And children should never be made to inherit their parents’ punishment.

People have found that decision strange, some of them, that after everything Michael did I would let his children keep the inheritance he forfeited, and I understand the confusion, but to me it was never a difficult call.

My grandchildren were not their father.

They had committed no fraud, forged no documents, gripped no wrists.

They were two young people who happened to have been born to a man who made monstrous choices, and it seemed to me a fresh injustice, a continuation of Michael’s own logic, to visit his sins upon them.

Henry’s amendment had been written precisely to allow this; he had directed the forfeited share to Michael’s lawful descendants, not into some void, because Henry too understood that the point was never to strip the family of its future but only to keep that future out of the hands of the one member who had proven he could not be trusted with it.