military commands to hereditary holding dynamic system?
Nov 17, 2018 20:38:43 GMT
spazticbadger likes this
Post by rufff1 on Nov 17, 2018 20:38:43 GMT
The new Beggars Begone submod by mrlovemaker got me thinking about additional holdings and when your relatives ask for them. This is actually a really important part of medieval politics that CKII mostly ignores - as an of examples of balancing the tension between giving lands to relatives but not giving away all your power one of the key parts of the background to the Thirty Years War was Protestant rulers in the HRE trying to to seize small ecclesiastical territories in/near their lands to set up as hereditary states for their second sons to rule,
I'm not sure if it would even be possible but it would be a really interesting mechanic if the military command system could be dynamic rather than being fixed as it is in the mod. What I mean by this is that you can appoint someone to rule a county as a military command temporarily then change it back to a normal hereditary holding to reward someone - Historically kings and rulers tended not to give away power on a hereditary basis as that divided their patrimony and undermined their power, but in the medieval (and even later) world you couldn't administer everything you ruled so you delegated and appointed a castellan of a castle, or a lord marshal of your armies, or a steward of your household but then you'd have a weak king and suddenly the castellan/marshall/steward position was passed from father to son and a few years later it was a fully hereditary position and after a few decades the King wouldn't even dream of trying to get the lands back,
Examples of this: the earl marshall (nominal chief general) of England becoming a hereditary position by the time of William the Marshall in reign of King John (the position still exists today as a title held by the Dukes of Norfolk), the Stuarts of Scotland becoming hereditary Stewards of the Court under the Dunkeld Kings (they'd leverage it into succeeding to the Crown after the Bruce Kings died out), the Khedive of Egypt wentfrom being an administrator of Egypt for the Ottoman Sultan to being a de facto independant ruler who paid only nominal loyalty to the Ottomans, and perhaps funniest of all the Lord Great Chamberlain of England rapidly became a hereditary position of the Earls of Oxford then the Earls of Lindey but when the last Earl died leaving two daughters the office was divided between them equally and the process kept repeating itself such that this now ceremonial position is held simultaneously by 14 people holding between 50% and 1% of the office depending on how many times their share has been divided and the role exercised in proportion to the share of it they hold which illustrates rather nicely how an official position can become a fundamentally hereditary and heritable position.
I mean the Gates of the Moon was held as a castellanship for thousands of years until it was converted to a permanent seat for Nestor Royce, the Wolf's Den appears to have oscillated between being a temporary command under Flints, Lockes, Slates and Harclays, to becoming more hereditary under some Flints and Slates and the Greystarks, building on this, early in GOT Bran thinks about how he would probably wind up running a holdfast on behalf of Rob but wasn't thinking it would be a hereditary position that he would use to set up a cadet branch.
It would be far more true to the medieval world that GRRM created if you could award any holding as a military command (like you can with vice-royalties in vanilla) so you can revoke without tyranny and you get it back when they die, but then if you have a weak king or someone gets a high faction support they can put a demand to the king/duke/whoever gave them the castle that "You recognise my son as heir to the lands that I hold in your name as a reward for my service" or whatever and the holding suddenly becomes hereditary
I'm not sure if it would even be possible but it would be a really interesting mechanic if the military command system could be dynamic rather than being fixed as it is in the mod. What I mean by this is that you can appoint someone to rule a county as a military command temporarily then change it back to a normal hereditary holding to reward someone - Historically kings and rulers tended not to give away power on a hereditary basis as that divided their patrimony and undermined their power, but in the medieval (and even later) world you couldn't administer everything you ruled so you delegated and appointed a castellan of a castle, or a lord marshal of your armies, or a steward of your household but then you'd have a weak king and suddenly the castellan/marshall/steward position was passed from father to son and a few years later it was a fully hereditary position and after a few decades the King wouldn't even dream of trying to get the lands back,
Examples of this: the earl marshall (nominal chief general) of England becoming a hereditary position by the time of William the Marshall in reign of King John (the position still exists today as a title held by the Dukes of Norfolk), the Stuarts of Scotland becoming hereditary Stewards of the Court under the Dunkeld Kings (they'd leverage it into succeeding to the Crown after the Bruce Kings died out), the Khedive of Egypt wentfrom being an administrator of Egypt for the Ottoman Sultan to being a de facto independant ruler who paid only nominal loyalty to the Ottomans, and perhaps funniest of all the Lord Great Chamberlain of England rapidly became a hereditary position of the Earls of Oxford then the Earls of Lindey but when the last Earl died leaving two daughters the office was divided between them equally and the process kept repeating itself such that this now ceremonial position is held simultaneously by 14 people holding between 50% and 1% of the office depending on how many times their share has been divided and the role exercised in proportion to the share of it they hold which illustrates rather nicely how an official position can become a fundamentally hereditary and heritable position.
I mean the Gates of the Moon was held as a castellanship for thousands of years until it was converted to a permanent seat for Nestor Royce, the Wolf's Den appears to have oscillated between being a temporary command under Flints, Lockes, Slates and Harclays, to becoming more hereditary under some Flints and Slates and the Greystarks, building on this, early in GOT Bran thinks about how he would probably wind up running a holdfast on behalf of Rob but wasn't thinking it would be a hereditary position that he would use to set up a cadet branch.
It would be far more true to the medieval world that GRRM created if you could award any holding as a military command (like you can with vice-royalties in vanilla) so you can revoke without tyranny and you get it back when they die, but then if you have a weak king or someone gets a high faction support they can put a demand to the king/duke/whoever gave them the castle that "You recognise my son as heir to the lands that I hold in your name as a reward for my service" or whatever and the holding suddenly becomes hereditary
