It's not too late to cash out before Elfcation. These expensive souvenirs won't buy themselves!!!
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
Brilliant idea: you know, it'd be a lot less abstract if we had them pay their taxes in warpstone…
xamaplak
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE @SOUP?
- Location
- the Soup Store
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was under the impression that 'governmental organization' is... not really a thing? At least, not our modern understanding. Like, there are Knightly Orders and professional armies that work directly for the Emperor and/or elector count.
But there's no 'Department of Defense', there's a Marshall. There's no 'ministry of education', there are schools for nobles, cult-run lower schools, and reputation-based Universities. And jurisdiction isn't set-in-stone, it's based on competence and workload. A spymaster could end up controlling trade in an entire province, for instance. Or the Stewardship advisor could be an auditor who focusses entirely on forensic accounting.
It's not 'here, this organization is specifically constructed to do this and will only do this, as designed after an initial 23 months in committee and passed by a 2/3rds majority after 4 additional months of debate and 10 more months in committee' it's 'oh this fits your remit, right? no, I think you'll find that it does. go do that while I put out this fire made of demons and goblins and Marienburg'.
Why would the Emperor expend the time, effort, and political influence making a specially constructed and loyal organization to deal with Waystones when he can appoint a reasonably competent chief of Waystone Affairs and tell them to 'deal with it'. Mathilde would be the choice for that position, and she'd have the authority to bring in the EIC to supply materials if she wanted to.
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Chlof
Her Ladyship
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wouldn't say so, it's more just absentee lord. "Absentee Landlord" implies a lot more than simply not being present and collecting revenue.
Some Brettonian Nobles might qualify, depending on which edition of Warhammer Fantasy you draw on. They're just a lot more short-lived due to tilting their lances at everything vaguely threatening without any magic to save their asses.
Huh... this gives me a thought that that would make Kragg considerably more angry than usual, but which might still be useful to him and other runesmiths. Do you think we can find elven books on runes in Lothern? They would have stuff from the lost holds, their history does go that far.
A duty to, given a severe enough display of mishandling. The books are Mathilde's property and she and those she appoints have the right to do violence to defend that property.
Mathilde suspects they do, but it's a sensitive topic that has the potential to reopen some very old but very grievous wounds, so she isn't asking and they aren't telling.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
For the record, I highly disagree with the notion that there's "almost no" nobles like Mathilde in-setting. Like... certainly, nobility and inherited positions of power have a lot of downsides that are readily noticeable and which we've seen for ourselves (and personally punished), and certainly, I'm not gonna be a cheerleader for it, but like, Mathilde knows several nobles who she knows actually do good things for their subjects, and is even friends with several of them: Anton, Abelhelm when he was alive, Roswita, Boris, Konstantin (the EC of Wissenland), Luitpold and Heidi (she totally counts), Belegar, Thorgrim, Kazador, Queen Marrisith, Cadaeth...
Nobles actually doing things is expected here. And mercifully, the things they're expected to do very often benefit not only themselves but their subjects. Investing wealth into their subjects so they can generate more wealth, like Mathilde did with her fief, is probably not all that uncommon - people like having more passive income.
And we could also talk about how many nobles lead their armies from the front because they often have the benefit of really good martial training since childhood, and good equipment - and we've seen both the benefits and the drawbacks of that, with Abelhelm and Belegar.
...I suppose, if you want to be really cynical, that we could take "nobles being good isn't uncommon" to be the ultimate demonstration of how this is a fantasy setting.
Nobles actually doing things is expected here. And mercifully, the things they're expected to do very often benefit not only themselves but their subjects. Investing wealth into their subjects so they can generate more wealth, like Mathilde did with her fief, is probably not all that uncommon - people like having more passive income.
And we could also talk about how many nobles lead their armies from the front because they often have the benefit of really good martial training since childhood, and good equipment - and we've seen both the benefits and the drawbacks of that, with Abelhelm and Belegar.
...I suppose, if you want to be really cynical, that we could take "nobles being good isn't uncommon" to be the ultimate demonstration of how this is a fantasy setting.
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I know this probably isn't how you intended this comment but now I'm wondering if there's any characterization that runs counter to Mathilde just being a next level elitist because part of me really likes the idea
That's an interesting question. Mathilde is part of a organization which protects from dangers most of the Empire's population cannot even see whose members are in constant danger from as she put it 'a fistful of virulently held superstitions they do not even consider'. Certainly she gets annoyed at the common man in the Empire quite often, but the thing is the key in that is 'in the Empire'. She likes dwarfs of all social classes (and likes that they treat her with respect), in the Eonir social system her sympathies are rather more with the Forestborn than the Citybborn and she has never expressed anything but respect for the Udumgi or the halflings.
I'd say Mathilde is deeply wary of the social class she was born into because they tried to burn her alive as a child. Even then there is nuance, remember at the start of the quest when she encountered that one village that was friendly with her she was perfectly happy to chum it up with them.
In conclusion no, she is not an elitist, she is just carrying a lot of unprocessed trauma which mixes with the habiual paranoia in a way that makes her standofish until the other person proves they aren't hiding a torch and pitchfork behind their back.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I would not even be surprised if nobles being good was a majority in our real world past. Most people are good or at least try to be. It is just a rotten apple in nobility tends to rot the whole barrel.
Most the the Emperors have been good. The damage from Dieter IV still lingers.
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Eisenhelm
gran dutch of douchery
- Location
- Colombia
That and that if those rulers are bad then the people can revel about it and little else, and if they do the imperial armies are going to fall on them like anvils just so no secessionist get any ideas.
The government of the Empire does not exist in the sense you are imagining. The Emepror is the Prince of Reikland who holds power because he owns the province of Reikland the same way he owns his Runefang because he inherited it from his father. The taxman does not tax because the people he takes money from are citizens of the Empire, that concept does not exist, but because they have sworn oaths to someone who swore oaths to someone who swore them to the Emperor. This is also why nobles have the power of taxation and the right to raise an army and use that army both internally and externally so long as it does not conflict with the interests of the Empire. The only institution that belongs to 'the state' in the sense you mean of being bound to the crown is the Colleges of Magic and you cannot have wizards carry every rock on their back.
solarlight
Appreciative Archive Reader
- Location
- Netherlands
I miss Abelhelm, he was incredible. He would be so proud of us now.
To be fair, some cultist could be interested in Waystone, if they know about it.
Isn't the whole deal of our Library is that it's open to everyone?
I think we can certainly say that most people try to do good - for their given culture and society's version of 'good'. For a lot of pre-modern European elites, at least, that meant signifying their power by martial means to earn glory and standing that would elevate and sustain themselves, their family line and/or their polity (and, in many cases, please a deity or group of deities). The trouble with that, of course, is that said martial means typically involve doing murderous, rapacious things to other people, most of which we would today consider abhorrent. This is not to say that elites could not be kind and considerate under given circumstances; it is merely to say that the cultural values at play were different in a way that pushed those elites to cause a significant amount of suffering.
Odysseus is a suitable example of this contradiction, to name a well-known example of a noble depicted in pre-modern fiction. Here is a man distinguished by his resourcefulness, his deep love for his wife and son and his care for the slaves loyal to him - yet he also raids and murders his way across the Mediterranean on his way home, cheats on said wife multiple times on that journey for good measure and, when he actually gets home, slaughters not only the men who invaded his household but also those of his slaves who were coerced into supporting them in order to reassert control of his estate. (Did I mention that he keeps slaves?) His 'character arc' across the Odyssey, if he can be said to have one, is not becoming merciful or less violent to those with less power than himself; it is instead learning to use his guile outside the context of a war and becoming better at following the laws of hospitality. His big, triumphant character moment is proving that he can use a weapon better than anyone else immediately before mowing down dozens of men with said weapon. Think that all demonstrates the point aptly enough!
(As Andres' post below reminds me, there's an economic/territorial dimension to this as well but they've already done an excellent job of explaining that so I'll just point to it gratefully!)
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- Location
- Australia
I was thinking about humans and Cityborn, so yeah you're right when it comes to dwarves. They can be relied on to have their people's interests at heart (not universally of course, but generally alright). However, the rest of your examples are merely exceptions, the reasons I used the word 'almost'.
Marrisith is good, but the Cityborn situation is crapped up because of the aristocratic landowners and their unending lust for wealth and leverage. Marrisith is making things better by manipulating the nobles, not by working with them. They care about the common good absolutely no more than it would benefit them.
Anton is an anomaly in more ways than one, Roswita hardly counts as a normal noble given her upbringing, we don't know Heidi's backstory earlier than pretending to be a vampire so she could be a fake noble, Boris faced immediate aristocratic resistance to helping his people and had to have my thesis (his father) assassinated, Konstantin has only been shown to want to fight skaven and build a gun foundry, and while Jor-El is a good emperor, there hasn't been the slightest indication he actually cares about common people. He'll do good things for the Empire sure, but all nobles defend their property.
And like, that's the thing. Nobles doing things is normal in real life just as it is in Warhammer Fantasy. We had knights too, they built castles and defended their lands and raided each other for loot. That doesn't mean they invested money to improve their people's lives. At very best it was for the reason you noted: increasing passive income. Most times they invested money in personal luxuries, war materiel to steal other people's stuff (stealing land being the ideal way to increase passive income), and otherwise only spent just enough to maintain the status quo. They almost never acted benevolently towards their subjects.
What nobles are like Mathilde? She who invested in her fief, and did so to improve her people's lives? Exceptions. You will find piles upon piles of nobles willing to fight on the front lines or build walls to defend their stuff from rival nobles (and greenskins etc.), but almost none who would be moved by a waystone in the Old Quarter improving the lives of those they routinely abuse and exploit.
EDIT: I'll concede on Bretonnia, where only 95% of nobles are terrible people.
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Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Grail Knights are generally depicted as sympathatic and charitable to the peasantry, but they do so from a position in which they uphold a social structure that is itself very oppressive and which primarily glorifies fighting the realm's enemies as the best you can do for said realm and in which trying to actually alter the social structure is verboten so that's pretty arguable. Of the three dukes that we're told are Grail Knights in Louen's time: Louen himself, Bohemmond and Cassyon, the latter two are described as spending much of their time hunting down terrible monsters and foes of the realm for them to personally slay, which in their culture, not entirely without cause, doing so is considered to be doing right by your people, since those would do their subjects great harm if allowed to continue to live. Louen though is described as also as making certain legistlations which ease the lives of the peasantry, for which he is very well liked by the common man, and merciful enough to be willing to argue with Thorgrim that the lives of bandits who resorted to banditry to feed themselves should be spared due to their plight, though Thorgrim executes them anyway.
Aside from the Grail Knights though it's practically one of Bretonnia's hats that their nobility is oppressive, save perhaps those of Montfort.
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- Location
- Washington
In a way, warhammer represents a world where all the pressures of the start of feudalism 100% exist all the way into the early modern period. Nobles are expected to be martially capable and lead from the front or at least participate in order to keep the respect of other nobles and it turns out a not insignificant amount of the people they're leading from the front against are functionally monsters with an ideological hatred of civilization itself instead of people that the noble thinks they should own the land of because fuck you that's why.
- Location
- Eugene OR US
Could they even legally do that?
It is our personal branch afterall.
Maybe we can do a write-in sometime to get those books.
How many times had Bretonnia invaded the Empire again?
Way fewer times than either have been invaded by Greenskins that's for sure. The point I think isn't that the feudal states do not but heads, but that they come against things hostile to all of them far more often.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
How many times indeed? Wars between Bretonnia and the Empire don't seem that common and when they do happen seem to be mostly a matter of some skirmishes, something which is in large part probably owed to Bretonnia and the Empire having a huge mountain range acting as a natural border between them
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Except not really. There are theoretically a half-dozen institutions that are bound to the crown (the Reiksguard, the Imperial Gunnery School and the Imperial Engineer's School off the top of my head) but when the chips are down, no one expects any of them (including the Colleges!) to be so. It's the canon reason Thyrus Gormann and Karl Franz couldn't get the Colleges an EC vote; everyone expects them to vote with Reikland.
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They've fought at least four wars with Parravon, and have enough conflict to build fortresses at the passes. I'd guess "a lot".
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
The fortresses are kind of part of the point. The Grey Mountains have only a few passes, which are very easily defensible, making invasion difficult and restricting the possible scope of war between the two.
Could you cite the Bretonnian invasions?
- Location
- Australia
WFRP 4e: A Guide to Ubersreik says there's been four wars between Ubersreik and Parravon, the latter three of which were started by Parravon. Karak Azgaraz doesn't like them for that.