[Banestorm] Why is the Cardien Council of Lords full of barons and vicounts?

[Kax]

Originally Posted by Rupert

As for the resentment, I think it shows that some nobles think that there should be a clear ranking (and I'd bet they're the ones with little power and 'high' titles), not that there is such a structure.

The resentment is from a Viscount (status 4) and a Baron (senior, status 4) regarding a newly-made Baron (junior/lesser, status 3) as their boss; they have a legitimate beef. :P

(ref Banestorm pp87)

[RyanW]

Just before the French Revolution, about 0.5% to 1% of the population was nobility, and that would have included a lot of unlanded nobility and families who had been granted nobility for things not particularly related to the old land management system.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I would say they have little to no reflection of actual power. As for the resentment, I think it shows that some nobles think that there should be a clear ranking (and I'd bet they're the ones with little power and 'high' titles), not that there is such a structure.

In certain instances, the "rank" of a noble had more to do with how long his family had been noble than how much land he controlled or what word he was allowed to put in front of his name. A baron of an ancient lineage would have higher social standing than a count whose grandfather had been born a commoner.

[RGTraynor]

(shrugs) Above everything else, who says that the percentage of people granted titles of nobility in Cardiel has to conform to the percentage prevalent in various European nations?

There are certainly many demographical elements of medieval life that can be reduced to equations: how much fish can come out of that there ocean, how many peasants are required to grow X amount of grain out of Y acres of fields, and so on. This isn't one of them.

As far as some barons being more powerful than higher ranking lords go, I fall back on an ancient scrap of verse, which should be familiar to any hardcore medievalist. "Roi ne suis; ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi. Je suis le sire de Coucy!"

[Michael Cule]

I think that what you need to remember is that Cardiel was created out of rebellion against the Empire. And it wasn't a rebellion led by one noble but by the majority of the local nobility. (One assumes that there were a few Imperial Loyalists.)

And when they were done they didn't create a hereditary monarchy but an elected one.

There wasn't any theory behind this: there was no French Revolution style reworking of the social structure according to some intellectual theory of How Things Ought To Be. They just took the social structure they had and the basically accidental distribution of noble ranks and continued it with a few modifications.

They haven't elected any reforming or intellectual princes since or if they have there hasn't been enough time for them to make any changes.

What they have now isn't a system: it's the remnants of their history.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Sam Baughn

My model of roughly how many nobles to expect is basically:
Around 1% of the population are nobility (i.e. every 'hundred' or village has a noble family and a population of around a hundred commoner families).
The lowest rank of noble is a baron.
Titles in a feudal system follow some kind of logarithmic progression, so each level has roughly the same number of vassals as the previous one.
For countries with populations in the millions and five or so levels of nobility (baron, possibly viscount, count / earl, possibly marquis, duke, archduke / prince / king), this works out to roughly ten vassals each.
Obviously that is an ideal which only roughly corresponds to real feudalism.

1% might be a plausible figure for the number of knights—I've seen "number of peasants to support one knight" given as anything from 15 households (maybe around 75 people?) to 300 individuals. But a baron would generally have several knights sworn to his service. Say 150 peasants to the knight, and 5 knights to the baron, could give you 1 baron per 750 peasants, just slightly more than 0.1% of the population.

That said, I agree that having barons on the seven-member electoral college of a 6 million person principality is a bit puzzling. The best explanation I can come up with here is that Megalos has historically been stingier with titles in peripheral lands, while handing them out more freely closer to the core. This fits with Caithness having once been a mere "county" with Conall as its earl (Banestorm, p. 110), and Araterre being a land of "enfeebled lordlings" who rarely "hold titles above baron" (p. 47).

[The Colonel]

Hasn't "baron" traditionally been a rather woolly term? I seem to recall the "Barons" that plagued King John and Henry III during the two "Barons' Wars" including at least a dozen Earls (which could be the equivalent of a count or a duke, depending on who you asked - and, indeed, who they were).

Also, I see upthread a note that most of these nobles have their seats in urban areas ... which, unless I'm mistaken, is a poor fit for medieval Europe as quite a lot of the major urban areas (such as they were) tended to be chartered by (and therefore direct vassals of) the king. Although medieval Europe being a) medieval and b) Europe, there are still plenty of exceptions to this, plus the opportunity to argue about what constitutes a major urban area...

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Hasn't "baron" traditionally been a rather woolly term? I seem to recall the "Barons" that plagued King John and Henry III during the two "Barons' Wars" including at least a dozen Earls (which could be the equivalent of a count or a duke, depending on who you asked - and, indeed, who they were).

Also, I see upthread a note that most of these nobles have their seats in urban areas ... which, unless I'm mistaken, is a poor fit for medieval Europe as quite a lot of the major urban areas (such as they were) tended to be chartered by (and therefore direct vassals of) the king. Although medieval Europe being a) medieval and b) Europe, there are still plenty of exceptions to this, plus the opportunity to argue about what constitutes a major urban area...

It's one thing to use "baron" as a generic term for "peer" when referring to a group of peers, another thing to call a specific count, earl, duke, etc. as Baron So-and-So. If a text refers to Duke A, Count B, Viscount C, Baron D, Baron E, Baron F, and Baron G, it seems safe to assume that the last four don't hold any titles higher than "Baron".

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Hasn't "baron" traditionally been a rather woolly term?

All titles are. The neat hierarchy people expect them to fall into has never actually been the case. Not even now. In fact with the Banestorm taking place in 1050 and preferring the English enough to make Anglic the standard language, the title Baron arguably ought not even exist - it came to England only with the Norman conquest. And pretty much the entire peerage of England technically holds their lands per baroniam (direct from the king in return for a set number of knight services), which is the sense the word is used in with respect to stuff like the Barons wars and Magna Carta.

In 11th century England secular titles are basically limited to thegn, earl and king (with aetheling (royal prince) and lord existing as ambiguous levels in there too). Any others are somewhat out of place for Yrth, and might well be slotted in anywhere if one did turn up.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by malloyd

All titles are. The neat hierarchy people expect them to fall into has never actually been the case. Not even now. In fact with the Banestorm taking place in 1050 and preferring the English enough to make Anglic the standard language, the title Baron arguably ought not even exist - it came to England only with the Norman conquest. And pretty much the entire peerage of England technically holds their lands per baroniam (direct from the king in return for a set number of knight services), which is the sense the word is used in with respect to stuff like the Barons wars and Magna Carta.

In 11th century England secular titles are basically limited to thegn, earl and king (with aetheling (royal prince) and lord existing as ambiguous levels in there too). Any others are somewhat out of place for Yrth, and might well be slotted in anywhere if one did turn up.

According to the timeline on p. 9, the Banestorm began in 1050 but "The Banestorm starts to subside" doesn't happen until 1200.