Re: Orlanthi practices

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_yeats.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 22:23:56 GMT


Charles Corrigan:
> How do bloodlines manage splitting up? If it really is as disorderly as
> Benedict Adamson suggests with all possessions remaining with the stronger
> group then all (an Orlanthi all) members of a clan would be feuding with
> everyone else in the clan.

Oh boy, Jeff is gonna love this one! I think what happens is this: everyone continues to own their own personal property (by definition, really). In some cases this will 'trigger' a dispute (legal or otherwise) about a) what _is_ personal property, and more likely yet, b) whose property it actually is, if this wasn't clear back when they were all one "big happy bloodline". (Say if "old granda's ax" was being used by one or more of his descendants, but without clear title to it having been established.)

When it comes to odal property, then each of the 'new' bloodlines asserts its 'traditional rights', in the person of the constituent steads and individual, in the use of that property. I believe that _technically_, such is in the gift of the chief, so he could assign it to either, arbitrarily -- or to some third party, even. But clan politics is the art of the possible, so he'll almost always do what Tradition and Justice demand (hopefully those two will be more or less compatible).

In summary, then, the basic Resolution mechanisms are, in order of resort/increasing seriousness:

        o personal: argument; law suit; bloody feud.

	o  odal:  argument; appeal to the clan chief; clan ring
	   meets; _really_ big and bloody feud.


I don't think that in legal terms, a stead or bloodline can normally own property, though they can certainly be the party to a claim of a 'traditional right'.

> It strikes me that there will be precedents to manage this - mostly common
> sense rather than legal - who wants kinstrife? It must be the exception
> rather than the rule that a feud results from the break-up of a bloodline.

Well, there are feuds, and then there are feuds. An outright blood-feud would indeed be very bad (though a tad better between two different bloodlines than _within_ one bloodline, if it's going to happen anyway). Residual grumbling, bitterness, disputes at the clan thing (moot? whichever the correct term is in this context) and the like seem sadly predictable.

Slainte,
Alex.


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