>> Actually, this is a time of opportunity - Salinarg was the candidate >> for prince because others of the royal family were in the Holy >> Country where a Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death was held >> and thus unavailable, if I remember those late night conversations >> at Convulsions '96 correctly.
> I had missed this. When is the tournament supposed to have
> happened?
I recall this only fuzzily (and it doesn't help that I got an allergic reaction to mosquito bites which increases that fuzziness), but I am certain that no season was specified.
> Is the Pharaoh (temporarily) dead in the summer of 1600ST, or
> does he only leave his burnt-out body after the winner of
> the contest has been settled?
I don't know if there is any great difference between body-burnout and failure to recover a burnt-out body from undergoing sacrifice. Given the rather unpanicked reaction to his disappearance in 1616, I would expect that it wasn't the first time that a sacrifice initiated a change of bodies.
> I've gotten the impression that he first dies, and is waiting
> on the other side for the winner of the contest.
That sounds like the normal procedure. However, if the current body is really weak, the Pharaoh might be able to initiate the tournament upon his passage.
> I'm also not quite clear on how the succession happens in Sartar.
> Apparently one has to be of the dynasty (bloodline?) of Sartar, but
> there obviously isn't a line of succession like in an european
> monarchy. I wonder if the closest analogue wouldn't be how the heads
> of Orlanthi bloodlines are chosen. The stead of that bloodline just
> happens to be the whole of Boldhome, and the traditional authority
> is that of the Warlord of Sartar.
I'm not the authority on Vingkotling kingship, but as I understand it you need to be descended from the founding king to become eligible.
It appears that among the Vingkotlings, the "founding king" was Kodig rather than Vingkot (since the tattoo of the Kodigvari features in this). This might explain why Sartarite succession was limited to Saronil's get before Eonistaran's descendants were considered. And the Sartar Royal House member in Kethaela may have been Saraskos, son of Tarkalor's Feathered Horse Queen.
I wonder how many children were fathered by the dynasty members outside of marriage and recognized to be part of the Sartar dynasty. We know about Eonistaran because his descendants get into the succession, and about Tarkalor. (And we don't know whether Onelisin Cat-Witch ever married, only that she had three daughters. And other royal daughters disappear without further mention. Yorestina, older sister of Saronil, probably founded a dynastic branch, too..
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