Location of the Nobility: A Question of Fluff

[Grytorm]

Okay I just started reading the 5e DMs guide. I've had it a few months but just got around to it.

So I was wondering if the description of Feudalism was accurate. It states that the nobility primarily live in the cities and larger towns. And that small villages while having a feudal lord are remote. Is that accurate historically? I thought most members of the nobility would live in manors or castles in their land with the major cities having more independence, not less. It just struck me as backwards the way things are described.

[Vitruviansquid]

In real-world medieval Europe, you are more or less correct. Owning land and people to work it was very profitable and reputable as a way for nobles to earn money. The Catholic Church forbade usury, so it was considered kind of dirty for a noble to make investments for profit as you would in capitalistic society today. In many European countries, like Spain, cities were often directly chartered and beholden to the monarch, having nothing to do with any feudal overlords. It is also true that if you own land and depended on land for your income, you had to protect it from rival nobles, opportunistic neighbors, and random brigands. So yes, nobility hung around in the countryside a lot.

HOWEVER, DnD is not medieval Europe. There is a polytheistic pantheon instead of the Catholic church, so investments for profit might not be stigmatized. The lay of the land might be different, so that nobles could feasibly be more concerned with goings-on in cities. DnD settings tend also to be a lot more progressive than medieval European countries at any point in time, so maybe, say, the lack of serfdom would take some of the profitability out of rural activities. In short, I wouldn't assume it's inconsistent for DnD nobility to hang out in large towns and cities.

[Warwick]

Okay I just started reading the 5e DMs guide. I've had it a few months but just got around to it.

So I was wondering if the description of Feudalism was accurate. It states that the nobility primarily live in the cities and larger towns. And that small villages while having a feudal lord are remote. Is that accurate historically? I thought most members of the nobility would live in manors or castles in their land with the major cities having more independence, not less. It just struck me as backwards the way things are described.

Like a lot of fantasy settings, despite the pseudo-medieval trappings, 'generic' DnDland is a mashup of a bunch of different things. The notion of 'distant' nobility living primarily in the city and away from their holdings is much more of an enlightenment thing (think the court of Louis the XIV for an example). For one thing, a medieval noble is as much a warrior as anything else and it looks bad if you're off in town dandying it up while someone else runs your fiefdom. I've seen decent arguments that standard DnDland actually has (or ought to have) fairly primitive political organization, what with the large tracts of wilderness, rampaging monsters, etc...

[Ninja_Prawn]

I think part of the problem is that the D&D settings (and here I'm mainly thinking FR, as that's what I'm most familiar with) try to provide a complete smorgasbord of every conceivable geographic and political environment. So you have the big cities on the Sword Coast, which are mercantile trade-centres, the central lands, which are more medieval, as well as various wildernesses filled with primitive tribes and nomads... the range of settings within just one continent spans probably a thousand years of real-world history.

When the DMG says a lot of nobles live in cities, they're imagining Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Athkatla and Neverwinter. Those places are full of Whiggish nobles who earned their fortunes through trade. The 'feudal system', with its Tory-ish nobles and illiterate serfs, is found elsewhere in the FR world.

[MrConsideration]

This depends on time-period and geography.

For example, we can see that France c 1000 AD had a huge amount of local castellans with considerable power and resources, making the kingdom extremely decentralised and your lord likely to be local. Fighting between the local nobility was constant.

England experienced rapid centralisation under Knutr around that as power was concentrated into a few families with enormous estates: Thurkyll the Tall held sway over all of Norfolk and Leofric almost all the North-East. They were more likely to be in major cities and notably they are present at meetings in Winchester, York and London.

Pick your poison with your D&D game. I find local nobility who are powerful, rural and have local concerns work best because they're more likely to care about the PCs kicking out that Manticore or tackling the bandits than some ponce living it up in Waterdeep.

[Sigreid]

This depends on time-period and geography.

For example, we can see that France c 1000 AD had a huge amount of local castellans with considerable power and resources, making the kingdom extremely decentralised and your lord likely to be local. Fighting between the local nobility was constant.

England experienced rapid centralisation under Knutr around that as power was concentrated into a few families with enormous estates: Thurkyll the Tall held sway over all of Norfolk and Leofric almost all the North-East. They were more likely to be in major cities and notably they are present at meetings in Winchester, York and London.

Pick your poison with your D&D game. I find local nobility who are powerful, rural and have local concerns work best because they're more likely to care about the PCs kicking out that Manticore or tackling the bandits than some ponce living it up in Waterdeep.

To expand on this, it depends on the stage. Historically, in the early days of nobility they are essentially generals put in charge of protecting an area for the king, as well as raising troops to support the crown on foreign adventures. Later, nobles generally become less warrior and more politician, spending much of their time in court attempting to curry favor with the monarch. In both phases it is not uncommon for the main lord to tend to the family lands while his relatives, the lesser lords, are sent to "court" as a combination lobbyist for their family, face for forming alliances with other families and frankly hostage used to keep the main person in line. Also, in both phases it is in the interest of the younger siblings to go out and attend court with the monarch or other noble families because normally only the oldest inherited lands and the younger siblings had to find their own niche.

[TheOOB]

There's a book called A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe that does a great job of explaining how the feudal system works, and how it would work in an D&D world.

Except in late medieval societies, cities are not really the place for a noble, as cities typically represent a dis empowerment of nobility and an empowerment of the freeman. Guilds and councils are the power in cities, not nobility. The biggest reason for a noble to create a city(other than one happening naturally over time) is to gain more liquid wealth through taxes instead of things like work obligations and grain, but doing so losses the noble power over their own lands.

Weak nobles likely have an estate on their manorial lands, but most nobles live in castles or strongholds. The feudal system is all about protection. I work and/or fight for you, and you protect me. A noble is expected to protect their land from banditry and the like and keep it productive, and in exchange their lord will protect them if and armies take interest in the land(using their own army formed primarily of forces owed to them by their vassals).

Generally if a noble resides in a city, they're either really weak(they have little to no manorial lands or can't afford a keep or stronghold), or a city grew around their castle/keep/whatever.

Also most nobles control multiple manors(parcels of lands), so many peasants may only see their lord every once in awhile, and be commanded by a steward, bailiff, or knight in their lords absence.