He folded up the chart, slid it into a drawer. The genealogy was clear enough. If Josep had not died under circumstances more than suspicious, he and not his brother would have inherited. Josep was his great grandfather, Pere her great great grandfather, and succession by murder was null and void, so his claim, legally speaking, was better than de Litran’s. Hers, admittedly, was better than the Thrune bitch.

What she had, and he didn’t, was the support of archmages, three of them. One of whom, really two, maybe three, had insisted on a convention to limit the queen’s power. That she had had to go along was clear enough evidence of where the power lay. All that was needed was something to provoke a clear break and, for all the talk of republicanism, they would need someone to sit on the throne.

Someone with a better claim than de Litran’s.

Too early to make plans.