Yesterday, Father informed the family that Karl, who had turned 18 this year, is finally getting married. The wedding will be held in a few days when the bride arrives, so preparations must be made. To that end, Ralph and I head into the forest in hopes of hunting and gathering.
Although a bit gauche and lacking some of the more ornate trappings one would expect, this wedding will still be fit for a noble couple. In a remote, countryside village with nothing in it, the wedding of a noble family allows the local population to celebrate.
What it all boils down to is that there will be hundreds of people who will come to the wedding reception to eat and drink. That means a huge amount of food and liquor is needed. In the end, the Curzon House will be expected to bear that cost.
But it can't be helped. It would be troublesome if Father were to fail to put together a sufficiently grand wedding reception, as he would be viewed as stingy. A stingy noble is prone to many pitfalls.
We must prepare a proper feast and provide enough liquor to convince the wedding guests that the supply is endless.
In addition to the food and booze, the groom must have new formal clothes made. That's because, in addition to the dowry, the bride's family will prepare new clothes and accessories for her to wear and the groom can't show up looking shabby by comparison.
We are just poor nobles and, in light of the money and material losses that are sustained by maintaining the border, we can barely afford to rebuild the basic societal structures of the territory. My family has been saving for a long time to ensure that it can afford to hold this ceremony.
「It's good that big brother Karl is getting married.」
「Yeah, it great. Sooooooo then? When will you leave, huh?」
Ralph said mockingly. I turned around and hit his arm.
「I told you already! Father said that if I don't want to, I can stay here.」
「Oh man! And here I was thinking that I was going to finally going to get rid of you.��
Damn him. This guy has been teasing me about this since the day Karl's marriage was decided.
After the wedding ceremony of a family heir, it is a common practice among countryside nobles for their sons who aren't going inherit the land to leave the territory and seek their independence. When a non-inheriting noble son leaves the house, it is customary for the family head to provide him with a sum of money, which serves as an implied apology from a father to a son that cannot succeed his title.
What this means for the Curzon House is that aside from the second son, Ralph, all of the other sons (only me at the moment) will shortly depart to make a life for themselves elsewhere. Ralph is yet to marry and will stay behind as a backup for Karl (in the unlikely event that he suddenly dies). In a few years, Ralph will be married to the eldest daughter of our retainer house, which is related to the Curzon House by blood.
When a retainer family breaks off from a noble household it is known as a "branch family". In this case, the branch family was established a few generations ago when my great grandfather was the family head. My great uncle, as the previous head of the branch family, had been the commander assigned to lead the attack on Elbonia Empire. He was killed in battle and along with his heir. In fact, none of his sons returned home after that campaign.
My great uncle's granddaughter now has priority to inherit, and the household is being managed, albeit barely, by one of her relatives. Ralph is engaged to that granddaughter and, upon their marriage, he will succeed as the head of that house.
What I mean to say is that when I come of age (15), I would normally be told to leave the territory. However, my parents have already told me that if I didn't want to go and wanted to stay with them, I could continue to do so.
Anyway, with all of these seminal changes at hand, our Curzon family was hurriedly preparing for the wedding. Which leads back to me and Ralph going to the forest today.
With a grand feast a few days away and a shoestring budget to prepare with, Father ordered us to gather the ingredients necessary to prepare the many dishes we will be serving.
He also decided to send Ralph with me for some reason.
「You don't have to hold back, you can use magic. I haven't ever seen you use it myself though.」
「Oh?」
"Support magic"can improve strength and speed can make the otherwise powerless appear capable, though the degree of that capability is proportionate to the strength of the user's magic. Still, many magicians can use this sort of magic in some form. One of the reasons that my family was not worried about me entering the forest alone was because they had always assumed that I could use this sort of magic. The fact that they allowed me to continue to enter the forest stands as tacit consent to the continued use of this sort of magic.
「Let's go! We are going to empty this forest today. Hahahahah.」
「I-I don't think that's a good idea, big bro Ralph. It might harm the ecological syst-」
「Yeah, whatever. Bookworm!」
Cutting me off while teasing me again, he took out his bow as we entered the forest. He also had a considerable amount of arrows.
「Also, as Father had said, you haven't told anybody else about magic, right?」
「Yeah.」
It doesn't make sense to me though, I always assumed that after my family knew that I could use magic, they would have asked me to use it to develop the territory. But they didn't. Even though I wanted to help, my father would brush it off by saying that I don't need to work so hard yet.
Actually, why were they hiding it in the first place?
I was about to ask as much, but Ralph preempted my question.
「If you were to demonstrate your magic to the people of the territory it would almost certainly result in a succession crisis.」
「Huh?」
Seeing as I still didn't understand, Ralph explained it to me further.
Basically, the eldest son is given priority when it comes time to inherit titles and land. However, this priority is not absolute, and the noble himself often has much discretion when choosing his heir. This is true from the royal family all the way down to lowly country knights.
However, the noble's discretion is limited by the legal status of the children. This means that children born to a legal wife will always receive priority over children born to a mistress.
All of the sons born from the union of Head and legal wife have the legal status necessary to inherit. Among those sons, the Head has absolute discretion to decide his heir. However, so long as there exists a living legal son, it would be extremely difficult for Head to choose a bastard son as his heir. This means that, while the head has the discretion to pass on his title and lands to mistress's sons, to do so while any of legal wife's sons are still alive would invite extreme criticism, severely damaging the house's reputation and social relations. Because of this, it is unheard of for a noble to exercise his discretion in this way.
However, if there exists no living legal son, Head would have the discretion to either name one of his bastard sons as his heir or marry his eldest legal daughter to a suitable suitor and then name that suitor as his heir. (Obviously, women can't inherit.)
In summation, a child's legal status is based on the legal status of the relationship of the parents. There exists a presumption that the eldest legal son will be the heir, which presumption can be overridden by the head, in his sole discretion. By contrast, there is an irrebuttable presumption that a legal son will inherit over a bastard son or the husband of a legal daughter. Finally, as between a legal son-in-law and a bastard son, the discretion again vests to the Head of the house.
It's a fairly complex system, but it is designed to minimize the number of succession crises that break out in the kingdom. Still, any time that there is discretion there is the possibility of a succession crisis, so these decisions have the potential to lead to bloodshed. If a succession crisis becomes bloody or protracted enough to be noticed by the royal family, the house in question may have its territory reduced as punishment if the order cannot be quickly restored. In severe cases the noble house may have its peerage demoted, resulting in a lower noble rank for whichever party prevails in the dispute.
Father doesn't have a mistress though. So he doesn't have to deal with such things.
Ralph continued.
「I'm sure that you don't want to inherit this territory, right?」
「Yes, as much as I hate to admit it, I am not responsible enough to do so. I think big brother Karl is the fittest for the job. I just want to help the territory in any way I could.」
「If that's your goal you shouldn't use your magic to develop this territory. Father is aware of how dangerous it could be if you do, so he understands」
「Really?」
「He can't read, but he's still the head of a noble family. He knows full well how wrong things can go when it comes to matters of succession.」
Ralph explains that, if I were to use my magic to develop the territory, Father predicts that some of the villagers and retainers will begin to whisper things like『Since Claude can use magic, he is more suitable as the future Curzon family head.』. If that is allowed to happen, the population would split into factions and chaos would ensue.
「Listen, Claude, no matter how hard you try to keep the entire population happy some people will always be dissatisfied, as there are those in our territory too that are looking for any excuse to stand in opposition to Father and the Curzon House.」
Forget about the development of agricultural land, if a bloody conflict between factions were to break out in this territory there wouldn't be enough manpower leftover to sustain our current operations. Even if they raise taxes afterwards in the name of repairing the damage wrought by the incident, that would also sow the seeds of dissent among the people.
「So, it's best if you don't openly advertise your magic.」
Ralph is probably right. I would imagine that there are plenty of people who would cause a stir if my magic became common knowledge.
「Though there might be people who have their suspicions already, that is a very different state of play than if you put your magic on display.」
「Got it, I'll stick to the forest.」
「Good! Now then let's begin, shall we? Let see who will collect more food than the other. The loser will have to give up their share chocolate when we get back.」
「Yeah! You better be prepared to lose, big bro.」
We started our little game of hunting.
Still, knowing that I might get dragged into the politics of the territory only makes me thankful for my father for thinking this far ahead. He really is worthy of being called the head of the house.