Line of descent? [Spoilers]

[Madame Sidler]

Noelle asked an excellent question on the FAQ page which deserves a thread of its own. She wondered, “If Janner died, does Kalmar become the Throne Warden and Leeli the queen, or is it something else?” Apologies, Noelle, for redacting your initial post. I try to keep spoilers safely tucked away in the forum. 🙂

I asked two of my Archival Assistants to do a little research on this, and they tell me that the records in Anniera have been lost, and what has come to us in Ban Rona is not always clear. What we do know is that Kalmar remained on the Throne, and in his case there was still a living Throne Warden—Artham. But there is room for speculation on what might happen in other cases, such as when a king and queen have only one child, or if a ruler dies without an heir, or if the Throne Warden dies and there is no other Throne Warden. I am curious to hear what you Featherheads think.

[Miss Mary]

The Annierian method of descent is quite fascinating to me with having the second child the heir, yet having distinct and special roles for each of the first three children in the family. I suspect that cases of tragedy were handled as they arose depending on the circumstances and that these things gradually built up “case law” sort of precedence for what to do.

We have some of that shown in the case of Davion for instance. They thought he died as an infant and the next child born DID take his place as heir and succession continued. That was a case involving babies though, no one had been training their whole life to be song maiden, or king and then have to find out that they are not ready for the job they actually have.

I can see that the ruler might be able to get a lot of help from advisers and have other people running a puppet government for a while, but I am not sure anyone COULD jump into being the song maiden/master if they had not been gifted for it and trained to it from a young age. That isn’t something that someone else can do for you…you can either do it or not, music lessons help, but connecting to sea dragons, contacting family members at distance and fighting wars with music isn’t something you can pick up with a few whistleharp lessons. I am not sure how well a king or queen would make the transition to throne warden either. Even if they were willing to, going from being protected to being the protector is a really difficult thing, it takes a whole different set of skills and a different way of looking at the world. It would at least be a tough transition.

I suspect that if there is another generation of royalty around, they will sub in for whoever is missing (opening the Fain of Fire for instance takes all three), or it may be that a Lore Wain (fourth child) would move up to fill an empty role if everyone is already well established in their roles, but we really don’t have enough surviving history to know how it worked in practice. It may have been a fairly rare occurrence that was always a little bit of a scramble.

[Miss Linda]

An Archival Assistant chiming in here to clarify something- we do not have records that state definitively what happened to Janner. But we DO know that Kal remained on the throne and that there was a throne warden referred to. Whether it was Janner or Artham is debatable, but everyone seems to have an opinion, so feel free to share yours here too.

If you were in charge of making the decisions about succession, how would you handle it?

[Toklaham Veruzia]

I personally suspect that Sara Cobbler may have taken up the role of the Throne Warden. Or maybe Janner was resurrected. We’ll probably never know for sure, seeing as Andrew Peterson plans to leave his readers in agony forever by never revealing what happened after the end of The Warden and the Wolf King

[Freckles]

I think either Janner should be resurrected or Sarah should be Throne Warden. I go with the first idea more (no offense Sarah). 🙂

[Peet the Sock Man]

I think Janner should be resurrected or Sara should be Throne Warden. 🙂

[Peet the Sock Man]

I meant to say Artham should be Throne Warden

[Peet the Sock Man]

Artham rocks

[Brighton Nelson]

I agree. Resurrect Janner or make Artham the Throne Warden.

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