A Blurb on Kings

I apologize for the lack of posts on here. I have had trouble coming up with topics, but I have been inspired by my latest history geek-out session (yes, I am a history geek if you haven't figured that out yet).

Over the past several months, I have been doing basic research (which is basically me using wikipedia... good enough for basics; if I want to learn more, I'm sure better books have been written for such things) on various monarchies. I've done Britain, France, and Russia so far, and I'm in the middle of researching Byzantine emperors. One of the interesting things that I have discovered in this research is how each monarchy was vastly different and functioned. We tend to think that kings ascending to the throne is a simple matter of the king's son or otherwise nearest male relative being chosen because of his mere birthright. However, it can be far more varied than that.

In Britain, for example, lines of ascension tend to be pretty easy to follow. All kings of unified England have been descended from Alfred the Great, and so there have been no "peasants" on the throne; even wars for the throne were fought by relatives or at least by people claiming to be relatives; however, there were also no laws preventing women from ruling either, though no female monarchs took the throne until Mary I (not counting Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, or Lady Jane Gray), and queens after that point never had to struggle to prove themselves worthy of the throne. Russia was pretty much the same way, though the family trees were more twisted and did not follow the usual pattern of father -> son and several claimants to the throne were either murdered or locked up to keep them off the throne, whether they were male or female. France, on the other hand, followed Salic Law, which forbade females from reigning, as well as preventing any rulers from being descended through a female line; this led to constant wars over the throne and a constant jumping around in the branches of family trees for centuries whenever a male line died out. The Byzantines, so far, have also proved to be different in that several early emperors died childless or only having daughters; so the emperors chose their son-in-laws to reign or elected military leaders, or other military leaders not related at all to the imperial or aristocratic families were elected after the fact, so you do not really have family dynasties like you would in England or in France.

My point in this is that as a writer, if you want to be inspired by real-life monarchies when writing your own hereditary government, you do not have to stick to the traditional father -> son model that is generally used. While this is certainly true, at other times it was not the case. You can either use the stuff that I've mentioned here or look it up yourself to get ideas, but you should play around with it in changing how a government chooses a successor. It could be that the king/emperor/whatever you call it can name anyone, even a peasant, as a successor. Or maybe it is the oldest child, whether male or female. Or maybe the ruler has no choice in the matter and a cabinet of sorts chooses the successor. Whatever the case, play with whatever idea suits you. This could also lead to some interesting plot ideas about political power and enable you to create a fascinating world with a new government system that is unlike what most novels nowadays portray monarchies as being.

So, as I said, let your imagination have fun and go at it. Even the most basic of research can give you some interesting ideas that could be prime story material.