The traditional award of prime inheritance rights to the firstborn son strikes most moderns as arbitrary and unnecessary. Like most traditions of medieval times, of course, there was very good reason for it. Actually, there were a few:

The first and prime reason has to do with political stability. In this case the firstborn is an arbitrary choice, but an arbitrary choice must be made because the major political weakness in monarchy is succession. If the King dies suddenly without naming an heir, you need a go-to choice. There is never any question as to which son was born first. It is impossible to falsify by ambitious lords and scheming ministers. And if you make succession the King’s choice, you have a bunch of Princes and Lords who live their entire lives thinking that they have a shot. Which is a recipe for civil war and discord. Ruthless competition among shareholders in the same company, and even worse, in your BoD, will not lead to a good outcome. Whereas if your firstborn is first in line, your later kids grow up under the impression that they don’t have a shot. You can raise him to have the demeanor necessary to a King, and your later children to have the qualities of loyalty and obedience necessary to princes of the blood.

The second reason is genetic: your kids are healthier the younger that you have em. Traditional peoples certainly noticed, if only unconsciously, that older parents result in birth defects and other problems. Thus a value of purity was attributed to the firstborn.

The third is fairly simple. If your wife was a virgin on her wedding night (verifiable), your first kid was very, very likely to be your actual genetic offspring. Whereas after years of marriage there is a greater risk of adultery. And adultery was a sin that European nobles often engaged in.

The fourth is specific to medieval religion, but the practice of primogeniture gave God a say in who ended up King. Not that He would necessarily use it, but it was a gesture by Man to respect the wishes of God, whereas arbitrary choice of succession is an act of free-will, which He will generally not intercede in. (Henry VIII, by the way, was a second son. His older brother? Prince Arthur, who died young. Feels like too potent a symbol, with Europe on the brink of a turning-point, for it not to mean something. Like C.S. Lewis and the abortion of Christ’s second coming, England may have been deprived the return of its true King.)

The fact that I am even analyzing this is a sign that our Culture is moribund. Our ancestors understood without thought: the value of Primogeniture, which in a word contains the practical PoliSci, the sexual, the eugenic, and the religious, was simply self-apparent to those who carried on the tradition, and wrapped up in the aesthetically potent symbol of the Firstborn. And so I dissect its corpse as evidence that it was once alive, and good. Because its enemies tell us that they killed it for a good reason.

I dissect it not because I want to Frankenstein it back to life, but because we must raise something, not a LARP, not a zombie, but real and organic, that bears the same internal principles. In fact, this is an area where modern technology corrects the weak points, few though they are, in medieval social technology. (This is a phrase I’m loath to use, because it was not designed and manufactured dispassionately but grew organically out of necessity. Most modern people cannot understand it if I do not phrase it this way.) For example, genetic degeneration through elite inbreeding is easily corrected by modern science. And we have unbreakable encryption that allows a monarch to name his successor without the danger of falsification by an usurper, not to mention genetic therapy to ensure you bear a fit, healthy son and medicine that is sure to preserve that health into adulthood. Just look at how long the Rothschilds can keep themselves alive when cost is no obstacle.