It's strictly that I'm getting very impatient that fairly obvious things we keep repeating seem so hard to understand.

Galad as an adult or teenager would have been of use to House Mantear and Tigraine. I think there's no question that if Taringail was dead and Galad was older, House Mantear would have made him their heir, as later in life Galad became well-liked and extremely capable.

If Tigraine had no female heir and died unexpectedly but much later, he could have useful only if they managed to marry him before or as soon as Tigraine died to a woman from an allied House who had enough lines to Ishara that marrying Tigraine's son into Mantear would have made her suitable as the next Mantear Queen, and her daughter from Galad after her. But Mordrellen died when Galad was still but a toddler.

As a toddler, and with the power that the House holding to him would have given Taringail over House Mantear and its affairs and lands and revenues - and power over whom Galad eventually married and all that, House Mantear was much better letting this son of Tigraine go, because otherwise they all but handed a Great House of Andor to a Cairhienin schemer. He could have married Galad to a Saighan or Riatin or even a Damodred cousin and all the Mantear lands would in effect have been Cairhienin-held.

When Modrellen died, the only way Mantear could save the Crown using Galad was by marrying him immediately to some High Seat or her sister willing to forsake her House to enter Mantear and be Queen. That's been done in real history, but apparently it's not done in Andor... perhaps because for that woman to rule, with baby Galad and his schemer of father raising him, that Queen-to-be would never have managed to get the support of ten Great House. That also meant either choosing a very young woman - creating instability in Andor and risking no heir would show up for many years, or one woman young enough that in over 10 years she could still bear Galad a daughter, and in the meantime there would be not clear succession if she died...

Mantear chose a male High Seat from a more junior line, shortcircuiting Taringail's ambitions, and threw its support behind its ally House Trakand. They chose the good of Andor. That kept them in a very good position in Andor, and put the new Royal House in their debt... a debt they could very well repay by marrying one day a younger daughter of Morgase, or a granddaughter (bringing Morgase's lines to Ishara back into House Mantear), thus putting them right behind Trakand again if Trakand ran out of female heirs.




That's not the problem at all, it's that your arguments in this debate contradict some known facts (eg: matrilinearity, that make Galad's Andoran ancestry pretty irrelevant) and that makes you argue completely in the left field despite our efforts to bring the debate back to the facts. You keep bringing up issues concerning Galad that would make sense in a different context, but don't make any sense given the facts we know.

Arguing about Galad's value later in life is pointless. We don't know what the fact he wore the name Damodred would have changed had Tigraine survived. Based on the fact he stands to be Elayne's FPOTS if Gawyn dies, it changed nothing to Galad's birthrights, and if he doesn't hold Mantear lands, it's probably because Mordrellen's holdings passed to the High Seat, not her closest relative.

As for Mantear letting him go, it wasn't much of a sacrifice. He was useless to Mantear nobles as a toddler, and he stood in their way to the HS and he had a very dangerous father. By letting Galad go, the Mantears helped secure an alliance that put the new Royal House of Andor in their debt (marrying Taringail solidified Morgase's claim), and that as a bonus rid them of a disliked Cairhienin schemer. By the time Galad grew up, he would have been a rival to the Mantears who rose in power.

Is that all unfair to Galad? Of course, he's been a political pawn in other people's hands all his childhood. At least he had Morgase's love.