Female NPCs with inherited titles

[JD Niemand]

So Eutropia's whole drive to overturn primogeniture means women will be able to inherit property and aristocratic titles... but there are female NPCs throughout (especially in Crownfall and SSS) who HAVE property and aristocratic titles (see Baroness Voinum and Dame Crabbe in SSS especially). How did these NPCs inherit them under male-only primogeniture?

[Grankless]

Please go read any of the five other threads on this same discussed-to-death topic.

[Artofregicide]

Grankless wrote:

Please go read any of the five other threads on this same discussed-to-death topic.

Hey, let's be helpful or not post at all. If the topic has been discussed previously, why not link to said threads?

[Dasrak]

JD Niemand wrote:

How did these NPCs inherit them under male-only primogeniture?

It's never explicitly stated anywhere. The most common interpretation is that the law had already been loosened to allow women to inherit land and titles in some circumstances, but the office of Grand Prince remained fully closed off.

[Shivok]

This is the result of bad writing, editing and collaboration in fitting a square peg into a round hole (Making the argument for the AP itself).

[Rysky]

Taldan Primogeniture kept women from ruling, not owning property or inheriting other titles.

[Zaister]

The male primogeniture law this AP is about is only in regard to the sovereign title. Other titles may have their own inheritance rules.

Compare this, for example, to the British peerage. In general, inheritance of titles follows the rules of (in CK2-speak) agnatic-cognatic primogeniture, but many titles have special stipulations that were defined when the title was created.

For example, in the most cases, when there is no male heir, a title falls to the oldest daughter, but other title have a rule that if there are multiple daughters, the title falls into abeyance, and no-one will be able to hold it until a single heir emerges, which can take centuries, such as with Cromwell barony which was in abeyance for more than 400 years. Other titles cannon be inherited by female heirs, and others again treat women as equal heirs.

What I'm saying is, the law just affects the imperial title, and there is no rule that says it must apply to all titles in Taldor, especially with Taldor being such an incredibly old and byzantine monarchy.

[Wyran Tegus]

My group was also confused about this when we started the AP (and complained that agnatic primogeniture should probably be specified). But the books do consistently specify that the Taldan law at the beginning of Crownfall refers almost exclusively to the inheritance of the Lion Throne.

To echo Rysky and Zaister and add some sources:

The PFS Scenario Birthright Betrayed includes an explanation in which a character (Venture-Captain Muesello) states that Taldan laws have been changed over the years to allow women to inherit land and title, but not the crown.

There is also a brief reference in the earlier PFS Scenario Library of the Lion in which the PCs find a scroll detailing times when Taldor has chosen an heir to the throne differently than usual (usually when the previous emperor left no legitimate heirs). Two canon examples of this are the transition from Cydonus III to Beldam I (chosen because Cydonus left no heirs prior to his assassination) and from Beldam II to Micheaux (who Beldam adopted, having no children of his own).

The book Taldor, Echoes of Glory confirms all this and says that there have been over a dozen families inheriting at one time or another if there was no living, legitimate eldest son to inherit. Taldor, the First Empire confirms this as well and expands some of the history in informative ways.

All told, all of the source books are pretty unified in the idea that Taldan primogeniture at the start of this AP refers pretty exclusively to inheriting the Crown. There is still rampant misogyny besides this, but the Senate vote in Crownfall is narrow in scope and deep in impact.

[JD Niemand]

Thanks for the help - my group has kind of decided that primogeniture is only agnatic when applied to the Lion Throne itself, and is male-preference in all other cases, so many women would still really like it gone (and many men would still really not).

Cheers, all!