Book 3, Chapter 30
One of the legal bases that the Imperial Assembly used as their guidance in developing consistent laws across the Empire were the previously answered questions regarding citizenship which had been refined in the years earlier.
Specifically, prior to the political conflicts and developments of AD 1043, the laws regarding citizenship, tribal and clan membership, and other such identities were extremely variable across the Alban Isles and its constituent polities. Berk and its sister Norse societies had laws that automatically granted freed thralls tribal membership upon arrival in their territories, and the Bog Burglars had similar laws regarding women seeking refuge, both cases of which were laws that had been adopted out of pragmatic need over the previous decades and centuries, to give two examples, but free individuals outside of those classes were not considered to be tribal members outside of specific actions taken to adopt them in, which themselves required particular conditions.
Due to this, then-Chief Stoick's ad hoc mass 'adoption' of Vedrarfjord in AD 1041, bringing the residents of the city into the tribe, was technically not in line with the law. However, as it solved a moral quandary no one spoke up against the action at the time. Still, the action ended up creating an effectively new class of tribal citizens who held their citizenship by dint of their residence within Berk's territory. This new class quickly grew to be overwhelmingly demographically dominant as new outsiders came in and took up residence in Berk's new territories, becoming tribal members as a result, on the technicality of being a resident in a region under Berk's control. The annexations that followed on that precedent made legal matters worse in this regard, and the need for an overhaul of the tribal citizenship laws became quickly apparent.
Further complicating matters in this regard were the interactions between tribal citizenship, clan membership, and the various permutations of life. Was an individual who had been brought in as a clan citizen due to annexation of their home territory still a citizen upon receiving a sentence of temporary exile due to the commission of a crime, either during their exile or upon their return? What citizenship rights could a transient merchant claim? Was it based on his home port, origin of birth, or some other factor? What rights and privileges were granted to outsiders adopted by citizens, or even directly into a clan, especially with adoption law itself being a complicated tangle of precedents? What status, if any, did an individual claiming sanctuary or refugee status, still hold with their old community? And so forth.
Origins Of The Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631
Tropes that appear in this chapter:
- Apple of Discord: Because of the walker attacks, the Screaming White nest can't hunt enough food to feed every flyer. The resulting food shortage causes hunger to spread, which in turn causes food theft, sparking a lot of fights among the flyers.
- Bad Boss: The Screaming White's method of dealing with a dispute among his flyers over food theft is to kill everyone involved, including the victim of the theft, instead of something more reasonable.
- Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: A variation; Esther is reading and translating a hundred-year-old book in the synagogue by the main altar when two women enter the other side of the room and take the opportunity to gossip—about her.
- Content Warnings:Chapter Trigger Warnings: Explicit Dragon Egg Loss
- Death of a Child: One of Stormfly's eggs (and hence one of Toothless') is the first of the dragon eggs to explode. Also, all but one of the Nightscreamer's eggs are destroyed by the Screaming White's rage.
- First Kiss: Gunnar and Sophia share their first kiss in this chapter after the affirmation of their poly-relationship.
- Gossipy Hens: Chana and Shifrah both gossip about how they think Esther has a plan to gain power that will have a great side-benefit of empowering the Jewish people and consider it a good thing. Esther explains that there is no such plan and tells them to keep the gossip to themselves.
- Happily Adopted: William accepts being adopted by Stoick into Clan Haddock, and Stoick will happily teach him how to be a leader.
- Internal Reveal: Sophia is told about Sigurd's disastrous bender.
- Single-Target Sexuality: More "Dual Target Sexuality", but Esther reflects that, contrary to what some people think, Hiccup doesn't have a weakness for beautiful blondes but is exclusively attracted to Astrid and Wulfhild.
- Their First Time: Sigurd, Sophia, Heidrun, and Gunnar have sex with each other for the first time.
- A Threesome Is Hot: More like a foursome is hot in the case of Sigurd, Sophia, Heidrun, and Gunnar.
- Wham Episode: The ruling family of the Kingdom of Berk has adopted a foreign noble. This doesn't just give William a familial tie to the Haddocks, it gives William's dukedom, Normandy, a political tie to Berk, with everything that implies.
