Aztec imperial practice aside, the widespread pattern in central Mexico was for rulers to be succeeded by sons. Since kings were polygynous, they often had many sons. The one chosen, however, was not necessarily the bravest or smartest, as desirable as those attributes were in a king, but the son by the king’s politically most important wife. And who that was depended on the hierarchy of political alliances: typically, it would be the king’s son by the wife from the most powerful kingdom with which he was allied (Carrasco 1984).
Succession, however, is much like a bequest: there are no heirs until the benefactor dies; until then, there are only heirs apparent and heirs expectant. As for royal succession, the fortunes of kingdoms rose and fell, so that the wife who was the politically most important at marriage might not be at the death of the king, with corresponding consequences for her son. Consequently, there was often a coterie of brothers who might become king.
Once a city had been conquered by the Aztecs, however, this changed. The Aztec wife was not only the most politically important at marriage, the disproportionate power and stability of the Aztec empire virtually guaranteed that her son would succeed to the throne. The impact of this was felt both within the kingdom and without.
Since the Aztecs did not conquer entire allied regions at once, local alliances were not retained intact. Regional alliances were overlapping as they were virtually continuous, with each city the center of its own series of alliances that only partially overlapped with those of any other city. indeed, only imperial conquest created alliance boundaries, however fluid. And new imperial boundaries severed some of the political ties that the newly subjugated city-state had created through marriage, with the result that the royal wives whose natal homes were within the empire were politically strengthened, whereas those from outside were weakened. But whether their fortunes waxed or waned, all royal wives were eclipsed by the ruler’s new Aztec wife, the importance of their home cities diminished as the tie to Tenochtitlan became pivotal, and the prospects of their sons to succeed to the throne dimmed.
But it was not just the sons who lost in this system. The king of the new ally was also threatened because he had already demonstrated weakness in submitting. He was also now cut off from political support from his maternal and spousal kin. Thus, he was threatened in fact or in perception by his sons and by his erstwhile allies. His only options were to rebel against the Aztecs to reassert the traditional order. His recent defeat had already demonstrated that this course was likely to be futile, and attempting it risked incurring far more onerous penalties, including his potential ousting. His other alternative was to cleave strongly to the Aztecs to secure their support from these internal and external threats. The latter was the common result of conquest.
Of course, the severing of traditional alliances and the implantation of a new pivotal alliance had a similarly great impact beyond the empire. cities that had previously been allied to now-conquered cities yet remained independent themselves, also lost support they had previously enjoyed, as their traditional allies were reoriented toward Tenochtitlan. Their internal succession system was disrupted, new allies had to be sought, and reigning kings looked after their own security. Subjugation thus roiled alliances within and without imperial boundaries, weakening kings on both sides, and rendering further conquests easier.
The internal consequence of tributary conquest, however, was not simply that the king was threatened, weakened, and became a more reliable Aztec ally. it was that, within one generation, a maternal Aztec would be on the throne of the tributary province and he would, in turn, have at least one Aztec wife to further cement the kin ties that bound his kingdom to Tenochtitlan.
Moreover, within that generation, the towns surrounding that tributary would most likely be conquered as well, setting the stage for the establishment of new political ties via marital alliances with their traditional allies who were now Aztec tributaries as well. Their rulers would similarly be seeking political support through Aztec marital alliances and with those of other Aztec tributaries in the region, so that an entirely new regionally stable system of pro-Aztec alliances would emerge.
Hence the peace that Tenochtitlan did not seek in its public and political practices was in fact a consequence of how they dealt with the subordinated cities and provinces. The empire grew by immediate conquest, but it was the creation of elite marital ties and the subsequent ascent of Aztec offspring to the thrones of subject cities that created an extensive area of relative peace.
World History
