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thecrimsondawn
2017-02-27, 05:05 PM
Its come to my attention that I have a clear and utter lack of knowledge of how various old style governments truly work from the inside. Many games often have a Monarchy style of government in place, so I feel I should get to know just how things work, and ive come here as I know there will be at least a few of you guys who have obtained this knowledge and would be willing to share :)

So first off, It is my understanding that a king/queen of a domain is just one part of a series of Dukes and Duchess who own land and have some measure of power, and that the king/queen needs to maintain a delicate balance of power less they can be overthrown by their own Nobles. Is it sort of like a share system in a stock market where those who have the most power are the ruling body of the collective of Nobles, or am I misunderstanding this heavily?

Second, lets say I am an adventurer, and I do a series of great tasks for the king/queen of the domain and am awarding land and a title. Does this alone make me a noble?

Third, what are the responsibilities of the Nobles. From what I gather those with a title often have a domain to look after and what happens in said domain are the responsibility of said Noble over the domain. Failing to properly care for what is yours, and potentially making the king/queen look bad may cause you to loose your standing, is this correct?

Fourth, How do taxes work? Does the king/queen tax those who own domains, and leave the domain owners to tax the people under them, or is there any system in place?


I know some of these questions will result in very long, drawn out answers, so I am going to thank anyone and everyone who puts the time out to help answer this now :)

Honest Tiefling
2017-02-27, 05:09 PM
The problem is, this is covering A LOT of territory. You are basically asking about every single continent's history for many centuries. Any chance you'd want to narrow it down a bit? Given your questions, maybe a medieval western European standpoint?

For more general questions...Several kings and queens had to worry about religious groups gaining power and wealth. While they are not technically a part of the monarchy, they were so involved that they did shape the history of it.

Darth Ultron
2017-02-27, 05:48 PM
Well, with no real historical answers...




So first off, It is my understanding that a king/queen of a domain is just one part of a series of Dukes and Duchess who own land and have some measure of power, and that the king/queen needs to maintain a delicate balance of power less they can be overthrown by their own Nobles. Is it sort of like a share system in a stock market where those who have the most power are the ruling body of the collective of Nobles, or am I misunderstanding this heavily?

Yes, in most cases a kings power comes from the other nobles and other powerful people in the kingdom, like for example the high cleric.

Of course this gets complicated...



Second, lets say I am an adventurer, and I do a series of great tasks for the king/queen of the domain and am awarding land and a title. Does this alone make me a noble?

In most cases, yes, having a title makes one a noble....but it depends. In most cases a king can ''make'' a noble....but sometimes you might need a vote of something like a Noble council. Any society can have ''official'' rules that lets one become a noble. Some times they are far less then official.



Third, what are the responsibilities of the Nobles. From what I gather those with a title often have a domain to look after and what happens in said domain are the responsibility of said Noble over the domain. Failing to properly care for what is yours, and potentially making the king/queen look bad may cause you to loose your standing, is this correct?

Yes, more or less. It's all politics...you support the king and get favors and support back. Often the king will give a noble a good deal or something to keep them loyal. In all most all cases a noble has to pay a ''tax'' to a king to be a noble, though this is often in goods and services. Military troops was always a big part of this: a noble had to make and maintain a fighting force that the king could call on and use for an army.



Fourth, How do taxes work? Does the king/queen tax those who own domains, and leave the domain owners to tax the people under them, or is there any system in place?


Tons of systems. Often the king taxes the nobles and the nobles tax the peasants. Very often they go with the ''death by taxes'' and ''nickle and dime'' the people. Literaly everything they can make money off is taxed. Toll roads and bridges are common. As are toll gates.

Honest Tiefling
2017-02-27, 05:53 PM
In most cases, yes, having a title makes one a noble....but it depends. In most cases a king can ''make'' a noble....but sometimes you might need a vote of something like a Noble council. Any society can have ''official'' rules that lets one become a noble. Some times they are far less then official.

Also, while YOU are a noble, that doesn't mean your children or spouse are. Children of nobles from left-handed marriages are also not considered nobility in many places.

Darth Ultron
2017-02-27, 06:36 PM
Also, while YOU are a noble, that doesn't mean your children or spouse are. Children of nobles from left-handed marriages are also not considered nobility in many places.

Again...it does depend.

Some times....a spouse and children become nobles, but not the rest of the family.

Though note a whole family can also be made noble.

But as with everything, each society will have it's own rules and traditions and anything is possible.

Tiktakkat
2017-02-27, 07:13 PM
So first off, It is my understanding that a king/queen of a domain is just one part of a series of Dukes and Duchess who own land and have some measure of power, and that the king/queen needs to maintain a delicate balance of power less they can be overthrown by their own Nobles. Is it sort of like a share system in a stock market where those who have the most power are the ruling body of the collective of Nobles, or am I misunderstanding this heavily?

Yes and no and maybe.
That is to say, there are kingdoms where the royal family is more "first among equals" and there are kingdoms where the royal family is the top of the heap and no matter how many levels there are among the nobility, they are not and never will be the royal family. Well, barring the usual rebellion. But that could also result in some peasant coming to power.
And then there are kingdoms where the power dynamic constantly changes and evolves over time, so you need to decide exactly where any particular kingdom is at the moment, including which direction it is moving.

France was originally an elective monarchy with the king pretty much only first among equals, and often not that. After the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties burned themselves out in fratricidal warfare over succession inheritance, the Capetians began a slow evolution to centralization of power that required a number of cadet branches to finally achieve the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV whose descendants promptly frittered said power away to ministers and favorites until the French Revolution.
England after William the Conqueror conquered was a wholly owned property of the crown. Nobles existed solely at his discretion. That power slipped when his descendants engaged in fratricide, was restored under the first of the Plantagenets, then began eroding as they tried out fratricide. Slowly but surely the nobles got parliament, then had parliament taken away from them by the commoners.


Second, lets say I am an adventurer, and I do a series of great tasks for the king/queen of the domain and am awarding land and a title. Does this alone make me a noble?

Yes and no and maybe.
Certainly it could. After all, the ruler is the ruler, and can do with his land whatever he feels like, including granting it to some adventurer. Likewise various offices and titles are the ruler's to grant. And hereditary status for the same.
Of course that doesn't mean all of the other nobles are going to welcome said adventurer with open arms. They may despise him as an upstart peasant, resent him for the competition, loathe him for receiving lands seized from recently deceased ally, or even just smile and cheer him on while plotting to use him as a catspaw in their next scheme.
And then of course there is the question of just how much land and just what title was were awarded. The king could just make you a hopped up knight.

In England after the conquest, most of the nobles were second sons from continental families, liberally sprinkled with raised up commoners. Over time, new blood of both types found their way in, particularly as the kingdom expanded into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Lines showed a strong tendency to die out, with some titles recreated 3-5 times over the centuries. And then of course there are the courtesy titles and lifetime titles that cannot be inherited.


Third, what are the responsibilities of the Nobles. From what I gather those with a title often have a domain to look after and what happens in said domain are the responsibility of said Noble over the domain. Failing to properly care for what is yours, and potentially making the king/queen look bad may cause you to loose your standing, is this correct?

It depends on the set ups from above.
In France early on, doing a bad job didn't mean the king took away your job, it meant a rival noble took it away and turned your title into a holding for one of his younger sons. In England, a considerable amount of effort was spent by the kings in taking over local judicial authority from "uppity" nobles, and concentrating the power of the law in the king.
About the only consistent responsibility was that of showing up with troops when the king called, but even that was eventually replaced over time.


Fourth, How do taxes work? Does the king/queen tax those who own domains, and leave the domain owners to tax the people under them, or is there any system in place?

That was one of the more common methods. However, raising revenue was significantly more complex than just taxes, and at many times, taxes were actually one of the less common methods of raising revenue. Mostly because people have always hated paying taxes, and there are just plain easier ways to get income.
The most common was the "royal demense" - the lands the king owned as a noble himself, from which he collected rents and such from the inhabitants. That was usually the main source of income.
The next most common were the fees on trade, be they taxes, tariffs, licenses, or whatever, including the selling of monopolies.
The third favorite way of collecting money was to extort it from someone. Make it clear that they either gave the king a "loan" or the king would stop "protecting" them from casual violence.
Then you finally got to actual "taxes", which were often of limited scope and duration, usually some fee in a year for defense of the realm.
Other fees, such as "relief" and . . . other terms I'm forgetting at the moment . . . were paid by nobles and clergy to take over their fiefs and benefices. Those were much easier to collect, and of course much larger, than trying to track down thousands and thousands of peasants and collect a few pennies from each.

However, discussing these can easily give a false impression of the situation, as medieval economies tended to function on a multi-tier basis. That was "national" financing.
"Local" financing operated on the manorial system, and featured a truly bewildering arrays of taxes, rents, fees, duties, and more, all designed to keep enough raw wealth flowing into the hands of the gentry (knights) and nobility in order to allow them to provide military service, as well as setting up what was essentially a "Big Man Economy" (where a local leader's status was determined by how many "gifts" he could give to people, though such gifts were only possible, and indeed needed, because said local leader was draining so many of the local resources to himself in the first place).
And then there was a weak and somewhat nebulous "international" financing, led by the great merchant families (like the Medicis) and cartels (like the Hanseatic League), which are most recognizable next to modern economics. (Mostly because they developed most of the techniques.)

Unoriginal
2017-02-27, 07:18 PM
So first off, It is my understanding that a king/queen of a domain is just one part of a series of Dukes and Duchess who own land and have some measure of power, and that the king/queen needs to maintain a delicate balance of power less they can be overthrown by their own Nobles.

Depends the realm. Some kings were masters of the whole country with dukes, earls, barons and the like administrating some part of the territory for them, others were just independent rulers next to neighbors who were in-name-only their vassals. Others gave the nobles a share of the land to do as they pleased, with the king having no direct say on how to rule it, as long as they repaid the king with taxes and military assistance when asked to


Is it sort of like a share system in a stock market where those who have the most power are the ruling body of the collective of Nobles, or am I misunderstanding this heavily?

Err, it's not the same. A shareholder in a stock market is basically "I own X% of this company, so I have the right to X% of its benefits and maybe some influences on the decisions."

A noble's power is tied to their wealth, military power and influence at the court. It generally is influenced by how much land you have and how high your title is, but not directly so. When a king listen to a noble or a group of noble, it's because something like "I can't afford to have this person go to war with me/stop paying me/stop lending me money."


Second, lets say I am an adventurer, and I do a series of great tasks for the king/queen of the domain and am awarding land and a title. Does this alone make me a noble?

Technically, yes. "Landed knight" is the lowest recognized title of nobility in Western Europe. Bellow this is the gentry.



Third, what are the responsibilities of the Nobles. From what I gather those with a title often have a domain to look after and what happens in said domain are the responsibility of said Noble over the domain. Failing to properly care for what is yours, and potentially making the king/queen look bad may cause you to loose your standing, is this correct?

Depends if the noble is just administrating the place for their sovereign or if they own the place. If it was given to them, it means that they can do more or less as they please, and the king usually can't your land away from you. But if you do a bad job and lose money, people will think of you as a fool, which will diminish your standing and prestige among your peers


Fourth, How do taxes work? Does the king/queen tax those who own domains, and leave the domain owners to tax the people under them, or is there any system in place?

Depends on the time and place.

Beneath
2017-02-27, 07:35 PM
The way feudalism works will vary, and conflicts will happen at every level. A lot of how it varies is in how these conflicts are resolved, and also conflicts are very gameable.

Basically, each fief-holder wants to act like a mini-king (but is constrained by their obligations to their liege). They have some land, some of which they keep for themselves and some of which they rent out to tenants/vassals. Most of their tenants, at every level, will be peasants who work the land rented to them to feed themselves and pay rent and taxes in some combination of goods, labor, military service, and money, usually emphasizing the first three. Peasants may or may not be allowed to unilaterally break their tenancy; historically in western europe, this system evolved from slavery in the declining roman empire where previously enslaved people won the right of tenancy over a portion of the land. The land the landlord holds back would then be worked by the peasants on days they are obligated to as part of their rent.

The big struggle here is that without peasants to work the land, a landlord is worth nothing; without tax collectors and managers and so on to make sure the peasants pay their taxes, the landlord is also worth nothing, and without soldiers to ensure the peasants can't simply murder the tax collectors and that rival landlords can't come in and replace him, the landlord is also worth nothing. Thus within a single fief, there are at least three power groups in play: the peasantry, the landlord, and the bureaucrats and soldiers. The peasantry want their obligations reduced; what they gain out of the arrangement can often be fairly minimal as long as the alternative is outlawry or starvation. The nobility wants to collect as much as possible and keep it for themselves, but they have the most need to keep things running smoothly and keep both other groups out of revolt. The bureaucrats and soldiers want to maximize their cut of the loot; they're also more able to revolt than the peasants (because they have weapons), but they have more to lose (because they have status).

Another point of conflict is that some of the bureaucrats will be drawn from the peasantry (a soldier might agree to serve as a soldier permanently in exchange for preferential treatment regarding working his landlord's fields, or a larger field for himself), while others from nobility where the family doesn't have enough titles to give one to everyone (a second son, for instance, might be given a plot of land to farm in exchange for bringing in all the peasants on their work days to make sure his father's, and later brother's, land gets adequately worked). This might cause complications dividing the soldier-bureaucrat class's loyalties.

Beyond that, there are other power groups. If there's a state religion, they'll have their own tithe obligations on everyone present, and their own representatives; these representatives want to live a good life on their tithes, but they have obligations to church higher-ups and to their flock, and they're competing for the same limited produce coming off the peasants with the noble and the bureaucrats. Since this is a feudal fief and not a pocket kingdom, the landlord has a liege, who he owes taxes to. He may also have vassal lords. In both cases, the relationship between vassal and liege is similar to the others: the liege benefits by squeezing as much as possible out of their vassals, while the vassal wants to reduce the burden on themself.

So then the peasants on one fief support, with their labor: themselves, their landlord, their landlord's tax collectors, their church, their church's hierarchy, their landlord's liege, and their landlord's liege's liege up to the sovereign. All of these groups are going to be conflicted over how big of a cut they can get.

Hereditary rule provides something of a defense here against usurpation in that it limits the pool of people who traditionally can be in charge. However, it also conditions noble families to scheme against eachother; when all it would take for you to go from being worth very little to being a noble is for your older brother to die, it's not far to get the thought in your head that, whatever your feelings for him, it would be better for you if he did, up to arranging his murder yourself. Though hereditary rule isn't the only possible way nobility has worked. A vassal lord might be appointed by their liege, for a term of years or for life; such an appointment might be revokable prematurely or not; likewise, a liege lord could be elected by their vassals, or all vassals above a certain rank, on the passing of the previous one. This worked for Popes and also for the Holy Roman Empire. Again, how much the king is able to do will vary based on conflicts; a noble who wants their children to be provided for will want to be able to pass on their fief; a king who wants crucial positions to be held by loyal vassals will want to be able to choose who he assigns to what fief

All of this talk of "possibility" and "conflict" comes together: There are levels of possibility. What is possible on paper, whether written in a formal charter of the rights and obligations of the nobility or simply the understood tradition, does not always match with what is possible politically. A king might nominally have the right to revoke the position of any of his vassals at any time, but with the understanding that every time he uses this power he inches closer to his remaining vassals rising against him in open revolt. Conversely, a king might nominally have the right to appoint each and every one of his vassals, but with many of them understanding that their chosen heirs will receive their fiefs and the royal appointment is just a formality. A king who is bound by his Parliament/Diet/Council of Nobles in certain matters on paper will be more or less bound depending on his relative military strength to the military strength of the faction that opposes him.

At the bottom of this possibility is what can be done if you don't care about consequences, and the answer is quite a lot. However, feudalism is never far from violence (expect a peasant revolt about every other generation, and about half of all successions to any position of import to be accompanied by armed conflict as various groups try to either place their claimant of choice in position or force the new occupant to acknowledge that they can't simply ignore them)

Returning to the top, each vassal lord wants to be like a mini-king, but tax obligations to their higher ups keep them from doing so. However, when going to actual war against their king looks like it'll cost them less than paying taxes, they might well just do that (especially if they can get enough peers to throw in to join them). Similarly, the king wants to be able to have things done the way he wants them done over as wide an area as possible; thus he might try to set uniform law over his vassals that they then have to enforce on their tenants.

As a final note, even kings tended not to be flush with cash, in part because whenever you have money you have a bunch of supporters who all want a bigger slice of the pie, and a bunch of possible successors ready to succeed you if your supporters think they'll give them one. Middle nobility will be in an even worse state 'cause when they get rich, their king's likely to apply special taxes or outright demands.

So, it's not like shares in a company (though I mean you could have a place that runs like a business where noble titles are attached to stocks; nothing prevents that, but it wouldn't be feudalism as it was); it's not like much else, actually.

Second question, a title does normally make you a noble, yes. I'm not aware historically of any, like, titled non-nobility (well, knights, but they're knights rather than people who have titles like Baron or Count or Duke)

Third: See above; your responsibilities can vary depending on the state of struggle between the nobility and the crown. Typically you are responsible for providing taxes and soldiers to the crown; if you are in a particularly dangerous area you might also be tasked with making sure that some threat is contained and doesn't spill over (an area like this would be called a March, and its lord a Marquis, usually, unless it's large enough to be a Duchy). There will also be some laws you have to ensure are properly enforced, probably. Depending on the strength of the crown this can range anywhere from you doing as you please like a petty king to having it be a challenge to turn your fief into something that can meet the obligations you have for having it. Note that a king who has the authority to just give you a fief is either granting you some land from his demense (the portion of his lands he has not previously granted to a vassal), thus weakening his position, or is handing over a fief that used to be someone else's to you

Fourth: Taxes. Feudal tax codes are nothing like modern tax codes. Modern tax codes have, one, a pretense of fairness, and two, a thick enough bureaucracy that the government can reasonably estimate the income of every single citizen. A feudal tax code will likely be based on some combination of things the tax collector can easily count, measure, or look up, such as the size of your fields, the number of people in your family, the amount of livestock you have, and so on, along with sales taxes and tariffs on specific items, and of course tolls. In cases where one side is significantly more powerful than the other, "I saw that and I want it" "taxes" can also be a thing, where the more powerful party can simply take things from the less powerful party and call it taxation. This is likely to happen especially in cases where one side hasn't won a war in a long time (peasants might revolt to demand an end to this if their landlord tries it; ditto vassals and kings. Thus it can only happen regularly after the less-powerful side loses a war over it. This is not guaranteed because the less-powerful side is the side responsible for providing the more-powerful side with the soldiers that make them more powerful)

For a peasant, you might see taxes as being based on some number of days/person/month working the landlord's demense, plus a certain maximum amount of military service they can be conscripted to do, plus a certain amount of produce per acre of field in their hide (the land they're renting) plus per head of livestock, possibly up to and including allowing the landlord their pick of the herd at certain times of year. Taxes here will be set by tradition and remembered orally since most peasants can't read. Trying to raise taxes above tradition might see peasant revolts, or it might not. A conscripted peasant will likely be required to provide their own weapons and armor and keep them in good condition, too; a cavalry sergeant, for instance, would be entitled to a larger field to maintain a warhorse, rather than being issued one by his liege; similarly, a knight would be entitled to tenant peasants enough to enable him to train for war as needed and maintain a full kit of gear.

A noble will likely be paying tax in soldiers, goods, and cash. Soldiers will be a certain number of people for a set period of time, depending on the population of the fief. Goods would be non-perishable; a peasant might pay tax to her landlord in eggs, but those eggs stay in the landlord's house; his tribute to his liege is in bushels of flour or in silver. You'd get your cash by selling produce taken from your peasants (in tax or corvee on your demense) or from your adventuring gold. Theoretically an adventurer flush with adventuring gold could cut their peasant taxes down to almost nothing, just enough to sustain your basic defenses, and pay for everything with adventuring gold, but doing so means you derive little benefit from your land and also means your land will be a drain on any children you pass it to.

Depending on the development of the economy, the balance of how you pay your taxes might change. In a very undeveloped economy, you will pay primarily in goods and soldiers. As things develop your liege might decide he'd rather you sold the bushels of flour marked for him and gave him the proceeds rather than paying someone to cart them over yourself; a dedicated flour merchant might find a way to make the trip for cheaper making it cheaper to sell it and send the silver then for him to buy it, or perhaps he has more flour than he needs and wants to buy something else with it and save the effort of having to liquidate it. He'll still need soldiers, though, at least until you start getting either A, a great dependence on mercenaries, or B, a fully professionalized, salaried army, either of which allows money to take the place of soldiers.

Most soldiers would be paid in land (i.e. being available for a certain number of days of military service a year is part of the rent for their farm back home) primarily, and also in plunder; their commanders are responsible for keeping them supplied, but payment in cash for soldiers on campaign is not as much of a concern. During a siege it might be, though, since siege warfare can take months during which your soldiers are not receiving any loot.

The tl;dr is that most of the answers to your questions, except the second, depend on a lot of things, primarily the struggle between the haves, have-nots, and have-mores. Feudalism is never more than three paces from naked violence and is about all parties trying to hold as much power as they can, but beyond that pretty much anything can happen as long as it's preferable to violence for all parties.

Mith
2017-02-27, 08:06 PM
I just want to say that these are very nice responses to read. I really have nothing to add.

Carry on.

Berenger
2017-02-27, 08:23 PM
@thecrimsondawn: You really need to specify a time frame (preferrably no longer than one or two centuries) and a region to get meaningful answers. Alexander the Great, Harold Godwinson and Louis XIV of France, for example, are all archetypical and well-known kings and yet they operate in completely different worlds, in completely different societies and under completely different circumstances and expectations. The same is true for the nobility of their respective societies.

veti
2017-02-27, 08:30 PM
"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded..."

Now seriously, this is a phenomenally huge question. You're asking about thousands of years of history across five continents. There's no "general" answer.

The closest I can get is: think realpolitik. What's "right" and "wrong" matters a lot less than what you can get away with. It's all about maintaining your power base, however that's formed. You need to persuade people to support you.

Looking at your direct questions: you're not necessarily "misunderstanding heavily", but I think you need to adjust your mental model, because I don't think the "stock market" analogy is going to work for you. A system of nobles has an intricate web of influence and (often conflicting) loyalties (e.g. when your nephew goes to war with your brother-in-law, who do you support?) - it's very often horribly unclear who is on what side, and even the role of the king is often not very clearly defined.

If you're awarded a land and title - then yes, that's pretty much the definition of "noble", right there. However, to start with, you're just the king's protege: until you can establish ties to other noble families, there's nothing much preventing the king from deposing you at will, so you better stay loyal. The usual way of "establishing ties" in this sense is by marriage - so it's a slow process. (In some systems, the ruler would periodically "sack" the entire nobility and replace them with new blood, specifically to prevent them from establishing these sorts of networks that might one day allow them to challenge royal authority. This may work for a while, but brings huge problems of its own - no continuity means that each generation of nobles basically focuses on stuffing its own pockets while it can, and then your long-term development and growth of civil society are screwed.)

Also, note that RL history and politics are a "forbidden topic" here, so I'm going to skirt the issue by talking about history as seen through a specific literary prism: Shakespeare's histories. Note that this is just my gloss on an account that's already quite heavily fictionalised, but I think it still casts some light on how the various moving parts of nobility and royalty relate to each other.

Richard II: is faced with rivals (his father had a large family, and "succession laws" were far from clear cut at this time), and several nobles who are discontent with his reign, which they see as extravagant and unfocused. He has previously had one of his rivals assassinated, and that sets in motion a chain of events that leads to exile of the son of his most powerful noble, John of Gaunt. Even that might have worked out OK, but for the budget crisis that develops at the same time, which leads him to claim John of Gaunt's estates when he dies, and that is the step too far that the rest of the nobility won't accept. (Exile is temporary, or at most it's a one-generation thing. But confiscating land - that really steps on their toes.) His deposer, once crowned as Henry IV, tries to keep Richard a prisoner, but some of his own followers take matters into their own hands and murder the old king (for excellent reasons, as would shortly become all too apparent).
Henry IV: is haunted by how he came to power, which casts a cloud over his own legitimacy. There are people all over the country who can raise a banner against him by professing allegiance to the "true king", i.e. not-him. So Henry spends all his time putting down rebellions - from other nobles, from the church, from the Welsh - all of which costs money, and time, and makes him increasingly gloomy, isolated and unpopular. To make matters worse, his son - later Henry V - is very popular, being a natural leader and a successful general. This leads to the father seeing his own son as a potential rival.
Henry V: intent on uniting the country, after all the grief his father had put up with, revives an old claim against the kings of France. This works out pretty well for him, right up until the point where he dies at the age of 36.
Henry VI: inherits his illustrious father's throne at the age of nine months. At that point, you might think the throne is effectively vacant and just waiting for some ambitious noble to move in. But realpolitik kicks in again. To make a move for that position, you would need to persuade a plurality of other nobles to support you - and at this point, with England making big gains in its war with France, all the established nobles are feeling pretty good about the status quo. So you see the great nobles of the land pledging their allegiance to a baby. (This "pledge" is important. It's a way of affirming "we may have our differences, but ultimately we're all on the same side here".) In the end, Henry VI's reign is defined by this war; after their initial reverses, the French start to fight back properly, and the English lose big time while Henry tries desperately to come to terms - costing him, of course, all the popularity and solidarity he inherited from his father. His reign ends with civil war, and finally deposition (and murder) at the hands of a rival noble family.
There then follow the Yorkist kings (Edward IV, Edward V), whom Shakespeare pretty much glosses over, but because of how they came to power, they never manage to persuade a majority of the other nobles (and to a lesser extent, the middle classes, which were also starting to be a factor by now) that their leadership is the best option on offer. This is the Wars of the Roses, which culminate in Richard III distinguishing himself as the last king of England to die in battle.
Following this debacle, the Tudors are understandably concerned (to the point of obsession) with consolidating royal authority and stabilising the country. Henry VII (also not covered by Shakespeare) made great progress in steadying the economy and taxation. Henry VIII inherits a country in which the nobles are firmly on side, but his own succession is uncertain because he doesn't have a son; this leads him, more or less incidentally, to establish royal authority over the church - at that point, the only serious rival still standing.
Elizabeth I devotes her considerable intellect and energy to establishing her legitimacy as the rightful or proper ruler - the idea that there is a single, defined, "legitimate" ruler, ordained by divine right to be the sovereign, pretty much dates from this time. Shakespeare's own works are a major part of that project. Anytime you see someone talking about a "rightful" king, that's someone who's swallowed the Elizabethan propaganda. ("Divine right" is the culmination of this thinking - it's not a phrase you would have encountered at all until early modern times.)

Note, this is one model of monarchy: it's a story of the throne as the focus of slowly-coalescing national unity. If you look at other cultures (times and places), you'd see different ways of thinking about royalty and nobility. Because of the ever-changing patchwork of loyalties, influence and precedents, there's very often a deal of uncertainty about the role of "king" - and the resolution of that uncertainty will set a new precedent, create new loyalties, which will help to shape the next decision point. Monarchy evolves.

thecrimsondawn
2017-02-27, 10:03 PM
Wow.... thank you so much everyone!
I was looking for just what you guys gave me - a general overview of how the various types of governments ruled by a king ran.
Im currently playing a d&d game with a strong political backdrop made for it, playing a new steam game I found that is very heavy with it, helping a friend out however I can that is running a VTM game that has its own interesting leadership system, and frankly, I was kinda tired of not having a clue what was going on :p

The information you all have provided me is of great help, so much so that I am bookmarking this page for when I forget something or need a review :)


~Thanks!~

Beneath
2017-02-28, 02:56 AM
A side-note about feudal warfare: It was near-constant, yes (frequent enough to justify a hereditary warrior caste), but also it was fairly limited and with defined goals, protections for noncombatants, and so on (formally arranging a battle between both sides would not be unheard-of). This is because of two things:

First, you're fighting over the produce your noncombatants make. If you burn a village, there's nothing for you to take, either as plunder or if you're enforcing a claim. Even if you're not fighting to take territory, you agree not to burn eachothers' villages because the long-term cost of them doing it to you is more than the strategic gain you would get in any war by doing it to them, and you fight often enough that you will lose wars.

Second, you're often fighting your cousin about something neither of you really is that invested in. Nobles who are not actively engaged in combat are generally not fair game to target because killing someone's conscripted peasants is one thing, but if you kill a noble, they'll be related to several people whose opinion you care about (ambushing peasant conscripts might be considered fairer, but prisoners of war are expected to be ransomed, not executed).

Thus, for instance, a band of nobles revolting against their king over taxes will be fought until either they can't raise an effective army or the king agrees to cut taxes, but no matter what their strategic advantage is they won't, e.g., try to commit regicide (likewise, if they lose, they will likely be able to negotiate terms for it where they remain vassals of the king and everyone pretends they didn't just raise an army to march against the throne, though if they force the king to crush them they might have their fiefs taken. Even then, though, if the king takes their fiefs and doesn't grant them back to a member of their family, that will breed discontent among the other nobles. Exiling someone or killing them is one thing, disennobling their family is quite another). You might see a case where the king's (e.g.) brother sees discontent with nobles as an opportunity to fight a war for the crown, though, in which case things are different but regardless a surrender where the king agrees to cut taxes and the brother agrees to cease pressing his claim to the throne for the moment is possible.

This doctrine of limited war also makes more war possible. If you can be reasonably assured you won't die or lose your fief if you start a war (unless you're stupid and get crushed), you can start more wars. Don't like the taxes? War. King's thrown your cousin in prison and you think it's unjust? If you can't convince the king, convincing enough barons to win a war is the next best thing. The possibility of war hangs over every expression of displeasure with someone's governance decisions. Few monarchs have been able to forbid all war between their nobles, though restricting what is seen as a legitimate cause is more likely (both for monarchs and churches); duels are often less restricted, but also face the risk of personal death.

Given this, then, why would a king grant parts of their land as fief? Even if they start off with the idea that all land is theirs and their vassals are nominally tenants who serve at their pleasure, they can lose that in one rebellion (William the Conqueror took over England in 1066; the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, only six kings later, counting a civil war known as "the anarchy"). The answer is because fundamentally a feudal manor is a system of land management that works at a specific size, and at that level of development, the technology (both in terms of communications, transportation, and also, like, social development) for larger-scale management doesn't exist. Even if the technology did come into existence, though, the nobility would oppose its imposition unless they got more from it than they lost.

As a noble, you might be called upon by your liege to command troops or otherwise serve in a war yourself, though the terms of your fief may not require you personally to go into battle (even if they do, if you can find an equivalent combatant to go in your place, likely you can force the king to take them. If you're high-level this might be tricky. Note that being able to obligate you to fight his wars might actually be the king's whole purpose in granting you this fief (sure, it's thanks for service to the realm, but it also means you're part of the crown government now and expected to play the part when the crown needs you), though if the fief is more trouble than it's worth you can tell him to bugger off and walk away). The proper feudal experience involves wars you don't care about but serve in out of obligation, but those are bad for the narrative pacing of campaigns unless the campaign is trying to make a point about feudalism, war, or both.

Finally, a note about protection: Nominally, a lord is responsible for protecting their vassals, which justifies their tax payments. In a D&D world this may actually be true, given rampaging monsters exist, but by and large the biggest threat peasants face comes from nobles and their armies; a peasant getting "protection" from a noble is akin to getting "protection" from the mafia. This is, however, more true about the way a lesser noble is treated by their liege. As a vassal of the king, if someone from another kingdom wants your land, even if they have a legitimate claim to inherit it, them taking it would mean that a subject of their king is taking stuff from yours, which is cause for war between the kings (which means, likely, that their king will forbid them from pressing their claim, right up until they're ready to go to war with yours, likely pressing a bunch of claims at once). You don't have the same guaranteed protection from the king's other vassals, though, but unless the king has changed his mind about you, someone else trying to take your fief would be subject to the king's displeasure. So until you have enough noble allies or enough personal power to hold your fief against all takers, you'd be well-advised to try to stay on the king's good side.

Martin Greywolf
2017-02-28, 08:14 AM
One major thing to be aware of is this - everyone who will say anything of substance in this thread WILL be wrong. Most people have this idea that European middle ages were monolithical thing, but the reality is that even the term feudalism itself is so diluted these days that historians are either not using it or each using their own definition that only works for some of the kingdoms.

As an example, kingdom of Hungary in the 1000-1400 period doesn't have the usual binding of vassals through fiefdoms. At all. That's a good tenth of Europe's population (and source of half of Europe's gold).

Another problem is time itself. The entire political system of nay given country will go through numerous reforms as the time goes on, and will be looking very different - sure, a king may hold power by divine mandate at the start, but he may well shift through vassalage to presiding over an elected government as an example. Early medieval kings were described as ruling "lands their whip could reach" and were very different from kings of 1500.

First thing you then have to do is to pick a time and a place you want to model your system on, and look into how that worked, otherwise you can only get generic answers that will have holes in them. Picking a time is no easy task, since most TTRPGs don't know what tech level they're at, what with full plate armor and no gunpowder, place will probably be England or France (differences between these two are far fewer than, say, England and HRE).

I could go into a long, long explanation of general trends, but the problem is, it won't tell you what you need to know - how to roleplay a noble during his usual workday.

Morty
2017-02-28, 08:54 AM
I might bookmark this thread, because there have been some concise responses that cut to the heart of the matter... the hart being, there's a reason a person can spend an entire academic career studying that.

SethoMarkus
2017-02-28, 10:26 AM
One major thing to be aware of is this - everyone who will say anything of substance in this thread WILL be wrong. Most people have this idea that European middle ages were monolithical thing, but the reality is that even the term feudalism itself is so diluted these days that historians are either not using it or each using their own definition that only works for some of the kingdoms.

As an example, kingdom of Hungary in the 1000-1400 period doesn't have the usual binding of vassals through fiefdoms. At all. That's a good tenth of Europe's population (and source of half of Europe's gold).

Another problem is time itself. The entire political system of nay given country will go through numerous reforms as the time goes on, and will be looking very different - sure, a king may hold power by divine mandate at the start, but he may well shift through vassalage to presiding over an elected government as an example. Early medieval kings were described as ruling "lands their whip could reach" and were very different from kings of 1500.

First thing you then have to do is to pick a time and a place you want to model your system on, and look into how that worked, otherwise you can only get generic answers that will have holes in them. Picking a time is no easy task, since most TTRPGs don't know what tech level they're at, what with full plate armor and no gunpowder, place will probably be England or France (differences between these two are far fewer than, say, England and HRE).

I could go into a long, long explanation of general trends, but the problem is, it won't tell you what you need to know - how to roleplay a noble during his usual workday.

I'm not sure, did you read the other replies? I'm not certain that they "WERE wrong" considering the general consensus is in agreement with what you said yourself...

thecrimsondawn
2017-02-28, 11:27 AM
I'm not sure, did you read the other replies? I'm not certain that they "WERE wrong" considering the general consensus is in agreement with what you said yourself...

To be fair, this thread is aimed at obtaining knowledge, both at a realistic level and a fantasy level, as this is of course a forum based around gaming. His point did touch upon the key fact that things change very rapidly in the real world, and there is also the fact that history is written by the victors, so what we know could, and most likely is, very skewed from what may have really happened at any given time. I would say tho that in that regard, saying anyone/everything else is most likely wrong is going a bit far, but his words where in no way written as an attack on anyone since they where aimed at being historically accurate.

Another huge X factor is the addition of factors that never existed in the real world. When you start adding in monsters, magic, other planes, gods, and/or supernatural beings into the mix, it could vastly change how governments both grew and how they currently operate too. Of course this is a huge can of worms and is a case by case scenario based on the world and game you are playing.

Hmm...I wonder how the government different in operation compared to the Emperors of China and Japan during their respective timelines.

Darth Ultron
2017-02-28, 01:08 PM
Hmm...I wonder how the government different in operation compared to the Emperors of China and Japan during their respective timelines.

Of course when most people talk about history of something like nobles and kings, they focus only on Western Europe.





Another huge X factor is the addition of factors that never existed in the real world. When you start adding in monsters, magic, other planes, gods, and/or supernatural beings into the mix, it could vastly change how governments both grew and how they currently operate too. Of course this is a huge can of worms and is a case by case scenario based on the world and game you are playing.


This is a very big, world changing X factor.

*The kingdom has a huge, powerful dragon in it...that could obliterate the kingdom. But it does not as long as it is given an annual tribute in gold or people.
*The kingdom is allied with a dragon or dragon clan, but only if 'family X' is the royalty.
*The kingdom is held for ransom by a bard, wizard or such that keeps a dragon asleep.

And you can put lots of other monsters in there too....

*There might be a powerful artifact, that does something like grow crops or control the weather, but only people of a single royal blood line can use it.

*A group of druids could also ''hold a kingdom hostage'' .

And more...

Tiktakkat
2017-02-28, 01:36 PM
Hmm...I wonder how the government different in operation compared to the Emperors of China and Japan during their respective timelines.

The same, different, it depends.
(I feel like Rule of Three suddenly.)

The variations between centralized unity and diffused crypto-equality played out pretty much the same in China and Japan as they did in Europe. They just managed more cycles with full on interregnums, particularly in China, than they did in Europe.

There were however some rather distinct cultural and religious differences that had direct effects on the political so as to make things different enough to be require some significant adaptation. Even with that however there are still enough parallels that things can be understood. (For example, among the Anglo-Saxons, "rulership" was limited to families that could trace descent from Tyr or Odin or Thor. If you couldn't manage to redact your family history enough to make such a connection, you were never going to make the jump from "warlord" to "ruler". Compare this to Japan, where the Imperial Family had a divine origin, and the Shogun had to be from a family related to the Imperial Family, and otherwise had to settle for a lesser title. Meanwhile, compare and contrast European "Divine Right of Kings" with Chinese "Mandate of Heaven". They are NOT identical, but they are very much "parallel evolution".)

Finally, the Chinese developed a supra-bureaucracy that endured. The closest in Europe was that of the Roman Empire. Those could actually run the empires even while the dynasties collapsed and changed.
Other bureaucracies were much weaker, and had a tendency to suffer near total replacement when dynasties, or even just rulers, were changed. Deeper consideration of that requires looking at the first two answers.

Berenger
2017-02-28, 01:42 PM
I'm not sure, did you read the other replies? I'm not certain that they "WERE wrong" considering the general consensus is in agreement with what you said yourself...

For just about any definite statement about "the monarchy" or "the nobility" or, god beware, "feudalism" that does not contain heavy qualifiers (such as "some of the time", "one possibility is...", "scholars debate whether..." or "during the x century in the country of y") and that gives tangible details instead of very vague concepts described in the broadest of strokes, there will be rather large territories and rather long periods of time (too large and too long to dismiss them as fringe cases) in which said statement won't hold water and can therefore be accurately described as "wrong". That's no fault or shortcoming of those who wrote said statements, it's just that it is impossible to cover such an enormous body of knowledge as "The Concept of Kingship and Nobility throughout the History of Man" via forum posts and still conserve a useful level of detail without making gross simplifications bordering on oversimplification.

Amaril
2017-02-28, 04:58 PM
A side-note about feudal warfare: It was near-constant, yes (frequent enough to justify a hereditary warrior caste), but also it was fairly limited and with defined goals, protections for noncombatants, and so on (formally arranging a battle between both sides would not be unheard-of). This is because of two things:

First, you're fighting over the produce your noncombatants make. If you burn a village, there's nothing for you to take, either as plunder or if you're enforcing a claim. Even if you're not fighting to take territory, you agree not to burn eachothers' villages because the long-term cost of them doing it to you is more than the strategic gain you would get in any war by doing it to them, and you fight often enough that you will lose wars.

I'm curious about this. My perception of medieval warfare has always been that it was really bad for the peasantry, to the point where, as a peasant farmer, a group of soldiers serving your own lord or his liege coming through where you lived could be just as dangerous as enemy forces. I got the sense this had to do with how armies kept themselves supplied in the field--by carrying off what they needed from whatever settlements were handy, by force if necessary. Can anyone comment on how accurate this perception is, or how it squares with what Beneath says?

veti
2017-02-28, 05:55 PM
I'm curious about this. My perception of medieval warfare has always been that it was really bad for the peasantry, to the point where, as a peasant farmer, a group of soldiers serving your own lord or his liege coming through where you lived could be just as dangerous as enemy forces. I got the sense this had to do with how armies kept themselves supplied in the field--by carrying off what they needed from whatever settlements were handy, by force if necessary. Can anyone comment on how accurate this perception is, or how it squares with what Beneath says?

See above disclaimers about "different times and places", but a couple of general points:

One: if they're soldiers, and they're hungry, who's gonna stop them from taking what they want? The only people who might make the effort are their own leaders/officers, and I'm sure that would happen sometimes, but as a general rule - yes, having any army, including a friendly one, on your doorstep was very bad news. They would probably not deliberately target your home or fields, but if they take enough of your food, that might be just as bad from your point of view.

Two: largely for this reason, most nobles would try very hard to avoid having any armies, including their own, spend any significant time in their own territory. The basic strategy is "March them as quickly as possible toward the enemy, fight, then send everyone home. Preferably before harvest." Living off the land in this way is never a comfortable position to be in, even if it's enemy land, so the less time you spend doing it, the happier everyone will be.

gkathellar
2017-02-28, 06:32 PM
It also depended on the scope and nature of the warfare, its objectives, and to what extent it was waged against outgroup peoples vs. ingroup peoples. Rape and pillage were verboten under some circumstances, but might have been perfectly acceptable in those of say ... crushing a peasant revolt to set an example, or murdering heretics (the 30 years war was a bad time, yo). If your goal is "demonstrate that taxing you a lot is more costly than fighting you," you're probably not going to burn villages and slaughter peasants because that generally goes beyond the scope of your goals and may convince your liege that your head would look better on a spike. And of course violence is always going to be worse against people regarded as foreign - linguistically, geographically, religiously, etc. It depends, like so much else that's being discussed here, but small ingroup wars would generally have been less brutal than large outgroup ones.

Wardog
2017-02-28, 07:20 PM
Another point that I don't think has been addressed is that the rights and responsibilities of nobles vary according to rank (as well as time, place, etc).

For example, a Marcher Lord (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcher_Lord) (and etymologically related ranks like Margrave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrave)or Marquess/marquis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess) was tasked with running a border province and defending it against invasion. This typically came with greater prestige, and often greater autonomy than lesser noble ranks. (A marcher lord, for example, had certain rights such as building castles and making laws that were normally reserved for the king).

Another thing is that the noble "chain of command" differed from place to place and time to time. For example, in England, the chain went King > "tenants in chief" > knights. "Tenants in chief" were the major nobles (dukes, barons, etc). The difference between a duke and a baron was that the duke had more land, power and influence, not that a duke was the baron's "boss". But I think some other countries did things differently, and you could have long and convoluted chains of command where a baron would answer to a duke who would answer to a king.

There was also the issue that people could hold multiple titles. For example, the king of England was, as a king, the equal of the King of France. But the king of England was also (after 1066) the duke of Normandy, and so a vassal of the King of France. This sort of think lead to wars.

Berenger
2017-02-28, 08:20 PM
I'm curious about this. My perception of medieval warfare has always been that it was really bad for the peasantry, to the point where, as a peasant farmer, a group of soldiers serving your own lord or his liege coming through where you lived could be just as dangerous as enemy forces. I got the sense this had to do with how armies kept themselves supplied in the field--by carrying off what they needed from whatever settlements were handy, by force if necessary. Can anyone comment on how accurate this perception is, or how it squares with what Beneath says?

Depends. If you (as a hypothetical medieval peasant) live in the Holy Roman Empire and are caught in a feud between nobles, you may be lucky and the emperor or the church manage to enforce something resembling martial law in the form of the Landfrieden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfrieden) or the Gottesfrieden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God). In this case, you may be pretty safe as a civilian*. If you live a hundred years later and five hundred kilometres to the west, you may well be caught in a Chevauchée (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevauch%C3%A9e) which is a french phrase that roughly translates to "Dear knights, let's loot, rape, burn, maim, kill and destroy every peasant village in our path until their %§&*# excuse for a lord stops hiding in his castle and offers battle! Yours truly, Edward the Black Prince, no really, that's what they call me. Awesome, I know!" or, more succinctly, "Bad things will happen to you and your peasant family."


*Note that the distinction between civilians and military personnel is a modern one, those laws don't speak of "civilians" but list various especially vulnerable groups, e.g. virgins, jews, children, priests and others that are definitely expected to be noncombatants. It also protects property, especially outlawing the burning of houses and churches.

Beneath
2017-02-28, 10:23 PM
Pretty much that, yeah. Doctrines of limited war existed, but even an army that wouldn't burn your village and kill everyone who can't get away might still steal supplies (and valuables, since most soldiers were conscripted away from working their own fields and aren't getting paid, and may need something to make that up), and when it was more strategically viable to break doctrine than to honor it, or a commander was sufficiently shortsighted, limited war doctrines and agreements got broken.

If I had to guess at reasons based on Wikipedia, chevauchee was a viable English tactic in the Hundred Years War because they could hit territory that they had no chance of holding anytime in the near future (near enough that it couldn't recover from the damage done by a chevauchee in the meantime), nor would they really be affected by what french nobles thought of them in the same time-span (and they weren't very vulnerable to counterattack on their own ground). In practice, a limited war doctrine is an expression of the idea that it isn't usually strategically viable to practice total war or terror attacks on noncombatants, not a law that is binding on anyone who doesn't end the war at the mercy of their enemies.

Martin Greywolf
2017-03-01, 05:30 AM
1) People being wrong

I made my point pretty clearly, anything you say, even the most general thing, will not apply to a lot of places - as an example, let's take taxes. Kingdom of Hungary usually gave nobles a right to a tax as a reward, not the other way around. That meant that the taxation level was, in theory, constant and only thing that changed was where the tax goes to. Whether nobles could tax people of their own initiative and how exactly was a frequent clashing point between them and the crown, and if nobles took a tax they shouldn't have, they were often persecuted rather heavily (official punishment was loosing all of your personal holdings).


2) Soldiers and supplies

This is one of those things that not only depends on time and place, but also on individuals in charge of troops. When allied soldiers cross a country, they obviously still need supplies, so they requisition them as they go, but they usually pay for them. How much and if there's a fixed rate depends.

That said, if the central authority is weak, the soldiers may well decide not to pay and keep the money for themselves, if they were issued any money to pay for their journey at all - often times they are expected to pay for their food and lodging from their pay. Motivation to just use that shiny sword to take stuff for free is clearly present.

When in enemy territory, you usually don't pay, but often do. If the conflict is in a border zone, you may well want the local population to like you, especially the walled cities, so you pay - Hungary/Bohemia border region between Morava and Vah is a good example of such an area (a border area some 50 km wide). That said, just because a person in chief wants the soldier pay doesn't mean the soldier (or lower tier commander, for that matter) will do what is expected of him.

Lastly, there are wars to gain territory and wars to gain loot. If you want to occupy the land, you want the locals to like you, if you want to devastate enemy holding and go away, you just take all the loot. The looting incursions are especially bad for the locals, but if they were done by christians to christians (this includes orthodox, catholic and sometimes muslim faiths, and doesn't apply that much to religious wars of counterreformation era), they were less severe. You didn't see outright extermination or kidnapping people into slavery (much - there are examples of people being forcibly relocated to then be illegally taxed).

One major caveat, though - locals weren't stupid. When they got a wind of an army known for looting (enemy or otherwise) approaching, they promptly hid what they could. That includes burying valuables/grain, hiding cattle in mountains, caves or swamps and often hiding themselves, either with cattle or in walled cities and castles - that's what castles are FOR, after all, and why GoT nobles would die of hunger by the end of book 2.

These buried treasures (most often in the form of stuff enclosed in pottery and then buried) were often not dug up if something happened to their owner, and are frequently dug up today. They often contain significant wealth (a record in my area is over a kilo of silver in coins, IIRC, would have to look it up for specific numbers).

The most devastating invasions by far were those made by steppe nomads, since they wanted to pillage everything and not stay, and had nothing forbidding them from doing their worst. Mongols are most often cited, since they were organized enough to pull it off on a national scale - their invasion of Hungary resulted in deaths of about a third of the population (from 3 million to 2), some killed directly, some taken as slaves, most dead as a result of subsequent famine (not enough people left to work the fields, people fearing to work the fields in case they returned, grain necessary to do this stolen, etc etc). This gives you a ballpark for worst possible outcome, with the attackers deliberately killing those they can't enslave/take away with them, period sources liken the devastation to Black Death - ironically, Black Death didn't hit Hungary nowhere near as hard "thanks" to the fact that population density wasn't recovered from mongol invasion, and the spread of plague was slowed.

It bears mentioning that those 2 million that survived hid themselves in mountainous regions (mostly) or fortified places with stone walls.

Berenger
2017-03-01, 06:09 AM
In practice, a limited war doctrine is an expression of the idea that it isn't usually strategically viable to practice total war or terror attacks on noncombatants, not a law that is binding on anyone who doesn't end the war at the mercy of their enemies.

An additional angle of view is the religious one. If it is "the church" (that is, certain more or less influential representatives of the church) that demands adherence to a certain code of conduct, one noble may actually care about the salvation of his soul and at least think twice, but the next noble may be utterly unfazed by any threats of fire and brimstone and decide that he can still repent afterwards.

Spartakus
2017-03-01, 10:57 AM
Well, this question is best answered by looking at how ruling a country works in general for which I suggest the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

and the follow up about dynasties:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU

Tu put it in a nutshell: A king needs the support of people in key positions like ministers and generals or any other powerful person which in turn need the support of their most powerful underlings. You get support by rewarding them. In a feudal society granting land and titels to them and their offspring is a good reward, because if you own a mine or a field you can get people to work it and sell whatever the land produces. Or you can grant it to whomever support is vital to you. Congratulation, you created a fiefdom.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-01, 11:47 AM
1) People being wrong

I made my point pretty clearly, anything you say, even the most general thing, will not apply to a lot of places . . .

Which doesn't mean the most general thing will not apply in some place.
Which means citing said general thing as examples and not absolutes is in fact "right" (correct/accurate/acceptable/useful).

Anyone who knows the era knows they can find a precedent for just about anything if they look hard enough.
That doesn't preclude sharing examples for development. Indeed, sharing multiple examples can help, as people bring up more variations for use.
Sometime it is possible for more than one person to be right.

Segev
2017-03-01, 12:07 PM
The bare-bones, theoretical structure of a feudal monarchy is this:

The King is the only real land-owner in the entire kingdom. He owns it all. Period.

The King rents the land (with a lot of formal terms for how this is done) to various Dukes, usually keeping between a Barony and a Dukedom's worth directly under his own control and letting each of his Dukes govern their fiefs (the term for the rented land) themselves. Dukes pay rent in the form of food, duties to provide soldiers, money, supplies, etc.

Dukes sub-let this land to lesser-ranked nobles, and those lesser-ranked nobles sublet their land further, down to the serfs who are not-quite-slaves. They can't be kicked off their rented land, but they also aren't allowed to leave it. Peasants are a freeman alternative, and often form the citizenry of towns and the non-agricultural professions. (You can have peasant farmers, but serfs were more common.)


Now, in practice, all the politics discussed above complicate things, and there probably wasn't a true pure form of this feudal state ever. In practice, the loyalties of armies and employees are often to their immediate employers, especially when the Dukes, Barons, Counts, etc. all had their own liveries and basically encouraged a certain "team spirit." So while the Dukes owe their fealty to the King, and the lesser nobles to their immediate superiors and eventually the King, if enough nobles broke faith, it was highly likely their immediate fealty-holders would side with their oath to their immediate lieges rather than to their lieges' liege. Not guaranteed; some would view their liege's betrayal of his oath as abrogating his right to be a liege. But again: politics.

This reality means that nobles and kings had to balance the loyalties of their subordinates and keep them happier in service than they would be by risking taking over.

Vinyadan
2017-03-01, 12:26 PM
I don't agree on the king owning everything. Allodium was common for a very long time, and, while it tended to disappear in northern France, it survived in southern France and was recognized as valid in the xvii century. I hope I can manage to post some more information later, although my sphere is much earlier than most which has been written until now.

Segev
2017-03-01, 12:51 PM
I don't agree on the king owning everything. Allodium was common for a very long time, and, while it tended to disappear in northern France, it survived in southern France and was recognized as valid in the xvii century. I hope I can manage to post some more information later, although my sphere is much earlier than most which has been written until now.

Oh, sure. Like I said, that is the classic, theoretical definition. The practice was different from kingdom to kingdom and even generation to generation. Traditions of "rented" land being in the same family forever often leads to it being "theirs." Not the King's. And, of course, possession is 9/10 of just about any law. Especially when you have armed forces to defend that possession.

ShaneMRoth
2017-03-01, 03:31 PM
Find Downton Abbey on DVD or Blu-ray.

Watch Downton Abbey.

Then watch it again with audio commentary.

Then watch the special features.

daniel_ream
2017-03-02, 12:27 AM
Thanks to the popularity of Game of Thrones, there's an explosion of medieval historical drama available right now that will help. The Tudors, Reign, The White Queen, Pillars of the Earth, even Borgias and The Borgias (because that's not confusing at all).

For a crash course on this stuff, a good history of the English War of the Roses will help, as it shows up both how this stuff was supposed to work de jure and actually worked out de facto. And it's what Game of Thrones was based on, anyway.

redwizard007
2017-03-02, 04:50 PM
Find Downton Abbey on DVD or Blu-ray.

Watch Downton Abbey.

Then watch it again with audio commentary.

Then watch the special features.

For real? Is it that well done?

ShaneMRoth
2017-03-03, 02:19 AM
For real? Is it that well done?

The show was well researched, and employed knowledgeable technical advisers.

Downton was a look at the British nobility as it existed just as the 20th century was dawning. The cultural clash between the long traditions of peerage and the modern world as we know it today is a big part of the show's appeal.

I consider Downton Abbey to be at least as important as Game of Thrones in terms of influence on anyone who is looking for inspiration in a D&D role-playing campaign.

GolemsVoice
2017-03-03, 09:17 AM
A side-note about feudal warfare: It was near-constant, yes (frequent enough to justify a hereditary warrior caste), but also it was fairly limited and with defined goals, protections for noncombatants, and so on (formally arranging a battle between both sides would not be unheard-of). This is because of two things:

First, you're fighting over the produce your noncombatants make. If you burn a village, there's nothing for you to take, either as plunder or if you're enforcing a claim. Even if you're not fighting to take territory, you agree not to burn eachothers' villages because the long-term cost of them doing it to you is more than the strategic gain you would get in any war by doing it to them, and you fight often enough that you will lose wars.


I've actually read a book on the (start of) the Hundred Years War, which was as much French infighting as it was England vs. France, and it said that the main goal of wars back then wasn't to occupy a main city or strategic points, but rather to destroy your enemy's economic capabilities, by raiding and burning their stuff, which your enemy would in turn try to do to you.

Also, back then, taxing was often a one-time, or very temporary measure. Like, you need money, so let's tax everyone once or twice, and repeat if neccessary.

Khaiel
2017-03-03, 11:00 AM
I've actually read a book on the (start of) the Hundred Years War, which was as much French infighting as it was England vs. France, and it said that the main goal of wars back then wasn't to occupy a main city or strategic points, but rather to destroy your enemy's economic capabilities, by raiding and burning their stuff, which your enemy would in turn try to do to you.

Possibly because the Hundred Years War saw the chevauchée being used sistematically for the first time. With the Black Death, and the demographical drop after it, these tactics were of special effectiveness, since you could do a lot of damage with the very small number of troops you still had at your disposal, and you didn't need very big armies (Which are very vulnerable to contagious ilnesses). But it's widespread use started in the XIV century, and died after first decades of the XV century.

Truth be told, whether you are defending your territory or trying to acquire new lands, burning the countryside in a mostly agrarial economy is not going to get you anywhere. Also, while it is not usually considered important nowadays, a lot of commanders wanted the glory of great massed battles. Glory that chevauchée tactics didn't exactly bring.

Jay R
2017-03-03, 12:06 PM
Even if you pick a specific time and place, this requires a vast body of knowledge, and I applaud you for taking on this challenge.

I urge you to read fiction about and/or from the time and place you want to use as a starting point. This could be Arthurian tales, the Three Musketeers (not movies; they're too modern), Scaramouche (again, not the movies), the Faerie Queene, Tirant lo Blanc, Orlando Furioso, Prince of Foxes, etc.

dps
2017-03-03, 12:49 PM
In very broad, general terms, the power of monarchs in western Europe tended to increase over time, and the power of other nobles relative to the throne tended to decrease; and the formal structure of government tended to become much more codified over time. But that's not particularly true outside of western Europe (for example, in the Holy Roman Empire, the power of the Emperor in many ways decreased over time relative to the other nobles of the Empire), and even in western Europe you can find exceptions to and blips in the trend.

Also, in many cases, the difference between a strong monarch and a weak monarch wasn't in the formal authority they held, but rather the power that they held was a reflection of the strength of their personality or intellect.

Beneath
2017-03-03, 02:25 PM
In very broad, general terms, the power of monarchs in western Europe tended to increase over time, and the power of other nobles relative to the throne tended to decrease; and the formal structure of government tended to become much more codified over time. But that's not particularly true outside of western Europe (for example, in the Holy Roman Empire, the power of the Emperor in many ways decreased over time relative to the other nobles of the Empire), and even in western Europe you can find exceptions to and blips in the trend.

Also, in many cases, the difference between a strong monarch and a weak monarch wasn't in the formal authority they held, but rather the power that they held was a reflection of the strength of their personality or intellect.

England would be a very notable exception to that; the power of parliament relative to the monarch generally increased over time (admittedly, my data points on this are rather sparse, but consider the magna carta and the ), though eventually the House of Commons came to supercede the House of Lords. This is probably why the modern democratic UK is a constitutional monarchy, and the creation of a republic in France involved guillotines

Vitruviansquid
2017-03-03, 03:01 PM
There are always exceptions, but I stick by two rules when trying to understand feudalism for the purpose of making a fictional RPG version.

1. Everything is personal.

In modern times, a ruler is often conceived of as someone separate from the state. He either controls and exploits the state, like a dictator who seizes the oil wealth in a country, or he administrates the state, like a president givin the okay on policies designed to allow prosperity for the people.

On the surface, a feudal ruler does the same things, but he is also conceived of as owning the territory. So if you raid his territory, the feudal ruler has a personal problem with you damaging his property, his subjects, the source of his income.

2. Everything is rights, which can be waived.

Feudalism is vastly different everywhere because of traditions and exchanges whereby its participants waive and exchange their rights. In fact, you could conceive of the start of feudalism as an absolute monarch waiving the right to direct rulership in the country in order to reward his subordinates with land of their own to govern, or in reverse, that a group of petty rulers waived their right to independence in order to have unity under one ruler.

But the system is defined by the rights that kings have, that nobles have, that subjects have. Let's say the king originally had the right to give and take lands. Maybe something happens down the line and a ruler surrenders the right to confiscate lands for a political reason or because he was forced to. That, along with rules becoming unenforceable due to changes in the balance of power, accounts for the differences and weirdness in feudal systems.

Mr. E
2017-03-03, 05:34 PM
I'm curious about this. My perception of medieval warfare has always been that it was really bad for the peasantry, to the point where, as a peasant farmer, a group of soldiers serving your own lord or his liege coming through where you lived could be just as dangerous as enemy forces. I got the sense this had to do with how armies kept themselves supplied in the field--by carrying off what they needed from whatever settlements were handy, by force if necessary. Can anyone comment on how accurate this perception is, or how it squares with what Beneath says?

It does depend on the war. Wars like the wars of the Roses, which were primarily centred around claims of kingship or authority could be quite light on the peasantry, but immensely lethal to the nobility. The armies were not in the field for long, and the combatants wished to avoid causing discontent among the people they wanted to rule. Even without some form of central-ish government, conflicts could be fairly safe. Captured nobility were frequently executed though, to destroy rival claims to the throne with finality. Of course, even the Wars of the Roses contains some exceptions, such as Queen Margaret's march on London.

Other wars, like the 100 years war, were much more in line with your perception, as has been noted by several others already. In these cases, it was pretty broadly terrible no matter whose side you were on, and who was invading.

GolemsVoice
2017-03-04, 07:40 AM
There are always exceptions, but I stick by two rules when trying to understand feudalism for the purpose of making a fictional RPG version.

1. Everything is personal.

In modern times, a ruler is often conceived of as someone separate from the state. He either controls and exploits the state, like a dictator who seizes the oil wealth in a country, or he administrates the state, like a president givin the okay on policies designed to allow prosperity for the people.

On the surface, a feudal ruler does the same things, but he is also conceived of as owning the territory. So if you raid his territory, the feudal ruler has a personal problem with you damaging his property, his subjects, the source of his income.


It was also personal in that vassals or followers swore allegiance not to the office of the king/ruler, but to that specific person. Today, most clerks, ministers and secretaries are employed by the state, independent of the person holding office. However, most kings would have to gather their vassals and have them swear loyalty to them again.

Dragonexx
2017-03-04, 11:05 PM
What game system is this for? Because in worlds with magic, and wizards and monsters, governmental structures could be very different (like D&D).