Yesterday, a question was asked. It wasn't a very good question, but it was a valid, cromulent question. I wouldn't downvote it, or vote to close it in a vacuum, but I also wouldn't upvote it either. It should also be noted that it doesn't have an upvoted or accepted answer.
This morning, another question was asked. This question was, essentially, the same question as the first. However, this new question is objectively better than the earlier question as well. It's more detailed, includes more information to provide context to the reader, better written, and broader in the best way possible. (Which is to say, it is broader by a small amount that allows for answers that are more broadly useful without losing any of the essence of the original question or otherwise losing focus.)
So, I did what one does when one encounters a duplicate question, and I voted to close Question One as a Duplicate of Question Two.
Whereupon, the inevitable happened.
@LessPop_MoreFizz actually since this one was asked first the other is a dupe of this one. – spartacus 14 mins ago
To which I say:
So What.
While it makes sense in the general case to point new questions as dupes to old questions, this is not a hard and fast rule. If the newer question is of higher quality (or, as sometimes happens when doing housekeeping on old dupes, has higher quality answers), there is nothing wrong with pointing the older question to the newer one as a duplicate. Our first concern when closing duplicates should be accuracy. Our second concern should be that the duplicate referred to (and left open) has good, high quality answers and that we aren't wasting peoples time by shuffling them between unanswered questions (a concern that is at least partly addressed by the requirement that dupes have upvoted answers.). Our third should be that the newly 'canonical' question is of high quality. Only after we have considered all of these should we fall back to chronology to determine which question gets redirected.
Join me in ending the tyranny of chronology! Stop insisting on sending dupes to the oldest question purely by virtue of its age!