"It sounds like this proposal treats men and women the same. Why is that?"

He is really not sure why this is what he's been bribed to ask about but he's not going to complain. They're paying him pretty well, and the committee chair promised to promote Gozreh's interests in his barony when he returns home.

"It is true that this proposal makes no formal distinction between men and women. But one need only look at the example of our Lawful and Good queen to see that there are certainly women who can rule just as capably as any man. If those women are rare, then they will rarely be designated as heirs, and rarely inherit. The lack of formal distinction is only relevant in cases where a title-holder fails to name an heir, cases which should certainly be rare."

After the first half of the floor session, he is kind of having second thoughts about whether he should have tried harder to persuade the committee to bend on this point, but it's too late now.

Oh, this is going to be good .

"This is a Good proposal. Back home, when the baron died, his first son inherited the barony, and he spent all his time drinking and gambling. When we had a problem with ghoul-wolves, we had to put it down ourselves, because he wouldn't do anything about it. Lost my cousin, that way. 

With this proposal, any decent noble can just pick whichever of their kids will actually make the best replacement. There are even rules in place to stop them from picking a really bad replacement. Supporting this proposal is the right thing to do."

Almost none of that is true but he's not paid to say true things, now, is he.

Jonatan has really had enough of absurd radical proposals. Yes, there probably needs to be some mechanism in place to gracefully handle the situation where a resurrected noble dies before producing an heir, but that's no reason to do away with a perfectly functional, far more traditional system of inheritance and replace it with whatever this is.

He gets in line to explain this, but there are already a few people ahead of him.

Why are there rules against Chaotic nobles but not Evil nobles! Being Chaotic is fine, being Evil isn't! ...Probably because the man presenting it is himself an Evil noble and doesn't want to stop being allowed to go around hurting innocent people.

She gets in line. ...Anonymously, this time.

Why does this law have so many unnecessary extra paragraphs? "Each noble gets to pick who goes after them." Done.

She can’t see any problems with the proposal on a first reading, but her gut instinct is telling her there is.  At minimum, her sense from skimming committee transcripts it’s probably intended to help the nobles on the committee with their own succession.  But… it seems like this only affects nobility?  Maybe whatever hidden trap or idiocy or twist this proposal has will only affect the nobility and she can relax and enjoy the nobility infighting?

Well at minimum she needs to back up whatever her noble allies want if she can.  She owes them that much for stopping all books from being banned.  She’ll wait to get in line until she actually figure out what they want.

This proposal is too obviously stupid and unprincipled to debate. What is wrong with these people.

They're trying to make new laws for the nation. A thousand sub-national differences in custom are exactly what they need not to introduce, especially not in such a disgusting and embarrassing way.

Aspexia knew this was a bad idea. She politely suggested this was a bad idea. People were skeptical.

If this passes, she will consider Pichot i Bordas a politic genius.

Republicanism is such a stupid way to make these decisions. Now they have to explain to a bunch of commoners why this is a naked power grab. 

"I know that to many of you it may not seem like it matters how the nobles choose their successors. But it does, because when there's any confusion, there's a civil war, and when there's a bad lord, everyone suffers. So the law ought to bring about good lords, and no question of who the heir is. This proposal is clearly a bunch of nonsense written to keep ten particular people in their seats. The longstanding traditions of the Longmarch? What longstanding traditions of the Longmarch?? Everyone who's been in power there the last century was an Asmodean! You pass this, you'll have twenty stupid civil wars over what 'longstanding traditions' everyone's able to forge or dig up but which absolutely no one was actually holding by. 

Here's what you want. A man's heir is his oldest legitimate son, and if he has no living legitimate sons his brothers, and if he has no living brothers his sister's sons. If a man is manifestly unsuitable to inherit his father can disinherit him by decree, or just tell him to go prove his worth. Any man who's found engaged in diabolism should be put to death as a traitor immediately, that doesn't need to be in the inheritance rules. It's simple, it works, it's not traditional everywhere but it's traditional a great many places and the traditions of this country are too Asmodean to preserve anyway."

This is garbage. Self-serving garbage. Sure, not everything they suggested is bad, but even the parts Jilia is in favor of are probably there as self-serving garbage.

She'll get in line.

"I think that we should abolish the nobility like Galt did," contributes someone who is slightly confused about what Galt did.

Huh, this seems pretty good! A bad noble is bad news for everyone else.

"Your Grace, there are many traditional forms of inheritance that predate Asmodean rule. If someone tries to reaffirm an Asmodean tradition, the Queen can simply refuse them. Your alternative proposal is simple, yes, but it fails to account for the many nobles in this room who have been dead a hundred years and have neither living children nor living siblings."

"Then get married and get to work, son."

"I echo His Grace's words, and would add that this law purports to restore tradition while in truth paying it little attention. In the vast majority of the Arodenite empire, the eldest son inherited, save in the case where he had taken vows incompatible with doing so. Succession by designation was not unheard of, but it was far from the norm — and for good reason, as the uncertainty of such a method often led to unnecessary strife between siblings. It is better for there to be no ambiguity, and certainly better if a lateborn son is not encouraged to secure an inheritance by deception and trickery.

I do not disagree that any proposal ought account for the fact that some of us have no living heirs, but we are not writing a constitution merely for the next few years. Our proposal is meant to stand the test of time, or at minimum the test of the next forty years, and ought not enshrine measures necessary only for the present situation as permanent fixtures of our law."

The problem with the eldest son inheriting is that he's the second son.

"Your Excellency, your objection assumes that titleholders are too foolish to determine which of their children are best suited to rule. Any sensible titleholder can simply refuse to designate someone as their heir if that person is intentionally causing strife between their siblings."

...He had not, actually, been particularly focused on dealing with the various barons and minor lords in his county. He knew there was a chance it would come back to haunt him, but it wasn't like he had anyone to replace them with. Everyone he trusted has been dead for eighty years. And there was so much work to do in the rest of his county; the previous count had completely ignored all of its actual problems in favor of playing incomprehensible Asmodean political games, and it would have been a minor disaster if he'd let the multiple separate nests of amphisbaena continue to grow, let alone the bonesuckers in the south.

As far as he could tell when he briefly attempted to make sure that the barons weren't going to go around causing him problems, the bizarre succession method in use in Miravet had spread to Conesa, and both baronies were now being ruled by Galè, Antoni, and Joan Pichot i Bordas, with Gale residing in Miravet and the other two in Conesa, and there was a good chance they were all awful but he didn't have reason to think they were any worse than anyone else in Cheliax.

He should probably figure out what's actually going on. (He's so tired. He cannot wait to get back to Axis with its personal-customized-illusion-boxes the details of which he is not allowed to remember.)

"There are some very good points in this proposal. Particularly in our current state, with women almost equally represented among our wizards whether noble or not, our Queen and many of our high lords women ruling in their own right, and a general paucity of heirs expected for at least the next generation and so the better part of the forty years, allowing women to inherit seems to me a practical necessity. The choosing of heirs based on merit has a great deal to recommend it; I do not presently require it, as my cousin and heir was before my elevation my apprentice, but especially if the resurrected prove short on heirs in the coming generation permitting selection from kin or from adopted kin could prove very practically useful. I have been told this was practiced by the old empire at the heights of its virtue, though I have not checked that history since the Thrunes fell."

"I do agree it has some serious flaws. Many of the caveats seem rather arbitrary, and I am concerned the committee may have mistaken conditions which would, in their personal view, be better for their house and its lands in a narrow case, for conditions which should be applied to all of Cheliax. Particularly, while I am neither anarchic nor evil myself, nor is my heir, I see very little case for banning anarchic alignment but not evil; either both should be banned, or neither. Many nobles are still evil though aspiring diligently not to remain so, and many of the best available adventurers for protecting counties from depredation of monsters, in my experience, are anarchic or think they may become so, so of the two I would prefer 'neither'. I do not think most disqualifying conditions for an heir, whatever we might decide they are, ought apply to sitting lords, to avoid constant disputes; additionally, such disputes ought to be resolved by ordinary courts. If there are crimes which ought to disqualify a lord from keeping his title, such as perfidy and worship of Evil gods, we ought to pass law specifying disinheritance and stripping of titles as penalties for those crimes, rather than enumerating a special list such as this which prompts a special nonjudicial review."

"And while I acknowledge full equality of laws across the archduchies may not be possible, particularly given the Hellcoast's current state where many noble duties including the archducal seat are run by other means, I do not think there is such a need to add clauses for their old traditions carrying them forward, nor for individual families to reject the overall rules. Many traditions are ancient and were current at different times in history, and those active when the resurrected died, or when the families of the returned were first exiled, were much more different than might be assumed, and of course as the Duke of Valldaura says the most recent active traditions cannot be presumed virtuous and are certainly not ancient. I think this is presently a good time to emulate Aroden's policies and 'surpass our fathers' by wiping clean the slate and implementing one code for the whole country. One which is relatively simple, but which draws on the lessons of Molthune and Galt, and the lessons from the slow decay of Taldor, which respects the state of Cheliax as she is and prepares her for the future. A, very limited, experiment which can be revised in two generations seems in the truest and most virtuous spirit of the traditions of pre-Infernal Cheliax."

"Banning both anarchic and Evil character might be reasonable, if it were possible, but in Cheliax that would require replacing nearly every baron and minor lord." Also in nearly every other country except possibly Lastwall. Most people are Evil. But he's pretty sure that's an Iomedaean heresy. "Disinheriting every minor noble at once would be far more disruptive than just prohibiting anarchic nobility. An anarchic adventurer may be suited for fighting monsters, but that does not make them suited to rule, Your Highness."

The idea of resolving disputes among nobles through the ordinary criminal courts without any special procedures is laughable enough that he's not even going to bother to address it. Though in hindsight, passing laws to disinherit Galè would probably have been easier. If the Queen ends up not approving their law that lists out punishments, maybe he can see about doing that.

"I do not agree with the whole of this proposal. I don't think anyone agrees with the whole of it, on the succession committee; it is inevitably a compromise.

"But His Grace of Valldaura is mistaken if he believes that it is better for a county to go to a nephew who is a babe in arms than a daughter who is a wizard, and in Cheliax, many men's daughters are." She wears gloves to cover the inkstains on her hands, and is far from the only one. "A simple, mechanical rule which will yield children, imbeciles, demon cultists and venal brutes is inferior to one in which men of ability may use their judgement to select an heir by blood or adoption who is capable of stopping bandits, undead, orcs, bulettes, duergar, goblins, devils and fey - all problems Viscaya and Mequinenza have faced since the fall of the Thrunes - and all of which which need a capable warrior or wizard to overcome. If chaos comes again to Cheliax, as we all pray it does not, the counts who inherit must be capable of doing their duties each and every one, and whether they are women or natural born will matter less than if they are brave and true, wise and strong, and that is what this proposal seems to achieve."

He nods along.

She had a speech, but then people said things, and now she needs to change a bunch of what she was going to say. Hopefully it's still an okay speech, but it's not going to be very polished.

"I agree with Delegate Bainilus that the law shouldn't ban Chaotic nobles and not Evil nobles. There's nothing wrong with being Chaotic. Delegate Ardiaca is Chaotic, and I'd much rather live somewhere ruled by him than by some Evil nobleman who thinks it's his right to go around hurting whoever he wants. I'm not saying we should have mobs go murder all the Evil nobles, or anything like that, but you don't need to have a mob murder them to replace them.

Delegate Pichot i Bordas just said that getting rid of all the Evil nobles would be bad because you'd have to replace a lot of people at once. Well, maybe we should try harder to find people to replace all the barons and lords with. The main reason we even need nobles is to fight monsters, maybe once we don't need the paladins to be judges anymore we can just replace all the barons with paladins, and they can fight monsters and not be Evil. That'd be bad for Delegate Pichot i Bordas, who is Evil — you can have someone check if you don't believe me — but it'd be good for everyone else who isn't going around being ruled by Evil nobles anymore.

I don't know about the rest of the law, but I say we should add an amendment to add being Evil to the list of reasons someone shouldn't be allowed to inherit."