Paternity In A Fantasy Setting

So the royal family has been assassinated (never mind how, that's above your pay grade), and many foreign monarchs are eying the throne with covetous glances. In order to avoid a destructive war of succession an heir must be found.

Fortunately the late king was a man-whore of quite extraordinary proportions, so royal bastards are in abundant supply. The council has already chosen the ideal next incumbent; the Duke of somewhere-or-other. Almost all of the other known bastards are either younger than his grace (and therefore ineligible due to the law of primo genitor) or lack anything other than circumstantial evidence of their royal parentage.

Almost all.

Five bastards, however, have seniority *and* uncomfortably concrete proof of paternity.

The players are charged with finding these fellows and knobling them or their evidence, preferably both in either order.

My problem is: What would constitute iron-clad proof of paternity in a society without D.N.A. testing, or even blood-typing?

The King's distinctive birth-mark, or course!

Or, if you want to be lame, you can say that there's a magic spell for determining paternity. Don't do this.

old king loved me mum so much, he gave her the royal std

Is this what Frollo wanted the whole time?

Mia culpa!

One of the bastards has a witch for mother, she got the king drunk and took his blood he might gave her the blood willingly, just a small sample for later, which the bastard wears around his neck in a pingent.

I think this could be used to prove paternity and with magic showing that it is indeed the king's blood, and how would a commom hag got hold of that?

THE SEED IS STRONG!

The royalty is royalty because they have the ability to shoot laser beams out of their eyeballs.

Discern Paternity

School divination; Level cleric 4

Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S, DF

Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Targets one creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart

Duration concentration, up to 1 round/level

Is this in the books or just something this user made up?

>primo genitor
This makes me unreasonably angry.

>fucks lots of women
>manwhore
That's not how it works retard

They're really skeezy women. He could have done a lot better.

Level 4 is way too high for this. I would say it's a solid level 1, maybe level 2 if you can read a family tree using it (like Legend Lore)

>What would constitute iron-clad proof of paternity in a society without D.N.A. testing, or even blood-typing?
"Proof" is relative in this situation, punintentional. The council (and the people) may put a great deal of faith in things like facial features or birthmarks. Maybe the king has a distinct skintone or hair color, like the royal family were the only extremely pale or extremely dark people in the country. A semi-aknowledgement, such as paying for the bastard's education or giving him some other boon, would be a pretty big deal.

Really, though, without DNA testing there's no way of proving any children belong to their fathers. Even maternity is only provable via eyewitness testimony, which is notoriously unreliable. His Grace Duke Bastard Fitzroy of Somewhere-Upon-Other could be literally anybody's kid.

The king really liked to slum it up occasionally.

Half orc claimants to the throne?

>My problem is: What would constitute iron-clad proof of paternity in a society without D.N.A. testing, or even blood-typing?
Do they act like a king?
That was good enough for the norse, who believed that your social status was in accordance with your type of soul, IE, a slave soul will act like slave even if he is born a king and a king soul will act like king even if born a slave.

It's definitely a level 1/2 spell. I'd probably add Save: Will (harmless) to the description to avoid any serious abuse of this spell.

Actually I was thinking that of the five other possible heirs one of them would be a noble, but of lesser rank than Duke d'whatever, (and also possibly insane or suffers from some other inbreeding-related disorder making him a less preferable candidate), one would be of peasant birth rendering him an unsuitable candidate, and the other three would be half-breeds of various descriptions and therefore totally unacceptable to the council.

>My problem is: What would constitute iron-clad proof of paternity in a society without D.N.A. testing, or even blood-typing?

A large enough army, a dream of taking the throne, and enough of the nobility being willing to swear that you're totally the rightful king.

Historically, it wasn't about proof, but who had tbe most prestige. Remember, in a standard medival inspired fantasy setting, peasents are stupid, under educated, but most importantly, under entertained. A birth of a heir would be the medival equivalent of Brad Pitt and Jenifer Aniston breaking up. Whoever had the most support of the masses would generally be made the new King, mostly because all the other nobles wanted to avoid civil war at all costs.

Note that those with the strongest blood ties were not always the most popular. If you look at Edward the Confessor's death and inheritorship, there were four men who claimed to be the true heir.

There was Harold Godwinston, the richest man in England at the time. He was the brother of the Queen, and actually had no blood ties to the throne, but he was rich and popular.

There was Harald the Hardrada, "King of the Vikings", who claimed he was the true heir to King Magnus, and thus the rightful King of England. The blood ties were a reach at best, but he had a huge army of Vikings backing him.

Then there was William the Bastard, who was a Norman and distant cousin of Edward's. William claimed Edward promised his throne to him, a popular rumor at the time, and after a shipwreck on the Normandy coast, Harold himself promised to support William's claim to the throne, but that never came to pass.

Lastly there was the true blood heir to the throne. Edgar the Aetheling. The Confessor had no son, but traced his line back to the Danish kings who disposed Edmund Ironside and his English children. This made Edgar the exiled son of the last true English King of England, but with no titles, armies, or coin, his claim was totally ignored.

Of course in the end William the Bastard became "The Conquerer" after disposing Harold's year long Kingship. William had the better story, the better navy, and had the Pope himself declare Harold an oathbreaker for his troubles.

I remember another thread like this a while ago.

I can't remember if it was from a book, or some user's game, but someone mentioned the right of succession was chosen by a magical creature who basically was made to go "yup that's the guy." Then the creature either gets corrupted or skips the eldest son or something and that's how things get started.

Point is, instead of some spell from the court wizard, or whoever has the biggest army, you could have a magical artifact or some grand beast seek out and enforce the rightful claim despite other's approval. Might be a neat reason why one bastard has a Griffon as an animal compainion or gets a magic sword that makes him a mighty warrior despite his farmboy upbringing.

hereditary diseases, like hemophilia

Odds are you could tell a real from an imposter if they refuse to take the blood test, because they are a hemophiliac.

well if it is a fantasy setting it depends a lot on how high the magic/fantastic levels are. If the magic is at d&d esk levels asembling a counsel of wizards to divine the bastards parentage seems like a right sort of quest or if there are gods that talk to mortals perhaps the players could try to get an answer from one of them. If lower magic as has already been mentioned acting like nobility was a major sign or being noblility.

Speak with the Dead, ask the king who should succeed him. Cast in multiple temples from various faiths simultaneously to avoid Cleric faction defacto nomination. If results vary, off with their heads.

One of them is a knight wha was the kings personal bodyguard
One a memeber of a really prestigious family
Another is the son of a powerful sorceress
Another the granddaughter of a rich merchant
The last one is just a normal peasent who looks exactly like the king

Twist: The peasent should actually be the most fuctioning member of all of them, the others all have emotional, personality or mental related issues that would make taking the throne a really, really bad idea.