Crises of supreme power in pagan Bulgaria.

All authors dealing with the ruling institution in early medieval Bulgaria start from the fact that the power of the Bulgarian ruler was hereditary, passed down within the family and the principle of majority was valid - the first-born son of the ruler had the right to inherit the throne, at least as long as this was objectively possible. Regarding the dynastic principle, most examples from our early medieval history indicate that it was followed. As for the primogeniture, however, as a right of succession to the throne, in our history until the conversion we have mostly exceptions to it. The aim of the present work is, by tracking the exceptions to the rule of succession - peculiar crises of power, to look for their common and different features, as well as similarity in the reasons that gave rise to them. Although in some of the cases the information about the kinship ties and relationships in the Bulgarian ruling family from this period is extremely scarce and/or divergent in order to contribute to the drawing of definite conclusions, they are included here because of the existing discussion on them in the Bulgarian and foreign historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]