The Male Line

[RumHam]

What is the significance of the male line of a house? It seems to me like it doesn't really matter if you're descended from the male or female line when there are no other options (fake Arya.) So why did everyone seemingly let their guard down Blackfyre wise when Maelys was killed?

To save people like me some trouble, here's every occurrence of the words "male line" in the books:

“A poisoned prize. House Darry is extinguished in the male line, House Tully is not."

Maester Luwin answered. “With no direct heir, there are sure to be many claimants contending for the Hornwood lands. The Tallharts, Flints, and Karstarks all have ties to House Hornwood through the female line, and the Glovers are fostering Lord Harys’s bastard at Deepwood Motte.

You Starks were kings once, the Arryns and the Lannisters as well, and even the Baratheons through the female line, but the Tyrells were no more than stewards

Through the female line, they claim descent from Garth Greenhand, gardener king of the First Men, who wore a crown of vines and flowers and made the land bloom.

A poisoned prize. House Darry is extinguished in the male line, House Tully is not.

Illyrio brushed away the objection as if it were a fly. “Black or red, a dragon is still a dragon. When Maelys the Monstrous died upon the Stepstones, it was the end of the male line of House Blackfyre.”

As to the Starks, that House is extinguished only in the male line. Lord Eddard’s sons are dead, but his daughters live, and the younger

girl is coming north to wed brave Ramsay Bolton.”

“Gerrick is the true and rightful king of the wildlings,” the queen said, “descended in an unbroken male line from their great king Raymun Red-beard, whereas the usurper Mance Rayder was born of some common woman and fathered by one of your black brothers.”

[CelticAggression]

The female line seems to be working out pretty well for the Tyrells.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

The male line is the one rated higher in inheritance. Furthermore, it retains the name, drawing more followers, while the female line grew up with another one and would have to change. And a maile claimant can gather swords to claim his birthright more easily, clad in armor and bearing his sigil proud on his chest instead of a female claimant wearing a gown and staying far from the fighting.

[Tywin Smokin a Blunt]

The significance is the practice of primageniture. Inheiritance can only pass to the female line when the male line is exstinguished.

[Mladen]

The male line is the one rated higher in inheritance. Furthermore, it retains the name, drawing more followers, while the female line grew up with another one and would have to change. And a male claimant can gather swords to claim his birthright more easily, clad in armor and bearing his sigil proud on his chest instead of a female claimant wearing a gown and staying far from the fighting.

I agree, but you have to wonder the importance of maternal lineages in ASOIAF. So far, we have:

1. Jon and his Stark inheritance through Lyanna

2. Catelyn's and Lysa's children and their claim on Riverrun and Harrenhal

3. Asha's support that came from House Harlaw,, her mother's house

4. Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella equalizing Lannister and Baratheon sigil

5. Mormont women inheriting Bear islands through maternal line

6. Robert claiming the throne through his grandmother's blood

7. Aegon talking first to Dornish, as he claims to be Elia Martell's son

So, although male line is important , there is a great significance of maternal/female lines in ASOIAF.

[Ice Turtle]

Because Targs are different than most of the noble houses in this. After Dance of dragons female Targs were forbidden to rule. If the Blckfyres want to rule trough Targ succession they have to come from the male line.

[Arya kiddin']

Because Targs are different than most of the noble houses in this. After Dance of dragons female Targs were forbidden to rule. If the Blckfyres want to rule trough Targ succession they have to come from the male line.

I'm not sure if female Targs were expressly forbidden. I think prior to the Dance, the eldest child be it male or female would rule. After the Dance, all the sons would come before the daughters in the line of succession regardless if the daughter was the elder one.

[Kienn]

Cause guys are the ones who keep their last name.

Except for great houses, where if the male line dies out, often the guy who marries a daughter will take the great house's last name to appease the plebeian masses who don't want to have to learn a new last name for their overlord.

[Ice Turtle]

I'm not sure if female Targs were expressly forbidden. I think prior to the Dance, the eldest child be it male or female would rule. After the Dance, all the sons would come before the daughters in the line of succession regardless if the daughter was the elder one.

only from wiki but still:

Since the Dance, House Targaryen has practiced a highly modified version of agnatic primogeniture, placing female claimants in the line of succession behind all possible male ones, even collateral relations.

Baelor the Blessed for example was followed by his cousin and not any of his sisters.

[Mithras]

This SSM tells much

November 02, 1999

THE HORNWOOD INHERITANCE AND THE WHENTS

[summary: Maia asks about the Hornwood inheritance, given that Lord Hornwood's sister is not being considered for the lordship but her son is and so is one of his bastards. Given that we have seen female heads of houses (Mormont, Whent, and other examples listed), this doesn't seem to make sense. Moreover, how could Lord Hornwood's wife or a future husband of herself be considered a legitimate holder of her lands over Lord Hornwood's blood relatives. Also, Maia asked about Lady Whent being called the "last of her line" given that a female Whent is listed as married to a Frey, but GRRM did not answer that one.]

Well, the short answer is that the laws of inheritance in the Seven Kingdoms are modelled on those in real medieval history... which is to say, they were vague, uncodified, subject to varying interpertations, and often contradictory.

A man's eldest son was his heir. After that the next eldest son. Then the next, etc. Daughters were not considered while there was a living son, except in Dorne, where females had equal right of inheritance according to age.

After the sons, most would say that the eldest daughter is next in line. But there might be an argument from the dead man's brothers, say. Does a male sibling or a female child take precedence? Each side has a "claim."

What if there are no childen, only grandchildren and great grandchildren. Is precedence or proximity the more important principle? Do bastards have any rights? What about bastards who have been legitimized, do they go in at the end after the trueborn kids, or according to birth order? What about widows? And what about the will of the deceased? Can a lord disinherit one son, and name a younger son as heir? Or even a bastard?

There are no clear cut answers, either in Westeros or in real medieval history. Things were often decided on a case by case basis. A case might set a precedent for later cases... but as often as not, the precedents conflicted as much as the claims.

In fact, if you look at medieval history, conflicting claims were the cause of three quarters of the wars. The Hundred Years War grew out of a dispute about whether a nephew or a grandson of Philip the Fair had a better claim to the throne of France. The nephew got the decision, because the grandson's claim passed through a daughter (and because he was the king of England too). And that mess was complicated by one of the precedents (the Salic Law) that had been invented a short time before to resolve the dispute after the death of Philip's eldest son, where the claimants were (1) the daughter of Philip's eldest son, who may or may not have been a bastard, her mother having been an adulteress, (2) the unborn child of the eldest son that his secon wife was carrying, sex unknown, and (3) Philip's second son, another Philip. Lawyers for (3) dug up the Salic Law to exclude (1) and possibly (2) if she was a girl, but (2) was a boy so he became king, only he died a week later, and (3) got the throne after all. But then when he died, his own children, all daughters, were excluded on the basis of the law he's dug up, and the throne went to the youngest son instead... and meanwhile (1) had kids, one of whom eventually was the king of Navarre, Charles the Bad, who was such a scumbag in the Hundred Years War in part because he felt =his= claim was better than that of either Philip of Valois or Edward Plantagenet. And you know, it was. Only Navarre did not have an army as big as France or England, so no one took him seriously.

The Wars of the Roses were fought over the issue of whether the Lancastrian claim (deriving from the third son of Edward III in direct male line) or the Yorkist claim (deriving from a combination of Edward's second son, but through a female line, wed to descendants of his fourth son, through the male) was superior. And a whole family of legitimized bastard stock, the Beauforts, played a huge role.

And when Alexander III, King of Scots, rode over a cliff, and Margaret the Maid of Norway died en route back home, and the Scottish lords called on Edward I of England to decide who had the best claim to the throne, something like fourteen or fifteen (I'd need to look up the exact number) "competitors" came forward to present their pedigrees and documents to the court. The decision eventually boiled down to precedence (John Balliol) versus proximity (Bruce) and went to Balliol, but those other thirteen guys all had claims as well. King of Eric of Norway, for instance, based his claim to the throne on his =daughter=, the aforementioned Maid of Norway, who had been the queen however briefly. He seemed to believe that inheritance should run backwards. And hell, if he had been the king of France instead of the king of Norway, maybe it would have.

The medieval world was governed by men, not by laws. You could even make a case that the lords preferred the laws to be vague and contradictory, since that gave them more power. In a tangle like the Hornwood case, ultimately the lord would decide... and if some of the more powerful claimants did not like the decision, it might come down to force of arms.

The bottom line, I suppose, is that inheritance was decided as much by politics as by laws. In Westeros and in medieval Europe both.

[Arya kiddin']

only from wiki but still:

Since the Dance, House Targaryen has practiced a highly modified version of agnatic primogeniture, placing female claimants in the line of succession behind all possible male ones, even collateral relations.

Baelor the Blessed for example was followed by his cousin and not any of his sisters.

My thanks. :)

ETA: Thanks Lamprey for adding the SSM as well.

[CelticAggression]

The significance is the practice of primageniture. Inheiritance can only pass to the female line when the male line is exstinguished.

That's not primogeniture. It's MALE PREFERENCE primogeniture. Primogeniture is gender neutral. 'Primo' comes from the Latin word meaning first, not first male. Most of Westeros has male preference primogeniture, while Dorne just has primogeniture (also called absolute primogeniture).

*edited for typo

[SerArthurHeath]

Because if you marry a man of your house to the female line of another, the children are those of your house. You can assimilate houses in the female line, if they have a male line any marriage would result in your house being assimilated

[AryaNymeriaVisenya]

The female line in itself isn't a problem. The problem is that the culture imposes a ridiculous education on women making them generally unfit for rule. They have babies and look pretty. Meaning that their husbands, usually foreigners get the house in their grasp and sons who likely were not raised in the seat they claim.

[Starspear]

That's not primogeniture. It's MALE PREFERENCE primogeniture. Primogeniture is gender neutral. 'Primo' comes from the Latin word meaning first, not first male. Most of Westeros has male preference primogeniture, while Dorne just has primogeniture (also called absolute primogeniture).

*edited for typo

Incorrect.

"Absolute primogeniture" is succession through male or female lines, as in Dorne.

"Primogeniture" is succession through the male lineage, specifically the firstborn male.

The gender of the word does not affect the definition of the word.

EDIT: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/primogeniture

[CelticAggression]

Incorrect.

"Absolute primogeniture" is succession through male or female lines, as in Dorne.

"Primogeniture" is succession through the male lineage, specifically the firstborn male.

The gender of the word does not affect that the definition of the word.

I am 100% correct. Primogeniture is primus (first) + genitura (birth). Neither part of the word implies gender, therefore it is impossible for the word to be gender-specific. "Firstbirth" would be the direct translation. Whan women are completely banned from succession it's called Salic law. Again, when males come first it's male-preference primogeniture.

Putting something in bold doesn't legitimize your point, by the way.

[SerArthurHeath]

It's only impossible to be gender specific if we assume English sticks to its own and Latin's own grammatical laws. Which it doesn't always. As for which of you is correct, no idea but it's certainly not impossible

[SerArthurHeath]

Also primus is declined, it specifically has a gender by the way... Which is male. Prima is the equivalent female, primum is neuter, and primo could either refer to te male or the neuter

[CelticAggression]

"Which is male."

"primo could either refer to te male or the neuter"

If it's neuter, it's not specifically male. That's not how language works. In languages which combine male and neuter into one ending, there is no 'male only' ending. Like how if you're addressing a group of males, you use the same words as you would addressing a mixed group. Same idea. You can never really specify for males using grammar in that way. You'd have to clarify some other way.

[SerArthurHeath]

;) I said primus was specifically male, I didn't jump to any conclusions as to which of primus or primum is used in the makeup of the word, I was merely playing devil's advocate and pointing out what I thought was an inconsistency. I really don't know the specifics about how primogeniture should be used as a word :)