Succession
Mayan kings cultivated godlike personas. When a ruler died and left no heir to the throne, the result was usually war and bloodshed. King Pakal's precursor, Pacal I, died upon the battlefield. However, instead of the kingdom erupting into chaos, the city of Palenque, a Mayan capital city in southern Mexico, invited in a young prince from a different city-state. The prince was only twelve years old. His name was Pakal. Pakal's Temple of Inscriptions still towers today amid the ruins of Palenque, as the supreme symbol of Pakal's influence and power in Palenque.
Read more about this topic: Maya Rulers
Famous quotes containing the word succession:
“Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We then entered another swamp, at a necessarily slow pace, where the walking was worse than ever, not only on account of the water, but the fallen timber, which often obliterated the indistinct trail entirely. The fallen trees were so numerous, that for long distances the route was through a succession of small yards, where we climbed over fences as high as our heads, down into water often up to our knees, and then over another fence into a second yard, and so on.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“the negro Babo took by succession each Spaniard forward, and asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a white’s.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)