Discussion Main / TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone

"The Queen in Tanya Huff's A Woman's Work is well aware that her son is not up to her standards of Evil Overlordness and is a romantic idiot. After the conquest of a neighbouring kingdom, she notices that the youngest princess of the deposed royal family has a very practical frame of mind and quickly agrees to a marriage to the Queen's son, after having arranged for her two brothers to die in a failed suicide attack and her eldest sister to have unfortunately become deceased. The Queen cheerfully expects that her son will suffer a tragic accident very soon after their first child is born, making the daughter-in-law the new heir to the throne, and is quite pleased at the thought of having a competent successor. She's also quite careful not to eat any food given to her by her new daughter-in-law."

Love this story (found in the collection If I Were An Evil Overlord). The Queen killed the elder sister when she refused to marry her son. But Mailynne (the younger princess) showed minimal reaction to the event, and agreed to marry the prince with no fuss. If she didn't plan it, she sure expected it. And there's the question of why someone who was rather clever didn't urge her family to run, or at least run herself.

Queen Arrabel is bloody scary. She's evil, completely ruthless, controls information, education, and healing, but she's practical Lawful Evil, and knows a contented well-kept populace is a good basis for maintaining power. And sadly, she seems to have the best thing going in her world and time. (She appears to have read the darn Overlord list.)

Just be glad she and Vetinari don't exist in the same universe.

Edited by 69.172.221.4 Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett

Cut this:

* Sometimes invoked (and/or Deconstructed) in Hamlet, depending on the interpretation you watch. Sometimes Claudius is the typical evil despot and Hamlet is the rightful heir, fighting for the powers of decency. Other interpretations imply that Claudius is a decent ruler with a semi-legitimate claim to the throne (being the dead king's brother), and further that Hamlet would be a terrible ruler, since he might actually just be insane.

Because whether Claudius is portrayed as a good king or a bad one, there was nothing "semi-legitimate'' about his claim to the throne. Denmark had an elective monarchy, not a hereditary one (Hamlet refers to this at the end when he says "I prophesy that the election lights on Fortinbras). Claudius had been duly elected by the Danish electors; his claim to the throne was not in any way in question.

Edited by RTanker Hide / Show Replies