From ancient times to the present, scarcely any royal family, across dozens of generations of succession, had avoided conflicts over inheritance. The saying "there is no family affection in the imperial household" existed for precisely this reason.
When there was only one throne but many candidates for succession, their conflicts had almost no chance of reconciliation. No matter how they dressed up their ambitions and desires, in the end, everyone wanted to be emperor.
And sometimes, it was not enough for someone to be naturally carefree and uninterested in power to avoid the struggle for succession. Even if you did not want to participate, plenty of people would want to drag you in.
And once a succession war broke out, what they fought over was no longer the throne, but their own lives. Once you became even slightly entangled in it, if you failed to win, you died.
As for whether there was any way to break such an almost unsolvable deadlock, Schiller felt that there was. It was simply difficult to implement in ancient human societies.
The method was the same as Odin's: from beginning to end, maintain a single chosen heir without wavering, and tell everyone else that they had no chance.
It sounded somewhat cruel and not entirely fair, but it truly was the best way to prevent bloodshed in struggles for succession.
In matters like this, giving everyone the same opportunity meant that things would not stop until one person emerged victorious and everyone else was wiped out. It was better to declare the winner early. With the resources of a royal family, was it really difficult to support a few idle princes?
Back when medical conditions in ancient human societies were poor, this method was actually very difficult to put into practice.
It was not