The report emphasises that
- - the smallest legal unit is a bloodline,
I think that given the above, there must be some further religious and social bonds between members. I feel that each bloodline should have a council or some other leadership mechanism to actually runs its affairs (dividing up the lands that the clan have given it between members, arranging marriages and punishing misbehaviour)? Also, there should be frequent worship of the Founder, perhaps the spirit of the Founder will be a member of the leadership?
How often would a new bloodline be established? My feeling is that, once a bloodline exceeds 50 adults, there would be a tendency for it to split, as the temptation and opportunity to cheat would increase as members could not easily keep track of one another. Furthermore I suspect that almost all Heroes will be chosen as a new Founder by his/her children and possibly other close relatives.
In the case of a Clan Founder and (possibly) Bloodline Founder, will the ancestor worship take them out of the cycle of rebirth?
It appears that, in the majority of marriages, the wife will move to her husband's home but this implies there will be cases where the opposite applies, but I do not wish to explicitly spell it out in each of the following cases. How involved in a bloodline will a wife be? How does a bloodline regulate the behaviour of its married daughters? Obviously a wife's original bloodline will protect her interests, especially if it comes to divorce, but from a practical and legal point of view I think she will have become a member of her husband's bloodline.
Moving on to clan and tribal behaviour.
The clan chieftain is expected to be a warrior. Is a chieftain expected to voluntarily retire when he loses his fighting abilities or would the clan chuck him out? I suspect that this would depend on the times and that a retired chieftain would usually remain on the inner ring (and frequently an ousted chieftain would still have enough support to remain there too).
Would a clan raid against another clan of the same tribe? I had a chat with Simon Hibbs and we came to the conclusion that intra-tribal raiding would be quite ritualised with maybe only one cow taken, just to show that they could do it. Perhaps the owner would come over a few days later to collect their cow and give the raiders a few beers and have a laugh?
regards,
Charles
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