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[Witty]

I've noticed some oddness in regards to dwarven monarchy succession.

I assumed that the heir was chosen from the eldest surviving child of the currently reigning monarch. It seems more often than not the first few children of the monarch will die during world gen, so the heir is almost always another one of the children.

In two worlds now however I've noticed that the new heir chosen is not always the eldest survivng child of the previous monarch. Instead, it's one of the younger children.

Does anyone have any idea why this is the case? Is the direct inheritance thing only apply to the first born child, and the other siblings just 'decide' who will inherent the throne? Is the most skilled child chosen? Or is this just some weird bug?

[Loam]

I haven't done any real science, but I've spent a good bit of time looking at successions, both dwarven and human. From that I gather that the game does attempt to choose the eldest child, but there are a few less-than-obvious disqualifications.

Firstly, children (i.e. not adults) are not considered. If the king dies with only child heirs, the kingship goes to another line.
Second, anyone who already has a position is out. So, if the king's eldest became the baron of Rightwhips before the king died, he would not become the next king.

There's probably more, but I'm pretty sure of these at least. Also the game doesn't consider "dynasties": if the king dies with no valid heirs, the throne is as likely to go to some random peasant as to the late king's sibling. Maybe more likely.

[Witty]

Second, anyone who already has a position is out. So, if the king's eldest became the baron of Rightwhips before the king died, he would not become the next king.

Don't think that's true. Looking at the current queen of my civ, she was previously the baroness to some site, and simply stopped being the baroness upon her coronation. I have modded the monarchy position to be dwarves only with the ALLOWED_CREATURE token, but I don't think that'd change this kind of behavior. There was also another elder brother to the current queen that is still alive who has never occupied any positions, but still wasn't chosen as the successor.

At first I thought maybe the successor is preferred to be the same gender as the currently reigning monarch, since that was the only real difference between the various heirs to this family. But now I've found a law-giver family line that is suffering from a similar issue. Reigning king became a night creature, and a younger son was chosen over an older one. Elder son in this case also didn't have any noble positions.

I'm guessing something else must be determining who receives the inheritance besides seniority (ignoring possible bugs). Maybe skills?