Agnatic Seniority

Agnatic seniority is a patrilineal principle of inheritance where the order of succession and their descendants from the succession. Contrast agnatic primogeniture, where the king's sons stand higher in succession than his brothers.

Description

In hereditary monarchies, particularly in more ancient times, seniority was a much-used principle of order of succession. The Ottoman Empire evolved from an elective succession (following the principle of agnatic seniority) to a succession inherited by the law of agnatic seniority.

In succession based on rotation (close to seniority), all (male) members of the dynasty were entitled to the monarchy, in principle. However, this tends to lead to situations where there is no clear rule to determine who is the next monarch.

Brothers succeeding each other as a system leads quickly, particularly in the following generations, to complex patterns and also to disputes between branches which have formed within the monarchical house.

Monarchs had collateral relatives, some of whom were rather distant cousins, who were often as entitled to succeed as the monarch himself. Either one branch obtained sufficient control over others (often by force), the rival branches arrived at a balance (such as the succession becoming rotational), or the inheritance was somehow partitioned.

Succession based on agnatic seniority or rotation was often limited to those princes who were sons of an earlier reigning monarch. Thus a son of a king had a higher claim than a son of a prince. In some cases, distinctions were even made based on whether the claimant was born to a monarch who reigned at the time of birth ( porphyrogeniture).

This limit was practical, as otherwise the number of rivals would be overwhelming. However, it usually left multiple rivals who too often waged civil war against each other. In other cases, the eligible branches of dynasty became extinct in the male line (no surviving sons), in which situation the limit was problematic.

Sons of princes who did not live long enough to succeed to the throne were unsatisfied with such limits. This led to interpretation problems: What if a claimant's father was a rightful monarch, but not recognized by everyone, or by no one (did not rule at all)? The cases were further complicated by co-reigning monarchs, but this was often a practical solution to a controversial succession.

Agnatic seniority tends in the long run to favor a sort of ultimogeniture, because princes born in a certain generation to the most junior lines tend to be more likely alive at the demise of the predecessor (the last of the immediately preceding generation). In a situation where representatives from any later generation are not allowed to succeed until the last ones of the earlier generation die, plenty of dynasts, usually from more senior branches, will die before their turn on the throne. This tendency is one of the causes of disputed successions: some desire to succeed before they die, and plead the seniority or better blood of their branch. This is further exacerbated if a dynast is not allowed to succeed in case his father was not regnant (or is regarded just as a spare, eligible to succeed only after all those males whose fathers were regnant)—senior branches will with high likelihood sooner or later lose their places in succession. Agnatic seniority tends to favor boys who are born to fathers in their old age.

Succession within one family based on seniority was often a device to control an elective monarchy. Those two forms of monarchy (agnatic seniority and elective monarchy) were mostly used in the same centuries. Many kingdoms were officially elective long into historical times (though the election usually, or always, fell to family of the deceased monarch).

The preference for males which exists in most systems of hereditary succession