Mostly because the query you are building is being split into many queries. You may try orderBy('credit_name.sort_no'), but I don't think it will work. You most likely need to build query some different way or sort this data manually.

That doesn't work. Any suggestions about building the query in a different way? credit_name is a hasMany relationship to CreditRole. So, these results need to be sorted by sort_no. And CreditRole's results need to be sorted by their own sort_no column too.

I'm not sure why you have the following in your query if you're doing a sub-query from credit_name:

->with('credit_name.has_name')
->with('credit_name.has_biography')

Also, is ->with('credit_role') not the same table you're already selecting from (CreditRole::)?

I'm not sure if the following will work but give it a try:

$original_authors = CreditRole::with(array('credit_name' => function($query)
                        {
                            $query->where('run_type', '=', 'OR')
                                ->orderby('credit_name.sort_no', 'asc');
                        },
                        'has_replacements' => function($query)
                        {
                            $query->where('run_type', '=', 'RE');
                        }))
                        ->where('credit_level', '=', 'S')
                        ->where('author_status', '=', 'O')
                        ->where('show_id', '=', $id)
                        ->orderBy('credit_role.sort_no')
                        ->get();

Ah, ok. I see what I was doing wrong.

has_name, has_biography and has_role are hasOne relationships. The perpetrators were has_name and has_biography. It sorts properly if I put them in the credit_name array.

Glad I could help.