Fair enough, thanks for the sourcing/reasoning on the numbers....you are correct the 6,000 number has been around for a long time ... adding family members who have no royal status to the mix certainly increases the numbers, along with natural population increases.... I don’t see it as a major issue to this particular discussion. But I was thrown a bit by the big jump in the number......Thanks again.
V/R
Bill
I suspect the non-royal offspring of royals in Saudi really have to be considered to be loyal FIRST to their family members ~ and then maybe to the clan or tribe ~ but always the family first.
BTW, regarding the dichotomy between Saudi NG And Saudi Army, of course the royals think of it in terms of princes, but the Tribal leadership think of it a bit differently ~ and that makes a whopping big difference. All federated tribal societies have that problem ~ even if the leader of the tribal consolidated forces was a close relative of the top dog over the royal forces.
We need look back no further than the dynastic disputes between English claimants and French claimants over kingship over what had been proprietorships held by Anjou over both places! There are outlyers in the mix who were sufficiently able to command or attract allegiance from enough men to end up creating England, France, Burgundy and a fair number of mini-states (note, Brittany was an independent 'super power' just a few centuries before ~ they had command over the Bay of Biscay and the English channel ~ and could pretty well enforce whatever revenue edicts they wished ~ but once the dynastic disputes between England and France were settled, Brittany found itself being eaten alive by French nobles.)