OK, so in a previous post, I mentioned that my character (St. Avery) is planning on getting an apprentice. Now, part of his reason is to show his own paren how a REAL magi takes an apprentice - which basically means "sending them to private tutors for 5 years, then Open the ways, then having a reasonable apprenticeship/secondary education for another 5 years, then letting them read the Roots and Branches for five years. Oh, and if they're slow, use that Cr Me ritual to boost their intelligence."
He's a Breakthrough researcher, and within his own bailiwick (Re Vi wards), he actually doesn't NEED an apprentice to add to his lab total (Plus, he just got a Familiar, so he's teaching his pet dragon how to be a lab assistant). So really this is all about showing his paren who the better teacher is.
However, I got to thinking - in going down this path (and in pressing his Hermetic virtues onto a susceptible apprentice), he's going to make some fantastic proto-bonisaguses. And if a Bonisagus sees any of them, they will be ripe for getting Boni-snatched.
HOWEVER - the reason they would be boni-snatched is because St. Avery set up a strong educational curriculum, and Apprenticed them once a season (His own Magic Theory is 11 - so they're earning 14 xp/season while in the lab with him. Every year, for 15 years.), and pressed his own Better-Than-Bonisagus virtues onto their magical skills.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the apprentice's own innate abilities - As such, ANY apprentice trained by St. Avery is ripe for snatching - which hardly seems fair: they would be snatching the results of St. Avery's hard work, rather than anything special about the child that needs to be groomed.
So my question is this - if his apprentice got snatched, could St. Avery bring a complaint to Tribunal, and have a reasonable chance at winning? Along with the documentation of the tutors and the training schedule and any Cr Me ritual expenditure, of course. Because if the Bonisagus are snagging apprentices because they couldn't be bothered to properly educate their own (which doesn't sound right - if anything, the Bonisagus should be out-educating everyone else), that's a MASSIVE dis-incentive to groom quality apprentices for anyone else in the Order.
EDIT - my thought is that Bonisagus don't just look for "good apprentices" - otherwise, as described above, they'd be snagging apprentices from magi that had the gall to educate their charges. Instead, they're looking for children that naturally have a high Intelligence, Creative Genius, Pussiant Magic Theory, and Affinity (Magic Theory). And they'd specifically be looking for that in the first few years of training - after that, it's as much the original paren's instruction as it is anything else.