:D I do actually enjoy a lot of the Ottoman system, and don’t enjoy playing them in Diplomacy. It’s such a nasty little corner, and their administrative innovations don’t come into play (and weren’t helping them very much at that point in history).
The main thing I enjoy about the Ottoman method of finding successors is it makes the most of good genetics (the leader can select the best women and probably has a good supply himself) and education (if you only have 30 potential leaders, you can afford to tutor all of them extensively, which is prohibitively expensive to do for the general population at earlier tech levels) while also minimizing the variance, which is the main problem with normal hereditary rule (if the eldest son gets the throne, you get one shot at a good ruler; if the best son gets the throne, you get the best of 15 shots; if the best child gets the throne, you get the best of 30).
I do have a healthy Burkean respect for monarchism- speaking loosely, the theory that no ruler can be worse than a civil war- and trying to ensure that succession conflicts happen within the confines of the palace means that as little collateral damage is done as possible. Of course, this doesn’t always pan out (there were a few wars of succession that were proper civil wars).
:D I do actually enjoy a lot of the Ottoman system, and don’t enjoy playing them in Diplomacy. It’s such a nasty little corner, and their administrative innovations don’t come into play (and weren’t helping them very much at that point in history).
The main thing I enjoy about the Ottoman method of finding successors is it makes the most of good genetics (the leader can select the best women and probably has a good supply himself) and education (if you only have 30 potential leaders, you can afford to tutor all of them extensively, which is prohibitively expensive to do for the general population at earlier tech levels) while also minimizing the variance, which is the main problem with normal hereditary rule (if the eldest son gets the throne, you get one shot at a good ruler; if the best son gets the throne, you get the best of 15 shots; if the best child gets the throne, you get the best of 30).
I do have a healthy Burkean respect for monarchism- speaking loosely, the theory that no ruler can be worse than a civil war- and trying to ensure that succession conflicts happen within the confines of the palace means that as little collateral damage is done as possible. Of course, this doesn’t always pan out (there were a few wars of succession that were proper civil wars).