"Very good," says the king, devoid of any real reaction. "Congratulations, then. We hereby bestow upon you the castellancy of…" he looks back at his desk, at the parchments splayed across its tabletop. "Orsa Rutheniae. Congratulations, too, then, on your senatorial rank."
Orsza. You try to calculate in the blink of an eye: Witebsk Voivodeship, by the Muscovite border, smaller town… Krzysztof nearby… Castellans don't usually have to actually manage a damn thing… And you are a senator… "I am honored, Your Majesty."
Orsza actually has some history behind it. A border town, it was the site of 3 battles against Muscovy (1508, 1514, 1564). The most famous of these is of course the great victory in the
second battle, where the Grand Lithuanian Hetman Prince Konstanty Ostrogski crushed a numerically superior enemy force. Fun fact: a few years earlier he was taken prisoner by Moscow, but managed to escape after feigning cooperation and swearing oaths before the Moscow Metropolitan (he was Orthodox) to serve the local Grand Duke. Keep in mind, such changes in allegiance happened surprisingly often, with Ruthenian Princes from both sides of the border going over to the enemy. Prince Mikołaj Radziwiłł the Red commanded in that last battle from ten years back.
The place is right next to the Dniepr river. It's
Starosta is Filon Kmita-Czarnobylski (or just Filon Kmita, the second part is due to him becoming the owner of Czarnobyl... yes,
that Chernobyl), an Orthodox middle nobleman from Ruthenia-Ukraine, that stayed in the service of the GDL after his home became part of the Crown. He was a frontier fighter of great skill and renown that raided Muscovite lands more than once during the Livonian Wars, now he sits there and guards the border, while collecting any useful intel.
A few words about the office:
There are a lot of offices for the rich and mighty (well, not that many, but they are diverse) and even more for the regular nobles (but still not enough for everyone).
You see, because titles have been banned, the nobles wished to elevate their names by holding an office. The vast majority of offices were only titular and symbolic. They had to do literally nothing. Even so, with that many nobles in the Commonwealth, there was still a great hunger for more titles because there weren't enough posts for everybody. Therefore the country has developed an unprecedented rule (again). Children and grandchildren of an office holder held their own honorary titles based upon the post of their ancestor. So, a son of a
Starosta was a
Starościc, and a grandson of one was a
Starostowicz. Of course this rule was for the regular nobles, since the rich were always guaranteed to have some offices of their own so they did not bother with this nonsense.
A
Castellan (
Kasztelan) was mostly a symbolic office, but of senatorial rank (he was a member of the Senate, that sat and discussed with the King during parliamentary sessions). It's an office given mostly to the middle nobles and some rich ones (the
Kasztelan of Kraków was formally the highest secular senatorial office, but it was mostly for prestige). The military formally had only
Hetman offices (high command), while a
Regimentarz was a temporary substitute chosen by a Hetman, the King as Commander-in-Chief or by the soldiers themselves, when the regular ones were unavailable for one reason or the other. The highest regular rank in the military was one of
Colonel (
Pułkownik). Above him were the
Hetmans. A noble cannot be forced to serve, unless in the levée en masse, therefore the King cannot send us to an obscure post if we don't want it, since with our money and private armies we can do whatever we want militarily. As for an office to govern, 9/10 a rich noble never even visited the place, being happy with the title and letting a subordinate do the hard work, while he spends time in his estate drinking and partying.
Once a powerful office and now but a shadow of itself, the
Castellan gets to only do one thing. To lead the local levée en masse to its concentration point designated by the Voivode. Since rich nobles have better things to do, this was almost never exercised. Castellans also have two branches: major and minor. The major ones (more important cities) had their own chairs in the Senate, while the minor ones sat in the very back of the gathering, next to the wall on a common bench. I couldn't find the info, by I'm fairly certain that Orsza is the latter. Furthermore, Castellans couldn't become Starostas and hold other Senatorial offices (unless they step down).
In general, Lithuanians serve on the Muscovite and Livonian border, while the Crownlanders serve in Ukraine.
I would also like to use the opportunity to say a few words about the
Starostas, since they come up quite often. There are two kinds of them:
Starosta grodowy (Town Starosta) and
Starosta niegrodowy (Estate Starosta). The town one is the
Starosta I've said about before, with administrative duties and law enforcement powers. Whatever income came from the Crown-owned lands and insitutions there were used to pay the
Starosta and to keep the local administration running. The Estate Starosta was the classic sinecure found in other countries. Lands and estates, that were given to the holder by the Crown as tenancy. The rewarded noble paid the agreed upon sum in money or in kind, while keeping the rest for himself. Such a
Starosta had none of the rights and duties of the regular one, being happy with the title and the hefty pay that came with it.
