Information I'd love to know

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:Possibly but, on the other hand, requiring the heir to be married before attaining the crown is a big step toward ensuring the succession. Also, heirs are already expected to avoid situations which would result in the kind of crisis or shotgun wedding that you are talking about. An heir that would get into such a situation might not be fit for the crown. A requirement of marriage is hardly unprecedented, at least in literature (I don't know whether any real monarchies had such a requirement).

Well they could avoid a "classic" knocked up the bride shotgun wedding. But a requirement to marry before being crowned could still result in a hasty marrage.

At it would take is for the heir to still be a kid and the current monarch dies. Now the kid has to be crowned (admittedly with a regency council providing guidance until they're of age) -- but with a requirement to be married before being crowned now this kid has to get married.

That's problematic if we're talking a teenager who might actually have a boyfriend or girlfriend at the moment. Its even worse if you're talking about someone less than 12 who isn't even interested yet. How do they (or their guardians) quickly pick a reasonable commoner to marry.


If they had such a requirement I really hope it's got a clause that, for a minor, postpones the requirement to be married from "before being crowned" until "before achieving their majority;" (when they'd no longer be under the guidance of their regency council)

But I really doubt they have a law requiring the heir to be married before assuming the crown.

No, you misunderstand. An underage heir does not attain the crown until the age of majority. I was not suggesting that heirs be married while a minor, just that they might be required to be married before the regency lets them take the crown.

Hutch wrote:

kzt wrote:They run starships, so the odds that they don't have what we consider modern medicine is pretty much insignificant. Not what the SL core considers modern medicine, but right now.

North Korea runs airplanes, but would you want your heart operation there?

I wouldn't, according to doctors who have been there, most of their hospitals are at about a 1960's (if that)level of technology. Also most of the KWP(Korean Workers Party) ie Korean Communist party big wigs either go abroad (China) or import doctors and medical equipment for specific operations on specific persons.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:
Possibly but, on the other hand, requiring the heir to be married before attaining the crown is a big step toward ensuring the succession. Also, heirs are already expected to avoid situations which would result in the kind of crisis or shotgun wedding that you are talking about. An heir that would get into such a situation might not be fit for the crown. A requirement of marriage is hardly unprecedented, at least in literature (I don't know whether any real monarchies had such a requirement).

Well they could avoid a "classic" knocked up the bride shotgun wedding. But a requirement to marry before being crowned could still result in a hasty marrage.

At it would take is for the heir to still be a kid and the current monarch dies. Now the kid has to be crowned (admittedly with a regency council providing guidance until they're of age) -- but with a requirement to be married before being crowned now this kid has to get married.

That's problematic if we're talking a teenager who might actually have a boyfriend or girlfriend at the moment. Its even worse if you're talking about someone less than 12 who isn't even interested yet. How do they (or their guardians) quickly pick a reasonable commoner to marry.


If they had such a requirement I really hope it's got a clause that, for a minor, postpones the requirement to be married from "before being crowned" until "before achieving their majority;" (when they'd no longer be under the guidance of their regency council)

But I really doubt they have a law requiring the heir to be married before assuming the crown.

SWM wrote:
No, you misunderstand. An underage heir does not attain the crown until the age of majority. I was not suggesting that heirs be married while a minor, just that they might be required to be married before the regency lets them take the crown.

Thanks for clearing up the misunderstanding SWM, and my apology to boot.

That may solve the flavor of a shotgun wedding of an underage Queen, but it offers up other questions to me.

1. It seems the underage problem is resolved but still leaves half of the original problem. Even after the "Queen In Escrow" reaches the age of majority, she still may not be naturally interested in marrying for lack of a suitable mate. Problem remains.

2. A question of weakness of the crown surfaces. Is the QIE an effective ruling power, being withheld from the actual crown? Who is actually making the decisions? Can a headstrong Elizabeth be a soul of steel taking on Parliament and other uncooperative elements of the government? We know from textev that a young Queen could be perceived as being weak (Haven's mistake). My question is whether "powers in escrow" may temporarily lend credence to that perceived weakness of the crown? It didn't in Elizabeth's case, of course, but Elizabeth was already 16 or 17 when she ascended. What if she'd only been 12? How assertive emotionally, and constitutionally can she be in the interim? Unless "regency retaining the crown" is meaningless. If it isn't meaningless, then it seems that the roll of the dice of Haven to assassinate King Roger was a worthwhile gambit, since then Manticore will be tasked at having a strong and effective Queen up for succession, and a strong and effective regent - a regent who also must be accepted by the Queen. It is stated in textev that the Queen has the ultimate choice of regents. A seven year old Queen may act out of emotion instead of logic, in choosing a regent.

cthia wrote:2. A question of weakness of the crown surfaces. Is the QIE an effective ruling power, being withheld from the actual crown? Who is actually making the decisions? Can a headstrong Elizabeth be a soul of steel taking on Parliament and other uncooperative elements of the government? We know from textev that a young Queen could be perceived as being weak (Haven's mistake). My question is whether "powers in escrow" may temporarily lend credence to that perceived weakness of the crown? It didn't in Elizabeth's case, of course, but Elizabeth was already 16 or 17 when she ascended. What if she'd only been 12? How assertive emotionally, and constitutionally can she be in the interim? Unless "regency retaining the crown" is meaningless. If it isn't meaningless, then it seems that the roll of the dice of Haven to assassinate King Roger was a worthwhile gambit, since then Manticore will be tasked at having a strong and effective Queen up for succession, and a strong and effective regent - a regent who also must be accepted by the Queen. It is stated in textev that the Queen has the ultimate choice of regents. A seven year old Queen may act out of emotion instead of logic, in choosing a regent.

Actually the text-ev seems to say that Queens (or Kings) younger that 16 don't get to nominate their own regent.

So for your hypothetical 12 year old someone else gets to do that. (Not sure if that would be Parliament; though certainly they'd at minimum retain their approval role)

SWM wrote:No, you misunderstand. An underage heir does not attain the crown until the age of majority. I was not suggesting that heirs be married while a minor, just that they might be required to be married before the regency lets them take the crown.

Ah, yes I misunderstood what you were saying. Sorry about that.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
If Elizabeth somehow finds herself a widow and she remarries, does textev explicitly state that it simply has to be a commoner, or should be a commoner?

If she falls in love with an uncommoner( ) is she just SOL?

Can she just elect to not marry? That way, she can just have a live-in uncommoner lover. Although that in itself, could be considered quite common.

And, is it explicitly stated that it has to be a Manticoran commoner? Can she marry a commoner from Dresden, Haven, Grayson. Even an Andermani?

Is there a Mrs. Gustav Anderman? I can't seem to find any reference. Is he a widower?

Can she marry a female commoner?

I can't recall any specific text-ev on remarrage. I suspect the wording is generic enough that any marrage or remarrage of the primary heir would have to be to a commoner.

But I guess it's possible that that constitutional restriction only says 'heir', not 'monarch and/or heir'. So depending on exactly how it's worded its possible that the restriction might not apply after your crowned. (Personally though I doubt they left that loophole, because it would allow an heir to circumvent the requirement simply by postponing marriage until after they assumed the crown)


I couldn't even speculate on how the constitution (or court decisions on it) have effective defined "commoner"


But I absolutely assume that, like any Manticoran, the King, Queen, or primary heir is free to marry someone (or ones) of either sex. (Though whether the Winton's particular branch of Christianity is happy their congregants being in multi-partner marriages is a different question)

roseandheather wrote:
I can at least weigh in on the church thing - Elizabeth and the Winton dynasty are 2nd Reformation Catholic, like Hamish and Emily, and no, that particular church doesn't frown on multi-partner marriages. The chief issue impeding the Hamish/Emily/Honor debacle was that Hamish and Emily, when they married, chose to wed monogamously under Church law, meaning that Hamish's affair with Honor, despite Emily's consent, was adultery in the eyes of the Church. Of course, once everything got straightened out - and how this never occurred even to Emily when everything went to Hell I will never know - the Church was more than willing to allow them to modify those marriage vows to include Honor. But yes, 2nd Reformation Catholic does allow multi-partner marriages.

That said, I suspect the dynasty has wed monogamously 99% of the time; for one thing, it takes a particular sort of mental flexibility to handle a polyamorous relationship, one that most people don't have, and for another, a multi-partner marriage would, in purely practical terms, probably complicate the succession quite a bit. If a Winton really did want such an arrangement, I'm sure something would be worked out, but it doesn't seem like the situation has arisen historically.

Thanks for your weight Rose. You weighed a lot! (First time I've ever felt comfortable saying that to a female), but it creates another question.

If Elizabeth would have married a woman, then there's the problem of a progenitor, someone to create heirs. I assume the obvious solutions would be ...

1. Adopt a male child.
2. Sperm donation.

My missing an option notwithstanding, in these two circumstances, would it be required that both of these solutions be commoners as well?

cthia wrote:If Elizabeth would have married a woman, then there's the problem of a progenitor, someone to create heirs. I assume the obvious solutions would be ...

1. Adopt a male child.
2. Sperm donation.

My missing an option notwithstanding, in these two circumstances, would it be required that both of these solutions be commoners as well?

Egg-merging is experimental in mammals now; so is stem-cell-to-gametes. By the time the Star Kingdom is founded, they'll have solved those. Were a Queen of Manticore to marry a woman, things would be slightly more complicated, but, given the likelihood of the security services practically insisting any children be tubed, only slightly.

I don't think, btw, that adoption would be allowed as a means of producing an heir in the normal course of events; hereditary monarchies tend to be big on the hereditary part, and most acts of succession (Henry VIII had three, which is a sure sign of an interesting reign) carefully restrict the pool of heirs to the lawfully-begotten descendants of some prior monarch. That might still be Roger Winton the First in the Star Kingdom; so far as we know, they haven't had a succession crisis, civil war, questions of attainder, or any of the other sorts of things that tend to require the Act of Succession to be updated. (Which Act might be, in Manticore's case, in the constitution rather than a distinct act of Parliament, but I'd expect there are some constraints -- the marry-a-commoner part and probably age at accession to the crown -- in the constitution that the act has to respect, but that no one was quite daft enough to believe the detailed law belonged in the constitution.)

I do believe that Ruth is not in the line of sucession, which if true would probably answer the adoption option.

Annachie wrote:I do believe that Ruth is not in the line of sucession, which if true would probably answer the adoption option.

You are correct that Ruth isn't in line for the throne, but that doesn't eliminate adoption; it just eliminates adoption of a non-royal (non-noble?) (non-natural-born-Manticoran?)

Weird Harold wrote:

Annachie wrote:I do believe that Ruth is not in the line of sucession, which if true would probably answer the adoption option.

You are correct that Ruth isn't in line for the throne, but that doesn't eliminate adoption; it just eliminates adoption of a non-royal (non-noble?) (non-natural-born-Manticoran?)

It doesn't eliminate anything. The rules for the Winton-Sarisberg marriage were a special act of Parliament, unique to that proposed union and to the special political freight that it carried. Also, there was already an heir-of-the-body to the reigning monarch.

I am just quite sure that any adoptive, or non-traditional (by modern SEM standards) conception would also require a debate and approval by Parliament as well.

Adoption is not out of the question. There is plenty of historical precedent. Rome, and the current reigning House of Sweden come to mind - are the Swedes of the early 19th century more flexible than the SKM/SEM House of Lords? Wait - don't answer that.

dreamrider