Entertainment / Literature / Partible Succession: The opposite of primogeniture, partible succession is the practice in which all the children share equally in an inheritance. Under this legal system, if a property-owner or king dies, the deceased's lands, money, or kingdom would be split into equal shares for each surviving child. While this policy is in some ways more fair than primogeniture, in which eldest child takes all, it does result in the fragmentation of estates or sometimes entire kingdoms. In the late medieval period, primogeniture was the common practice in much of Europe and Britain, but in the early 'dark ages,' partible succession was notoriously common among some Celtic tribes in England and the Merovingian and Frankish tribes of France and Germany. This practice is behind King Lear's sycophantic games in the first act of King Lear, as the play is set in ancient Celtic times, though the subplot about Edgar involves the much later later practice of primogeniture.
Search Google for Partible Succession:
Succession Noun Synonyms: passing (on), handing down or on, transmittal, transmission, transfer, transferral, shift, conveyance, conveyancing
Succession Adjective Synonyms: sequence, progression, order, series, turn, course, flow, chain, train, procession
MORE
Science / Marine Biology / Succession: A predictable ordering of a dominance of a species or groups of species following the opening of an environment to biological colonization MORE
Business / Human Resources (HR) / Succession Planning: The process of identifying long-range needs and cultivating a supply of internal talent to meet those future needs. Used to anticipate the future needs of the organization and assist in finding, asses MORE
Science / Biology / Community Succession: The sequential replacement of species in a community by immigration of new species and by local extinction of old ones. MORE