On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 10:30:51AM -0400, charles_sumner at harvard.edu wrote: > On a tangential point though, we don't know for certain that the Dragon > Heir's claim to the throne works as smoothly as the Dragon Council wants it > to as we've never really seen it happen, just the manipulations that go on > behind the Dragon Council. It's not hard to imagine that when the cycle > shifts, the Dragon Council would say Person X is the heir but then a bunch > of members of another line would argue that point with their armies, > Dragons are like that after all. It's important to remember that in all of > the books we've never seen a "normal" transition of the Orb from one ruler > to the next. I think it fairly certain that the transition of the Orb from one ruler to the next is never an entirely peaceful or "normal" matter. Draw the analogy to the Mandate of Heaven in China; the ruler with the Orb is the divinely appointed ruler, until someone manages to take the Orb from him, at which points the gods ceased to favor the old ruler for the new... the Cycle works exactly that way. Nobody goes to *check* where that big wheel sits. They look for a transfer of power and then validate it when the Orb moves. I strongly suspect that the Orb will go to whichever person of the correct house manages a coup, unless the Emperor personally resigns in an orderly transition. Of course, if you have the support of your House, your chances of a successful coup are much higher, thus the whole Heir business. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp