"...ugh. So. Mortals have families," he says, glancing at her. "And we don't end up magically envassaled to ours, so we tend to be very fond of them - not invariably, but usually. And mortals, as the term implies, die. And since we don't have magical vassalization influencing our power structures, we have to come up with other ways to organize large groups and then maintain that organization in the face of inevitable turnover, and one of the commonest ways especially early on in the development of human society was for someone to assume rulership of a group and then pass that rulership on to one of their children when they died, and then that heir passes it to their own heir, and so on and so on. I am in line to inherit such a rulership myself."

He looks at the mountains again.

"So I was going to say, 'it's like inheriting the Countship'. Because the Countship I'm going to inherit from my father one day will come with many advantages, some of which are pretty exciting taken out of context, none of which will make it okay."