Pretender Stellan Kallenbach

Stellan filed for the Kallenbach chair through proper foundry-court channels: a thirty-page brief, eleven affidavits from elder engineers, two genealogies, and a sealed packet of letters between his great-grandmother and a previous patriarch, which he says establishes his cadet line as the senior succession. The court has deliberated for six years. It will probably deliberate for six more.

Meanwhile he commands the Open Claim, a heavy frigate he built in his own yard on his own credit. The name is a provocation nobody has yet ruled actionable. He fights hot, loud, and forward, the way his branch fought in the second succession war and never quite stopped. He does not denounce his cousin in public. He attends every ceremony the chair-holder attends, in dress uniform, with the ship visible in a nearby orbit. The cousin has stopped attending some of them. Stellan counts that as partial.