Quote:
Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen
I've become involved in a discussion of how much money someone in a position roughly analogous to a strong ruler of a country might be able to tax his people for his own private account's sake. I.e. how much would go into the ruler's private account for him to spend on his own personal purposes.
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What TL? Richard LionHeart spent a lot of time doing his own private thing, which was crusading in the Middle East, while his brother helped him tax England.
Medieval knights and lower nobles sometimes had an underling to manage their manors, while they were absent for long periods, doing something else, although according to my understanding of Christian theology, it was quite sinful to accumulate wealth. It was okay to be rich, but you had to spend your money, and so rich wasn't having lots of money but rather spending a lot of money (which meant you could look rich if you borrowed a lot of money and
then spent them).
Another place to look might be the pre-Christian Norse, or the poorly converted early Christian Norse (not having caught up with the theology yet), for various kinds of estate management.
A better way to handle it might be to come up with some kind of political power rating, defining how much power a government (whether consisting of a single individual or not) has over its nation (or fief, or whatever). Greater control can facilitate a greater level of taxation, and if great effort is expended it should be possible to Taxate one Level higher than the Control Level, or possibly two levels if the scale used is fine-grained.
It'd then make sense to use such a scale to say that if you don't manage your lands yourself, but get someone to do it for you, the effective Taxation level is one lower than it'd otherwise be, or two if you are also physically absent a lot.
I'll be needing to make such a system eventually, for Sagatafl, but it's not an urgent priority. Nor is it particularly hard. Trickiest part might be to define formal area sizes, e.g. the size of a knight's fief, the size of a knight bannerette's personal fief, the size of a "baron's" fief, and so forth, and to find a mechanic to modify things according to the tech level of the setting. I've got the first part already, a formal widely used "Extent scale", but not the second.