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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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me.me.here said:
The fact that the Bretonnian process for moving up from the social rank of peasant is literally "become a Knight or die trying" in no way indicates that large numbers of peasants succeed in becoming Knights. I'm pretty sure that 'Knight Errant' is just one of those Bretonnian polite fictions springing from stories of peasants going out to do great deeds and getting Knighted for their achievements - in a less euphemeistic society they'd be called 'peasants with death wishes' or 'mercenaries' or the like, which would more accurately describe them as just another form of peasant (if one that's taken up violence as their profession rather than farming or baking or whatnot).
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Most Knight Errants are the children of nobility, who have spent their entire lives training as Knights. They're common, and not in any way a social fiction. A Peasant who has not been raised to fight, does not own a warhorse, and does not own expensive armor and weapons, is highly unlikely to succeed as one.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
Sure, but just making the attempt automatically makes you a knight. You become a Knight Errant for trying, whether you succeed or not. If you succeed an errand, you become a Knight of the Realm. 5e Bretonnia has really easy social mobility. You just need to accept that you've signed up to a nobility that sees its primary duty as killing everything that threatens the nation.
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Yeah, succeed at a task despite all the disadvantages you face as a peasant, and you can become a knight. Unfortunately, you alone have risen to noble status, not your family. Since your children will not have three generations of noble status on both sides of the family at birth, they will still be peasants. Such easy social mobility.
 
notanautomaton said:
Most Knight Errants are the children of nobility, who have spent their entire lives training as Knights. They're common, and not in any way a social fiction. A Peasant who has not been raised to fight, does not own a warhorse, and does not own expensive armor and weapons, is highly unlikely to succeed as one.
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And when one is lucky enough to succeed (whether it is because they were born a genius, a quest protagonist or otherwise had lucky breaks), which law of averages says it should happen once every few generations at least, they get to point at him as a success story about how the system actually works. Its even easier to do, because I imagine they'd have to be much, much better than the nobles who get to succeed their knighthoods, so the legends will build around that kind of guy naturally, and they'll be used as the bar one has to reach to become a real knight from peasant background, ie another tool for denying social mobility for the vast, vast, VAST majority.

Best still if they can name them knight posthumously so they don't have to suffer said person.
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
Yeah, succeed at a task despite all the disadvantages you face as a peasant, and you can become a knight. Unfortunately, you alone have risen to noble status, not your family. Since your children will not have three generations of noble status on both sides of the family at birth, they will still be peasants. Such easy social mobility.
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Technically speaking, the Peasants -> Knight Errants thing is only from 5th edition, and the "Only a noble if nobles for 3 generations back" is only from KotG, after 6th edition.

There's a mixing of canons in the discussion.
 
notanautomaton said:
Most Knight Errants are the children of nobility, who have spent their entire lives training as Knights. They're common, and not in any way a social fiction. A Peasant who has not been raised to fight, does not own a warhorse, and does not own expensive armor and weapons, is highly unlikely to succeed as one.
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IRL, a knight in full-plate on a warhorse is basically the late-medieval tank. Critically, this includes the price point. A peasant trying to become a knight that way is like someone welding a machinegun to a clunker to make a technical and then taking that into situations where you normally send a tank.
 
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BurnNote said:
IRL, a knight in full-plate on a warhorse is basically the late-medieval tank. Critically, this includes the price point. A peasant trying to become a knight that way then is like someone welding a machinegun to a clunker to make a technical and then take that into situations where you normally send a tank.
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And much like tanks, they died an awful lot when going up against the contemporary IFV that was the Hussite wagon forts.
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
Is there anything in the other editions that contradicts it, or do they have nothing to say on the matter? Because if so, I feel it can still be included in the composite canon most fanmade Warhammer runs on.
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In KotG, there have been exactly three peasants that were made Knights on account of valiant service. Two died in the act.

Assuming she was still canon, Repanse de Lyonesse would be the third.
 
BurnNote said:
IRL, a knight in full-plate on a warhorse is basically the late-medieval tank. Critically, this includes the price point. A peasant trying to become a knight that way then is like someone welding a machinegun to a clunker to make a technical and then taking that into situations where you normally send a tank.
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There is a reason tanks are "mechanized cavalry".
 
storryeater said:
And when one is lucky enough to succeed (whether it is because they were born a genius, a quest protagonist or otherwise had lucky breaks), which law of averages says it should happen once every few generations at least, they get to point at him as a success story about how the system actually works. Its even easier to do, because I imagine they'd have to be much, much better than the nobles who get to succeed their knighthoods, so the legends will build around that kind of guy naturally, and they'll be used as the bar one has to reach to become a real knight from peasant background, ie another tool for denying social mobility for the vast, vast, VAST majority.

Best still if they can name them knight posthumously so they don't have to suffer said person.
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Mopman43 said:
In KotG, there have been exactly three peasants that were made Knights on account of valiant service. Two died in the act.

Assuming she was still canon, Repanse de Lyonesse would be the third.
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Oh, wow, I was just cynically spitballing on the posthumous thing. I do not know much about WHF lore outside of this quest.

But I was dead center about it, it seems -_-
 
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storryeater said:
Oh, wow, I was just cynically spitballing on the posthumous thing.
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If anything, you're not cynical enough. I recall at some point the lore was one of those two managed it in life for killing a Minotaur, assuming Repanse was the third, and then a few months down the line was deliberately Uriah Gambit'd to death by the other knights for being born a peasant.
 
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Sir_Travelsalot said:
Thanks, but I meant about the 'three generations of noble descent to be born a noble' thing that was in KotG.
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I glanced around 5th edition without seeing anything explicit, but I'm not likely to find anything. Without the "need 3 generations of nobles for children to be nobles" statement existing, the writers of the 5th edition book wouldn't see any need to explicitly say "and yes, the children of those peasants that became knights could become knights on their own".

At the same time, the system is described differently enough that I don't think it applies. Everyone is stated as being able to become a knight through either an Errantry or through being a squire to a knight. If you, as a peasant, are now a knight, then you have every ability to help your own children achieve the same, including by making them your squires and then later knighting them. The reason why the 3 generations thing in KotG is such an obstacle is because becoming a knight in of itself is such an obstacle.
 
Mopman43 said:
I glanced around 5th edition without seeing anything explicit, but I'm not likely to find anything. Without the "need 3 generations of nobles for children to be nobles" statement existing, the writers of the 5th edition book wouldn't see any need to explicitly say "and yes, the children of those peasants that became knights could become knights on their own".

At the same time, the system is described differently enough that I don't think it applies. Everyone is stated as being able to become a knight through either an Errantry or through being a squire to a knight. If you, as a peasant, are now a knight, then you have every ability to help your own children achieve the same, including by making them your squires and then later knighting them. The reason why the 3 generations thing in KotG is such an obstacle is because becoming a knight in of itself is such an obstacle.
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Ya know, I was thinking... Maybe a good way to reconcile all the Brettonian contradictions is to say that yes, they are all true*... but at different points of time, and that outsiders conflate together big historical periods where different things were the norm, thus causing the confusion.

The questiont hen would be... does it gets more idealistic and progressive as it goes on? (thanks to the lady's interference), or, as is the norm, more cynical and corrupt?

*Except the nine tenths of a crop thing, that one is so stupid it can never fly.
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
And much like tanks, they died an awful lot when going up against the contemporary IFV that was the Hussite wagon forts.
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Yeah, Bretonnia's rejection of cannons should really bite them in the but with wagon forts

storryeater said:
Oh, wow, I was just cynically spitballing on the posthumous thing. I do not know much about WHF lore outside of this quest.

But I was dead center about it, it seems -_-
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Sir_Travelsalot said:
If anything, you're not cynical enough. I recall at some point the lore was one of those two managed it in life for killing a Minotaur, assuming Repanse was the third, and then a few months down the line was deliberately Uriah Gambit'd to death by the other knights for being born a peasant.
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There were some countries that had a practice of merchants that get so rich that they are essentially nobles already being able to send a 'gift' of gold away to an important noble, then they'd get a letter back referring to them as if they were members of the low nobility, and they'd retroactively always have been noble and anyone implying otherwise was gainsaying the word of the upper nobility.
On one hand, maybe possible, on the other hand, that almost seems like the sort of thing that 'heroic'' knights in Bretonnia would fight against.

storryeater said:
*Except the nine tenths of a crop thing, that one is so stupid it can never fly.
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Sir_Travelsalot said:
It can if the knight immediately reinvests eight-tenths back in the peasants, so it's a palace economy. 's not great, but it's functional.
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notbirdofprey said:
Or it's basically a safekeeping thing, where most of the grain is stored in the castle because that's fortified.
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The grain is owed to the noble, and thus stored in the castle, but the noble owes the peasants most of the grain back through a series of repayments of social obligations, payments for workmen to do things the noble is obligated to have done, and customary festivals.
Thus a nobles honor in fulfilling their obligations is central, and any famine can be blamed on lack of honor, rather than bad weather, crop plague, raiders, or Chaos. and the Noble has the hypothetical practical and legal capacity to starve out the demesne if they think the place is full of chaos cultists.
On the other hand excessive taxation means that the peasants also have a strong incentive to steal food or underperform during corvee labour.
Maybe the nine-tenths thing as actually an assessment of how much of the food-producing land in their demesne the noble owns, and the peasants are expected to work to harvest the noble's nine-tenths of the food-producing land in exchange for payment in food?
Or maybe taxation is only collected for work on the noble's land, which the peasants are obligated to do, in which case the noble takes nine-tenths, but work off of the noble's land is untaxed?
 
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Mopman43 said:
Historical knights didn't kill dragons or bounce cannonballs off of their pecs.
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Neither do the vast majority of Brettonian knights. Now maybe that one Grail Knight that came to the skirmish can kill off the entire opposing force singlehandedly and claim a glorious victory as all of his comrades heroically rot on the field behind him secure in the blessings of the Lady, but that isn't the sort of thing that's conducive to long-term power projection and stability of the realm.
 
notanautomaton said:
Most Knight Errants are the children of nobility, who have spent their entire lives training as Knights. They're common, and not in any way a social fiction. A Peasant who has not been raised to fight, does not own a warhorse, and does not own expensive armor and weapons, is highly unlikely to succeed as one.
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The previous line of discussion was about social mobility - i.e. peasants becoming Knights. In that light the idea of a Knight Errant (that anyone, regardless of class, can become a Knight through valorous deeds) is very much a social fiction, precisely for the reasons you give - in practical terms the bar for deeds to be considered valorous enough to make someone a Knight requires the equipment and backing of a noble estate, thus most actual Knight Errants being children of Knights and the concept becoming a way of reinforcing the social hierarchy rather than degrading it.
 
consequences said:
Neither do the vast majority of Brettonian knights. Now maybe that one Grail Knight that came to the skirmish can kill off the entire opposing force singlehandedly and claim a glorious victory as all of his comrades heroically rot on the field behind him secure in the blessings of the Lady, but that isn't the sort of thing that's conducive to long-term power projection and stability of the realm.
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You don't need to be a Grail Knight, its available to every Bretonnian army that prays before a battle. Affects every knight and Damsel in the army.
 
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