Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 453.

Odo's Rebellion, The Cold War.

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Primageniture. The practice of handing all wealth and power from father to the eldest surviving son

had done a lot to consolidate power along single family lines. But it also created all manner of problems for well pretty much everyone else.

I mean first there's the question of what do you do with the boys who weren't the eldest?

And in the case of France and now conquered England,

this was occurring within a chivalric society,

so these younger sons were likely to be knights.

And having a bunch of landless, ambitious, and angry knights riding around

had trouble written all over it.

So this culture had to figure out a way to avoid the inevitable calamities that this system

would create for itself.

And surprisingly, France had spent the 11th century coming up with a half decent solution.

French noblemen were providing their spare sons with endowments of land and the appropriate titles to go along with it.

Now these younger sons still had to answer to their elder brother, but they had a stake in

the game now because while they might not have the biggest title they still had authority and wealth

And this is why Williams half-brothers Robert of Mortain and Bishop Odo, had all of that wealth and power.

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