Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-27713488-20180327004110/@comment-31763506-20180328183232

I can give an explanation on how Antarion is a potential heir that's pretty straightforward.

If you recall, the official age of Alonon is, as of Chapter 4, something on the order of 88 years old, while Tyna is something like 21. That means that Alonon, who seems to have succeeded before or very early on into the 2nd Arclent War, was 67 when his youngest sister's only child was born. Now SierraLee has indicated that Tyna's mom's age at marriage was pretty high, but even if you assume she was 45 at Tyna's birth, that puts the absolute latest death date for she and Alonon's mother's at ~ 1090 AE, 22 years before the 2nd Arclent War, with a latest death for their mutual father, presumably the previous King, of circa 1115 AE. Statistically, it's more likely that the father died first.

What we're dealing with, in other words, is a previous royal couple that managed to produce children for a rough minimum of 22 years between 88 and 66 years before the present succession crisis. That means there were probably something on the order of nine full siblings between Alonon and Tyna's mother, most of whom would have been of marriageable age before the outbreak of the 2nd Arclent War. Attrition was apparently a bit heavy during the war proper, but if each of these siblings had 1.5 kids on average, than there'd have been ~14 royal nieces and nephews besides Tyna at the time of her birth. Let's say that half of these were killed in the war before they could have kids, and the remainder had an average of 1.5 kids. That still leaves 11 royal grandnieces and grandnephews running around in the next generation. And the oldest of Alonon's siblings likely has at least one adult or nearly adult great-grandchild by this point. (84/21 = 4). The surprising thing isn't that there are 7 candidates besides Tyna for heir, it's that there aren't a few dozen more.

Antarion is obviously from a noble family, since he refers to the people or Ardford as peasants in the Third Arclent War. So it's not at all implausible that he's a child or grandchild of one of Alonon's siblings. I'd say grandchild is more likely. And now he's a hero of the 3rd Arclent War and the savior of Ardford. Which isn't hurting his claim.

The conversation I had with SL on the topic can be read here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/june-11-update-11684785

For the benefit of those without a detailed knowledge of European succession law, here are the the various means of asserting a claim to a throne.


 * Male Preference Primogeniture - In this case the heir would likely be that great-grandson of Alonon's oldest brother, but that would be too easy, and SL says that while having a female in the line of succession doesn't exclude one from it, it weakens the claim. So if that obvious choice by modern standards is the son of a son of a daughter of Alonon's oldest brother or the son of a daughter of a son, that would explain why the argument is happening at all.  (This would be analogous to the succession after the deposition of Richard II of England, which should have gone to Edmund Mortimer, the Earl of March, who was the oldest grandson of the daughter of Richard's father's oldest younger brother, but instead went to Henry IV, the son of the next younger brother.  (Actually, this wasn't a case of fine points of succession law so much as Henry standing in front of a big army with a large axe and saying to Edmund, "that's a nice neck you have there, it would be a shame if something were to happen to it...".))
 * Salic Primogeniture - As above, but no girls allowed. Henry IV made this sort of claim, but paradoxically also maintained a claim to the throne of France based on his grandfather being the son of the only surviving sister of a previous King of France.  I'd guess that the guy Tyna is describing in the screenshot has this sort of claim.
 * Seniority - The oldest male relative of the previous king gets the nod.
 * Salic Seniority - As above, but no girls allowed in his relation.
 * Proximity of Blood - The nearest living relative of the current monarch succeeds. The last example of this in English succession was King John, who succeeded his brother Richard I in preference to his nephew Arthur, son of Geoffrey, who was the brother between Richard and John and who you have never heard of unless you are a history or theater nerd.  (The plays being Shakespeare's "King John" and James Goldman's "The Lion in Winter".)  King John also had seniority going for him.  Proximity of Blood is the only way Tyna is on the shortlist, as she's a niece of Alonon as opposed to a grandnephew or great-grandnephew, which is what most of the guys higher up the primogeniture line probably are.  It's entirely possible that she's Alonon's ONLY surviving niece or nephew.