To be honest... I'm not sure I really want Belegar to become the next High King. Not until and unless he has children. Not just to pass on Karak Eight Peaks too -- because Mathilde pointed out that hypothetically, he could give it to his cousins -- but because of, well, having children and hopes for the future.
The previous High King had children; the current one did not have any, because he came off of a triumphant (if bitter-sweet) victorious "We just beat the Everchosen and discovered the north Dwarfs!" straight into "The power is running out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." and as a result didn't feel enough hope or feel secure enough for the future to have children; and Belegar, too, is stressing out so much about "Not getting it wrong for Karak Eight Peaks" that he worries about having children.
If Belegar goes from worrying just about Karak Eight Peaks alone, to worrying about all of the Karaz Ankor... well, that'll be 2 generations of High Kings probably not having children. Maybe enough to set a new pattern. That's not the end of the world or anything; if nothing else, because High Kings have probably not had children before, of course. But it is a sign. If your rulers are having children and being like King Kazador, you probably feel pretty optimistic and confident about your life and the health of your Karak, right? If your rulers are more like King Ungrimm or High King Grudgebearer... well, you're probably not very enthusiastic about life. Probably more focused on pride or grudges or quiet dignity.
I want happier, or less-stressed, High Kings, basically. I want the position to not be seen as just, or primarily, the position which you feed a sacrifice of your most even-keeled and most stoic Dwarf too and hope you get a century or two of good rulership out of him. I mean, it is a position where you want your best for it of course. Just... don't want it to be a place where happiness goes to die.
Of course, if Belegar can marry, have children, and also still later become High King too... that'd be fine, too. Heck, if Thorgrim can marry and have children, that'd be great too. What better and more clear sign of the changing of the times could there be, if Karaz-A-Karak saw Thorgrimm Grudgebearer marrying and having children? ... Aside from all the reclaimed Karaks and avenged Grudges I mean.
But while the other Karaks might be feeling and seeing the changing of the tide, Karaz-A-Karak might have been in "We have nothing else but our pride and our way of life" mode for a long while -- when you suspect you are going to meet your maker, even if you have not been precisely told this by your leaders but you can still sense it in the mood, one of the things that can motivate you to still keep up your work ethic and loyalty-unto-death... is pride and stubbornness. A person with no hope for the future, might instead lean on pride and appeal to tradition as explanations for why he should keep working and fighting and holding the line. And getting a person to change his ways out of that position would be tricky; his pride is what kept him fighting on his feet! To a person like that, other people changing or doing weird or different things, might feel like a burr. They aren't in secure enough territory or mindstate to be able to change or try risky things, so seeing somebody discard traditions or experiment -- or succeed at doing things differently -- is probably not a pleasant sight. But seeing Thorgrim not just being revanchist, rather than pseudo-Slayer, but potentially happy? Or with time enough to marry? That could be a thing for the Karaz-A-Karak Dwarfs to point to and go "Huh."
