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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Sir_Travelsalot said:
Bretonnia is also so backwards in its legal code that merchants aren't obligated to pay any taxes, since they don't actually produce anything of their own, and Bretonnia's tax code specifies that peasants owe nine-tenths of all they produce. Since the merchants use their funds to buy luxurious gifts for their feudal overlords to keep them from changing the law, this is not likely to change any time soon.

Bretonnia's a bad example to use for decision-making with regards to law, is what I'm saying.
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It's almost like they are what happens if a young god was playing house while creating her super knights rather then making a real attempt at civilisation.
 
DragonParadox said:
Yeah well so are crossbows and guns on land. They have odd ideas over there. :V
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Sir_Travelsalot said:
Bretonnia is also so backwards in its legal code that merchants aren't obligated to pay any taxes, since they don't actually produce anything of their own, and Bretonnia's tax code specifies that peasants owe nine-tenths of all they produce. Since the merchants use their funds to buy luxurious gifts for their feudal overlords to keep them from changing the law, this is not likely to change any time soon.

Bretonnia's a bad example to use for decision-making with regards to law, is what I'm saying.
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To be fair, extremely stupid laws are not restricted to Bretonnia, or even Warhammer in general. And I suspect Boneytannia will be a whole lot more functional. I really do want to visit some time.

But y'know, in Bretonnian eyes, Mathilde is pretty much just a step above Chaos-level evil. She's a peasant, non-damsel spellcaster, sort-of priest of a proscribed god, really likes guns and pretends to be a knight despite being a peasant (and she has a magic horse that has the gall of being better than a proper horse). Just about the only thing they'd respect about her is the giant fuck-off blade, and I wouldn't be surprised if some bitch about it anyway.
 
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BurnNote said:
But y'know, in Bretonnian eys, Mathilde is pretty much just a step above Chaos-level evil. She's a peasant, non-damsel spellcaster, sort-of priest of a proscribed god, really likes guns and pretends to be a knight despite being a peasant (and she has a magic horse that has the gall of being better than a proper horse). Just about the only thing they'd respect about her is the giant fuck-off blade, and I wouldn't be surprised if some bitch about it anyway.
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Plus, Mathilde regularily associates with Dragons, which is a big nope in Bretonnia.
 
Chronic said:
Plus, Mathilde regularily associates with Dragons, which is a big nope in Bretonnia.
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I am not sure that is true.

Bastonne's coat of arms is a dragon, it is implied that bretonnian knighthood is inspired by asur concept of chivalry (who are notorious for their alliance with dragons) and iirc at least in some Bretonnian editions a possible mount option was a dragon.
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
Bretonnia is also so backwards in its legal code that merchants aren't obligated to pay any taxes, since they don't actually produce anything of their own, and Bretonnia's tax code specifies that peasants owe nine-tenths of all they produce. Since the merchants use their funds to buy luxurious gifts for their feudal overlords to keep them from changing the law, this is not likely to change any time soon.
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Bretonnia's degree of legal stupidity and institutional injustice depends heavily on which parts of the source material one reads, I gather. Intentionally picking the stupidest bullshit the Warhammer Fantasy writers could come up with and attribute to Bretonnia leaves them looking a lot more contemptible than they otherwise would.
 
Horium said:
I am not sure that is true.

Bastonne's coat of arms is a dragon, it is implied that bretonnian knighthood is inspired by asur concept of chivalry (who are notorious for their alliance with dragons) and iirc at least in some Bretonnian editions a possible mount option was a dragon.
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Bretonnian Knights are also probably number two after accomplished (and unlucky) Dwarf Slayers in the buisness of Dragon Slaying and one of Gilles Le Bretons first legendary feats was killing a Great Dragon attacking his home. For this great accomplishment, he took a Dragon as part of his heraldry. That, by the way, is why Bastonnes heraldry is a Dragon, Gilles was their first and most important Duke and they took his symbol for themselves. They don't honour Dragons, they proclaim that they are bad enough dudes to kill any Dragon that comes at them.

There's multiple other prominent legends of Bretonnian heros killing Evil Dragons, more than I've ever heard about from the Empire. Dragons are probably still respected for their strength and power, but they've always been treated as malicious in Bretonnian myth, much more than in other Old World Countries.
 
Chronic said:
Plus, Mathilde regularily associates with Dragons, which is a big nope in Bretonnia.
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Don't think they have anything against Dragons in general.
They have a great deal against anything that turns up and eats their horses/villagers/etc and most dragons they meet fall into the category. But the same can be said for non-ridden hippogriffs, their 'typical' monstrous mount.
 
Angelform said:
Don't think they have anything against Dragons in general.
They have a great deal against anything that turns up and eats their horses/villagers/etc and most dragons they meet fall into the category. But the same can be said for non-ridden hippogriffs, their 'typical' monstrous mount.
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It's less to do with dragons themselves, and more to do with Blood Dragons. Even more so the red duke.

the vampires who use a lot of dragon symbolism.
 
If the only problem holding Dwarf population growth back, is essentially severe depression, maybe we should just put the dwarfes on lithium and they'll start churning out twenty children per female dwarf. Especially with the dwarfs having ecperienced chemists, it should be possible to produce lithium carbonate.
 
On an unrelated to current discussion note, since I forgot what important thing I wanted to ask and it seemingly wasn't answered anywhere:
What do Empire, Colleges and Mathilde know about Lizardmen? @BoneyM
 
Simon_Jester said:
Bretonnia's degree of legal stupidity and institutional injustice depends heavily on which parts of the source material one reads, I gather. Intentionally picking the stupidest bullshit the Warhammer Fantasy writers could come up with and attribute to Bretonnia leaves them looking a lot more contemptible than they otherwise would.
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Yeah. I'm hopeful based Boney is going to swerve full fifth edition.
 
matvprok said:
On an unrelated to current discussion note, since I forgot what important thing I wanted to ask and it seemingly wasn't answered anywhere:
What do Empire, Colleges and Mathilde know about Lizardmen? @BoneyM
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"They probably aren't Beastmen."

Not much, especially since our Jade Journeyman still hasn't made his trip to Lustria, and his name is on like half of the discoveries about them.
 
pucflek said:
if not Dum (which is seriously lost, because i don't think living in chaos wastes is conductive to even dwarf health).
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What if with further diplomatic actions done by Mathilde with support from very greatful Karak Dum / Vlag survivors. The Ice Witches and Runelords begin a project to erect a huge warding Ice Wall powered by magic and runes?

Mathilde could contribute by founding a order to man it, dedicated to the Protector*, a Knightswatch if you will. :p

*Chaos is all about stomping on the weak kindof!
 
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Fehu said:
What if with further diplomatic actions done by Mathilde with support from very greatful Karak Dum / Vlag survivors. The Ice Witches and Runelords begin a project to erect a huge warding Ice Wall powered by magic and runes?
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Hmm. Was it canon or fanon that in Warhammer, Cathay's equivalent to the Great Wall is a massive fortification built to protect Cathay from the Chaos Wastes?
 
Simon_Jester said:
Bretonnia's degree of legal stupidity and institutional injustice depends heavily on which parts of the source material one reads, I gather. Intentionally picking the stupidest bullshit the Warhammer Fantasy writers could come up with and attribute to Bretonnia leaves them looking a lot more contemptible than they otherwise would.
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Voikirium said:
Yeah. I'm hopeful based Boney is going to swerve full fifth edition.
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Here's what was said on the subject in the past:
BoneyM said:
I'd stick with the 'all magical kids go into the woods and only the girls come out again' but I'd come up with something less grimdark than the obvious for the boys. I'm a fan of the idea of Brettonia as the land of polite fictions, where, for example, it's true that women can't be knights, but women dress up as men to be knights anyway all the time and nobody says anything about the beardless lad with the high voice who's oddly private about bathing, and if the truth does come out in a way that nobody can pretend it didn't, then the 'punishment' is to Seek the Grail which gives them knightly status anyway.
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BoneyM said:
Bretonnia swung back and forth between Knights Of The Round Table Only Super French and Everything Is Terrible Forever between editions. For the purposes of this quest, reserve judgement until you're shown evidence as to which is the case here.
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My guess is that we can throw out the grimderp versions of Bretonnia categorically, but the opposite extreme (5th edition's extreme noblesse oblige and shining-armor-iness) is also unlikely to be played straight. One of the great strengths of Boney's worldbuilding is the degree to which everyone feels like a person who is making decisions according to their own internal logic and has comprehensible motivations: this rules out both ends of caricature. It's not going to be a land of completely insane cartoonish oppression, and it's also not going to be a fairytale realm where the king is righteous and true and is served by knights who are unfailingly generous and good to the populace they protect. Whatever its deal is, it's inhabited by people who will act like people.
 
I vaguely remember reading a post of Boney that says that he considers Bretonnia to be heavily influenced by romantic notions/themes, so much so, that it completely dominates their lives.

I'll try to find the relevant quote.
 
BoneyM said:
According to the possible interpretation of canon I find most compelling:

What comes to mind for me is Lancelot and Guinevere. According to memory, in some versions of the Arthurian legends they were deeply in love with each other, but never acted on that love because both also loved Arthur, who Guinevere was married to. This was treated as a beautiful tragedy, and both were seen as noble for never acting on their feelings, rather than not for having them in the first place. So you have two stories in parallel - the main story of King Arthur, his devoted wife Guinevere, and his loyal Knight Lancelot, but then you have a second story where Guinevere and Lancelot yearned for each other without ever acting on it because they were still loyal to Arthur. The story evolved over time, gaining new facets without changing the underlying values of duty and fealty.

Remember the story of Soizic. A woman cannot be a Knight, of course, but women secretly becoming Knights is celebrated in story and legend, even as the letter of the law decries it. The unspoken but very powerful undercurrent of Bretonnia is that people are not following the law, they are following the script. They reject the terrible world they live in, and instead play the roles of the beautiful legends they believe in. So at first law and tradition demands proper marriage and fealty, there would be many marriages where it is understood that they are playing their roles in public, and then whatever the Noble Knight gets up to with his stalwart companions, and what the Devoted Wife engages in with her coterie, is happening 'off stage' and is therefore immaterial. But then another layer builds atop that, where these unspoken roles become part of the story and then form another tradition in itself. To invent an example, a story where a marriage of convenience between a gay Knight and a lesbian Lady is celebrated because though they do not desire each other, they support each other and form a platonic bond that strengthens them both, and then the Knight kills a dragon or something. The standard telling of that story does not explicitly say that, but the writing between the lines is clear enough that almost everyone understands what it means. So it is no longer just a simple polite fiction, but it is a wink and a nudge that is worked into the story itself, and thus into society.

Like the growth of coral, Bretonnian society builds atop itself in layer after layer, resulting in a beautiful reef that can shelter its inhabitants from the brutal emptiness of the world around them.
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Well, here it is. Sorry for double posting, I don't know how to insert quotes in edited posts.
 
It depends on whether you want to use Bretonnia as a vehicle for continuing the anarchist project, or whether you want to use Bretonnia for escapist romanticism, I suppose.
 
Lupercal said:
Personally I'm a fan of the later Bretonnia where even if all of its rulers are literally chosen and blessed by their goddess for being good people the system still sucks because that's what feudal systems *do*.
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I myself am torn. I despise the later edition Bretonnia, and feudal systems inherently sucking even in optimal conditions is the sort of political commentary that I want to avoid in my fantasy escapism.

That being said, I must admit that a variant of Imrix' take on the matter appeals to me:

Imrix said:
Bretonnia is for the most part virtuous, but also ignorant, both technologically and internally. The systems by which Bretonnian nobles measure acclaim (chivalric honour, valour in battle, questing for the Grail) incentivise knights to be just and compassionate, but not to be good administrators or reformers. They mean well, but they rarely understand what life is like for the lower classes. If a lord is asked to mediate a dispute about one peasant's pigs trespassing on another peasant's fields and eating the crops there, that lord will probably try to see justice done, but he lacks the relevant background information or education to understand the problem.
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Imrix said:
Knights do hold themselves apart from the peasantry, but they certainly don't despise the lower classes, and in turn the peasantry tend to be willing and enthusiastic supporters of the realm.
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If I were a qm or a story writer, my Bretonnia would probably resemble the above, though a bit more on the charitable/benevolent side.

Meaning, knights would be aware that of their flaws, and at least some of them would work to rectify it, creating a sort of inner struggle between pragmatic lords and traditional lords.
 
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