So for some realism which the original story didn’t call for —it’s a “parable trying to make a point”, not a “detailed historical account of territorial feuds in 15th century Albania”—, we can look at how this works out in practice. To do this, we look to The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, which describes the sort of laws used to deal with this kind of thing in 15th century Albania. My details might be iffy here, but I did read the book and remember some parts.
In practice, there are several points of intervention, if I’m remembering correctly:
After the first murder, the extended family of the murdered goes after the murderer, to the extent that he can’t safely go out of his home. If he is killed, the feud ends on the part of the murdered’s family.
At any point, one of the families can ask a more powerful figure to mediate; in some regions this can be a cleric. The resolution might involve substantial amounts of money to be paid, which, crucially, is set beforehand by law, in excruciating detail depending on the conditions.
The lands wouldn’t in fact be the most valuable resource here; it would be the working power of adult men, who can’t get out because they would be killed in revenge. This cripples both families economically, so they do have an incentive to cooperate.
So, in practice
a clever couple from one of the families hatched an idea
I get the impression that this ends with the clever couple getting killed in the middle of the night by one of the more violent and impulsive cousins of the second family, and maybe the second family paying some reparations if they’re caught. Probably less than, you know, if they’d killed a normal couple. That, or the dam gets destroyed. Or actually, the husband from the clever couple would have to ask the Patriarch of the family for permission, who would veto the idea because he wants to make the truce work, and is hesitant to lose more of his sons to a new feud. Also, with or without the discount factor rural people in Albania have, doing this kind of thing wouldn’t be worth it. Or actually, the clever couple learnt in childhood that this kind of thing wasn’t worth it, and got some lashes in the process.
Violence escalates, and the feud breaks out anew—but peace is even harder to come by, now, since the river has been permanently destroyed as a Schelling point.
The Schelling point wasn’t the river, the Schelling point was someone more powerful than you telling you not to start trouble. This is harder to game. Also, you don’t have “the government”, you have “the more powerful village cacique,” or the priest, which works because you don’t want to hell when you die.
You do see a thing in rural Spain with territory boundaries being marked by stones, and those stones being moved, which kind of works if one side doesn’t spend time in the land.
So for some realism which the original story didn’t call for —it’s a “parable trying to make a point”, not a “detailed historical account of territorial feuds in 15th century Albania”—, we can look at how this works out in practice. To do this, we look to The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, which describes the sort of laws used to deal with this kind of thing in 15th century Albania. My details might be iffy here, but I did read the book and remember some parts.
In practice, there are several points of intervention, if I’m remembering correctly:
After the first murder, the extended family of the murdered goes after the murderer, to the extent that he can’t safely go out of his home. If he is killed, the feud ends on the part of the murdered’s family.
At any point, one of the families can ask a more powerful figure to mediate; in some regions this can be a cleric. The resolution might involve substantial amounts of money to be paid, which, crucially, is set beforehand by law, in excruciating detail depending on the conditions.
The lands wouldn’t in fact be the most valuable resource here; it would be the working power of adult men, who can’t get out because they would be killed in revenge. This cripples both families economically, so they do have an incentive to cooperate.
So, in practice
I get the impression that this ends with the clever couple getting killed in the middle of the night by one of the more violent and impulsive cousins of the second family, and maybe the second family paying some reparations if they’re caught. Probably less than, you know, if they’d killed a normal couple. That, or the dam gets destroyed. Or actually, the husband from the clever couple would have to ask the Patriarch of the family for permission, who would veto the idea because he wants to make the truce work, and is hesitant to lose more of his sons to a new feud. Also, with or without the discount factor rural people in Albania have, doing this kind of thing wouldn’t be worth it. Or actually, the clever couple learnt in childhood that this kind of thing wasn’t worth it, and got some lashes in the process.
The Schelling point wasn’t the river, the Schelling point was someone more powerful than you telling you not to start trouble. This is harder to game. Also, you don’t have “the government”, you have “the more powerful village cacique,” or the priest, which works because you don’t want to hell when you die.
You do see a thing in rural Spain with territory boundaries being marked by stones, and those stones being moved, which kind of works if one side doesn’t spend time in the land.