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Heir Club for Men: Difference between revisions
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* It was this issue that started a period in English history known as The Anarchy, when Henry I named his lone surviving child, Matilda, his heir. It was a bit more complicated, in that not only were the Anglo-Norman barons wary of having a woman on the throne, but her husband was from Anjou, Normandy's rival. A faction of barons helped Stephen of Blois onto the throne, which plunged England into 19 years of civil war until a resolution was reached where Stephen's own sons would be bypassed for succession in favor of Matilda's son, the future Henry II, who was the founder of England's Plantagenet dynasty, which of course produced some of England's most famous kings, like Richard the Lionheart, Edward I 'Longshanks', and Edward III.
** Course, by then Stephen only had one legitimate son left, who had no interest in ruling.
*** The situation was even more complicated than that: Salic law didn't just bar women from the throne; it also barred male claimants who were descended from the royal bloodline via female ancestors; since medieval European princesses invariably married foreign kings and dukes,this was put into place to keep the crown passing into the hands of a foreigner. Although it was legally reinforced in France in the early 1300's ([[Hundred Years' War|precisely because the French nobility could foresee the aforementioned emergency occurring in the near-to-middling future]]), it actually existed since the days of the Frankish Empire and was legally extant at the time of the Anarchy. In the case of the Anarchy, the scenario was this: On one hand, a woman who was the heiress of the previous king (and Duke of Normandy; that part is important because it was really questionable whether or not the Salic Law applied in England); on the other hand, a man who was the son of a daughter of William the Conqueror and was himself considered to be non-Norman... lawyers had a field day with this. One of the accomplishments of the Anarchy, by the by, was to establish both the legal principle of the Salic Law not applying in Britain and the idea that practically, a woman could not hold the English crown...both of which had ''huge'' reprecussions [[The House of Tudor|a few generations down the line]].
* This trope still exists today as [[Real Life]] examples can be found in modern China, India, and other nations, where the birth of a female is often met with disappointment. The wish for a male is reinforced by several patriarchal traditions; the male child is usually the one who passes down the family name while the female takes her husband's name, the male child inherits the property while anything inherited by the female goes to her husband, and the male would be responsible for caring for his parents in their old age, while the female was expected to marry into her husband's family and care for ''his'' parents.
** As noted above, this has had rather terrible consequences for China. However, India has not been immune to the same pressures: despite the absence of a policy ''requiring'' that families limit their size, increasing prosperity and a government awareness campaign on overpopulation have caused many Indians to want to limit the size of their families (typically 2-3 children). However, the traditional attitudes remain, and many Indian women selectively abort female children, although this is technically illegal. While the gender ratios in India are nowhere nearly as skewed as in China, it is a problem that the Indian government is taking quite seriously.
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