PDA

View Full Version : Halp! OCD DM VS Feudal Heirarchy



Alanrex
2012-02-24, 01:13 AM
Ok, so I'm creating an E6-9 (Haven't decided on cap yet) campaign and I am struggling with the inconsistencies of the breakdown of feudal land holdings/titles.

I've looked at Birthright, Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, Burning Wheel, ACKS, feudal society websites and even a few larps for brain juice, but am still not finding the cut and dry answer I am looking for.

The cut and dry question is: In early Medieval Europe, as the feudal system gelled, just how many dukes/counts/barons existed in any of the feudal countries (Europe, France etc) under 1 king and just how much land did each one have?

I know that this number of lords and size of land holdings could change very quickly and need not be consistent when compared to one another. However, it would be nice to have a general idea at the number of vassal lords a king had...and also some consistency.

So, the king is king, and has his own chunk of land with his own counts, barons, knights...but he also has some dukes, who in turn have their duchies within the kingdom borders and their own under lords...all of which have pledged loyalty to the superior...how many should I detail? Help me make sense of it all. :smalleek:

Fatebreaker
2012-02-24, 02:56 AM
How many should I detail?

As many as your story calls for.

Seriously.

Keep the number of dukes, barons, counts, and whatnots vague. It's unlikely that the players will need to know specifics about everybody. Focus your time and efforts on the nobles that move the story forward, maybe a few extras for verisimilitude or in case the party goes in an unexpected direction, and don't sweat the folks who never influence the story.

That's not to say you shouldn't detail people the players will never meet. If Baron McAwesome is off guarding the border with his Awesome Border Guards, and that plays some role in the politics of the kingdom, he's important enough to put a little effort into, whether the players go to Castle McAwesome or not. But the guys who are never met and never advance or influence the plot aren't worth detailing so long as the players have a vague sense that "other nobles exist." It can be as simple as mentioning that a party of nobles are leaving the king's chambers as the players are going in, or some quote like, "The other Border Barons would never stand for this!" which implies that there are, well, other Border Barons somewhere off-camera.

Your other question...


The cut and dry question is: In early Medieval Europe, as the feudal system gelled, just how many dukes/counts/barons existed in any of the feudal countries (Europe, France etc) under 1 king and just how much land did each one have?

...has no clear-cut answer that I am aware of, since who owed fealty to whom was not always a cut-and-dry situation. Kings had as many nobles under them as showed up when he called. Sometimes loyal subjects could not answer a king's call. Sometimes disloyal subjects feigned loyalty at convenient times so nobody would notice their actions elsewhere. Sometimes loyalties changed, or people died, or had a complicated web of allegiances. And the strength of the feudal system depended so heavily on the force of personality (or sometimes just the force) of the ruler in question that the successor to a strong king would find that a hefty chunk of his father's loyal subjects had no such loyalty to him!

I'm sure that there's a lot of data and names and whatnot that could, if you narrow down what you're looking for, give you an impression. But for the purposes of your story, if you're going for something the size of a country-kingdom, it's not really necessary.

Eldan
2012-02-24, 08:51 AM
What the previous poster said. The medieval period is nearly a thousand years long, if you include the dark ages, and includes kingdoms from the size of, say, Napoli to the Holy Roman Empire or France. And the titles differed in every language anyway.
In the end, I'd say it's pretty much up to you. If you really want to detail it, make maybe four or five ranks of nobility below the king. Sit down with a map of your kingdom, divide it into a few dukedoms, those each into a few counties, those each into a few baronies and then just say that every baron has a handful of knights under him. Don't detail them to much. If you really need to, give the higher nobles a name and a few sentences of personality, unless they will play a large roll.

Storm Bringer
2012-02-24, 09:32 AM
just to add to the fun, the number of Titles (ie duchies, counties, etc) is not the same as the number of title holders (ie dukes, counts, etc)

One person often held more than one title. it was not uncommon for a noble to be the Duke of X and Y (two seperate duchies held by the same person), while also being Count of Z and Baron of Q. this could lead to a powerful duke being techincally a vassal of a middling count, because the duke is also the baron of some out of the way barony that is in the county. how much actaul power the count had over the duke depended on the two people in question.

real ife example: the father of henry Hotspur full list of titles was, at one point:

Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, 4th Baron Percy, "King of Mann", Knight of the Garter , Lord Marshal

also, the titles were held independantly of one another, so a man could loose or give away one title while keeping another. so a noble who was both a count and baron might give his eldest the county and the barony to his next son.


in short, thier were more titles than people, and these titles could change hands without anybody dying, and could change according to court politics..

Mistral
2012-02-24, 04:24 PM
What the previous poster said. The medieval period is nearly a thousand years long, if you include the dark ages, and includes kingdoms from the size of, say, Napoli to the Holy Roman Empire or France. And the titles differed in every language anyway.


Not to mention that the ranks of each title varied, even when the titles themselves seemed identical. An English Earl became equivalent to a Continental count/comte, while a Scandinavian Jarl was a petty king. There are specialized titles that refer to role rather than rank (a margrave/marquess/March Lord rules a border territory referred to as a march, and are charged with the defense of the frontiers), or to autonomy (a count palatine is granted special privileges of autonomy, but is not necessarily ranked superior to a duke, and may not even be hereditary depending on timeframe and location), or to certain exceptions to hierarchical rule (landgraves and the aforementioned counts palatine derive their authority directly from the crown - "palatinus", albeit in varying ways). Even people nominally identical in rank within a single polity, such as the German Prince-electors, varied greatly in title, including three Archbishops, a King, a Margrave, a Count Palatine, and either one, two, or three Dukes depending on time frame (entirely ignoring Napoleon's "contributions").

Basically, you're not going to find a cut and dried answer because feudal titles worked not by rule of law, but by relations between people. The feudal "contract" was an established way of doing things, but it didn't specify things like "twenty counts per duke, five dukes per king"; it instead was an implicitly-understood social contract between individuals who had agreed to certain privileges and duties between each other. Where these understandings broke down or could be bent, conflict arose, which further muddied the waters as special circumstances had to be accommodated (such as the disintegration of Swabia, which became a conglomeration of counties, Imperial free cities, and petty lords and bishops after the death of Zahringen without heir).

Martin Greywolf
2012-02-24, 04:37 PM
What they all said. Doesn´t really solve your problem though, does it?

Now, I´m going to disregard any magic in this, but this is how I would divide the land:

Every two or three villages will have someone in authority who will be responsible for collecting taxes and generally running day to day business. This won´t be mayor (though villagers will have one, whether official or not), but rather someone appointed by the local lord/baron/etc. Think chief of police, or if you have system that has them, yeoman - low-tier nobleman with just a village or two of holdings, who may or may not (if he is a businessman on the side or has a salt mine) be rather poor for a noble.

Every castle, and I do mean every single one will have a powerful and/or influential lord in it, and distribution of castles will be very, very even in stable kingdom (or heavily skewed in monarchs favor). Castles are almost impossible to take by force, and if one lord had too much of them (a nice plot hook would be for one nobleman trying to gain control of several castles). All villages villages around the castle will probably belong to the lord.

Cities will be either pretty much the same as castles, or free/royal cities (they are subservient only directly to the king). If they belong to a noble, he will probably have all the surrounding villages. If they are free/royal, a noble will have the surrounding villages, but not the city.

When you have a list like this, make up a family for the noble. Some parts of his land, he will have directly. Some will belong to his sons, some will be gained as a dowry, some will be his daughters dowry and so on. Some nobles may give land and titles to war heroes, thus basically founding a new noble family, if the title and land can be inherited.

Also, there will be little rapid changes in ownership, or at least little unexpected ones. If one happens, it will mean at the very least a time of great political tension, at worst civil war and division of kingdom.

Oh, and keep succession crisis in mind. Who should get what land can get pretty complicated really fast, and shenanigans can be pulled - honorable mention goes to Poland, where nobles, upon finding themselves with no male heir to the king and threat of foreigner on the throne promptly declared that Poland can´t indeed be ruled by the queen, but there is no law on the books that says the king has to be male. Cue King Jadwiga.

Beowulf DW
2012-02-24, 04:59 PM
As an example about the complications of titles, in Dragon Age, one of the bad guys becomes Arl of Amaranthine, Teyrn of Highever, and Arl of Denerim. All of these titles were separate from one another, and each held a different rank.

It got complicated. Even with respect to land, nothing was really clear cut. Although in a given feudal system, a duke might technically out-rank a baron, if the baron has more land and wealth than the duke, the baron will be more powerful. And landholdings could change in size if a noble decided to sell a portion of his/her land to another noble.

Eldan
2012-02-24, 05:27 PM
That extends all the way down to even the peasantry, in some places: customary hereditary law in Switzerland declared that when a man dies, each of his children becomes not only part of his land, but a part of every piece of land he owns. So if he had three fields, his three sons would each get a piece of each of three fields, resulting in nine smaller fields.
A consequence of that was that, about every 100 years, there would be a big affair called a Land Sharing, where all the land in a community was put together and re-distributed. (People feeling cheated there was a good reason to go raiding, burning and stealing against your neighbours, too).

JoshuaZ
2012-02-24, 06:09 PM
A lot of the answers already given are pretty good. I'd like to just quickly point out a few things explicitly: How many and what titles were around really varied a lot from location to location and from time to time. Even the same title could have drastically different meanings depending on where one was. Even though a baron is generally a low level noble, in practice one barony could be much stronger than another if it were in a more economically or politically important part of a country. You had occasions where a low level noble was in practice far more influential than someone higher up the hierarchy.

Alanrex
2012-02-24, 06:52 PM
Thanks for all the comments! Fatebreaker and Martin Greywolf especially. I'll try the less detailed approach.

Terraoblivion
2012-02-24, 06:59 PM
The cut and dry question is: In early Medieval Europe, as the feudal system gelled, just how many dukes/counts/barons existed in any of the feudal countries (Europe, France etc) under 1 king and just how much land did each one have?

That's easy, there wasn't a single one. Early feudalism didn't do the complex, titled nobility thing. There were kings who ruled, subsidiary princes who held land in their name and pre-chivalrous professional soldiers. Most places didn't have the subsidiary princes, but just local kings, archbishops and eventually ruling dukes, counts and so on, though.

However, feudalism is a hideously awkward term to use as people treat it as meaning something specific, with that specific thing being a hodgepodge of bits of different administrative systems. Either feudalism is a very loose term for systems of government with kings and nobles or it refers specifically to administrative systems where a king hands out full governance of a region in exchange for military service, something that's only truly been seen under Charlemagne.

Basically, feudalism is a mess and most people have no clue about. So first work out your understanding of feudalism and just what system of government you want, otherwise people can't give useful help. And like I said, remember that the kind of parceling out of land to titled nobility people think about was something that really only happened in France and England. Not just that, the concept of "nobility" as opposed to a group of knights and a group of princes didn't exist until the 15th century. Or you could screw your OCD and just do what works for your game rather than aim for accuracy.

Diskhotep
2012-02-24, 07:02 PM
A good way to get an idea of how complicated it can be (and why you should take everyone's advice to just keep it simple and detail who you need, leaving the rest in the background) is to look at one of the Let's Plays for Paradox's Crusader Kings. While only vaguely historically accurate, it is fantastic for getting a handle on how intricate noble lineages could be.

Fatebreaker
2012-02-25, 04:55 AM
Happy to help, Alanrex! If you really want to get an idea of how nobility can be a part of a game, look up an old classic by the name of Pendragon. It's set in the Arthurian mythos, combining elements from multiple versions of King Arthur and his court, plus some light elements of magical and mythical stuff. It's a lot of fun, and a really good example of how everyone can play the same "class" (all players are expected to be a knight) while still being interesting.

But, more to your point, not only do all players begin play with a fiefdom (complete with men-at-arms and peasant levies), but there's an option in character creation for detailing your family history. This can include how you came to serve at Camelot, who your father was, what famous events your ancestors were involved in, all sorts of cool stuff. This can lead to you having relatives who are also knights which you can call upon in times of war, claims to castles and fiefdoms if people die, even rivalries or friendships with other players or npcs before the game even begins!

The system is very much built around the specific setting, and the book is... not the best in terms of layout and clarity. Still, it does go into the duties and privileges which a noble-player can expect, and it does show how you can mechanically and thematically blend a feudal system with adventuring. If you can find it, give it a shot. It won't answer all your questions, but it may start you on the path to finding out what you really want those answers to be.

Good luck!

Xuc Xac
2012-02-25, 06:10 AM
Something else to keep in mind is that the fiefs weren't really overlapping. A barony was smaller than a county which was smaller than a dukedom, but that doesn't mean a dukedom contained counties in its borders which contained baronies in turn.

There were dukes who were as powerful as kings but they didn't claim to be kings for various reasons. When the titles were first forming, nobles could claim any title they wanted as long as they could get away with it. If you only controlled a small fief for example, you could call yourself baron or count and get away with it. If you called yourself duke or king, then other more powerful nobles would come and thump you and say "Like hell, you are!" Eventually, the titles attached to various fiefs became traditional, so even if the Duke of Burgundy is more powerful than the King of France, he's still a Duke. Burgundy wouldn't claim to be a kingdom or demand that France be "demoted" to a duchy, because dukes weren't necessarily "lower" than kings. It was just that the lord of Burgundy was called "Duke" and the lord of France was called "King" by tradition.

When a king gave a barony to someone to make them a new baron, he wasn't giving a piece of his kingdom away. The barony was a separate territory that was controlled by the same lord as the kingdom. I think the idea that counties (and other lower ranking fiefs) were inside the borders of kingdoms is a result of looking back at history with the assumption that there have always been nation states. Kings didn't have the homage of the lower ranked fiefs around them because they were inside the kingdom's boundaries; kings were able to claim the lordship of a kingdom because their vassals controlled the surrounding fiefs.

Later, with the rise of the nation state, the fiefs and their loyalties were basically fossilized. This is when the borders of the kingdoms were extended to include all the fiefs that owed homage to the king. So, instead of the Kingdom of France being a tiny island surrounded by all the counties and duchies loyal to the King of France, the Nation of France was made up of all the territory controlled by the King though his vassals. Eventually, the relationship changed from "the duchy of Brittany is controlled by a duke who uses his lands' resources to support his liege, the King of France" to "the King of France controls Brittany and allows one of his vassals to run it for him, which makes that vassal a duke because that's the title that comes with that part of the King's territory".

A small territory being inside and subordinate to a larger territory is more "federal" than "feudal".

MukkTB
2012-02-25, 11:59 AM
If you add magic into the mix you aren't going to see significant changes from what the people above have mentioned. The church held extensive lands. I'm not really sure on the way titles were held by church members. I think someone under the church would be 'Bishop of X' instead of 'Duke of X' but I could be wrong.

Wizards could easily be nobles. Given the power of a middle to high level wizard in D&D it not unreasonable for them to physically conquer territories on their own. There isn't really a clear way in which wizards fit into a world. Unless you want to follow the RAW to the conclusions of the Tippyverse.

But that isn't a feudal system. Tippyverse is either a Oligarchy or a Meritocracy. The general idea of the Tippyverse is that for reasons of defense extremely large city states would form. Mostly as a response to the effects of high level magic. These city states would hold very little territory around themselves because they could not defend that territory from attack. Small towns would cease to exist because the cities would not need them for food production or as part of a trade route, and they would be pretty much indefensible. The extreme power of wizards and other spellcasters would put them on top, and any new powerful spellcaster would either have to be killed, or more likely co-opted into the government of the city state. If you want explanations as to why these particular things happen, I recommend finding Tippy's thread on the matter.

I don't think you want that. But it is important to see what wizards are likely to do. High level wizards will group their assets into one defensible position because they cannot easily defend large areas or multiple locations from other wizards. This fort might be on the far side of the moon, at the bottom of the ocean, on top of a mountain, flying through the sky, or hiding in another dimension. If they decide to spread their assets on the idea of 'don't keep your eggs in one basket' they will most likely use stealth to hide them rather than brute force to protect multiple locations.

Furthermore a Wizard of high level has very little use for mundane people. He doesn't keep a standing army of humans. Undead or constructs are much better. He doesn't require agriculture. He doesn't need laborers when he can reshape the cosmos to his will or send out a group of undead/constructs to do it for him. The only other people he cares about are other wizards. Either as enemies or allies.

This leads us to the Wizard's Tower which may very well be the basic unit of wizardry. I particularly like Terry Pratchett's take on this. Multiple high level wizards fighting wars will make hell on earth and leave fallout that will be deadly for long periods of time. So in a stable non post-apocalyptic world wizardly institutions are likely to minimize direct conflict.



I propose that the basic unit of wizardry is the tower with one or more wizards. The tower will likely not follow mundane authority in order to prevent that mundane authority from dragging the tower into a war with another tower. If the tower projects authority over an area it will not be because the tower is capable of protecting the area from aggressors. It will be because the tower is capable of melting the area, literally.

Lesser magic users will fill advisory roles counting as very minor noblemen. A noble who is a lesser magic user will rely on his status as a noble rather than his magic as the source of his authority and identity.

Edit - This is s 3.x perspective. A 4e perspective would have magic users like any other order of professionals.

Yora
2012-02-25, 01:22 PM
The Holy Roman Empire is every historians nightmare. :smallbiggrin:
It resembles a lot of things from other places, but is completely unique and pretty much lacks any consistent organization or structure at all.

Bogardan_Mage
2012-02-25, 05:43 PM
Wizards could easily be nobles. Given the power of a middle to high level wizard in D&D it not unreasonable for them to physically conquer territories on their own.
I've always though Sorcerers would make a good ruling class in the right setting. What better claim to nobility is there than descent from a freaking dragon, and with magical powers to back it up? Some possible adventure hooks could be:

The heir apparent fails to manifest his powers as expected, as the bloodline has become so diluted, and a power struggle amongst the nobility ensues.

A commoner discovers he is the rightful heir to the throne when he discovers his own magical abilities.

Nerd-o-rama
2012-02-27, 09:59 AM
I've always though Sorcerers would make a good ruling class in the right setting. What better claim to nobility is there than descent from a freaking dragon, and with magical powers to back it up? Some possible adventure hooks could be:

The heir apparent fails to manifest his powers as expected, as the bloodline has become so diluted, and a power struggle amongst the nobility ensues.

A commoner discovers he is the rightful heir to the throne when he discovers his own magical abilities.

3. The entire setting of Dark Sun.

Wardog
2012-02-28, 02:09 PM
The Holy Roman Empire is every historians nightmare. :smallbiggrin:
It resembles a lot of things from other places, but is completely unique and pretty much lacks any consistent organization or structure at all.

It's bad enough just looking at maps of European state boundaries for that period.

"This blue patch is France, and this pink patch is England, and this green patch is Poland and did the cartographer just randomly throw different colours of ink at Germany?"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Holy_Roman_Empire_1648.svg

LibraryOgre
2012-02-28, 03:01 PM
Short answer? 1d6-1. Everything else is correct.

TheThan
2012-02-28, 06:05 PM
I’d start rolling up NPCs until I got tired of it. Then I’d go back through and give those names and titles etc, then I’d start filling in background, who owes fealty to whom, who’s loyal to the king, who’s looking to make a power grab etc. So you yourself won’t quite know how many you have. If it feels like you don’t have enough make a few npcs more powerful politically, make some titles vacant and in need of filling (useful pc plot/rewards), or just go back and create some more NPCs.

BRC
2012-02-28, 06:19 PM
I've always though Sorcerers would make a good ruling class in the right setting. What better claim to nobility is there than descent from a freaking dragon, and with magical powers to back it up? Some possible adventure hooks could be:

The heir apparent fails to manifest his powers as expected, as the bloodline has become so diluted, and a power struggle amongst the nobility ensues.

A commoner discovers he is the rightful heir to the throne when he discovers his own magical abilities.

Eh, they lead to two very different societies.

A Wizard gains their power through study, which means education, which means wealth. Enough wealth that you don't need to work in the fields and can afford spell books, teachers, regents, ect. For a Wizard-run society I would look to Imperial China, specifically the civil service exams and the Scholar Gentry (basically, people would spend their entire lives studying for these exams which, if passed, would let you hold public office), as my model.
For Sorcerers, I would look more towards traditional, blood-based feudalism. A ruling class of Sorcerers born into their power. Power that serves as both the means, and the justification, for their rule. To-the-death "Sorcerer's Duels" become common as a means by which nobles can solve disputes by showing that "The Blood of dragons flows stronger within me!". In such a society, Wizards would be a threat, since they could wield magic without any noble bloodline, as a result magical texts would be burnt and Wizards would be hunted down as "False Pretenders" to the power of the Dragons.

Anxe
2012-02-28, 10:40 PM
Most things I've seen keep it at 20 big lords per country. More than that and it becomes difficult to keep track of everyone. No idea what the actual number would be. Try sending an email to a medieval history professor to a nearby college. They might be able to answer.

LibraryOgre
2012-02-28, 11:43 PM
I've always though Sorcerers would make a good ruling class in the right setting. What better claim to nobility is there than descent from a freaking dragon, and with magical powers to back it up? Some possible adventure hooks could be:

The heir apparent fails to manifest his powers as expected, as the bloodline has become so diluted, and a power struggle amongst the nobility ensues.

A commoner discovers he is the rightful heir to the throne when he discovers his own magical abilities.

Birthright had an interesting take on this.

One of the big draws of the setting was playing Kings and nobles with actual Divine blood. The higher your divine blood rating, the more abilities you got. More powerful nobles generally had more powerful bloodlines (though not always).

One side effect of this was magic. Anyone could learn Illusions and Divinations, and the first two levels of other schools. After that... the only ones who could learn them were the god-blooded and the elf-blooded (full elves and half-elves).

Those who studied magic, but didn't have the blood? They were Magicians, and essentially double specialists in Illusions and Divinations.

Templarkommando
2012-02-29, 03:44 PM
As a side note, just because someone falls in a particular slot in the hierarchy of feudalism, it doesn't necessarily that they are inferior to their feudal overlords. A knight could easily be an excellent manager of his fief to such a degree that the baron who is his feudal superior doesn't have as much cash, and can't field as many men-at-arms etc.

Also, a quick note on complicated feudal loyalties. A knight (or other noble) might have more than one allegiance. He might start owing fealty to one baron who provides the knight with land and peasants. Now, suppose that a second baron also wants to gain the knight's allegiance. He grants the knight a fief and peasants from his own holdings. Now the knight owes fealty to two separate nobles. What happens if those nobles go to war? You can manage some nice controversial role play helping the knight decide which baron to side with.

Another possibility for complicated loyalties might work like this. A knight is married to a woman whose father is also a knight. Under many historical conventions of inheritance, women can only inherit a title under extraneous circumstances. So the son of the knight and the lady will inherit both titles and the lands, peasants, and allegiances that go with them.