"That'd also be a reasonably good analogy, but the constraints on his pool of apprentices are much stronger than 'people he's related to'."

"How did this rule get canonized?"

"It was one of several approaches to succession in place at Cuivienen, and became a topic of political debate after my father'd remarried and we'd settled in here. The King didn't feel strongly about the general principle as long as it left it clear I was his heir, and it's not likely to be relevant, so it ended up being one side of several political compromises I was mostly indifferent to."

"Huh. I guess it's not a huge deal if everybody's immortal but it rubs me the wrong way, neither I nor Aly went into politics but I wouldn't be, like, better at it or anything."

"If it ever looks like it could touch on relevance it might well be revised. As it stands the first eight people in the succession are the same either way, so it'd take quite a catastrophe for it to start mattering. Perhaps if Maitimo's firstborn is a girl he'll do something about it."

"Birth order being a consideration is obviously also weird to me."

"I favored that one, for the obvious self-interested reasons, but I'll agree it's not very meaningful as a general principle."

"Why would you even want to rule the place? You seem to have plenty to do."

"I have not the slightest desire. I'm going to pass it to Maitimo. I do not want it to fall to my half-siblings."

"...That's an interesting word, half-siblings... What's wrong with them?"

"It would be rude of me to influence your judgements on that front."

Blink. "Okay."

"Anyway, the laws are mostly a formalization, though not the best possible formalization, of the fact everyone knows Maitimo will make a very good king and my father wants him to eventually succeed him."

"It does seem to be his skillset. Although I do plan to beat him at Governor eventually."

"I have no doubt that it is in principle possible. And I think it's a waste of his skills, too, though maybe less of one now that there's something useful to mobilize Tirion towards."

"What do you think he should be doing with his skills?"

"Politics doesn't actually matter. I'm sure he could find something that does."

"Politics can matter a lot at home. Less here, I suppose."

"How do they end up mattering at your home?"

"We have material scarcity, and that means everyone is competing, all the time, to have the stuff they need, and there have to be rules about how they can do that, and a way to enforce them which serves as a deterrent but isn't too inhumane to be borne. We don't have Valar, but we do have various contradictory religions many of which have intrusive beliefs about how their neighbors ought to live, and there have to be rules about how far that has to be accommodated. Some places practice debt bondage or slavery and solving that is a political problem. There are wars, and politics about how to decide who has to fight them and how to settle the dispute when it's sufficiently clear who's going to win. There isn't parenting, creches are all run on public funds - what they teach and how they're run is political. There are things some interest groups want literally illegal to say and how much to bow to those interests with censorship is politics. Getting everyone coordinated on public health efforts so people don't have incentives to skip out of quarantine or pretend they've been vaccinated against something when they haven't is politics."

"Alright. In your world politics would be a good use of Maitimo's energy."

"I think he may intend to visit at some point."

"That's a good idea," Fëanor says.

"I'm not sure if at some point the Valar will lose patience with ferrying tourists - and things to sell, the idea for supporting a baby boom associated with mass produced storks is to have the storks show up at creches with money obtained by selling local stuff in my world's economy - it'd be easier if they just made a gate."

"You should ask Maitimo to make that suggestion."