Question - how did Noble Inheritence Law work in Southern France? If anyone has any sources to share I can look them up.
Thank you!
My understanding is that it wasn't really codified: a heir was named and took control of the estate with the support of the existing army.
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I read that when post-revolutionary France wrote their inheritance laws, they were inspired by the Occitanian system of dividing the estate amongst the children to avoid powerful dynasties re-emerging. So the rule of dividing everything up into little parcels evenly between children and having chateaux co-owned by 30 cousins (like the French do in the 21st century) would apply.
If you actually want to know what Provencal wills looked like, I did a search on medievalists.net for inheritance and they had a link to this thesis which exhaustively details the subject for the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
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Was there a dark tradition of fratricide?
The law in Southern France is more closely tied to Roman Law than in the north - including the handling of inheritance.
Here is an example about complicated inheritance in Provence: the counts of Forcalquier. The heirs together held feudal obligation to their liege, the Emperor - but conflicts were also settled by the archbishop of Aix.
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