D&D General Inheritances laws are changed so that regardless of gender the oldest child inherits, as a result a 15 old year boy lose's his inheritance

[bedir than]

He's as angry as you need for plot, NPC or PC purposes within the game of D&D.

Without the child being related to the plot or characters of your game it's just trivia

 

[Henadic Theologian]

He might get pretty angry but it's hard to see this making him a sympathetic character, given that the law was changed to be less obviously discriminatory, so that would make this a tricky storyline unless the plan is for him to become a villain. Being upset that wealth or power is going from the haves to the have-nots is classic villain motivation (e.g. Sheriff of Nottingham).

That would be an arguement for a fair split, not both his older siblings split things and he gets nothing, that just exchanges gender discrimination for age discrimination, its not an improvement.

An improvements is a fair 3 way split of inheritance. Titles are more complicated, but noble titles are never fair inheriantly by their very nature anyways.

 

[Clint_L]

That would be an arguement for a fair split, not both his older siblings split things and he gets nothing, that just exchanges gender discrimination for age discrimination, its not an improvement.

An improvements is a fair 3 way split of inheritance. Titles are more complicated, but noble titles are never fair inheriantly by their very nature anyways.

That would undermine their entire political system - as numerous examples in history have shown, once you start splitting inheritances up, including nations, there are dramatic consequences.

So, this being presented as a feudal situation, I assumed that the premise was simply that they were keeping the underlying political structure intact, but becoming more fair in that the choice going forward will be determined purely by primogeniture, not by primogeniture and gender.

In other words, there was already age discrimination AND gender discrimination. This fixes half of it.

It's 100% an improvement if you are a woman.

Of course, this is setting aside all of the class-based discrimination that feudalism is built upon, but given that we are playing a game using a quasi-medieval setting those are hard to get away from.

 

[Zardnaar]

That would be an arguement for a fair split, not both his older siblings split things and he gets nothing, that just exchanges gender discrimination for age discrimination, its not an improvement.

An improvements is a fair 3 way split of inheritance. Titles are more complicated, but noble titles are never fair inheriantly by their very nature anyways.

That's called gavelkind succession.

Used after Charlemagne died. Split the kingdom in 3 the one in the middle didn't last to long.

Alot of unfair succession laws were paased for political stability. Kingdom splits its weaker often causes a war.

France went with male succession to stop the King of England claiming the throne viavi his mother.

Places that didn't have stable succession laws. Rome, Mongolia, Ottomans, Macedon. Notice a recurring theme when the King/Khan dies. War and bloodshed.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

That would undermine their entire political system - as numerous examples in history have shown, once you start splitting inheritances up, including nations, there are dramatic consequences.

So, this being presented as a feudal situation, I assumed that the premise was simply that they were keeping the underlying political structure intact, but becoming more fair in that the choice going forward will be determined purely by primogeniture, not by primogeniture and gender.

Gender neutral inheritance introduces the opposite problem - centralization of power. Male heirs will marry female heirs, and their oldest child will inherit both titles. After some generations most land and titles will be in the hands of a few families.

Letting the oldest child of a specific gender inherit everything is a crude but effective way of preserving the structure of a feudal system. Is it fair? No. Is any variant of feudalism fair? No!

 

[Zardnaar]

Gender neutral inheritance introduces the opposite problem - centralization of power. Male heirs will marry female heirs, and their oldest child will inherit both titles. After some generations most land and titles will be in the hands of a few families.

Letting the oldest child of a specific gender inherit everything is a crude but effective way of preserving the structure of a feudal system. Is it fair? No. Is any variant of feudalism fair? No!

Not fair no but they did it because of Roman's and early medieval fun and games with kingdoms splitting and wars starting over it.

Even then it only minimized the bloodshed they were still going at it into the 18th century.

Feudalism kind of an improvement over what came before.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Usually a change in inheritance law like that will be written to exclude the currently living so as to not create such situations - ie it would only take effect for people born after the law was past.

That's assuming the law overrides wills, which would be odd (though there are cases where it would apply.)

But if the king was thinking about his daughter and wrote a silly law, it sucks to be the baron's son in that case. Said baron will likely try to find a work around like gifting the son a bunch of stuff (or even just giving him the land as a vassal) so the daughter effectively inherits close to what she was going to get anyways.

 

[Kaodi]

Why would a female heir want to marry a male heir when the system was still fundamentally sexist such that the husband might effectively overrule the female heir's lands?

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

That's assuming the law overrides wills, which would be odd (though there are cases where it would apply.)

Wills are more of a modern custom, in most historical societies inhertiance was determined strictly by law and tradition. Wills, if they existed, were only an option for people who lacked primary heirs.

Why would a female heir want to marry a male heir when the system was still fundamentally sexist such that the husband might effectively overrule the female heir's lands?

Plenty of possible reasons:

• She's confident she can maintain control anyway.
• She doesn't want to marry a landless man of lesser status, since that would reflect poorly on her own status
• The marriage have been set up by her parents.
• She prioritizes building the most powerful family possible.
• She doesn't particularly care for rulership.

 

[AnotherGuy]

How angry would the 15 year old be that changes to his homelands inheritances laws have resulted in him going from inheriting everything his family owns to him inheriting nothing?

The cooler questions, I feel, are
(1) Who proposed or backed the change in the law and for what purpose?
(2) Should the 15-year old be angry, would anyone seek to exploit that? And if not angry, would anyone fill the 15-year old boy's head with ideas?