"Rhonda L. Stroud" rstroud@qwest.net wrote:

Dana Shilling

...

The series doesn't give us a lot of information about many aspects of daily life, including civil law. If we assume a property system something like Elizabethan England, though--a system dominated by elder sons, with an obsessive concern about "legitimacy"--it could explain a lot.

Keeping in mind what Ellynne said earlier--that American's don't write giants well because they don't occur in their native mythology--it's interesting that Americans and English often assume that the most common method of inheritance is primogeniture.

Until the reforms in the early part of twentieth century in some parts of England (I use the term correctly) inheritance normally went to the youngest child, or was automatically divided among all children (relics of Viking practices etc) - I forget the terms offhand

Jacqui

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