels necessary to be called "Prince" or "Princess" are not directly inherited; they can appear at random in a bloodline that has never shown that kind of strength. Most Kings and Queens are not related to their heirs.

But oh, the Divided Courts. There, only blood matters. Not power, not fitness to rule, nothing but blood. And changelings can never, never inherit. In the case of multiple potential heirs, such as September, Sylvester, and Simon, the inheritance can be split up. This is why Simon got a title with no land, September got nothing, and Sylvester got his father's sword and a letter of introduction to King Gilad's parents, so that he could prove himself a hero and get the land that he believed he deserved.

Now, hope chests can make this interesting. Let's pretend, for a moment, that a King--call him King Bob--had a changeling daughter and no other heir. In time, the girl has a child. If King Bob uses a hope chest on his grandson, does his grandson (now a pureblood) inherit?

Yes.

There are a lot of reasons that some people dislike changelings, and like merlins even less.
Tags: a few facts, a red-rose chain, toby daye
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  • 22 comments

sleightedge

August 21 2015, 22:36:25 UTC 1 year ago

Between this and the previous post on fae kids, I'm wondering why hopechests aren't used more often. Changelings can never inherit, but generally low fertility and magical contraceptives mean than any fae progeny must have been wanted. Even if the progeny is a changeling, the fae parent must generally have chosen not to use the magic contraceptives, right? Which means that the fae parent probably wants that changeling kid. If the fae parent wants and loves that kid, why wouldn't they try and use a hopechest to give that kid the chance to fully fit into their world (or fully reject it and at least never have to deal with this shitty inbetween status). I mean, I can understand changelings deciding that they don't want to reject the either side of their heritage and choosing to remain that way, but I don't understand why having that choice hasn't become like a standard part of the changeling child-rearing process, a sort of second stage of the changeling's choice.

Maybe the hope chests are just too rare for that to be viable? I don't remember off the top of my head how many we know the location of canonically. But then how did they become so rare? I would think that fae communities would make an effort to keep track of them given how useful they would be in these situations. Maybe different fae don't want too much competition over inheritance? But that brings me back to the magical contraceptive part of things, which could prevent that. Maybe magical contraceptives don't work as well in human-fae pairings? *devolves even into confused muttering*

seanan_mcguire

November 5 2015, 17:51:58 UTC 1 year ago

Because they're all missing.