A patchwork house is a type of Viridian senatorial family that relies heavily on political adoptions to maintain their senatorial rights. The term is typically used in a disparaging manner by other houses who look down on the practice.
Adoptions for political purposes are not uncommon or frowned upon in Viridia. Should the head of a senatorial family not view any of his heirs or extended relatives as worthy of representing the family's interests, they may choose to bring a close friend or a protege into the house, for all legal and social purposes making them their child. While this is relatively common, the degree to which patchwork houses engage in this tradition is far in excess of their peers. As senatorial rights are lost when a family line goes extinct, patchwork houses rely on adoptions to keep this line unbroken in perpetuity, even if there may be no close biological relations of the original house left.
Patchwork houses tend to be less wealthy than other senatorial families, or even outright destitute, rarely possessing any land of their own or wielding the kind of informal local political influence that is typically enjoyed by a Viridian noble house. The primary political power they retain is the ability to break consensus in the senate, which they use to extract short-term concessions and gifts from more prominent families.