ef>, or if the) obtained officially certified proxies from other houses or circles Houses might avoid the responsibility of voting on certain issues of controversy by granting limited proxies affecting one vote only, or all votes on a particular issue There was no fixed number of Great Houses they varied in history with political and eco nomic fortunes, and depended to some de gree on the strength of the empire's basic institutions At any one time, there might be one hundred Houses Major sitting in the Landsraad, although there were as few as 35, and as many as 157 The official representative of each House was the Head of the Household, generally a hereditary position GREAT HOUSES 273 GREAT HOUSES although some families elected their Heads from among the family membership at large, or from certain specific lines; other clans practiced variant forms of succession, such as the House al-Qair, in which the Head of the House was automatically the eldest surviving member of the family. Although many family heads attended sessions of the Landsraad regularly, others appointed official Representatives to act in their stead; under Landsraad law, these Representatives had the same legal status as their masters, and thus could act unilaterally in their behalf; for tills reason, the practice was not widespread except in those Houses where the Head of the House was ill or suffered some other diminished capacity. Legally, the Head of th House was the House; under certain circumstances, the Head and his House could be tried by the Landsraad for treasonous acts against the Empire or the Landsraad, and the Head or his House or both exiled, deprived ot their titles and lands, or exterminated. There were nine such trials in the history of the Imperium; only one, that of House Masudi, resulted in the execution of all family members (in the year 3536; the Protector, Shi-Lang, ordered the name of this House expunged from all Imperial histories and records, although he was not successful in obliterating its memory; curiously, however, no record remains, and no trace has been found in official archives, of the crime of House Masudi).