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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
 Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 16:51:16
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I didn't want to clutter up Ed's scroll by responding there.
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Originally posted by Garen Thal
quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
Even if we assume that no Obarskyrs before 20 DR count, I submit that by ca 1350 DR, there is a virtual mathematical certainty that anyone born in Cormyr has the blood of Obarskyrs and anyone born in the Inner Sea lands at all has a more than 90% chance of being descended from Rhiiman or (overwhelmingly more likely) Faerlthann Obarskyr.
Note: Per Grand History of the Realms, Rhiiman died without issue. As did his brother Eskrius, his nephews Bryndar and Kaspler, and a number of other Cormyrean monarchs.
You're assuming a fairly standard array of numbers of children per Obarskyr, numbers of children surviving into adulthood, and numbers of children who survive to adulthood and have children themselves.
Having seen the Obarskyr lineage in its entirety from Telmer (Ondeth's father) to Raedra (the granddaughter of King Foril), I know for a fact that the mathematical certainty of which you speak is not nearly as certain as it might appear at first glance.
Azoun IV, of course, skews such numbers, but the ruling Obarskyrs have rarely been as populous as it might appear at first glance. Considering field-clearing events like the Thronestrife and long periods where there were no suriving issue to speak of (see Galaghard I/Galaghard II/Draxius, who reigned for 395 years all together and had exactly one child that produced issue: Bryntarth I), or where the only issue wound up on the throne, and there aren't a whole lot of spare branches--legitimate or illegitimate--of the Obarskyr tree floating around. Frankly, it's near-miraculous that they've stuck around this long.
Given the time, the resources, and the patience, I could probably find a hard stop for nearly every tracing of Faerlthann's blood into the present day. I don't have those things, so I can't venture to guess with any mathematical certainty how many people could claim to be descended from Faerlthann First-King, but it's certainly far less than 90%, or half, or even a quarter of the nobles of Cormyr.
And now back to your regularly over-scheduled Ed.
I find this incredibly hard to grasp.
First of all, I had believed Rhiiman to be the youngest son of Ondeth, the one Suzara took home to Impiltur with her. If he died without issue, then what purpose is there in discussing an Impilturan branch of the family?
Second, is it seriously true that people with no possible claim on the throne by Cormyrean law were murdered by shadowy groups for some obscure reason by the thousand, ever since the first day of the kingdom?
Because that's what it would take to make sure that there are not literally millions of people with exactly as much Obarskyr blood as King Azoun in the world. Well, maybe more, considering that royals are unlikely to marry commoners who can't attest to their ancestors for tens of generations and that Obarskyrs don't deliberately practise incest, so the odds are good that any random person has blood from much more than one branch of the Obarskyrs, but if anyone is likely not to marry the descendants of royal or noble bastards, it would be the royal line.
All it takes is one person who is not regarded as close enough to the royal family to worry about potential offspring and after that, no royal feuds or campaigns of heir-murdering will touch that person, leaving us to calculate the number of their offspring just as if they were a normal person.
And the thing is, since every person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on, it doesn't actually take many generations for it to be a mathematical certainty that a given person numbers among them. As noted earlier, there is a point in time beyond which people are divided into two groups. Those with no living descendants and those who are the ancestors of all living humans.
Let's say that no one actually killed the youngest son of Ondeth and he managed to have just one child. Now, since Ondeth lived around 55 generations from modern Faerunians, it should be clear that even if the descendents of this grandson he never saw were famously contingent and never sought to have more children than the bare minimum approaching a replacement rate, they'll still number 2 to the 53rd power.
Also known as considerably more people than live in modern Faerun. Of course, in order to maintain a replacement rate, more like 2.2 children have to survive infancy, but we'll ignore that. We already have an absurdly large number.
In fact, if even one royal lady who married a noble, one royal bastard or one member of the Impilturan branch of the family managed to have children who were not massacred, at any time before ca 600 DR, they'd have more than a billion descendants, of which enough would be alive in modern Faerun to ensure that pretty much everyone around the Inner Sea is one of them.
Given that the Silver brothers or some of their brood obviously married Obarskyrs, it would be necessary to have killed every single member of that household except the current heir, for every generation, in order to prevent one of them from having a descendant who, without title and possibly even without the knowledge of his begetter, would begin living a normal life, having an average of two children and with them doing the same.
And note I'm not using medieval rates of reproduction here. All I'm assuming is that if some people descended from Obarskyrs were born into populations in severe decline that then died out, others, in other lands, were not. Just assuming that, on balance, people around the Inner Sea had enough children so that there were not less of them in 1372 DR than in 20 DR means that all of them have as much Obarskyr blood as the king.
Of course, we all know that there are many, many more people around the Inner Sea in the modern day than there were then. But that doesn't change the fact that each of them will have ancestors among everyone who was living in 20 DR, except those who left no descendents at all.
The point I'm making is that there is absolutely nothing mystical about having 'the blood of' some person in your veins. While dynastic considerations can make it special to be the eldest acknowledged child of the eldest acknowledged child et cetara ad nauseaum of someone, that's a human construct.
We all have the blood of Caesars in our veins. At least 35 million of us can be conclusively shown to have a particular genetic feature most likely associated with Ghengis Khan (dead for less than 800 years) in our veins, which (even if we don't get into counting how many people end up not inheriting a given feature) means that a couple of generations more will make him the provable ancestor of pretty much everyone.
Every single person in Iceland* can be proven to be the descendant of a man who died in the 16th century, a mere five hundred years ago.
*With a margin of error for first generation immigrants and the children of two of those, but that's not all that common here. Few immigrants here practise endogamy, as most people who want to move so close to the North Pole are doing so for love, anyway.
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Edited by - Icelander on 06 Mar 2012 17:01:43
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 16:59:25
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There is a 'curse' on the Obarskyrs (and I use that term rather loosely, because the 'curse' could just be a clandestine group/deity/whatever 'working in the background').
The fate of the Realm is tied to the Royal Bloodline, but something prevents that same bloodline from "getting out of control". I would think the two are related somehow, but it doesn't have to be the case (it could be more like something 'acting' on the knowledge of the other). |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Edited by - Markustay on 06 Mar 2012 17:01:04 |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 17:05:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
There is a 'curse' on the Obarskyrs (and I use that term rather loosely, because the 'curse' could just be a clandestine group/deity/whatever 'working in the background').
The fate of the Realm is tied to the Royal Bloodline, but something prevents that same bloodline from "getting out of control". I would think the two are related somehow, but it doesn't have to be the case (it could be more like something 'acting' on the knowledge of the other).
While I can understand the purpose for this as regards potential heirs to the throne, what in the world would be the point for the descendants of female Obarskyrs, who are, at most heirs to their father's noble title?
And if there is such a curse, why have the tripartite Silvers not have any trouble breeding? They all have the 'blood of the Obarskyrs', just not in a way that makes them potential heirs.
I've heard many mentions of an Impilturan branch of the family. Is it true that Ondeth's son died without issue? If he did, there is no Impilturan branch, of course. If he did not, why would there be a curse on them? They cannot inherit by any law. They are not potential heirs. But they do have 'the blood of the Obarskyrs' in the same or greater degree. |
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader
USA
2717 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 18:29:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
We all have the blood of Caesars in our veins. At least 35 million of us can be conclusively shown to have a particular genetic feature most likely associated with Ghengis Khan (dead for less than 800 years) in our veins,
Ghengis Khan is considered by some scientists to be the most prolific male sire of offspring that ever lived.
Your average human—whether Earthling or Torillian—isn’t anywhere near as prolific.
Ghengis Khan’s example isn’t something that supports your line of reasoning. His is an outlier; an extreme. Not a norm.
Once again, very interesting topic. One that I hope reveals something of the Obarskyr legacy and the (magica) mysteries surrounding it. |
Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver). |
Edited by - Jeremy Grenemyer on 06 Mar 2012 18:32:24 |
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Garen Thal
Master of Realmslore
USA
1105 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 19:05:38
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quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
I had believed Rhiiman to be the youngest son of Ondeth, the one Suzara took home to Impiltur with her. If he died without issue, then what purpose is there in discussing an Impilturan branch of the family?
There are two people named Rhiiman in early Cormyrean history: Ondeth's son (and Faerlthann's brother), Rhiiman, who founded the Crownsilver family line, and King Rhiiman, known as the Glorious. All kings of Cormyr are descended from Faerlthann. Ondeth's son never ruled.
Your post deals with the mathematical probabilities of your premise (that most or all modern-day Cormyreans are descendants of a common ancestor). And in most cases, you might be correct. In this case, however, you're not. It's fine to assume that 'each Obarskyr should have averaged two kids each.' The reality, however, is quite different, and when you look at these folks as individuals who lived and died, some with many children and some with none at all, some who lived to old age and some who were cut down as infants, the story is quite different.
Unfortunately, I have the luxury of being the keeper of the Royal Lineage, which means I know about all the little corners and dead branches of the family tree. There are precious few lost heirs floating out in the ether, and many of those--or their children or grandchildren--wind up very dead the moment someone like the Fire Knives or Salember or Boldovar finds out about them.
I'm not going to get into any curses or mystical influence on the Blood Royal. That's speculation as to why the numbers of Obarskyrs have remained so spectacularly ineffective at maintaining a stable of heirs over the years.
The context of your 90% comment suggested that 90% of anyone born in the Inner Sea Lands (which includes Sembia, the Dragon Reach, the Vast, Thesk, Mulhorand, Chessenta, Unther, and Turmish) is descended from the first king of Cormyr. Given that I know how many children he had, and how many children they had, and how many children *they* had, and how and when they all died, and how many lived to adulthood, and how many had children of their own, I know for a fact that this claim can't be accurate.
Arguments about Genghis Khan and the Caesars are all well and good. But the ruling Obarskyrs and their descendants are not conquerors, and don't claim the women of their enemies as tribute. Azoun IV was a prolific man, to be sure, but no one ever claimed that he had a standing harem of hundreds or even thousands of women (as Genghis Khan did).
Faerlthann First-King had four sons, all of whom were eventually king of Cormyr. Only two of them had children (Imlon had a son, Bryndar, who died without issue; Embrus had two sons, both of whom ruled, and only one of whom--Imbre--had any children at all).
By the time the realm was a century old, in 126 DR, it had seen eleven kings, and there were only two living descendants of King Faerlthann: King Dorglor (aged 16) and his younger brother Embrold (14). Embrold also had no children, died suspiciously at age 33, and was succeeded on the Dragon Throne by Dorglor's (legitimized) bastard son, Irbruin.
In a hundred years, one man ended up with two living descendants. And they were his great-great-grandsons. The point being that math does not always give us an answer, and that answer isn't always correct. There "should" be two children for Faerlthann, and four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and sixteen great-great-grandchildren.
[Note to Lineage-hunters: I'm being very careful not to reveal anything that's not given away in the Grand History of the Realms.] |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 19:20:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
We all have the blood of Caesars in our veins. At least 35 million of us can be conclusively shown to have a particular genetic feature most likely associated with Ghengis Khan (dead for less than 800 years) in our veins,
Ghengis Khan is considered by some scientists to be the most prolific male sire of offspring that ever lived.
Your average human—whether Earthling or Torillian—isn’t anywhere near as prolific.
Ghengis Khan’s example isn’t something that supports your line of reasoning. His is an outlier; an extreme. Not a norm.
Once again, very interesting topic. One that I hope reveals something of the Obarskyr legacy and the (magica) mysteries surrounding it.
Remember how math works.
When you're dealing with an exponential variable, starting with 2,000 (or 3,000 or 6,000, if we want to go by the most extreme accounts) only means that you have to go through slightly fewer iterations to reach the same number.
Ghenghis Khan, being the amazingly prolific man he is, reached a certain number of descendants 500 years after his death. A sober and conscientous man without any notability, who had one daughter by his beloved wife of 30 years and no by-blows at all, will reach the exact same number of descendants, on average ca 12-13 generations later than the doughty Khan. Or, in other words, around 320-350 years later.
We've got 1350 years. Which means that we could start with five hundred years of taking it slow and no descendant of any Obarskyr, no matter how remote from the throne, ever having a single child who is then able to live a normal life. If, at any time in those five hundred years, a single by-blow of one of the Silver lines comes into existence* without anyone paying enough attention to murder him, the 'blood of the Obarskyrs' is no longer exclusive.
And boom, all of a sudden, some eight hundred and some years after that, everyone in Cormyr is descended from said Silver, who, in turn, was descended from an Obarskyr some five hundred years before that.
*Or, alternatively, a -silver girl makes a disadvantageous marriage, her daughter, in turn, marries into lesser nobility, etc. until the fact that their ancestors were nobles some hundreds of years ago is unlikely to be remembered at all. The existence of branches of the noble families indicates that it's possible to be descended from a high noble, but be merely gentry with pretensions yourself. In turn, that implies that marriages to a non-titled, but wealthy man is possible. Which, in turn, implies that at least some of those offspring might live more or less normal lives. |
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Edited by - Icelander on 06 Mar 2012 19:21:16 |
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader
USA
2717 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 19:37:03
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quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
Remember how math works.
Generally speaking, I do know how math works.
However, it doesn't follow that just because you can do the math that reality will reflect the numbers you come up with.
Your argument seems to be that the potential exists with any single person to sire (or birth) a bloodline that when given enough time will produce a genetic legacy linking every living individual within a wide region to that first person.
You seem to infer without explicitly stating that because all that's needed is one person, problems arising through death, famine, disease, bad luck, etc...don't matter. Somehow, some way, someone will survive and continue the line down the centuries, such that all persons in the future will be related to a given first person.
I simply don't see this as realistic. What you see as a conclusion based on the math looks to me like a set of assumptions.
There's certainly not enough there to conclude "some eight hundred and some years after that, everyone in Cormyr is descended from said Silver".
More to the point: we may be using exponential variables, but we're not dealing with exponential variables. We're dealing with people (albeit imaginary ones).
The math is only good for modeling the best maximum outcome; for estimating.
It's not good for truth value. |
Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver). |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 19:43:47
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quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
There are two people named Rhiiman in early Cormyrean history: Ondeth's son (and Faerlthann's brother), Rhiiman, who founded the Crownsilver family line, and King Rhiiman, known as the Glorious. All kings of Cormyr are descended from Faerlthann. Ondeth's son never ruled.
Very good.
The fact that he never ruled and his descendants could never have a claim to the throne has nothing to do with the original point about the 'blood of the Obarskyrs'. He had it and unless someone took care to murder all of his descendants but a single heir every generation, by now so does everyone in the Inner Sea lands.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
It's fine to assume that 'each Obarskyr should have averaged two kids each.' The reality, however, is quite different, and when you look at these folks as individuals who lived and died, some with many children and some with none at all, some who lived to old age and some who were cut down as infants, the story is quite different.
If you were to examine my argument, I'm not assuming any such thing.
I'm assuming that at least one* person descended from an Obarskyr managed to do so. Nowhere did I assume that such a person would bear the Obarskyr name or sit on a throne. In fact, I specifically took care to explain that I was assuming fairly standard demographics only once the line of this hypothetical descendant had diverged from anything that could be called the remotest proximity from the line of royal succession.
My point, in fact, was that being begat through a convoluted path of young noble sons riding to war, bastards begat and taken quiet care of, foreign wives and country gentry, rich merchants, poorer merchants, guildsmen, master coopers, perpetually drunk master coopers, journeyman carters, tinkers to sharecroppers; still made someone just as much 'blood of the Obarskyrs' as Azoun IV, as long as the noble sons in question were -silvers.
*I'd think that the odds supported more than that, but my argument really only requires one.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
Unfortunately, I have the luxury of being the keeper of the Royal Lineage, which means I know about all the little corners and dead branches of the family tree. There are precious few lost heirs floating out in the ether, and many of those--or their children or grandchildren--wind up very dead the moment someone like the Fire Knives or Salember or Boldovar finds out about them.
It doesn't take lost heirs. Genetic heritage and primogeniture don't really have much in common. Even the most demonically evil regicide generally won't bother to murder anyone but potential heirs (at least for the purposes of the usurpation of the throne, any other murders are more a hobby than occupation), but the people descended from the family will be much more numerous than that.
If anyone was interested, it would be possible to trace the descendants of all the royal lines that have ruled in Great Britain. Inevitably, it would be discovered that while everyone in Europe has ancestors with royal blood, only a few actually qualified as 'heirs'.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
The context of your 90% comment suggested that 90% of anyone born in the Inner Sea Lands (which includes Sembia, the Dragon Reach, the Vast, Thesk, Mulhorand, Chessenta, Unther, and Turmish) is descended from the first king of Cormyr. Given that I know how many children he had, and how many children they had, and how many children *they* had, and how and when they all died, and how many lived to adulthood, and how many had children of their own, I know for a fact that this claim can't be accurate.
In fact, my comment and the subsequent ones specifically noted that being descended from Obarskyrs in a genetic sense had nothing to do with being a lost heir to the throne. Nor did I ever claim that being descended from the first King of Cormyr was ever the only way to have Obarskyr blood. In fact, I made to point to apply standard demographics once removed from the line of succession, legally or at least practically.
Until that point, curses or kingslayers might well make demographics useless. But since titles are inherited quite a bit differently than actual genetic material, as in 'blood of the Obarskyrs', the number of people with the 'blood' without being noble in any way is going to be astronomical.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
Arguments about Genghis Khan and the Caesars are all well and good. But the ruling Obarskyrs and their descendants are not conquerors, and don't claim the women of their enemies as tribute. Azoun IV was a prolific man, to be sure, but no one ever claimed that he had a standing harem of hundreds or even thousands of women (as Genghis Khan did).
See above for how irrelevant that is. An extra 550 years of generational iterations is an order of magnitude or two more important than starting with a high number in the first generation. |
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Edited by - Icelander on 06 Mar 2012 19:45:09 |
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Garen Thal
Master of Realmslore
USA
1105 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 20:10:47
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quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
Even if we assume that no Obarskyrs before 20 DR count, I submit that by ca 1350 DR, there is a virtual mathematical certainty that anyone born in Cormyr has the blood of Obarskyrs and anyone born in the Inner Sea lands at all has a more than 90% chance of being descended from Rhiiman or (overwhelmingly more likely) Faerlthann Obarskyr.
Icelander, I'm not talking about heirs. I'm talking about your comment above.
And what I'm telling you, in no uncertain terms, is that your contention is incorrect. It's not "mostly correct, but...." Not probably or possibly wrong. It's wrong.
I can see why you might draw the conclusion. I can see how you would be convinced of it's certainty. But it's not correct.
90% of the Inner Sea is not descended from Faerlthann Obarskyr. 90% of Cormyr is not descended from Faerlthann. 90% of Cormyrean nobility is not even descended from him. Not even 10% of Cormyrean nobility is descended from him.
It is safe to say that half or more of Cormyrean nobles have some Obarskyr blood, from either Ondeth (through his son Rhiiman, who founded the Crownsilvers), or his brother, Villiam (whose sons were the progenitors of the Truesilvers, and his daughters married into other families). The noble families intermarry all the time.
If you want, you can even argue that the majority of Cormyreans have Obarskyr blood from the pre-king days.
But you can't argue that 90% of Mulhorand, or Unther, or Aglarond is descended from the Obarskyr line, and certainly not from King Faerlthann.
You can claim that the math bears out, but the math is examining a hypothetical distribution. I've already told you that evidence exists that the math is wrong. More importantly, though, the math doesn't matter. In the 37 generations between Faerlthann and Azoun V, there have not been 137,438,953,472 descendants of King Faerlthann (assuming, of course, no cases of multiple-descent). There have not even been one-tenth of one percent of that number. No matter how many times you run the math to describe the reality, if the math doesn't match the reality, the math is wrong. |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 21:25:32
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I guess he missed my own point.
Something is judiciously 'pruning' the Obarskyr family tree. Call it fate, call it a curse, or just call it Bob, but it is a very real (in FR) phenomena.
I have no idea if it is tied directly to the 'mandate' that an Obarskyr must sit the throne of Cormyr; as I pointed out above, it could be a cuase-and-effect thing.
But as Garen Thal points out, in FR, this is a very real situation, and no amount of math will allow for the paranormal variables involved. |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 21:38:57
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quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
90% of the Inner Sea is not descended from Faerlthann Obarskyr. 90% of Cormyr is not descended from Faerlthann. 90% of Cormyrean nobility is not even descended from him. Not even 10% of Cormyrean nobility is descended from him.
I'm not sure why you keep mentioning Faerlthann. I've repeatedly said that it's much more likely that Obarskyr blood comes from people who do not sit on the throne and are not in line for it. You might remember when I made a point of mentioning how the legal creation of 'inheritance' has little if any relevance to genetic line of descent.
Sure, if there were no cuckoos in the nest, the current King is descended from the first one. But it does not follow that just because someone is not in the line of succession (because an ancestor a thousand years ago was a bastard of the grandson of a bastard of a Crownsilver), he does not 'have Obarskyr blood'.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
It is safe to say that half or more of Cormyrean nobles have some Obarskyr blood, from either Ondeth (through his son Rhiiman, who founded the Crownsilvers), or his brother, Villiam (whose sons were the progenitors of the Truesilvers, and his daughters married into other families). The noble families intermarry all the time.
Just so.
But not 'half or more'. It is all, with the exception of exceedingly unlikely mathematical outliers, rare enough to ignore in the same way we ignore albino crows when we say that crows are black.
I don't think you're thinking the math through. If you'll allow that before the year 500 DR, just one person descended from just one of the -silver families might ever have had a descendant, legitimate or otherwise, that shadowy conspiracies or war wizards had no special interest in, that one person would be enough, on their own*, to become the ancestor of all modern people in Faerun whose ancestors interacted at all with anything who might trade with or visit Cormyr. And that would mean that any descendant of such 'had Obarskyr blood' to the same degree as the people who bore the name and had a right to inherit the throne.
In order for there to be only 'some', you have to invoke unerring magic or omniscient conspiracy not only for the royal Obarskyr line, but for all the -silver houses and all potential bastards of youngest sons of cadet branches of any noble family that ever married a -silver scion and had a brood.
This is because a thousand years is a very, very long time.** So long, in fact, that fiction writers and game designers very often don't quite visualise it. But it means that every modern Faerunian will have approximately 4.5 x 10 to the fifteenth power ancestors who lived during the founding of Cormyr. Of course, many of these will be the the same people, but this number is still so unimaginably vast that you can pretty much bank on any person who left living descendants at all being among them.
*Well, no. They'd need a second person, actually. But you know what I mean. 
**1352 years is even longer, of course. Long enough, in fact, for the descendants of a perfectly average person to number as many as the descendants of a famous conqueror with thousands of wives who lived a thousand years ago.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
But you can't argue that 90% of Mulhorand, or Unther, or Aglarond is descended from the Obarskyr line, and certainly not from King Faerlthann.
In Iceland, most people are related in the seventh generation or less. No one who is not a recent immigrant is more than 13th generations away from anyone else who is not a recent immigrant here. And to forestall the clever, it's not that we are especially inbred, it's that everyone is related to everyone else, everywhere. We're just small and isolated enough to have records that can show it and genetic databases to confirm it.
We are 330,000 or about a fourth of Aglarond's size. This means that about two extra iterations ought ot do it for them to show the same degree of inter-relationship.
If you're willing to grant a substantial number of Cormyreans with Obarskyr blood, then you have to accept the logical consequences. As long as, within the past three or four centuries or so, even one of these visited Aglarond long enough for it to bear fruit or an Aglarondan visited Cormyr, by now said person would be the ancestor of the majority of Aglarondans (assuming any descendants survive at all).
As for Unther and Mulhorand, they've been buying 'Tethen' slaves from pirates and slavers in the west since the founding of Westgate, at least. Do you really imagine that none of these have included Cormyreans? It just has to be a few, as long as it's a five hundred years or more ago.
There is no such thing as a society so stratified that social status of ancestors too remote for anyone to know will affect anything. Even changes between generations imperceptible to the people involved will take someone from slave to high lord within twenty generations (or, by contrast, that far down).
Remember, if there are a lot of Cormyrean people with the 'blood of Obarskyrs' (even if it doesn't come with any titles or names), any place where even a couple of Cormyreans have been before ca 600 DR has a pretty good chance of being mostly descended from that Cormyrean.
quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
You can claim that the math bears out, but the math is examining a hypothetical distribution. I've already told you that evidence exists that the math is wrong. More importantly, though, the math doesn't matter. In the 37 generations between Faerlthann and Azoun V, there have not been 137,438,953,472 descendants of King Faerlthann (assuming, of course, no cases of multiple-descent). There have not even been one-tenth of one percent of that number. No matter how many times you run the math to describe the reality, if the math doesn't match the reality, the math is wrong.
And I haven't said that he has had that many descendants, either. 'Average' means that some have less and others have more. And, in any event, I proposed counting descendants not from the ruling king, but from some ordinary peasant with the blood of a noble whose remote ancestress was the daughter of a -silver noble.
Remember, unless the lineage has the details for every single person in the Crownsilver, Truesilver and Huntsilver families, all their bastards and all noble families that ever married anyone from the three -silver families, it doesn't really give us much information about who 'has the Obarskyr blood'. It just tells us about heirs and potential heirs and so forth.
And keep in mind that the larger the sample, the closer you'll get to matching the 'hypothetical' results predicted by a mathematical model. It's entirely possible for the line of descent clustered around the royal family to be a statistical anomaly. It's even possible for several noble families to display similar anomalies. The problem lies in expecting this to hold with every single family that ever breeds with the descendants of these noble families, over not only multiple generations, but multiple centuries.
You are expecting reversion to the mean to be infinitely suspended without any plausible cause. Curses and conspiracies are plausible for the actual royal family, not so much for the remote descendant of a cadet branch of a noble family, removed from any title by several generations and a birth on the wrong side of the covers.
Even if you suspend reversion to the mean for five hundred years after the founding of Cormyr, my extremely conservative estimate will still hold, as long as just one person descended from one of the -silver families manages to be born without title or any call on noble rank.
Which is something that in real history happened with regularity, given that sometimes children were born without the niceties of marriage or sometimes there wore more children than there were good estates and so on, until the descendants of the youngest sibling of a lord, having married progressively slightly less well born people, were as common as muck a couple of centuries later (enough so that no ordinary person could even name the ancestors of that time).
At all times, though, you have to truly understand what the exponential growth of the number of ancestors as you go up a generation means. It means that while everyone in the world might be descended from Caesars, Khans, Tsars and Sultans, we are also descended from an almost infinite number of other people.
The legitimate heir to a dynasty which has stood a thousand years might be descended from that great king of 35+ generations ago. But that's just one of his billions of ancestors. The fact that a human culture has elected to trace a certain right through a direct male line and mark it by the use of the same name has little to do with the actual presence of 'blood' or genetic heritage. Spiritual heritage, supernatural investiture, divine right; these are theoretically possible in a fantasy world, yes. But the 'blood' isn't what is special. |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 21:43:03
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quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
I guess he missed my own point.
Something is judiciously 'pruning' the Obarskyr family tree. Call it fate, call it a curse, or just call it Bob, but it is a very real (in FR) phenomena.
I have no idea if it is tied directly to the 'mandate' that an Obarskyr must sit the throne of Cormyr; as I pointed out above, it could be a cuase-and-effect thing.
But as Garen Thal points out, in FR, this is a very real situation, and no amount of math will allow for the paranormal variables involved.
And I've repeatedly asked if the same pruning applies to people who could by no stretch of the imagination ever inherit the throne of Cormyr.
If it does, it is somehow the most pointless, the most evil and the most efficient and omniscient conspiracy imaginable. And I'm not sure I want to hear more about it, because it would depress me to find out that the most capable villains in the multiverse are wasting their talents on something to trivial.
If it doesn't, then no amount of pruning the line of direct, legal descent from Faerlthann will have the slightest impact on the actual number of people with the 'blood of Obarskyrs', because the -silver families are quite enough to spread that blood anywhere ships can sail, horses can ride, wagones can drive, legs can walk or spells can transport. |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 21:50:25
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As for specifically mentioning Rhiiman and Faerlthann, I was under the impression (because that was the way someone phrased the question that I originally responded to) that Rhiiman was the youngest son of Ondeth and Suzara and that he had lived out his life in Impiltur, founding a family of Obarskyrs without any claim on the throne, but still just as much 'blood of the Obarskyrs'.
I thought therefore that all the '-silver' families were the result of marrying female 'spare' Obarskyrs and thus that anyone descended from those families, no matter how remotely or through how many bastards, non-inheriting branches and so forth, was thus descended from Faerlthann.
If none of the Silvers ever married any descendant of his, then that was wrong, of course. In that case, that Obarskyr ultimately the ancestor of whomever married into those three families is most likely to be the ancestor of everyone.
As for the Impilturan branch of the Obarskyrs, there was indeed such a thing. No less than five sons of Vaerom lived.
I suppose there is a possibility that they and their children were all murdered by a secret conspiracy, despite their lack of any claim on the throne of Cormyr.
In the absence of that, the fact that they lived more than 13 centuries before the modern era makes it all but certain that one or more of them is the ancestor of pretty much everyone who hasn't lived completely isolated (along with all of his ancestors) for about that long.
We have to keep in mind that this is enough generations to produce full-blooded people of any 'racial' group without anyone noticing any admixture at all. Someone with a great-grandfather from Impiltur could look like anything and thus, keep having children anywhere he finds himself, even when faced with silly ideals of racial purity and suchlike.
Even today, with better records than the vast majority of Faerunians, most people have no way of knowing where their ancestors in the 16th degree came from or what they looked like. Not to mention the fact that there were so many of them (65k) that no one could remember it all.
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Edited by - Icelander on 06 Mar 2012 22:00:22 |
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader
USA
2717 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 22:33:50
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quote:
Originally posted by Garen Thal
It is safe to say that half or more of Cormyrean nobles have some Obarskyr blood (snip)
quote:
Originally posted by Icelander
Just so.
But not 'half or more'. It is all (snip) I don't think you're thinking the math through.
Icelander, I don't think it's about math, it's about having the list.
That is, when Garen says something like the above quote, I get the strong impression he's reading from an actual list—something that can be used to actually trace lineage(s) and thus allow someone to say definitively what Garen said in the quoted text above—as opposed to only extrapolating or estimating by mathematical means.
If the official list says one thing, but your math says another, which would you say is correct?
And so I don't come off as consistently contrary, I want to say I find this discussion interesting.
Suppose an industrious sage with time and some math knowledge pondered lineages and how genealogy works. By showing how numerous people can draw their lineage back to the Obarskyrs in some way, he might very well, say, undercut the concept of nobility.
I don't agree with your math, Icelander, but I like where you're taking the discussion.  |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2012 : 22:39:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
Icelander, I don't think it's about math, it's about having the list.
That is, when Garen says something like the above quote, I get the strong impression he's reading from an actual list—something that can be used to actually trace lineage(s) and thus allow someone to say definitively what Garen said in the quoted text above—as opposed to only extrapolating or estimating by mathematical means.
I am aware that he's reading from the lineage when he says something like this. I just maintain that as there exist Obarskyrs that are not in line to the throne, the lineage would need to include more than just a list of kings and their offspring. It has to cover every single descendant of Vaerom and his sons as well as those of all the Silver houses, acknowledged and unacknowledged, before it could be a source for anything like the above statement.
Otherwise it's like saying that a claim of a discovery of a new planet around a star millions of lightyears away cannot be correct, because we have a 'list of the planets' and it doesn't include it. |
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Zireael
Master of Realmslore
Poland
1190 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2012 : 09:43:41
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Hmm... are the bastards and whatnots listed in the Lineage too?
If the famed Lineage concerns only those who have a claim to the throne (i.e. a substantial amount of Obarskyr blood in their veins) then ther following is possible:
a bastard of X who might have had a son who might have had a son etc - note that I assume one son, not more - whose great-great-....-grandson has ZERO claim on the throne, but still, some Obarskyr blood is in his veins. |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 07 Mar 2012 : 10:51:48
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quote:
Originally posted by Zireael
Hmm... are the bastards and whatnots listed in the Lineage too?
If the famed Lineage concerns only those who have a claim to the throne (i.e. a substantial amount of Obarskyr blood in their veins) then ther following is possible:
a bastard of X who might have had a son who might have had a son etc - note that I assume one son, not more - whose great-great-....-grandson has ZERO claim on the throne, but still, some Obarskyr blood is in his veins.
All bastards of ruling monarchs must certainly appear in such a document, for it to be worthy of the name. It's even possible that all offspring, legitimate and otherwise, of all siblings to reigning monarchs, are comprehensively enumerated there. Furthermore, a mysterious curse or conspiracy might so prune the number of royal heirs that there are hardly any royal cousins with the Obarskyr name and thus no other branches of the family to worry about.
On the other hand, unless the Lineage traces the complete line of descent for any female descended from non-ruling Obarskyrs, who with marriage into a noble house would give up the Obarskyr name and any reasonable claim to the crown for their children, as well as including a comprehensive line of descent* for the Crown-, True- or Huntsilver families as well as any noble family where a scion of those houses married into them and had offspring (and so on for anyone marrying these descendants ad infinitum), it doesn't have enough data to be a relevant argument for an infinite suspension of regression to the mean as regards descendants of anyone with 'Obarskyr blood'.
In addition to the problem of making the Lineage complete enough, the existence of Obarskyrs outside Cormyr would in any event make even the most exhaustive detail on that front quite insufficent to maintain that only a few Cormyrean nobles have the 'blood of the Obarskyrs'.
*Including a 100% certainty that no other descendants exist than those named. |
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Edited by - Icelander on 07 Mar 2012 11:38:10 |
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Blood of the Obarskyrs
