Quote Originally Posted by peacekeeper83 View Post
It will be interesting to see how this falls...at least this man has mentioned, he will put it to the clan to decide.. It sounds like a reasonable thing to do.. If the geneology, and the clan wills it, so be it.... but if anothers lineage is more closer to the source... then...
Who, exactly, is the "CLAN"? There are more than 1,000,000 Macdonalds scattered around the world-- who amongst them would vote in a "clan plebiscite"? Only the armigers? Where would the election be held? In Scotland? It's because the "clan" is a legal species of heritable property that disputes to the chiefship are adjudicated in the Court of the Lord Lyon.

His decision isn't based on a popularity poll, or some notion of who is best suited to be the chief, but rather on the discovery of who is the person rightfully entitled to inherit that species of property known as "a clan". Once that decision is made, Lyon invests that person with the "deeds" to the clan he represents-- ie: the undifferenced arms of the clan chief.