Free The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie Page B

right of the eldest son to inherit the title and property of his parents, to the exclusion of all other children. Instead, and apparently from earliest times, after the death of each ruler the Incas anticipated a struggle to take place amongst the potential heirs.
    Europeans, of course, were not immune to struggles of dynastic succession. They were common enough, in fact, to provide Shakespeare the raw material from which he fashioned manyof his history plays and tragedies. The difference between European and Inca versions of monarchy, however, was that among the Incas bloody dynastic struggles were expected; they were the norm, not the exception. Apparently the thinking was that if a royal contender were cunning, bold, and aggressive enough to seize control of the throne, then he probably had what it took to successfully rule the empire. The formula for dynastic succession in the Inca Empire, therefore, was one that allowed for the most able candidate to rise to the top. Even if an emperor designated an heir, there was no guarantee of a smooth transition. To leave no heir or, in the case of Huayna Capac’s death, to suddenly designate one, only meant that the normal free-for-all of Inca dynastic succession would be exacerbated. Which is precisely what began to occur in Peru beginning around 1527.
    Most Inca accounts state that after Huayna Capac’s death, his son Huascar was crowned as emperor in Cuzco, a thousand miles to the south. Another son, Atahualpa, remained in Quito, meanwhile, which Huayna Capac had made into an ancillary capital during his constant campaigns in what is now Ecuador. Born from different mothers, Atahualpa and Huascar were half-brothers. Both were in their mid-twenties at the time of their father’s death, yet had completely opposite temperaments. Atahualpa had been born in Cuzco, had lived for many years in the far north with his father, had taken an avid interest in military pursuits, and was known for being extremely severe with anyone who differed with him. Huascar, on the other hand, had been born in a small village to the south of Cuzco, had little interest in military affairs, drank to excess, commonly slept with married women, and was known to murder their husbands if they complained. * If Atahualpa was the serious type, then Huascar was the party boy. Each, however, bore a sense of entitlement that made him ruthless if even the smallest portion of those entitlements was threatened.
    Though Atahualpa and Huascar shared the same father, they belonged to completely different royal descent groups, or
panaqas.
Atahualpa belonged through his mother to the descent group known as the
Hatun ayllu
, while Huascar belonged through his mother to the group known as the
Qhapaq ayllu.
Both of these descent groups were competitivewith one another, having struggled for supremacy and power now over several generations. And, as royal successions often provided the spark that unleashed open political warfare, from the moment that Atahualpa did not show up in Cuzco for his father’s massive funeral and for his brother’s subsequent coronation, Huascar became suspicious. Huascar’s paranoia—derived no doubt from an Inca history that was richly embroidered with tales of brutal palace coups—became so acute that he is even said to have murdered some of his relatives who had accompanied his father’s corpse to Cuzco, having suspected them of plotting an insurrection.
    Huascar’s suspicions eventually got the better of him, suspicions that were presumably only accentuated by the inefficiency of the many messages and counter-messages that had to be carried between the two brothers over a thousand miles each way by relay runners. The newly crowned emperor finally decided to wage a military campaign in order to settle the question of succession once and for all. His decision to launch a war was not well thought out however, for it immediately put Huascar at a disadvantage. Since Huascar’s father, Huayna