From: "Hughes, John (NAT)" <JohnP.Hughes_at_dva.gov.au>
>This makes good sense, but top down and legal perspectives become less
>relevant in situations like this. Obviously we have to know the particular
>context: the history of the two clans interactions, the exact reason for the
>current feud*, the status of the woman in her husband's clan, the nature of
>her social network, her cult allegiances, status of her children and birth
>family, her own temperament etc.
Certainly there will be lots of variations for individual circumstances, it may even be an internal family feud which has extended to the rest of the clans. Even so, given the abhorence of kinslaying, a precedent is needed so that people know what is right even if they don't do it. This way if a woman kills her cousin when he raids her home she can put the blame on him for introducing chaos. His excuse for the raid may well have been that by converting to the Red Goddess she had already introduced chaos. I'd certainly be suprised if it actually happened in even an Orlanthi all cases.
>I'm uncertain that daddy would sit down and write out an itemised last will
>and testament al la C20 westerners - its just as likely that the household
>would divide the goods after death according to a broad understanding of his
>wishes. I'm open to counter arguments on this - I know that Anglo-Saxon
>wills were common among the rich and landed, but A-S society was more
>centralised, literate and far less clannish and communal than the
>Heortlings. (for the vast majority of Heortlings, we're talking herds and
>personal possessions and obligation networks, not land or buildings). I also
>understand that wills among the non-landed A-S were far less common. (Looks
>askew to Andrew, raises quizzical eyebrow).
If it's communal property (whether bloodline, stead or clan) then it doesn't pass to someone else on death. A transfer occurs somehow when bloodlines or clans split or when people move from one stead to another but what the mechanics are I haven't been able to work out and I haven't seen anything on the practicalities in RW societies. At a guess there is some form of gifting ritual involved.
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #12
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