Quotation from: Lost Continent

Written by: Edgar Rice Burroughs

"He is. He took my mother for his woman after he had killed
Wettin. But my mother will die soon--she is very old--and
then the man to whom I belong will become king."

Finally, after much questioning, I got the thing through my
head. It appears that the line of descent is through the
women. A man is merely head of his wife's family--that is
all. If she chances to be the oldest female member of the
"royal" house, he is king. Very naively the girl explained
that there was seldom any doubt as to whom a child's mother
was.