ABSTRACT
T He Kingdom Of Lan Xang was about to enter a Golden Age that was to last some fifty-five years. It was to be the culmination of the kingdom's history, possibly never to be repeated again. The beginning, however, was not auspicious. As today, succession is not an automatic right of the eldest son. The only condition attached to kinghood is that the prince must be of royal blood. The only constitutional exception is that should the mother of a claimant be a commoner, she must have been publicly recognised by the king as a full member of the royal family. Within this framework, the senior members of the family, with any powerful mandarins they chose to nominate, are at liberty to name whoever they think best suited to be king.
