"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Royals of Hegn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

rank form intimate association only
with others of their kind.
Fortunately there are plenty of those.
Just as the bloodline of
a Thoroughbred horse on my planet can
be tracked straight back
to the Godolphin Arabian, every royal
family of Hegn can trace
its ancestry back to Rugland of Hegn-
Glander, who ruled eight
centuries ago. The horses don’t
care, but their owners do, and
 so do the kings and the royal
families. In this sense, Hegn may
be seen as a vast stud
farm.

There
is an unspoken consensus that certain royal houses are slightly,
as it were, more royal than others,
because they descend directly
from Rugland’s eldest son rather
than one of his eight younger
sons; but all the other royal houses
have married into the central
line often enough to establish an

unshakable connection. Each
house also has some unique,
incomparable claim to distinction,
such as descent from Alfign the Ax,
the semi-legendary conqueror
of North Hegn, or a collateral saint,
or a family tree never sullied
by marriage with a mere duke or
duchess but exhibiting (on the
ever-open page of the Book of the
Blood in the palace library) a continuous and unadulterated flowering
of true blue princes and processes.

And so,
when the novelty of the annual Addition and Supplements at last wears
thin, the royal guests at the royal parties can
always fall back on discussing degrees
of consanguinity, settling
such questions as whether the son born
of Agnin IV’s second marriage,
to Tivand of Shut, was or was not the
same prince who was slain
at the age of thirteen defending his
father’s palace against the
Anti-Agnates and therefore could, or