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Humble Ancestry of Gerlant Flame-Sword and other Seshnegi Kings


Joerg

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19 hours ago, davecake said:

? Gerlant is a Secret Keeper, and thus of an acknowledged lineage.

Let's examine that reasoning, trusting that that term which turns up in the Abiding Book still is part of the Malkioni canon. I'll examine what it means below, after tackling what is known about Gerlant popping up in the history of Seshnela.

 

I suppose he gave prove for that. But how reliable is that proof? Or is this just a favor to all his grandsons and their families ruling quite a few of the cities in Jrustela?

The I suppose trustworthy Seshnelan Kings List has this to say about Gerlant

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31. Gerlant, King of Seshnela

Reigned 453-c 500
Though called Son of Arkat, his actual parentage is unknown

Other, much lesser kings get their lineages recounted through hardly noteworthy ancestors, like e.g. Gothimus.

Gerlant makes a great entry into the Gbaji Wars during the reign of Healwelf, brother of his predecessor 

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Resistance [against Healwelf's ruthless persecution of the priests and followers of Nieby, the miraculous "healers" of the Gbajian Plague] crystallized around Iannilir, Healwelf’s bastard brother, and  climaxed in 415 in a great battle. Even with the help of Sir Arkat, the king was having the worse when Sir Gerlant, a foreigner, arrived on the field with a fresh army. 

Gerlant led an army of riders ("knights" ) into that battle.

I think that a lot points towards a Fornoari or maybe Utoni origin of Gerlant, or at the very least of the mysterious army of horsemen he brings into this battle.

There was an exodus of Seshnelan nobles resisting King Iwerlos after he overthrew his brother (or more likely half-brother, born before his father Ahmosing was crowned), and those were sent into foreign lands.

Or Gerlant could be the descendant of a sub-wife of a Silver Age noble in upper Tanisor, before those lands were returned to the Dari Alliance.

 

Let's have a look at the possibility of descent from Arkat, then.

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26. Blastring, King of Seshnela

Reigned 395-408
Son of Gwaloring

About 400 S.T. a Brithini army liberated Arolanit, they attacked the Kingdom of Tanisor but were resoundingly defeated. Shortly afterwards one of their soldiers named Arkat was among the Seshnegi, inciting everyone against the healing cult. King Blastring sent for him and was convinced, yet contracted the Plague in 398. He died fighting from a stretcher while invading the Temple of Nieby in Froawal.

Arkat arrived in Seshnela before King Blastring attracted the Plague in 398, possibly in 395. If he had fathered Gerlant upon arrival, he would have been no older than 19 at the time of the battle. Not completely impossible, but very unlikely.

And it looks like Arkat was banished from Seshnela already by King Hermalor, shortly before his death in Ralios in 417 and Harmast's Lighbringer's Quest 420. It does look like Gerlant returned to the side of Arkat when the subsequent kings of Seshnela, sons of Hermalor and former brothers in arms of Arkat, allowed their knights to volunteer to keep following Arkat. We know that the younger son of Hermalor fought at Gerlant's side all the way to the defeat of Gbaji in 450, as he brought back Gerlant to the kingdom he had inherited.

Not in the least because the description of Gerlant's reign has to say:

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Gerlant was a tremendous hero who had performed so many great deeds that he had achieved an agelessness which doubled his life span.

So Gerlant was considered to have doubled his life-span when he died in 500 or 501 (the year his even more long-lived son Nralar was crowned to his more than 100-year reign (he died in 603).

Nothing is known about any great deeds prior to Gerlant charging down chaotic followers of Nieby in 415, but if he rode at the head of that army of horsemen, he must have distinguished himself enough as a fighter and leader beforehand. Let's say he is in his late twenties or early thirties, that makes him die at age 115, give or take half a decade. Ok, that's close enough to two life-times (if I may say so as someone pretty exactly half that age.).

 

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Having no home of his own, Gerlant had returned home with his friend Talmakos. When the Seshnegi royal house died out he was asked by them to lead, and he accepted. He married Hupala to legitimize his claim.

Hupala appears to be a daughter of Hermalos, and Middle Sea Empire tells us about her losing sons in battle. (p.11)

Gerlant and Hupala could have met in Seshnela after "the church" had convinced King Hermalor to take Arkat's title as Grand Marshal away. But a marriage some time between 417 and 432 (when King Hermalor died and his successor allowed his men-of-all including his own brother to follow Arkat individually).432 is four years after Arkat had been defeated at Kartolin Pass, having pushed out all forces of the Bright Empire (though not necessarily all followers of Nysalor) out of Ralios. Re-inforced by the Seshnelan knights, and taking along the Orlanthi survivors of his Kartolin campaign Arkat set off to liberate Slontos that year.

It is remotely possible that Gerlant could have taken his teenage sons from Hupala along, as squires trainee men-of-all, or that he was joined by them after they had come of age (which appears to be around 18, judging from King Iwerlos claiming his throne and ending the regency at that age, a century earlier).

.I would assume that Nralar was born shortly after Gerlant's coronation, carrying the full legitimacy of a purple-born heir. That wpuld place his dying age beyond 140. Little wonder that the older brothers of his son Bertalor were judged unfit to rule, they must have been over 80, and may not have been as blessed with longevity as their father..

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King Gerlant attended the Third Ecclesiastical Council of Malkionism. Gerlant’s reign was long and relatively peaceful, and he often sent presents to Fronela where his friend Talor ruled.

Long and relatively peaceful reign doesn't sound like losing sons (not one, but several) in battle. Not impossible,either, but relations with the Autarchy had not yet deteriorated - that only happened early on in Nralar's reign when an embassy to Arkat (still embodied) demanded and was denied tribute.

As far as I can tell, Gerlant's and later Nralar's kingdom covered Old Seshnela and maybe reached the Tanier estuary in the south. Arkhome further up the Tanier Valley sounds like it was in Autarchy territory. It was founded by Arkat while he still was Marshal of Seshnela, but may have been founded to secure the barbarian lands liberated from the Vampire Kings of Tanisor.

 

So, if not Arkat, who could Gerlant's father have been? If Gerlant did have a legitimate rather than complementary descent from Seshnela as one of the Keepers of Secrets lineages (and I am very far from convinced about that), then his father and ancestors before him had not lived in Seshnela for quite a while. As exiles from Iwerlos' cleansings, they would have had to leave Old Seshnela by 330, and make a living in the diaspora, among foreigners. Not in Arolanit, which had no patience for such mayflies, so in Dari lands, or further east towards Slontos or further north in Akem.

I guess the Fronelan Malkioni were sufficiently foreign to count as untraceable ancestors, but that battle in 415 took place in a much smaller Kingdom of Seshnela than the preceding Silver Empire. At least I don't see any reason for recently conquered natives of previous Dari  territories to feel attracted to follow the less legitimate son of Healwelf's father against the new and vengeful king. A great number of Seshnelans in Old Seshnela still were grateful to the folloers of Gaalth for healing them from the terrible plague and willing to hide and support those Pure Ones (to borrow from the Katharian crusade).

 

The Secret Keepers are supposed to be those Malkioni who witnessed Malkion's martyrdom (?) and ascension. Now Hrestol's male lineage is extremely short - a father who was Duke of his colony founded well before the Double Belligerent Assault on the Logician realm of Zerendel, which killed his father and (only?) brother Hoalar. Talar himself probably did not leave Zerendel when Malkion did, and Froalar is unlikely to have left his colony.

So how can Hrestol be a Secret Keeper? Was he there himself? Did he inherit the secret from his mother? If so, how could she attend, and how did she make it to Froalar's colony?

(If it was Xemela's lineage that counts for being a Keeper of Secrets, then the pagan demigod Damol and his children should qualify. Damol was the grandson of Hrestol's sister Fenela, and of Duke Yadmov of Neleoswal.

 

But then, plenty of the powerful families in Jrustela claimed descent from the Keepers of Secrets.

If New Malkonwal - the site of Malkion's Fifth Action - was founded somewhere on the shores of Faralinthor, then any survivors would have been far from the next extant Brithini colony - not counting descendants of the Kachasti having gone native with the local Hykimi after the Vadeli kept them from staying true to their caste laws, possibly like the Kachasti had done to their Vadeli prisoners before. ("No transgressions against Zzabur's Laws in this camp!")

 

Gerlant was the first king of Seshnela not born in that country since Mimtak, the last Serpent king. There are several examples of people from a man-of-all background rising to nobility and theri descendants rising from that ancestry to the throne of Seshnela, including some of the more important and successful ones.

 

To be the founder of a Keeper bloodline, caste doesn't have to play a role, but I wonder how closely the Brithini worker caste and their Malkioni descendants followed their genealogy. Horali caste families will recount the notable deeds of their forefathers, like that Bormandy "talari" of Horali descent in the Tanisoran "What My Father Says". Zzaburi lineages (those were a thing in Dawn Age Seshnela, thus presumably in Brithos, too) and talari lineages have better records, because of literacy - something likely counter to caste rules for dronari and horali.

Or did these Keeper families not make it all the way back to Brithini colonies, but only into Pendali lands, populating the ket city-states of that pre-Dawn loose confederation of Basmoli warbands, led by demigod children of Basmol and Ifttala, and lesser sons of Basmol from other wives or lays? Those citizens could include descendants of Kachasti enslaved by the Vadeli, condemned to a much shorter life-span than the tsill-very-much-Brithini inhabitants of the coastal colonies on the Neliomi eastern shores.

 

Malkion's Expulsion Walk predates the Breaking of the World. His ascension may fall onto that event, but might also have been an event on Orlanth's Lightbringer's Quest. Flesh Man, a grandson of Grandfather Mortal, recognizes the fool being tortured by the evil (Brithini or Vadeli) sorcerers in the Sorcerers' Town (a description that might apply for New Malkonwal). Orlanh  intercedes and recruits the Friend of Men (or grandfather of men) to his cause, and leads him and Flesh Man to their (ambuatory, but still death) deaths at the Gates of Dusk.

 

I think that the Fifth Action happened exactly at

  • the first application of Death, (and we know Eurmal was there)
  • the Breaking of the World by Zzabur
  • during Orlanth's Westfaring, as the trail led him to Sorcerer's town to recruit Eurmal.

Anybody with a need for Godtime to have been linear will shake their head at this superimposition, but I don't think that the Fifth Action can be anything less than this.

Linearity is this messed up:

So, Humakt and Eurmal return from Hell (Late Golden Age, end of early Storm Age), Humakt applies the new power on Grandfather Mortal, and then passes the sword on into the hands of Orlanth, who slays the Emperor (end of Golden Age, start of Lesser Darkness) causing Yelm to disintegrate and his ashes to burn out Hell, which liberates the Flood (Midde Storm Age, Flood Age), which Orlanth fights back to enable a sunny Summer kingdom of the Vingkotlings before he needs to go into permanent exile (start of Vingkolting Age), before Vingkot dies at Stormfall, before the Vingkotssons plunder Dara Happa, then one of them raiding alone and losing the Iron Ram which helps part the Gacier during the Winter Kingdom of the VIngkotlings and the Dara Happan sun Antirius trapped in the dome(Lesser Dakness starts for real), which is before the Glacier is broken by Wakboth's horde leading to Sormfall (where Vingkkot dies, see above), before the World Breaks (start of Greateer Darkness, age of recovery for Choralinthor, the Pelaskites, and arrival of his Ludoch tribe), followed by Orlanth defeating Chaos in the Sky alongside his Star Captain heroes still up there, before noticing that Ernalda has been asleep since shortly after Grandfather Mortal was slain and Vivamort Nontraya had left the Underworld a mite ahead of the trolls, accompanied by all the dead that resulted form the later events, and goes to the Underworld to get his wife and kingdom back. Definitely before the Ritual of the Net / I Fought We Won, allthough the rivers running to Magasta's Pool starts re-knitting the world with Arachne Solara's web.

The Flood myths and those of River Sshorg's invasion are difficult to tell apart. The arrival of Sshorg starts the career of The Emperor aka Murharzarm, and the arrival of the flood starts the voyage and then reign of his successor Anaxial a few generations and the Death of the Sun later, but both are the same place on the cycle of myths.

The narrative runs in circles, sometimes hitting those story nodes, sometimes missing them for a few cycles.

 

Ok, back to Gerlant:

19 hours ago, davecake said:

He was not a King by birth,

Agreed. Not by descent, either, at least in the male line. There is a limited number of kings available to precede him.

19 hours ago, davecake said:

but as he marries into a royal lineage

of likewise uncertain ancestry, "a warrior of Seshnela" (indicating Horali/Pendali ancestry) crowned in the very year Gerlant makes his big entry, lasting only two generations

19 hours ago, davecake said:

you would assume he is of the Talar caste (if not by birth, by becoming a Man of All, but being of a known sacred lineage you’d presume by birth).

Talar by coronation of a man-of-all, yes.

My theory is that he is the son or even just adopted son of a man-of-all in exile, possibly several generations or adoptive generations in exile, a leader of an established mercenary band, with a bulk of Fornoari Enerali riders and a small corps of officers from their ranks trained in a most basic and possibly just superficial Man-of-All manner.

 

19 hours ago, davecake said:

You seem to be assuming ‘not a king by birth’ is the same as ‘not a talar by birth’, which I don’t think is true. 

I don't. 

There have been kings of Seshnela not of talar birth. Take Gothimus (#10). His Horali lineage has a brief encounter with talardom at Woswal through marriage, but Gothimus is descended from that individual's third son, still a man-of-all but without any title or office or other hint of talarhood other than his maternal descent. That man's son dies a man-of all, his son dies as a squire, and his grandson (the father of Gothimus) fights as a common soldier again, true to his paternal Horali lineage. At least a Brithini Horali lineage, unlike many others by this time, with several Pendali kets having been under Serpent King rule for more than 150 years, and the last integration of Pendali kets about 40 years ago under Sonmalos, whose remaining Basmoli/Pendali foes started a campaign of burnt earth as they slowly and unwillingly withdrew. Mimtak completed the genocide, displacing the last steadfast defenders of kets in Jorilland but failing to coquer and convert any.

None of his three successors had any better ancestry (or if they did, nobody cares any more), before the heir (#14) of the second of these ((12) contnues a royal lineage for exactly his own year of rulership and death. Somehow his mother, wife of #12, had a child from a Brithini talar and attempted to make that child the next king, but the Seshnegi wanted nothing of that zzaburist nonsense (they weren't too happy about #11's role in riling up the Waertagi and destroying Hrelar Amali with Vadeli allies, and #12 probably had to build the temple to Magasta there in reparation to the Waertagi and the descendants of Dan)

Then we finally get a dynasty founded by #15, another son of nobody special, Lofting, the founder of the Silver Empire. which collapsed along with his lineage in the third generation (#18) after him.

#19 is another son of nobody who starts a lineage of sons of kings for four generations (!), ending with #27. and only one interregnum not of that lineage (#21).

#28 is the king crowned after Gerlant's arrival, and he is succeeded by two of his sons, and then Gerlant as his son-in-law. Possibly not even posthumous son-in-law, but then his daughter or his sons weren't born as sons (or daughter) of a king, either.

 

There aren't terribly many talar lineages in Froalar's colony before Hrestol's exile. The Second Age map shows the orovince of Seshneg around Frowal, a total of four lesser cities founded by talar followers of Froalar after he received the (uninhabited, but still claimed) land from the Pendali king Avalal.

The ruler of Dontahal and the king of Jorilland had a wrestling match for the daughter of the founder of Caulsket (also in Jorilland). This led to the batte of Dontahal where Hrestol leading the combined army of the rest of Froalar's Seshneg broke the siege but was ambushed by Ifttala's dreadful magics when pursuing the fleeing Pendali. That's when and why he and his wizards decided that Ifttala had to die, and how the entire Man-of-All business came to be..

 The Brithini colony of Neleoswal had other problems with the Pendali of Rolfasland and conquered the Rolfasland kets of Tolsket and Neolket before Ylream's death at Kingsgrave, at the Battle of Ailor's River. While Tolsket went to Yadmov's brother (giving him a city to rule), Neolket given to Yadmov's nephew.

This means that by Ylream's death, Faralz was the only non-talar-born Man-of-All who had been promoted to a talar position. The son of a Horali friend married the daughter of the baron of Woswal and became the second named Horali-born Man-of-All to take a talar's position.

Faralz's slaying of the ruling talar of Brithos brought his and Hrestol's in-laws - the talars of Horalwal on eastern Brithos - into Froalar's realm.

More less-than-talar born men-of-all were named as talars of conquered Pendali kets - a term which can mean fortress as much as city, it seems. Let's think of them as chiefs' seats, perhaps comparable to the mickey-mouse-capped Celtic ruler of Glauberg in Hesse. Only Basmoli-descended, with full Basmoli companions bringing along their lions (male ones, I assume, who may have lived in something resembling a young bachelor's pride, very similar to the Koryos groups).

The royal kets probably deserved the term "cities", even if just barely.

 

19 hours ago, davecake said:

Horal also wields several other weapons, from other gods. So yes. 

So does Humakt, prior to finding Death - he excels at Kargan Tor's gym of all weapons.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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Essay structure would help here. Introduction, outline of thesis, one paragraph per argument, conclusion and summary, that sort of thing. I think I grasp the overall argument (Gerlant is descended from men-of-all in exile, not the Seshnegi royal line as he claimed, possibly?) but I cannot follow the path you followed to reach that conclusion.

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On 1/13/2022 at 9:33 AM, Joerg said:

Malkion's Expulsion Walk predates the Breaking of the World. His ascension may fall onto that event, but might also have been an event on Orlanth's Lightbringer's Quest. Flesh Man, a grandson of Grandfather Mortal, recognizes the fool being tortured by the evil (Brithini or Vadeli) sorcerers in the Sorcerers' Town (a description that might apply for New Malkonwal). Orlanh  intercedes and recruits the Friend of Men (or grandfather of men) to his cause, and leads him and Flesh Man to their (ambuatory, but still death) deaths at the Gates of Dusk.

A lot going on and I am tired but I keep coming back to this bit.

My intuition is that the murder of Malkion is the crucial event of their Great Darkness, the irruption of chaos into an already unsettled world. This event is portrayed differently in various modern and historical western accounts, each with its theological bias and agenda. For some, the breaking of the world became inevitable when the expulsion happened. Others will say that the exile itself was the original "sin" or mistake that broke the world and everything after that is just consequences. And apologists throughout will defend decisions that others mourn as cosmic errors. Few can agree on anything. Most try to distract themselves and each other with other topics.

But there might have been a few people, maybe in the dawn times, who put together something like the LBQ as told from Flesh Man's point of view. In this account, the role of the wind god shifts from the accidental bringer of death to the friend of man who repents his complicity in the fall of the world and is now doing his best to set things right. There's no royal Orlanth here yet. There's just a trickster in multiple masks. And there's no solar emperor here to offend and betray. There's just the Grandfather, the first ancestor. 

This reverse perspective on the LBQ was not well known to the Dawn Council and I suspect was something Harmast had to discover on his initial West Faring when he encountered the mythic landscape of that quadrant and incorporated into his rite the friendly or useful pieces he met along the way. I think his second LBQ was very different from the first in terms of the amount of Flesh Man material available at the time and opened up different territory in return . . . but Harmast was never a Flesh Man devotee and so the archaic Malkion rite never really made it into his reconstruction of the Orlanth story. And so it goes.

So imagine an early incomplete version of the story we all think we know by heart today. No solar emperor. No revenge for a dead dad. No Yelm and no Orlanth. Just a trickster who may also be death doing his best to repair the world and repair a simpler primal crime. Not so much a "Light" bringer or even a "Life" bringer but a rectification and renovation of the Law brought back for a new age of time. A different story of how the world broke and was partially repaired.

Now what gets interesting is that some people in modern Glorantha remember bits of this archaic narrative. The characters may have shifted official roles since then (the "zzabur" most notably) but what is remembered can be reborn as the Hero Wars heat reaches reaction temperatures.

In terms of Gerlant, IMG caste is more often defined by the work you do than the parents you had. The strict inheritance we see today is a historical aberration. Gerlant, for example, was able to rule despite not necessarily being born into any talar family or even marrying into one. But as long as you can exercise the perquisites of leadership, you can be consecrated to a formal leadership position. (The very identification of talar with "aristocracy" is controversial historically, but let's leave that for now.)

And as long as you have the power, you can take a formal leadership position. The line between horal and talar is always permeable within time and probably beforehand as well. Some people would like the lines around zzabur performance to be equally pragmatic. We don't see many examples of rising dronars but that doesn't mean they aren't there. (Another story for another day.)This reality behind the rhetoric seems to be at the center of the riddle that "illuminated" Arkat back on the island,  opening his mind, wrecking his Dawn Age caste training and ruining him as a good soldier forever.

Which brings us something like full circle. Do I think Gerlant was a literal son of Arkat's line? I think a symbolic son or daughter of Arkat's line would say it doesn't matter. Talor would laugh. Are all secret keepers brahmins? Depends on whether you let them marry at all. Compared to modern Glorantha, I think this question attracted different controversies in the ferment around the Abiding Book compilation, but this is already too long.

Edited by scott-martin
paragraphing so let's add a stinger
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singer sing me a given

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Let's play around with this a bit, too.

Brithini define caste via birth order (and there are serious questions there given statements about Brithini sexism) and so Brithini talars would have their firstborn child be a drone(ar) and their secondborn child a horal, holar, (or hoolar) and their thirdborn child be a talar. Now, Frowal is a Brithini colony and presumably Froalar is trying to live in the Brithini way until the drama with Hrestol and Basmola and Seshna Likita happens. And since that is likely the case, Brithini presumably have no succession laws as such, beyond maybe personal property. (They seem to rotate talars between positions, looking at when Talar Malaskan Philippe takes charge of Arolanit.)

So whatever is going on here with succession is some kind of Pendali or Likitan tradition, or some kind of elaboration on Brithini legal codes. What can we know about this tradition? Hrestol is definitely older than Ylream, but Hrestol removed himself from the succession. Succession passes from father to son among the first few Sacred Lords, without mention of birth order. But there may not be any siblings to be relevant, since Bertalor names Sonmalos as the fifth Sacred Lord and the intimation is that the snake-legged Sacred Lords are immortal in some fashion and voluntarily abdicate rather than dying. The succession passes down from brother to sister with Mimtak to Betria.

After that, we have several very short reigns, and then there is a large lacuna where most kings have no known lineage, and the only attempts to achieve succession via birth are failures, culminating in the lineage-less Lofting, who then establishes relatively stable royal succession, with interruptions. Lofting, though, is put forward as an alternative to the succession of a Brithini-fathered child.

I suspect that what happened, then, is that there was no coherent succession law at all, because there is an immediate crisis when Betria dies and Anilla does not claim legitimacy from her descent from Mimtak, but from her contact with Seshna Likita directly, her adherence to Hrestolist forms of legitimacy, and via marriage. Neeilin attempts to assert legitimacy via his own descent from Mimtak, but this is rejected by large parts of the nobility- and his successor Gothimus is directly appointed by Froalar's spirit. Gothimus also claims legitimacy in Brithini forms- he is explicitly the third child of his father, and his ancestry notes birth order only for his great-great-grandfather- a third son, and is also legitimate in a Hrestolist way, as a devout knight/man-of-all. But he also called for an acclamation of a King of Seshnela by the nobles.

Or to put it another way, there are four separate methods of legitimacy going on here. You can be legitimate in a pseudo-Brithini fashion- you are a third child (preferentially a son) of someone who can serve as a talar (talar caste or man-of-all). You can be legitimate because you have contact with Seshna Likita and her blessing, via priestesshood or via confirmation by a Serpent King. You can be legitimate because you were acclaimed as king by the nobles of Seshnela. Or you can be legitimate because your legitimacy has been confirmed by the Hrestoli religious infrastructure- crowned by a knight/judge and confirmed by a wizard.

I think the last two can perhaps be merged together. Hrestolist legitimacy relies at this point, I think, on having the support of all the castes and the approval of knights/men-of-all as judges/watchers, which is represented in later documents as being elected by the talars, blessed by a zzabur, and crowned by a knight/man-of-all, as in later times dronars and horals were understood as outside of the Malkioni system and so their approval would not be understood as meaningful. And when Lofting is elected King of the Silver Empire, he purges the Brithini (and pseudo-Brithini legitimacy) and worship of the Serpent Kings (and legitimacy from Seshna Likita), in favor of Hrestolism, which is then rationalized in the Second Ecumenical Council.

And then after this, familial succession becomes the norm. A little bit of irony, but whenever there's an interruption, there's a reference to a kind of election for the next ruler, and there are rulers who are explicitly not following primogeniture in these lists. So perhaps it's a matter of children of the existing kings having an advantage of upbringing- they can be prepared for the role, and this produces a kind of calcification. There are extended interregna, and according to the Kings List, proper Malkioni coronations don't happen until well after the Return to Rightness Crusade, and that is when primogeniture wins out over this semi-elective succession.

So to sum things up, Gerlant being a horali or even a dronar by birth seems entirely credible, because the broad trend here is of the descent of spirits into the material world with initial near-absolute freedom and then that freedom draining away as calcifying recreations of the spiritual structures they abandoned are rebuilt bit by bit, until at last we come to Rokarism, which shears away the last remnants of that ecstatic Joy and the freedom it brings. About time for another prophet to aid in Malkionism's revival.

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