https://acoup.blog/2022/10/07/collections-teaching-paradox-crusader-kings-iii-part-iii-constructivisting-a-kingdom/ Skip to content A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry A look at history and popular culture Menu * Home * Resources for Teachers * Resources for World-Builders * Book Recommendation List * Guest Posts * Contact * About the Pedant Collections: Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Constructivisting a Kingdom Bret Devereaux Collections, Teaching Paradox October 7, 2022 37 Minutes This is the third part of a four part series (I, IIa, IIb) examining the historical assumptions behind the popular medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings III, made by Paradox Interactive. In the last part (in two sections), we discussed how CKIII attempts to model decentralized political power in the fragmented polities of the medieval Mediterranean, with different mechanics to reflect the pressures that led to fragmentation both in the post-Carolingian West and the post-Rashidun East. This week, we're going to look at how CKIII understands power to be wielded and maintained within the system of fragmented, personalistic rule we've established in the previous weeks. In a sense this is the third leg of a the three-legged stool that is CKIII's understanding of power in a medieval polity: if power is personal, rather than institutional (leg one) and highly fragmented between many people (leg two), then how is power gained and kept within such systems. As historians, we tend to approach this question through the concept of legitimacy, the degree to which a ruling authority (in this case a person) is perceived to be the rightful authority and thus obeyed not out of the fear of force but out of tradition and social pressure. Legitimacy, for reasons we'll get into, is the fundamental lifeblood of any ruling authority. Legitimacy in traditional monarchies - of the sort the player is running in this game - are in turn founded on social norms, collective standards of behavior (often unwritten). In this case, we're interested specifically in the social norms about kingship, since norms often differ based on one's position in society (age, sex, social rank, etc.). There is a degree of circularity here: subjects want their king to act like a 'good king' and so they are more ready to support a king that acts out (or performs) their understanding of what a good king looks like, which in turn confers legitimacy on the monarchy, which in turn defines for subsequent kings what being a good king looks like. What is fascinating about CKIII is that one could easily argue that legitimacy is the central theme of the game, that most of the player's efforts within a realm are focused on building their own legitimacy or undermining the legitimacy of others and yet 'legitimacy' is not a a single system or currency within the game. No character has a 'legitimacy' score, instead what CKIII has to say about systems of generating legitimacy emerges from its systems, especially modifiers which interact with either vassal opinion. So that is where we will start: how do you keep all of those scheming vassals happy? And, as always, if you want to be my vassal, my levy and tax contribution rates are customary and reasonable; you can pledge fealty via Patreon. And if you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for updates delivered by Royal Nuntii (and/or email) or follow me on twitter (@BretDevereaux) where I issue royal pronouncements. Email Address [ ] Subscribe! [20220925210812_1][20220925210812_1]We stopped our House al-Yiliqi playthrough last time having ended the Struggle for Iberia through the Detente ending. Doing so, as you recall, required fragmenting our kingdom a bit. Our new goal now is to get an empire-tier title, which will enable us to reconsolidate the kingdom. And the new Caliph, Ajannas III, is precisely the fellow for the job. Bright, brave and aggressive, he is planning for a LOT of war. Factions and Kingdoms Before we dive into the game systems which influence vassals and holdings, we need to understand what makes vassals compliant and stable in the game. Vassals have three main ways they can work against their liege: they can scheme (using intrigue to launch hostile schemes), they can withhold levies in some government forms and they can form factions. Of these factions are generally the most dangerous and the most common way for a liege to lose control over their polity (either by actively being dethroned or by having key decisions taken against their will). Of these systems, factions are the most immediately relevant. Factions are coalitions of power centers within a realm which pool together their military power in order to make a demand of their liege, threatening civil war if refused. These in turn divide into two groups, vassal factions and popular factions; we'll deal with the latter later and focus on vassal factions for now. There are currently four types of vassal factions. Vassals can demand either that crown authority is lowered, that a different claimant be enthroned as liege, that they alone be made independent or that the kingdom itself be dissolved making everyone independent. [20221007112224_1][20221007112224_1]Jumping way ahead in my game just to get an example of the factions screen (right). The red dotted line is the mark where a faction will consider itself powerful enough to begin preparing to send an ultimatum, which will happen when the discontent percentage fills. In this case, my ruler has only been ruler for about 4 years and thus still has the 'short reign' negative modifier, reflecting the instability around new monarchs, so this is a fairly stable situation, though some attention to the independence faction (mostly North African rulers looking to break away) must be paid, in this case probably by courting the good opinion of some of the key members. A faction's power is computed as a comparison of the military forces available to the liege (both your own holding's armies and also the liege's slice of the levies of every non-faction member) as compared to the military forces available to the faction (the full army of each participating faction member), so that a vassal who joins a faction both subtracts their contribution from their liege's power and adds their entire army to the faction's power. Factions under 80% of the liege's power are effectively inert; factions with more than 80% of the liege's power gain 'discontent' rapidly and when this reaches 100%, the faction will deliver an ultimatum; if refused they will rebel, triggering a civil war. Vassal contributions to their liege are generally fairly small (typically around c. 25%), meaning that it generally takes only a sizable minority of vassals to be in a faction before they have sufficient strength to make demands. And in case it isn't clear, civil wars resulting from vassal factions are very bad. For one, the way the discontent threshold works, factions will only make demands if they have a good chance of winning. It is possible to trigger vassal factions early by unjustly imprisoning a faction member, but the knock-on-effects of the sudden burst of 'tyranny' modifiers can easy leave a ruler who does that with bigger problems. At the same time, of course a civil war means a situation in which the kingdom's military strength is cannibalizing itself, which can leave the kingdom extremely vulnerable to external powers, while all of the fighting and besieging can cause medium-term economic problems through the 'control' mechanic (which we'll come back to in a moment). Needless to say, as a liege, the player wants their vassals kept out of factions. There are a few 'strong' bars to vassals joining factions (that is they absolutely prohibit it rather than discouraging it): vassals cannot join a faction against their liege if they are their friend, lover or military ally, if the liege has a 'strong hook' on them (that is, they owe him a big factor or he has big blackmail on them, that kind of thing), or if they have at least 80 positive opinion of the liege (we'll cover opinion more in a moment). Vassals that are afraid of the liege (a product of 'dread') cannot join a faction unless it is over the 80% threshold to generate discontent; which makes dread a useful but dangerous tool that is entirely effective until you desperately need it at which point it is entirely ineffective. For a small realm with just a handful of vassals, controlling factions through personal relationships (friend, lover, ally) is possible. Alliances, as noted previously, require a close family connection (siblings, parents, or -in-law versions of the same), so the number of available allies is likely to be fairly limited, though a canny ruler is going to use strategic marriages to 'lock in' key vassals. Nevertheless, the larger the realm gets the less these strategies matter: with ten vassals, being besties with two and father-in-law to another two makes the realm stable; in a realm with fifty vassals, that's a rounding error on faction formation. [20221007112629_1][20221007112629_1]Jumping ahead again, by way of example here are the vassals in my realm right now who cannot because of personal relationship of some kind, join factions. Five are barred because they are underage, one is a friend and the other five are allies through relation (two brothers) or marriage ties (the rest). That's eleven total vassals 'neutralized' this way, in a realm where the Caliph has sixty-two direct vassals. Eleven is good, but it is not enough. Which leaves opinion (and dread) as a key tool in controlling vassals : by and large the player wants their vassals to have a positive opinion of them, even if (as feudal or tribal vassals), their opinion does not effect their troop contributions.^1 High opinion discourages hostile anti-liege scheming and faction formation, the latter in a sliding scale up to that positive-80 opinion where vassals cannot join a faction against you. Of course the reverse is true for negative opinion (character opinion ranges from +100 to -100): characters with massively negative opinion of their liege are almost guaranteed to form or join factions. For rulers with clan-type vassals whose taxes and levies vary based on opinion, the relationship between opinion and realm stability is intensified since this creates a sliding scale rather than a binary in terms of vassal contribution to realm stability (not in faction and supplying troops) or instability (in faction, supply troops to that faction). And finally, vassals with high opinion tend to have events and interactions with you (like swearing fealty, giving gifts, inviting you to feasts, etc.) which are beneficial, whereas vassals that hate your guts will do things like try to assassinate you. Fundamentally then, the stability of a kingdom is substantially dependent on the liege keeping positive opinion (as much as possible) of their vassals while also potentially maintaining some dread (to scare the malcontents). A Brief Aside on Realm Structure As a brief aside before we move on - the above statement is key for what comes next but is not the end of large-realm-maintenance strategy. I tend to most enjoy being the liege of fairly large realms, so this is a part of the game that gets a lot of my attention. The player as a king or emperor can improve their margin of error with factions also by building up the royal demesne - their personal holdings - to maximize revenue and levy generation, since you get 100% of your own levies in a civil war. In essence you then are reinvesting the taxes on your vassals to build up your ability to leverage your personal army against them (this is why, as you can see in my screenshots, I take so much care to avoid fragmenting my 'core' royal holdings even with partition - those are the most heavily improved counties in the kingdom and thus give my ruler a lot of power to play with). In addition, the player wants to avoid the emergence of jumbo-vassals with vast territory, because those fellows if they get out of control can easily become the core of a dangerous faction. The ideal stable kingdom then would be each duke with only one duchy, holding only the capital county of that duchy personally, with a single count on every other county, perfectly mapping the de jure boundaries. The limit to that strategy is that it reduces the kingdom's effective offensive power: by adding the maximum number of vassal layers between the king and the lowest rulers (the barons), a lot of military potential ends up trapped locally. Let's assume a duchy with 5 counties, each county has 3 holdings and each holding generates 100 levies; so the whole thing has 1,500 levies. If the duke holds all five county titles directly, he has 500 personal levies and his barons (all direct vassals) have 1,000 of which he gets a quarter (250), so he has 750 total levies which means you (the king) get 187 men from him in war time. But if his duchy is fragmented as intended here he has just 100 personal levies, plus 6 direct vassals (4 counts, 2 barons); each baron gives him 25 men, each count 37 (they have 100 personal, plus 50 indirect from their two barons), so his total is just 300 levy troops (100+(2*25)+ (4*37.5)), of which you the king only get 75 in war time. But at the same time, that means should that duke join a faction, he only removes 75 levies from the king's strength and adds only 300 to the faction's strength, which is a lot less dangerous than 187 and 750 respectively. This becomes substantially more important once a realm is large enough to require vassal kings to stay under the vassal limit (a factor for those looking to rebuild the Roman Empire, for instance). [20221007112958_1][20221007112958_1]Jumping ahead again, here you can see my efforts to keep vassals 'right-sized' to make them easier to control (I've enabled the 'direct vassal' view so you can see all of the vassals under my main title). The largest yellow Isbaniya chunk is the royal realm, which as you can see is quite large (and also well developed); my own personal territory (including baron-tier vassals) provides around 12,000 troops (including men-at-arms), substantially more than any vassal (indeed, more than my top four vassals combined) which helps to make the realm resilient against factions. In my own experience, the benefits to realm stability in breaking up (when you can do so without tyranny) vassals who have begun 'consolidating' their own de jure areas (that is, their duchies) generally outweigh the lost military power for most large realms if the player has also been diligent in building up the main royal core, because that royal core (and the mercenaries and men-at-arms units it supports) will provide the necessary military core. At the same time, as crown authority increases, the problem implied here reduces because each layer's contribution of levies and taxes upward increases, which reduces the difference between a duke with a bunch of count vassals and a duke that holds his entire duchy personally. On the flipside, avoiding 'double dukes' (or dukes that end up having lots of non-de jure vassals) is a much more clear-cut priority. A duke that consolidates two whole duchies is likely to be approaching the personal realm holdings of the king or emperor and is thus a substantial threat. When I run large realms I am generally on the lookout for opportunities to break up such situations, by a variety of means. If the ruler in question is caught committing a crime, that can be used to break up the titles via revocation, as can enforced partition as part of the feudal contract in realms that have adopted single-heir succession systems. It can even make sense to take some tyranny to 'clean up' titles if your ruler is well ensconced on the throne, to make things easier for a future heir who lacks that advantage; my own pet name for this slow-motion 'rolling revocation' strategy is 'revoke-a-palooza.' The reason you, as the player, may need all of these strategies is that while your current ruler may be a charismatic diplomat with great skills and a robust opinion bonus from having a long reign, his heir may be none of these things. Succession is always the moment of maximum peril for large realms, precisely because a new ruler is weak and succession creates lots of potential claimants for unhappy vassals to rally around. Building up the 'margin of safety' thus keeps the realm stable through generations by centralizing power around the monarch. Of course a player can carry out this kind of state-building to a degree that isn't very historical, focusing relentlessly on it over multiple generations. That digression out of the way, on with the show. [20220925211920_1][20220925211920_1]Back to where we were in the playthrough, Ajannas III is well-suited to the task. The idea here is to destroy the kingdom of al-Sarq, which will give us enough of Iberia to form the Empire of Hispania title (which because we have Arabic as our language will be Isbaniya), and then revassalize the fragments of our kingdom, Castalla and Navarra. Fortunately, as a clan ruler, we have access to the one-use-per-lifetime 'invade kingdom' casus belli, allowing us to seize al-Sarq. So we do that. Opinion and Prestige In CKIII, every character has an opinion of every other character within their diplomatic range, which represents how much they like or dislike that character, in a range from positive 100 to negative 100. Opinion calculation is simple: a character's opinion of you is simple sum of all of the modifiers. What is complex is that there are a lot of possible modifiers, but we can group them into just a few 'buckets' to understand how the game system processes them. The key thing is positive opinion modifiers reward the player for acting within the expectations of medieval rulership while breaking with those expectations will generally anger vassals and lower their opinion. So let's walk through the major categories of opinion modifiers. First off there are a set of 'relations' modifiers (friend, soulmate, rival, etc.); generally characters will only have a few of these over their lifetime. In addition to this there are a bunch of personal modifiers based on actions you have taken: giving someone a gift makes them happy, trying to have them assassinated makes them quite upset. These individual modifiers matter in the game because all rulership is personal but when we are thinking about realm stability with lots of vassals, it is really the modifiers that impact the most characters that matter the most (though absolutely infuriating a powerful vassal or two can absolutely wreck a kingdom). So we're going to focus on global modifiers to vassals (be they vassal specific or general for everyone). Then there is a ruler's personality and skills. The Diplomacy skill provides a flat bonus or penalty to character opinion, reflecting your ruler's ability to actually do the work of court interactions (high diplomacy skill also frequently gives 'outs' in difficult events to avoid offending people). On top of this, personality matters; while most characters like characters with the same trait as them and dislike characters with the opposite trait, certain traits are liked or disliked by vassals generally. Brave, Just, and Patient all give general vassal opinion bonuses, while Craven, Stubborn, Arbitrary, Impatient, Paranoid and Sadistic all give penalties.^2 The bonuses and penalties of these traits tend to be small, ranging from +5 to -10; they stack but characters generally only have three traits, limiting how high they can be stacked. [20221007113748_1][20221007113748_1]An example of just how many modifiers you can end up with to produce a single opinion score. While a lot of these are cultural, notice how many are from doing rulership (Court Grandeur, commissioning a history (the Al-Yiliqichronicon), personal diplomacy, illustrious (that's the fame bonus), being brave, held a large feast) and how many of the penalties are failures to do rulership (tyranny, holding too many duchy titles, doing too much offensive warfare, being impatient and stubborn). More pervasive is the fame modifier, ranging from negative 10 to positive 30 for all secular rulers; every character has a fame level. The way fame works is that various prestigious actions (holding hunts, having or creating titles, being lauded, winning battles, etc.) give a character prestige and fame in equal amounts; prestige is a resource that is then spent to do things, while fame accumulates. Fame can be lost, but only rarely so; in practice fame is the sort of lifetime value of all of the prestige your character has earned. Splendor, a sort of dynasty-wide fame rating, starts characters off at birth with prestige (they benefit from a famous name), so building dynasty splendor is a strategy to give all of your rulers a leg up in terms of holding together a kingdom. In some ways the inverse of fame's effect is tyranny, a negative modifier with effectively no limit that a character gains every time they take what are perceived as unjust actions (imprisonment without cause, that sort of thing). It decays slowly and lowers the opinion of all vassals and all courtiers, which can obviously be quite bad since the former make factions and the latter are effective agents in schemes against you. Individual tyrannical acts range from -5 to -20 opinion, but they stack so that repeatedly acting tyrannically can compile much larger negative modifiers. Unlike in previous games where characters remembered specific acts of tyranny, in CKIII, tyranny is more of a general reputation. Already we can make some observations about how this system functions. First, vassals care about a ruler's character, though not as much as they care about a ruler's actions. A brave, just, patient ruler's opinion bonus will be entirely swamped by unjustly imprisoning just one vassal (and they'll also pick up a bunch of stress for it, because they're just). At the same time, while vassals react very negatively to sources of tyranny, they aren't looking for a 'nice guy' ruler either. Instead, they value prestige, and so it is worth looking at how prestige is acquired. The main sources of passive prestige (and thus fame) are the titles a ruler holds personally, with a percentage bonus from diplomacy skill added on top.^3 Added to this are prestige bonuses from personal and court artifacts which can add up quickly to a substantial bonus; being the head of a large dynasty is also a major prestige bonus. But what I want to note is the sort of 'outer edge of the possible' for this, for which let me introduce you to Emperor Konstantinos VII, ruler of the re-established Roman Empire, Emperor, King (3x), Duke (2x), Count (11x), with a maxxed out court, a diplomacy of 16, both Joyeuse and Curtana and effectively infinite wealth: [20221003142536_1][20221003142536_1]Like I said, I enjoy managing large realms. This particular screenshot is from my last pre-Struggle for Iberia game. He has 23.9 monthly prestige, which is a ton. Needless to say even most independent kings will only have a fraction of this. But getting to the maximum fame level requires earning 25,000 prestige which at this rate will take 87 years. Clearly there must be other ways of getting prestige to get those sweet, sweet secular opinion bonuses. And there are! Both feasts and hunts can provide prestige, especially if you have a lavish royal court with lots of servants and good food, but those decisions are expensive and can only be fired once every five years. But I'll cut to the chase: successful warfare is the main driver of massive fame. Declaring war itself requires an investment of either prestige or its religious equivalent, piety (but not fame or its religious equivalent, devotion); you have to spend some political capital to bring all of your vassals to war and this reflects that expenditure. But most war types also reward prestige to the winner of the war, and they tend to reward quite a lot of it. For instance, it costs 100 prestige to declare a war to recover de jure territory from another ruler^4, but if you win you receive the land and 300 prestige (split between all of your allies, but if you attacked alone, you get all of it). Now that means if successful you 'net' 200 prestige, but 300 fame (because prestige but not fame were spent declaring war) and now you have the 'seed' prestige to immediately declare war again (on someone else). This is why, for instance, when I needed to hit a high fame level in my House al-Yiliqi playthrough, my kingdom embarked on a sudden conquest spree in the Maghreb - that was the necessary process of building the political capital to do what I wanted. That's actually not even the limit of this. Battles provide fame or devotion if you win them (sieges reward gold instead), so a war with lots of big battles (that you win) will reward even more fame than just the prestige for winning. Moreover, big conquests may also mean situations in which ducal or royal titles can be either created or usurped from their old holders (because you now have all of that territory), which rewards another 300 prestige for ducal titles and 400 for kingdom titles. For comparison again, the passive prestige of ruling 3/4ths of the Roman World was just 23.9 per month, just under 300 per year. At almost any stage of the game there is far more prestige to be earned by successful warfare than through any other source, often an order of magnitude more. And the high fame bonus is really big; it is a 40-point swing in vassal opinion from no fame to the highest fame. In short then, the games mechanics drive the player - even a player who merely wants an internally secure realm - towards external warfare. Why? Constructing Legitimacy Which brings us back to international relations theory! We've already met IR realism, which contends that states pursue their material interests and tries to understand state action through that lens, as well as emotional choice theory which contends that apart from these material concerns, the emotional states and incentives of individual decision-makers matter. But this sort of game model, which encourages the player to take certain actions (and we'll look at actions-not-war in a moment because they fit here too) not necessarily because of the territorial results but because of how they would be perceived by peers and vassals because of the way those choices fit how those peers and vassals understand the role of a ruler, that sits largely outside of these concerns. Emotional-choice leaders are guided largely by the desire to produce or avoid specific feelings, while IR realist states are essentially amoral actors looking to maximize security and power, considering the opinions of other states only in as much as they might interfere with those goals. This is something quite different. Here the monarch's actions are guided by cultural expectations and institutional structures (vassalage itself being the key institution here) as much as practical utility. Which at last brings us to the next big international relations theory field: constructivism. The central idea of constructivist thinking in international relations is to regard decision-making as fundamentally shaped by institutional and cultural factors (which are 'socially constructed' - a fancy way of saying 'made by humans' - thus the term constructivism). Rulers and leaders under a constructivist framework do not so much make rational, Machiavellian calculations to maximize strategic benefit as they aim to perform rulership or leadership, in whatever form that takes in their culture: they make decisions within a cultural script provided for them. That form, in turn, in constructivist thought, is shaped by social and historical factors (which is just a fancy way of saying, 'it comes about culturally over time as a consequence of that culture's history'). [20220927215004_1-1][20220927215004_1-1]Ta-da! Turns out I miscounted a touch and seizing some land from Navarra was also necessary to get to the right size, but the crown of Navarra still exists, so future rulers can set to work vassalizing it diplomatically, thus preserving the cadet branches of our dynasty, which I've decided is a priority here. Leaders and rulers, in this framework are thus not so much dune buggies ranging over the wide open desert with an infinite number of choices as they are cars navigating a culturally determined highway system with a limited number of lanes, roads and turns, their choices constricted by the need or desire to 'perform rulership.' I should note that while 'perform' and 'performativity' are the standard academic language, especially in the humanities, for these kinds of interactions, that does not mean the performance is insincere (the strong implication from the word 'perform' that the performance is insincere is one of the reasons I find 'performativity' an unsatisfying framework in which to understand historical actors. Academics who use the term will insist it does not have this meaning and then go and use it exactly in this way in common speech. People in the past generally believed their own religion and ideology and were generally invested in the values of their culture!). Indeed, a ruler growing up within a culture is very likely to have internalized that model of how rulers ought to behave and when decisions come up be guided as much by the idea of 'I want to be a good ruler and good rulers do X' than 'doing X will convince the people I am a good ruler.' In CKIII, this the constructivist vision is expressed in two ways: the game both blocks and nudges. For the blocks, some actions are simply unavailable if they sit well outside a character's accepted cultural milieu. The clearest example of this is the inability to declare unjustified wars (something that can be done in EUIV); though the culturally relevant excuses to go to war differ from one culture to the next and differ based on the target, such an excuse is required. But most of the impacts are nudges: tyranny penalties for some things, vassal opinion bonuses for others, showing the player the culturally preferred path of rulership, which they can take or deviate from as they wish. In history, the idea that rulership is strongly shaped by cultural and historic factors in this way is so strongly embedded and pervasive in our approaches that it doesn't have its own 'school' the way that it does in political science and international relations theory. It does, however, lead to, I'd argue, two broad approaches to studying what kings do and how they are understood, though of course most historians mix these methods. The most materialistic approach is what I'm going to call - for lack of a more theorized term - studying 'kinging.' This approach assumes that kings are what they do, that the best way to chart the social assumptions that inform kingship are to chart the actions of kings, the structure of their administrations and so on. In the ancient world, this approach is very strongly associated with Fergus Millar's magisterial The Emperor in the Roman World (1977), but the same method has been employed for the various monarchies of the medieval Mediterranean world. As we'll see, the nature of the many fragmented states of Europe has tended to mean that each polity has to be studied as its own sui generis creature; not one model of medieval kingship but many. [20220927215447_1][20220927215447_1]Our man Ajannas III (forming the new empire actually breaks the numbering, since the primary title changes, but I'm going to keep calling him Ajannas III) does most of the rest of his warfare internally, while nurturing a friendship with the king of Leon which will eventually allow us to peacefully vassalize that Christian kingdom (with a promise of religious protection), giving us two decent-sized Christian vassals in Spain (which, you will recall, was part of the aim here: a multiculturally, multi-religious realm). The other approach, far more common in medieval studies in my experience, is to study kingship, which is to say the ideological and literary constructs that medieval people - mostly authors, most of whom were members of the clergy, but also medieval people more broadly - built around the institution, as a means of understanding how the institution was understood. This is a subset of the Annales school's emphasis on mentalites and it is no shock that it is pervasive in medieval studies, given that Marc Bloch, an enormously influential scholar of medieval Europe, was also one of the most important figures in the development of the Annales school. Mentalites here are the ways in which people in the past understood and thought about their world; often, as it turns out, quite differently than we do today. While the study of mentalites is most often associated with a 'history from below' approach (also part of the Annales school), the study of kingship is more often a question of what are effectively elite mentalites, expressed through writings on kingship. Fortunately for historians, the literate elite of the Middle Ages wrote a lot about kingship and its place in elite values. Sometimes they did so explicitly in that frame in the form of 'mirrors for princes' - guides on how to rule well. But just as often this is taking place in the chronicles and histories they are producing as well. Scholars of kingship (and indeed, of polity-formation more broadly) will thus point out that the authors writing these chronicles are often engaged not merely in recording events and facts but in constructing (that word again) kingship as an institution an ideological construct as they do so, building a framework for future kings and future vassals to understand their role. As with research on the mechanics of kingship itself, the programs of literary legitimacy building for kings tend not to fit a single ideological pattern but vary by author, monarch and dynasty. As an aside, one of the most wonderful things added in DLC so far for me was realizing that you, as a king or emperor, can commission or sponsor such works, exactly as a historical ruler might, encouraging (with money and a spot at court) an author in your kingdom to write about your grand lineage and deeds. Moreover, once written such a book can be displayed in your court, where it grants prestige and sometimes a small boost to vassal opinion, which is, it seems to me, exactly what the kings who commissioned or encouraged such works thought they were getting out of them (and often, by the by, the circulation of such works was similarly limited; the point wasn't that everyone always read them but that the existence of a grand chronicle of your house testified itself to your legitimacy and right to rule). It immediately put me in mind of works like the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (written by Guillaume de Jumieges, later expanded and revised by Orderic Vitalis), a laudatory history of the Normans up to (and eventually beyond) the conquest of England which is also engaged in constructing legitimacy for William I and his descendants. I legitimately giggled for for a few minutes when I saw that you could do this because it is such a medieval-kingship thing to do.^5 The fundamental idea here is legitimacy; the king cannot rule by force alone and so must convince his most important supporters (those key vassals with their own private armies) that his rule is legitimate. This kind of 'legitimacy building' often seems strange to students coming from modern liberal democracies because those modern government forms rely on the deep well of legitimacy inherent in a democratic process ('our decision' being more legitimate by nature than 'my decision'), but such legitimacy-building was and remains a crucial tool for monarchies of all kinds. [20220929220956_1][20220929220956_1]The destruction of al-Sarq ended up creating a couple of independent counties on the border between Aquitaine and Spain, which the king of Aquitaine started attacking. Never one to miss out on a fight, Ajannas responded by declaring a kingdom-tier holy war in response. Normally doing this would clear out all of the Christian rulers all the way down when we won, but due to Muwalladism's 'pluralism' doctrine, this just vassalizes them, leaving the empire now with a large number of Christian vassals. The valuable distinction here is between two kinds of methods to get people to do what you want, the dichotomy, as Hannah Arendt presents it in "On Violence" (1972), between violence and power. A king's options for direct coercion - for the use of violence to make other people obey - was always limited (and reliant on getting the men doing the violence to obey without themselves being violenced against), but it was extremely limited for medieval kings whose key subjects also had armies and castles. Instead they had to rely on power - on the ability to coordinate voluntary collective action - in order to get things done or at least in order to get enough of their armed subordinates on board to coerce the rest. Legitimacy - the sense that the king's rule is rightful and his orders are, in general, to be obeyed - is the tool by which that power is supported. Fundamental to these notions of legitimacy was the idea of the kingship as a customary institution. As moderns, we are enamored with the idea of progress and change, but by and large pre-modern thinking was that things should continue to be done the way they have always been done, which makes a lot of sense in a world where technological and social change moved quite slowly. Kingship fits neatly into this mold: a good king was a king who practiced kingship in the way that kingship had always been practiced, fulfilling traditional models of how kings were supposed to behave and act. By doing that, or at least appearing to do that, kings could build the necessary legitimacy, lasting over generations, which enabled them to impel their collective subordinates to action. In particular, the king's traditional roles generally fit under three large headers: chief priest, chief judge, and chief general - that is the religious, legal and military head of a society. But the military role is peculiar of the three; the first two roles are judged based on how they conform to past practice and cultural ideals, but military performance is judged against results. Consequently, military performance becomes the 'proof in the pudding,' as it were, for the other two: a king that is successful on the battlefield must be so because they rule well in peacetime (and thus have a well-run kingdom with a good army) and because whatever Higher Powers may be interested were on their side. That then feeds back into the model of kingship: because the ideal king is successful on the battlefield, the actual king must seek battlefields on which to be successful. The performance of kingship by the socially constructed models present in these societies demands military performance and so conflicts must be found to do that performance. The balance of CKIII's prestige system pushes the player in exactly this direction, since the secular opinion bonuses of fame are so high and the best way to get fame is to spend prestige declaring wars you then win. That allows vassal opinion to be kept high (and some high opinion rolls over to your ruler's heir for a few years after succession), because the king is doing kingship (here, military activity) well. The game then mirrors this same structure for the 'chief judge' role as well with the Royal Court DLC. I've discussed this DLC already but here I want to briefly note how it adopts the same prestige/fame economy: it costs prestige to hold court (you can do so every five years). Doing so gives your character three dilemmas to resolve; getting favorable resolutions either by leveraging the treasury (vassals like generous kings!) or by being wise and skilled rewards further prestige and all gains of prestige are gains in fame, so the player spends political capital (the prestige investment) for the chance to win legitimacy (fame if you perform well). The effects aren't nearly as strong as warfare and that makes a lot of sense: these are military aristocrats, after all. But it fits in the same mold. However fame, while a major component of how the game models legitimacy, is not the only system for doing so. Remember that there are a lot of either general opinion or vassal opinion modifiers. Fame is one of the largest, but a character's traits (like Brave or Just, but as we'll see these can be culture and religion specific too!) matter. A number of lifestyle traits also boost opinion either directly (like 'Administrator,' +5 vassal opinion) or indirectly through a diplomacy bonus (like the 'Eager reveler' trait from doing lots of feasting, but beware because a character that does that can also pick up the 'drunkard' trait which is sharply disapproved of by some but not all religions/cultures!). On the other hand, holding personally more territory than you can inherit upsets vassals, as does acts of tyranny, but also acts a culture disapproves of (which can vary, culture to culture, see below). Consequently, the way CKIII models legitimacy is through a multitude of bonuses and penalties which bear on vassal opinion. Collectively the things that provide bonuses to vassal opinion - high fame (from military success), good diplomacy, holding feasts, giving fair judgement, commissioning histories of your house and displaying them - all together form the game's model of building legitimacy through performing a sort of ideal kingship in line with cultural expectations. By contrast, doing the things which provide penalties to vassal opinion - tanking fame by declaring wars without 'just cause' (the prestige to pay for it), committing crimes, having culturally or religiously disapproved of traits or lifestyles and so - do the inverse, undermining a character's legitimacy and promoting the formation of dangerous factions that undermine the unity of the kingdom. Legitimacy is very present in CKIII, not as a single system, but as an interaction of many systems which in turn influence vassal behavior. That said, we've been talking a lot about general features - every ruler is using prestige and fame (and the religious equivalents, piety and devotion, which naturally speak to the 'chief priest' kingship role). But of course as implied by the constructivist framing here, these roles are socially constructed (which again, just means 'a thing that humans made rather than a thing that occurs in nature without humans.' 'Socially constructed' does not mean 'fake.') ^6 which in turn implies that while there many be some common, cross-cultural features (like king-as-warleader), there also ought to be a lot of cultural particularity. What a 'good king' looks like in one society isn't going to be precisely what a 'good king' looks like in another, and so the job of building legitimacy is going to change from one to the other. Which brings us to... Legitimacy, Culture and Religion The way that CKIII deals with both culture and religion represents a significant shift from CKII. In the earlier game there were a set number of cultures and religions, some with bespoke mechanics (most religions and a few cultures) but the whole system was fairly inflexible and yet at the same time often had minimal impact on gameplay. The main impact of the system was merely to make multicultural realms less stable and efficient than monocultural realms. By contrast, culture and religion are much more complexly modeled in CKIII and - important for this post - have an impact on the game's understanding of legitimacy. Both culture and religion are, in the first place, modular. Each culture consists of an ethos (one of seven core values), four 'pillars' (language, but also an aesthetic which determines how characters of the culture dress, etc.), and then a series of traditions. Traditions are modular quirks of individual cultures, such as a preference for certain kinds of soldiers (heavy infantry, archers, etc.), familiarity with certain kinds of terrain, a tradition of monasticism, or traditions around activities like feasting or dueling. There are a lot of these and they can have a modest but noticable impact on gameplay, especially where they allow certain activites to occur more often or be taken without gateway perks (e.g. 'Tabletop Warriors' for cultures that place a high value on board games like chess, which in turn makes being challenged to friendly (or not so friendly) board games a regular occurrence). This modular structure also allows the game to simulate cultural blending and drift more easily (and giving the player some agency in it). [Untitled-drawing][Untitled-drawing]Examples of the Religion and Culture screens, where you can see the culture's pillars and traditions and the religion's tenets and doctrines displayed (though note that both scroll downward). These are modular and the player can try to start a new branch of their religion or, as the largest ruler of a given culture, try to reshape their culture (though the prestige cost is considerable, reflecting the tremendous political capital needed to make such changes 'stick.') Religion is similarly modular in how it is modeled. Characters each have a faith which is then part of a religion which is then part of a religious family, which allows the game to distinguish between different religions, branches of religions, heterodoxies and heresies within those branches and so on. Like culture, each faith has a set of tenets which inform its function in game, both a set of modular bonuses much like culture traditions but also a set of doctrines on the role of the clergy, marriage and what acts are considered criminal or shunned. Each religion (so a bundle of faiths) also has its own list of 'virtues' (preferred traits) and 'sins' (disfavored traits). The combined effect of all of these little factors is to change, sometimes in subtle ways but often in quite pronounced ones, what traits and actions improve or damage a liege's standing among their vassals, which is to say what traits and actions build or damage legitimacy. The differences are generally fairly small - no in-game religion prefers cowards or murderers to brave or just people, for instance - but then the range of human moral codes is not infinite either. Nevertheless, a vengeful hard-feasting (and hard-drinking) Norse-religion ruler with a high martial education and the 'poet' trait in a culture with the 'Chanson de Geste' cultural tradition is going to be highly regarded: vengeful and poet are both favored by the religion and martial education by the cultural trait. But take that same ruler traits but put them in a Muslim context and suddenly the hard-drinking damages the character's appeal to others; put the character in a Byzantine context and vengeful is now a serious character flaw (global opinion malus) while that character's martial prowess, while not disapproved of, provides no general opinion bonus. Meanwhile some of these tenets and traditions open up entirely new interactions or substantially change existing ones. Several traditions, like Druzhina and Futuwaa open up the option to have either serious to-the-death duels or sparring duels. Different faiths have different understandings of religious war and pilgrimage, even within a single religion, leading to different activities and bonuses for doing them. Thus a Muslim ruler can earn some legitimacy (general opinion bonus) by performing the Hajj; most Christian rulers can do something similar with a Christian pilgrimage, whereas for the Tengri with the 'ancestor worship' tenet, doing so only grants a close family opinion modifier. If anything, as a historian I wish these impacts were much stronger, encouraging very different forms of royal display and action. One difference that jumps out to me as not being modeled as fully are cultural assumptions about the king's role in the army. My sense is that most players keep their ruler out of army leadership because that is a high risk profession and surprise successions are bad, but in a lot of cultures that choice for an adult male ruler should be effectively impossible or at least badly politically damaging. Attitudes in different cultures here shifted over time, which makes a good fit for the culture system's traditions, which can also change over time.^7 I suspect this is the direction the game is trending in any event. The 'Tabletop Warriors' and 'Malleable Subjects' traditions added with the Iberia DLC are both relatively more impactful on gameplay, the former leading to a different form of culturally important activity (lots of chess), while the latter changes the shape your kingdom takes culturally, making multicultural realms more stable. Looking at what the developers are talking about in terms of what kind of content they intend to make, it seems safe to bet that future cultural flavor packs are likely to come with more impactful culture traditions or religious tenets, especially using new traditions as the 'wrappers' to contain a whole bunch of new event lines. I hope this is the direction they go; the system here seems to provide a good foundation to express the many different models of rulership at work in this period, but as of now that foundation isn't fully utilized. [20221003233705_1][20221003233705_1]Ajannas III passes away in 1028, leaving the throne to his son Muntasir (once again, there's been some careful title management to keep the royal realm from being partitions badly), who now takes the helm of a large, polyglot, multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire. With a diplomacy of 21, a diplomatic education and the diplomatic court trait, Muntasir is well equipped to manage. Performing Kingship Nevertheless, I think the overall focus on rulership (which, when the developers discuss the game tends to be discussed under the heading of 'roleplay' but since the only role you play is some form of ruler, the overlap is considerable) is broadly successful and also quite innovative for a strategy title. Getting that to work in CKIII requires all three of the design elements that we've discussed so far. Fragmentation is necessary so that the player has subordinates whose opinions matter, rather than merely opponents to be defeated, while the personalistic system of rule encourages the player to think about how their actions will impact the views and behaviors of peers, vassals and their liege (should they have one). With those pillars in place, the game doesn't have to pull the player out for a lecture on constructivism or kingship: instead players are going to rapidly note, especially when running a large realm that anything with a general opinion or vassal opinion bonus is very valuable to realm stability and that staying king or emperor over multiple generations is going to require racking up as many of those things as possible. And off the player goes, performing kingship (or failing to do so and finding their realm cracks up under the pressure of faction wars). In the process it provides a striking example of how often foreign policy is domestic policy by other means, as players routinely will use foreign policy (especially warfare) as a potential solution for domestic policy problems, which works in societies where military success is the ultimate marker of successful kingship. And I can't stress how unusual this approach, trying to get the player to play like a historical figure and to understand the concerns that shaped their behavior, is in this genre. Short of ultra-niche titles like King of Dragon Pass, most strategy games never put the player in a situation where the cultural and institutional constraints on their actions are so extensively modeled. Instead, most historical strategy games put the player in charge of a unitary state with near absolute power. To the degree that culture or religion are modeled, they more often exist the way that they do in the Civilization games, as beliefs for other people^8 which are putty to be molded into the desired form by the player's will, rather than as long-lasting structures which shape and constrain actors.^9 But in CKIII, religion and culture are not 'for other people,' but rather are fundamental shaping constraints on the possibility space for the player; culture is the sandbox they must play in. There are other sandboxes they could move to, but in all cases there will be a box and they will be in it. CKIII's design, built around personal rule, allow it to consider systems that are larger than any one ruler, and that is fantastic. Now I should note that we've ignored the other component of how the game simulates legitimacy, the 'popular opinion' modifier, which we'll get to next week as we take a look at how CKIII handles armies, unconventional polities and the other half of the vassalage-manorialism pair that makes up feudalism. Share this: * Twitter * Facebook * 1. Opinion also matters for lots of intrigue and since members of your council - typically powerful vassals - are potentially agents in schemes against you, having them like you is an important way to plug gaps in your personal security. 2. Sadistic's penalty is actually global, rather than just vassals. 3. I have tended to avoid giving ranges for skill-bonuses because technically skills can go all the way to 100, though in practice skills above 20 are exceedingly rare. At 20 diplomacy, a character gets +12% monthly prestige. That's a meaningful, but not overwhelming bonus. It certainly doesn't change the balance of what I'm about to point out. 4. That is, your title or the title of your vassal ought to make you a ruler of a place, but someone else has it, you can declare war to go get it. 5. Though realistically it should also probably give you a malus that makes tyranny accumulate more quickly, since now with a history of your house on offer, vassals can more easily accuse you of breaking with the ancient and customary practice of your ancestors when you revoke all of their titles and imprison them. 6. By way of example, which side of the road we drive on is socially constructed and entirely contingent. It could be - and indeed in many countries, is - the opposite of however you do it. But just because this is constructed doesn't mean it isn't real; if you drive on the wrong side of the road, you will soon have a very bad time. 7. By way of example early Roman emperors absolutely did not lead armies in the field, a norm that weakened in the second century AD and then inverted in the third. By the end of the third century the emperor always moved with the main field army, the comitatenses. But that norm wasn't stable either; by the early Middle Ages Eastern Roman Emperors were back to dispatching subordinates with the armies, as Justinian (r. 527-565) did, until the practice changed again with Heraclius (r. 610-641). 8. And you know how much that vision of past religions frustrates me ! 9. Structures here is (surprise!) another idea out of the Annales school, which divides history conceptually into three: short-term changes ('events' or evenements), mid-term shifting conditions and periods of rapid change ('conjunctures') and then la longue duree, long-term historical structures (geography, climate, mentalites, etc.). The Annales approach is explicit in prioritizing those structures over the other two, though of course sometimes major events can fundamentally alter underlying structures. Like this: Like Loading... * Tagged * Culture * Customs * IR Constructivism * Kingship * Legitimacy * Medieval * Middle Ages * Paradox * Paradox Development Studio * Political Systems * Religion * Social History [3f4e8a2b40][3f4e8a2b40] Published by Bret Devereaux View all posts by Bret Devereaux Published October 7, 2022 Post navigation Previous Post Collections: Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part IIb: Cracks in the House of Islam 87 thoughts on "Collections: Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Constructivisting a Kingdom" 1. [137e4][137e4] Sean vas Terra (@CaelReader) says: October 7, 2022 at 12:47 pm Interesting that large-scale offensive warfare is the best way to generate Fame and Prestige, and yet Vassals start accumulating an "Offensive War" penalty the longer you stay in such wars (unless you are a Warmonger religion, in which case being at peace for too long accumulates that penalty!) That means vassals basically prefer quick, decisive wars in which they win gloriously and can go home, rather than committing their troops to a years-long struggle. Loading... Reply 1. [ce699][ce699] Alex Rose says: October 7, 2022 at 1:23 pm They only get that penalty if you're using *their* troops to fight the war Loading... Reply 1. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 7, 2022 at 1:34 pm Which makes sense because they're paying for the troo- wait, no they aren't. I have to pay for them! Loading... Reply 1. [705bb][705bb] Mary says: October 7, 2022 at 10:43 pm They're manpower. Presumably your lord has use for them elsewhere even if it's not made clear in the mechanic. Loading... Reply 2. [b8a9b][b8a9b] Sheliak says: October 8, 2022 at 3:43 pm But as long as you've got those troops, *they* can't use them to launch wars and gain prestige of their own! Loading... Reply 2. [7effa][7effa] Richard says: October 7, 2022 at 10:14 pm That was true for CK2, but I believe the opinion malus happens regardless in CK3 Loading... Reply 2. [836c8][836c8] cptbutton says: October 7, 2022 at 1:13 pm "And, as always, if you want to be my vassal, my levy and tax contribution rates are customary and reasonable; you can pledge fealty via Patreon." But how can one man serve [counting] twenty-three lords? Loading... Reply 1. [b318d][b318d] Not Fenimore says: October 7, 2022 at 4:05 pm I've pledged fealty to Jimmy Maher, all Bret gets is homage, sorry. Loading... Reply 2. [705bb][705bb] Mary says: October 7, 2022 at 10:52 pm Talent! Loading... Reply 3. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 7, 2022 at 1:31 pm My sense is that most players keep their ruler out of army leadership because that is a high risk profession and surprise successions are bad Well, mostly I do it because my ruler is bad at it. I'm pretty sure nothing bad can happen to an army commander if you win the fight (knights are another story, but the player cannot be a knight) and I try to avoid losing battles anyways. However, I tend to go for stewardship or diplomacy over martial, so usually my ruler is a middling commander at best and doesn't have a commander trait. There's a +5 "leading own troops" advantage boost but that rarely makes you the top general. With the latest dev diary announcing they plan to include the entire Old World, which I presume includes China, I'm really curious how they intend to handle China, which was specifically ruled out in CK2 because its government form was just too different. Loading... Reply 1. [ce699][ce699] Alex Rose says: October 7, 2022 at 8:05 pm Ideally they could do China by making government form mutable, just like culture and religion are now. Loading... Reply 1. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 7, 2022 at 9:15 pm The problem is mainly that it's a burecratic state that appoints people to jobs based on their test scores and reassigns them a lot and generally does not have much dynastic succession at lower levels. It's certainly possible to create a government in the system that works like that, but then it's rather hard to play a dynasty. There's two existing governments with nondynastic succession but they're unplayable for that reason. Loading... Reply 1. [ce699][ce699] natural20 says: October 8, 2022 at 1:17 am Yes but succession based on high levels of a certain attribute was already present for CK2's imperial system so all they have to do is remove the elective part and calculate the inheritance of lower titles based entirely on ability score. It would be tough to play as "regulalry" but the lifepath system would let you subvert it really easy. Loading... Reply 2. [6efa8][6efa8] NVA says: October 8, 2022 at 12:18 pm In ck2 merchant republics are playable. They can copy their mechanics. Loading... Reply 2. [bd925][bd925] danvolodar says: October 8, 2022 at 10:02 am It's especially interesting since in the very same dev diary they say that a separate mechanic for empires (such as the Eastern Romans) is a long ways off. Perhaps they're planning to expand the playing area South before they go East? Loading... Reply 3. [8ea90][8ea90] Endymionologist says: October 8, 2022 at 2:59 pm Effectively they'd have to start by adding a Title tier; either something above Empire, or by renaming the current Empire tier to something smaller-sounding and making Empires so big that they almost never happen organically. Loading... Reply 4. [7d1a5][7d1a5] Misha says: October 7, 2022 at 1:37 pm All right, I've finally been convinced to play Crusader Kings. You win! But I second the recommendation for Tyranny - it's a great game and tons of fun. Loading... Reply 5. [a1271][a1271] Derschnoorps says: October 7, 2022 at 1:40 pm Wait, in the Twitter thread announcing this post you say that kingship doesn't usually arise from tyranny but rather from legitimacy, but in the Fremen Mirage part I you said that kingship essentially arises from military force, and in one podcast you said that the state was essentially a "stationary bandit." These seem contradictory- does kingship come from legitimacy or extortion? Loading... Reply 1. [05af5][05af5] cfwlodarski says: October 7, 2022 at 2:05 pm As I understand it, it arises from extortion but it is maintained through legitimacy. Loading... Reply 2. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 7, 2022 at 2:07 pm You need to have legitimacy among the people doing the extorting. Notice that this entire part covers only relationships with lords who have military power to call upon. Those lords and their troops can then extort peasants, although even then they can't keep an eye on all peasants at all times and need to persuade people that either they should pay their full taxes out of a sense of obligation or that they'll really regret not doing so. As for legitimacy with the peasants, that's represented with Control and Popular Opinion, with Control being how effectively you collect taxes and Popular Opinion being how happy they are with you. This is per county and mostly affected by the direct holder of that county, so the main driver for landing people outside your religion and culture (which can give like -45 opinion right out the gate) is to reduce popular discontent. If Popular Opinion is low enough the counties can form factions and demand you lower control or give them independence. But you end up not much caring because they don't have much in the way of armor and weapons. Loading... Reply 3. [ec358][ec358] margaretlgill says: October 7, 2022 at 3:10 pm None of those statements are incompatible- the state is a "stationary bandit" because it relies on involuntary contributions from the people it rules over. However, generally speaking, states produce forms of legitimacy to explain why these involuntary contributions should continue. And kingship specifically generally arises from an ideological understanding of military force- if you accept that I will take some of what is yours, I will defend the rest of what is yours, and I am very good at that. And thus, kings generally must be capable at wielding military force to be seen as legitimate, because it is the use of that military force for particular purposes which makes them legitimate and more than just the head of an organized crime syndicate. Loading... Reply 1. [199ef][199ef] Peter Thomson says: October 8, 2022 at 8:38 am The 'stationary bandit' terminology devalues the state. Bandits don't give anything back. Any hierarchy has to have a culminating point - a point of final decision. Also, as some sociologists have pointed out - nested hierarchies are the only form that scales. A band of foragers can reach decisions by consensus after debate; a city cannot. So 'kings' or some such are inevitable when societies reach a certain size. The issue is the terms of trade within the hierarchy - how much the top gets, and on what terms, and what the state will provide (sadly often, the opportunity to plunder the neighbours). Loading... Reply 1. [bd925][bd925] danvolodar says: October 8, 2022 at 10:05 am Bandits (organized crime groups, anyway) can be no less called upon to revolve disputes or even sometimes to provide disaster relief (see yakuza practices) than states (particularly medieval ones). The difference between a well-run protection racket and a state in quantitative, not qualitative. Loading... Reply 2. [2c54e][2c54e] Peak Singularity says: October 8, 2022 at 10:54 am Didn't the classical Greek democratic city-states manage to rule more or less by consensus ? Loading... Reply 3. [705bb][705bb] Mary says: October 8, 2022 at 11:56 am Bandits can certainly give back by suppressing rival bandits. A stationary band might give back by occasional almsgiving to the poor. And of course there is no guarantee that a government will give back. Loading... Reply 4. [bb96d][bb96d] Simon_Jester says: October 8, 2022 at 12:53 pm @Peter Thomson >The 'stationary bandit' terminology >devalues the state. Bandits don't >give anything back. I think you're adopting an over-narrow definition of "bandit." A "bandit" in the sense of "an isolated outlaw hunted by the state" is likely to give little back because they cannot afford to give anything back. And in a sort of grim circular logic, this is what makes them an isolated outlaw with every man's hand turned against them. But a "bandit" in the sense that, say, a mob boss is a bandit? That's different. Such individuals must be seen to give something back, at least to their own followers and perhaps to the community those followers live in @Peak Singularity >Didn't the classical Greek democratic >city-states manage to rule more or >less by consensus ? Yes and no. In a typical polis, much of the population was disqualified from political discourse on account of being female, enslaved, or a noncitizen. They thus had no ability to participate in that consensus. Furthermore, there were many small poleis where the total citizen population was, if large by hunter-gatherer standards, not that large. We're talking here about populations that can all fit in a sizeable market square and be addressed by a single speaker as long as said speaker is a loud man and everyone else shuts up and listens. Loading... Reply 4. [e9c89][e9c89] ad (@ad98832376) says: October 7, 2022 at 3:19 pm "These seem contradictory- does kingship come from legitimacy or extortion?" They are not contradictory at all. As a example from immediate experience: The legitimate right of the government to be given your tax money is not in any way contradicted by it's threat to jail you if you don't give it that tax money. There are three ways to get people to do something: reward them for doing it, convince them they should to do it, or force them to do it. A ruler that wants to stay ruling had better be willing and able to use all three. And show some judgement about which to use and when to use it. Loading... Reply 5. [09e98][09e98] Arilou says: October 7, 2022 at 5:05 pm Well, that is one of those complicated issues that's tricky to get becuase by their very nature we usually don't have a historical record of exactly how kingship arises (because kingship usually predates the kinds of records that can show that kind of detail) it's entirely possible that there are both models. That said, kingship once created cannot be maintained by force alone, simply out of practicality. You need people to do what you want them to *even when you're not there and can do violence to them* (even moreso in a pre-modern society where you might be months away from actually being able to do violence to someone). And that's where legitimacy comes in. Now, fear is absolutely a part of this. But you can't use fear *alone*. You at least need to keep the guys you use to instil fear in other people loyal by some measure other than violence itself. (though a healthy mix of fear can be useful there too) Loading... Reply 6. [b4408][b4408] Kazik says: October 8, 2022 at 1:34 pm I'm not sure it is contradictory considering that a medieval king isn't (usually) governing a state. They don't have a monopoly on violence the way a state does and thus must rely even more on building legitimacy since they don't possess as much coercive force. Loading... Reply 6. [1c772][1c772] Adam says: October 7, 2022 at 1:45 pm Some unconnected thoughts. First off, as a chess nut, I want to pedantically note that what was being played in the timeframe that Crusader Kings covers isn't exactly chess as we know it today. It had different rules, especially in piece movement, to "Mad Queen's Chess" which is the current form of the game played at FIDE events and pretty much all casual formats. The Knight is the only piece whose move survives from the days of Shatranj. (And, incidentally, it makes a lot more sense when you know how those old pieces moved. Once upon a time, the King moved one space horizontally or vertically, the Queen/vizier moved one space diagonally, the bishop/camel moved exactly two spaces diagonally, and the rook/elephant moved exactly two spaces horizontally or vertically. The knight can move to any of the squares that would not be immediately reachable by all of the other back-rank pieces) Modern chess only emerged in the late 15th century, more in early EU timeframe. Secondly, as someone coming in new to the game, I've noticed that civil wars aren't *that* bad. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather avoid them if possible, but assuming you win, it can actually be pretty good to lock up the majority of your vassals, and then get all sorts of hooks or just cash bribes when they get out, or strip them of their titles and redistribute their lands. At least so far, I've noticed that vassal coalition troops tend to be fairly low quality, a lot more levies, a lot fewer "real" troops. Unless I have another, external war going on, I've rarely had too much trouble stomping them. And while that might "cannibalize" my realm's strength, it seems to grow back fairly quickly. Maybe too quickly. I don't seem to have gotten any of these massive civil wars that even victory is kind of a defeat, at least not so far. One thing that maybe could help remedy it is maybe giving some kind of penalty for keeping your vassals in prison? I mean, the entire reason that you have this vassalage system is the inability of the central authority to actually administer all their landholdings. That's why it gets leased out to these guys in the first place, and somehow I don't think they can manage their mini-realms locked up in your jail. But (and maybe this is just reflective of bad play) I find one of the best ways to keep the realm stable is to keep a significant proportion of the vassals, especially the more powerful ones, in jail for as long as possible, which is kind of dumb. Also, as a last aside, and wholly in the realm of game advice and not history, is there any way to deal with the aggressive war impact on popular opinion? Make it go down faster? Right now, the best I've got is to take the stewardship option that gives a +50 bonus to try to counteract it, but my expansionistic ways are getting deep rumblings of discontent as I try my hand at re-establishing the Roman Empire. Loading... Reply 1. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 7, 2022 at 2:05 pm Secondly, as someone coming in new to the game, I've noticed that civil wars aren't *that* bad. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather avoid them if possible, but assuming you win, it can actually be pretty good to lock up the majority of your vassals, and then get all sorts of hooks or just cash bribes when they get out, or strip them of their titles and redistribute their lands. This is a valid plan I often use when I've wound up with a pile of different-religion vassals. How bad they are is gonna depend on how large a chunk of your vassals join and how powerful they are, and if they're at 200% military strength you're going to have a bad time. At least so far, I've noticed that vassal coalition troops tend to be fairly low quality, a lot more levies, a lot fewer "real" troops. Well, they've got the full army of their domains, same as they'd have if they're independent. I guess if you've recently-ish installed them they won't have had as much time to build up their men-at-arms as foreigners, but a good vassal revolt can easily muster more MaA than you. Also, as a last aside, and wholly in the realm of game advice and not history, is there any way to deal with the aggressive war impact on popular opinion? Far as I know, no. I tend not to pay it much mind, though; popular uprisings are almost entirely levies and spawn in split up. Loading... Reply 2. [367e7][367e7] Sarachim says: October 7, 2022 at 6:49 pm The thing about civil wars is that they have opportunity cost. The time and money you're spending on suppressing your own vassals could have gone to expansion instead. The nice thing about winning a civil war is that it gives you a lot of leeway to resolve the problems that caused the war (by reducing the power of your vassals), but that's still generally worse than not having one in the first place. Loading... Reply 3. [2c54e][2c54e] Peak Singularity says: October 8, 2022 at 11:01 am This post and the blogpost itself have reminded me how some are suspecting that Turkey's Erdogan might have "set up" the recent civil war to easily remove opposition for quite a long time... Loading... Reply 4. [bb96d][bb96d] Simon_Jester says: October 8, 2022 at 1:04 pm @Adam >Secondly, as someone coming in new >to the game, I've noticed that civil wars >aren't *that* bad... I suspect this is in part because it's easy to come up with good plans for winning wars in most computer strategy games. In practice, it's harder. Also, it should be noted that historically, many rebellions failed and many attempts to overthrow a monarch likewise failed, and when the monarch wins they do often get some pretty sweet consolation prizes like being able to lock up That One Jerk in a dungeon... But you only have to screw up once for the dynasty to collapse. This is another area where rulers being culturally expected to personally command their troops (especially in a civil war where their personal right and fitness to rule is in question) would probably "keep players honest" a little better. The prospect of goading a third of your vassals into rebelling against you so you can crush their armies and subjugate them might seem less attractive then. Because then, in-character, it means you as monarch have to personally lead the crushing force and accept the risk of said vassals attempting to remove the crown from your head with a large mace. Loading... Reply 7. [05af5][05af5] Caia says: October 7, 2022 at 2:29 pm Do you plan on doing a post about House of the Dragon ? I find that a lot of what is being said here also intersects with that series' plot and it would be nice to know your thoughts on it, and whether it does better than it's predecessor when it comes to it's relationship with history. Loading... Reply 1. [12ef9][12ef9] filipboa0637 says: October 8, 2022 at 2:18 am Seconded. Debating Daeron II Legitimacy and Rulership. How bad is Robert and Aegon IV drinking and womanizing. Jaeharys and Viserys decision on succession. And all over Legitimacy of various Targaryen Kings, Queens, and Usurper would be fascinating analysis. Steven Attewell had some articles, seeing other opinions would be nice. Loading... Reply 8. [37fe4][37fe4] Cazaril says: October 7, 2022 at 2:39 pm A great real-world example of "external wars provide legitimacy" as modeled by CK3 was Almanzor in the late days of the Caliphate of Cordoba, who engaging in what I can only describe as "Prestige farming" through annual campaigns against the Christian kingdoms to the north. As (more or less) a usurper, he lacked a reserve of legitimacy through family history (Renown!) or titles, so he helped solidify his grip through the ostentatious performance of religiously-supported warfare, accruing both Prestige and Piety in the process. While at the same time destabilizing the realm in other ways that caused the dissolution of the Kingdom-level title after his death... Loading... Reply 1. [3f4e8][3f4e8] Bret Devereaux says: October 7, 2022 at 3:47 pm New Kingdom Egyptian Pharaohs did much the same with warfare against their neighbors to the South, especially early in each pharaoh's reign. So this is actually something that happens! Loading... Reply 1. [1c772][1c772] Adam says: October 7, 2022 at 4:42 pm And wasn't at least part of the reasoning behind Claudius ordering the invasion of what's now England to shore up his own legitimacy? Loading... Reply 2. [c449b][c449b] Dark_Tigger says: October 8, 2022 at 12:18 pm It has been argued that this is what Putin is doing in Ukrain right now. His legitimacy is build on the idea that he is the one that will reconstitute the empire. He got popular by subjugating Chechenya. Then he brought part's of Georgia back, and he tries to be seen as the protector of central Asia. Loading... Reply 1. [bb96d][bb96d] Simon_Jester says: October 8, 2022 at 3:18 pm Of course, one of the complications of legitimacy-building is that it doesn't work very well if you don't have a clear understanding of both reality and the constructed culture of the people you're dealing with. Putin has surrounded himself with a bubble, and so is relatively bad at judging whether Russians as a whole actually give a damn about his empire-reconstituting project. And likewise, he is bad at judging whether he can win wars by doing so. So it's an attempt to build legitimacy through (re) conquest, but the attempt is susceptible to failure. Loading... Reply 9. [7a1a2][7a1a2] James says: October 7, 2022 at 2:50 pm The focus on legitimacy reminds me of an early scene in The Last Kingdom where a character who has a strong claim to the throne but lacks the qualities associated with kingship says something along the lines of "Alfred is king because he looks and acts like a king and people think I do not." (Incidentally, a review/ critique of that series would be awesome.) Loading... Reply 10. [13261][13261] Daniel Berke says: October 7, 2022 at 2:56 pm > the strong implication from the word 'perform' that the performance is insincere is one of the reasons I find 'performativity' an unsatisfying framework in which to understand historical actors. I dunno, there's shades of meaning in "perform". Someone can perform their duty, or the functions of their job, without it being somehow insincere. Granted, it depends on the context in which it's used, of course, but I don't personally find that describing someone as "performing the functions of kingship" means they're insincerely aping their way through it for the spectacle alone. But maybe that's just me. Loading... Reply 1. [bb96d][bb96d] Simon_Jester says: October 8, 2022 at 3:20 pm You're right. But the choice of the word "perform" in particular makes it that little bit easier for a modern historian or student of history to think about "the performance of kingship" while imagining it as an insincere staged 'performance.' It's not that the word is incompatible with a good interpretation of what is really going on. It's that the word is also compatible with a bad interpretation if one thinks sloppily... which many do. Loading... Reply 11. [2fef5][2fef5] Antisyzygist says: October 7, 2022 at 3:48 pm For instance, it costs 100 prestige to declare a war to recover de jure territory from another ruler4, but if you win you receive the land and 300 prestige (split between all of your allies, but if you attacked alone, you get all of it). Now that means if successful you 'net' 200 prestige, but 300 fame (because prestige but not fame were spent declaring war) and now you have the 'seed' prestige to immediately declare war again (on someone else). Not true! Critically not true. Or, at least, the assertion that winning a war gets an attacker their prestige back. The primary attacker in a war does not (typically- I've not done an exhaustive survey and the way CBs are scripted means there's definitely scope for outliers) get prestige for winning it. Their allies do, but they themselves only get the fame. The game is generally averse to feedback loops of this sort, despite the fact that they are entirely appropriate to the dynamics of social capital. Core to them, I'd assert. Actually one of my key criticisms of the game's prestige economy, is that lack. Loading... Reply 1. [ce699][ce699] Alexander Rose says: October 7, 2022 at 8:08 pm Nah, you do get prestige from war Loading... Reply 12. [05800][05800] Dillon Saxe says: October 7, 2022 at 5:21 pm In particular, the king's traditional roles generally fit under three large headers: chief priest, chief judge, and chief general...........Consequently, military performance becomes the 'proof in the pudding,' as it were, for the other two: a king that is successful on the battlefield must be so because they rule well in peacetime (and thus have a well-run kingdom with a good army) and because whatever Higher Powers may be interested were on their side. Vladimir Putin has had issues with the chief judge role, and the Russian military is notably suffering for it, so...checks out. Ukraine fight is one of many modern "wars for prestige", it seems, start a war somewhere so a leader can look powerful, so the concept obviously continues to the present day. Though in different circumstances of modern times these wars are not as favorably viewed. While mulling around some space empire game ideas in my head, I'd thought about different government types as a way to handle "unitary empire vs. lots of internal politics" as this post mentions. Instead of having bonuses and penalties, the different government types would change how the game is played, so a standard hive mind would play like the usual "player directly controls things" game, a feudal system, or split hive mind with separate rulers for each planet or system would be like managing lords/vassals, a federations/democracy type government has you work through popular opinion, elections, and such. I'd thought of "hive vs. independent", "elections vs. top down", and "unified vs. planets/systems have separate systems" (I think the last one is unitary vs. something else in political science terms, but don't know exactly) as covering the standard space empire games. Presumably the more complex playstyles offer some bonuses to output, or administration costs, or such to compensate for the lack of control, and create different playstyles, and different spaces would have some options available or locked (humans lose the hive option, for example, some other aliens might lost the top down or unitary options.) Loading... Reply 1. [eac03][eac03] ey81 says: October 7, 2022 at 8:51 pm "in different circumstances of modern times these wars are not as favorably viewed." That doesn't seem right. Short successful wars (Falklands, first Gulf War) dramatically boost a ruler's prestige. If the Ukraine war had gone like that, I'm pretty sure it would have boosted Putin considerably. Loading... Reply 2. [70f3b][70f3b] Richard H says: October 7, 2022 at 10:23 pm Though in different circumstances of modern times these wars are not as favorably viewed. After all, views of the proper performance of statesmanship change over time! (And TBF, there was a very concerted effort, involving spending a lot of prestige, to normalize the idea that all wars are crimes.) Loading... Reply 3. [13261][13261] Daniel Berke says: October 7, 2022 at 11:38 pm It's not, perhaps, as extreme as what you've described here, but Stellaris does have different government types that somewhat affect the state of play. Picking the most democratic one has elections every 10 years (which goes by pretty quickly in-game), and while the leader bonuses may not be large enough to swing the game wildly they can have an impact. On the other extreme, you can have "imperial" succession type where you have a royal family with an heir who steps in upon death of the current leader. Then there's hive-minds, which dispense with all of that for an "immortal" leader (to make it work with the engine). By default empires are still pretty unitary no matter what government type you take, but with the recent Overlord expansion you can now have vassal states with completely unique vassal contracts, which can lead to some differences in gameplay (e.g., one vassal could be required to support you in your wars and not engage in outside diplomacy, while another can require you to come to their aid in their offensive wars that they conduct with their own, separate diplomacy.) There's also the ability to put planets/sectors within your empire under the control of the AI, but these aren't really internal politics as they won't have separate agency (though planets can secede and declare their own empire if things get bad enough). Loading... Reply 13. [6a5c0][6a5c0] Lev says: October 7, 2022 at 6:43 pm Grateful for the shoutout to KODP, greatest game of all time! And in my best Hans Moleman impersonation, I was objecting to people using "performative" to mean ineffective in casual language... (it is a pedantic pet peeve of mine; if its performative, that means it works! Its effective! The word you're looking for is "insincere" my friends! Gonna start the other kind of Butlerian Jihad over this) Loading... Reply 1. [1c772][1c772] Adam says: October 7, 2022 at 8:58 pm I can't really agree with this statement "Grateful for the shoutout to KODP, greatest game of all time!" Six ages, IMO, is considerably better. Loading... Reply 14. [f5661][f5661] tweid says: October 7, 2022 at 8:21 pm "This kind of 'legitimacy building' often seems strange to students coming from modern liberal democracies because those modern government forms rely on the deep well of legitimacy inherent in a democratic process ('our decision' being more legitimate by nature than 'my decision'), but such legitimacy-building was and remains a crucial tool for monarchies of all kinds." I think there's plenty of 'legitimacy building' in Liberal Democracy (TM), and we just tend to not think of it that way. What is public relations, governmental or corporate or otherwise, if not an extended exercise in "here I am, doing the things that I am supposed to do, so allow me to continue wielding this power? " There's also plenty that needs the legitimacy built - see the Supreme Court in the US, or the monarchy i the UK. For all the rhetoric spilled about freedom and democracy, a LOT of government still depends on the Legitimacy of the Institution, which can be good (I like executive agencies when they regulate pollution without requiring an up-down vote on every regulation) and very bad (I do not love the Electoral College and Senate, why didn't we change that shit when we did Reconstruction, aaaaaaaaaaaaaa) Loading... Reply 1. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 8, 2022 at 9:11 am The democratic form of government does seem to lend legitimacy to the idea that you should do what the elected guy and his representatives say, but anyone who wants to win the next election is going to have to persuade people they did a good job presidenting. Also, they need to persuade the legislature to follow their lead if they want to get bills passed, though the importance of doing that varies. A democratic system provides something of a pressure valve for anti-government sentiments because if they're widely held the leader gets voted out of office rather than getting bayoneted in the street. I'd call the State Of The Union in particular a major legitimacy-building exercise, and presidents get noticeable approval shifts from war depending on how it's going. The executive agencies derive legitimacy from the fact that they're created by acts of Congress and controlled by the President (to varying degrees). Congress can technically yank an agency's leash at any time and strike down a regulation, pass a specific law on a topic, or eliminate or alter agency powers. Loading... Reply 1. [bb96d][bb96d] Simon_Jester says: October 8, 2022 at 4:36 pm What's noteworthy is that democracy creates more of a gap between the legitimacy of an institution and the right-to-rule of the specific individuals who sit in the chairs in that institution. Because you can tell yourself, with some hope of being correct, that even if right now the institution is occupied by losers or idiots or hateful snakes, that some day it will be elected by people you like better. Monarchies and other forms of more or less autocratic government don't have much of this, because the office of the king is almost inseparable from the physical person of the king. ... The catch in a democracy is that if your democracy faces a long string of abuses, incompetent leaders, or failures of the institution to enact popular reforms and solve widely known problems... Well, over time, the legitimacy of the institution decays as it becomes more apparent that the problem isn't only with the specific person sitting in the chair. For instance, the Supreme Court relies heavily on legitimacy. Control of the Court is normally very slow to change hands, but could theoretically be changed at any time using "court-packing," on behalf of a faction that held the presidency and a narrow Senate majority. The reason no one has done this since the early 1800s is because of legitimacy considerations. A packed Court is an obviously partisan Court, and nearly all of the Court's legitimacy comes from the idea that, in theory, it is a purely neutral and nonpartisan arbiter of constitutional law. But, speaking purely hypothetically, if the US got to a point where, say, 80% of the electorate thinks the Court is obviously partisan anyway and doesn't happen to like the Court's decisions, that legitimacy tends to evaporate. There is a real danger of the Court destroying its own legitimacy as an institution and opening itself up to court-packing maneuvers if it makes enough consistently unpopular decisions without taking steps to preserve the appearance of political neutrality. Loading... Reply 2. [70f3b][70f3b] Richard H says: October 8, 2022 at 11:00 am I was going to say that what you were commenting on was pretty much the point: Democratic government systems have legitimacy-building incorporated in their structure from the foundation. On the other hand, the running joke about headlines of "This is when Trump finally became president," point to the other thing, which is that we still have ideas of what being a good president looks like, and to be reelected, you need to do those things. Loading... Reply 15. [eac03][eac03] ey81 says: October 7, 2022 at 8:28 pm "This kind of 'legitimacy building' often seems strange to students coming from modern liberal democracies because those modern government forms rely on the deep well of legitimacy inherent in a democratic process." Partly, those students have little real world experience (as compared to members of the Class of 1981), and partly, they have not examined deeply many of the aspects of the world in which they live (as I had not in 1981). Was their professor selected by a democratic process? What about the president of the university? And when they have private sector jobs, most of them will have no trouble with the legitimacy of a superior who says, "My father founded this company," much less with someone who says, "I founded this company," even though neither of these is a democratic process. In fact, medieval political entities might better be compared to family businesses, run by the founder or his offspring, than to modern states. Loading... Reply 1. [ba117][ba117] GreatWyrmGold says: October 7, 2022 at 9:10 pm And when they have private sector jobs, most of them will have no trouble with the legitimacy of a superior who says, "My father founded this company," much less with someone who says, "I founded this company," even though neither of these is a democratic process. I think that has less to do with family ties and more to do with capitalist institutions; most students are willing to go along with what their boss says even if that boss is only "legitimate" by decree of a few wealthy stakeholders (with no bloodline connection to the company's founding). And an awful lot of students are eager to give the opinions of rich guys way more weight than the opinions of poor or middle-class experts in the fields those rich guys stumble through. (* cough cough*Elon*cough*) Loading... Reply 1. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 7, 2022 at 9:29 pm I think capitalist legitimacy mostly comes in the form of paychecks. Employees may have little respect for their bosses but plenty for Mr Green. Loading... Reply 1. [11549][11549] LHN says: October 8, 2022 at 1:51 pm Though there are lots of day to day decisions that don't carry a realistic risk of being fired. It's a lot like the force versus power distinction: some jobs may be micromanaged and maximally precarious, but most depend on employees acting when there isn't direct observation or an immediate risk of termination or pay loss. Things like work ethic, team spirit, respect for the manager, etc. have a similar role in legitimacy and can make the difference between healthy and dysfunctional organizations. Loading... Reply 2. [eac03][eac03] ey81 says: October 8, 2022 at 5:17 pm That's not inconsistent with what I said: students are willing to accept the legitimacy of capitalist authority even though it isn't chosen by democratic means. What they need to understand is that the medieval mind didn't see the same division between economic and political activity, or between property and sovereignty, as we do, and therefore accepted as legitimate the political authority of entities that were more like family businesses than the political entities we know today. Loading... Reply 2. [6efa8][6efa8] NVA says: October 8, 2022 at 12:42 pm "democratic process" in capitalist terms means "social contract" - which considers citizens to be the "stakeholders" of a state, similar to the stakeholders of a company. Feudal systems were also based on contracts for land and rulership, dictated by the "stakeholders" - feudal warlords. Loading... Reply 16. [ba117][ba117] GreatWyrmGold says: October 7, 2022 at 9:07 pm I should note that while 'perform' and 'performativity' are the standard academic language, especially in the humanities, for these kinds of interactions, that does not mean the performance is insincere (the strong implication from the word 'perform' that the performance is insincere is one of the reasons I find 'performativity' an unsatisfying framework in which to understand historical actors. Academics who use the term will insist it does not have this meaning and then go and use it exactly in this way in common speech.) FWIW, I haven't heard "performativity" used in an insincere sense...though I've mostly heard it used by trans people discussing gender performativity, who have more of a stake in this performance being seen as sincere than most academics. Though realistically [writing self-aggrandizement books] should also probably give you a malus that makes tyranny accumulate more quickly, since now with a history of your house on offer, vassals can more easily accuse you of breaking with the ancient and customary practice of your ancestors when you revoke all of their titles and imprison them. It would be neat if a future DLC let you create/commission more specialized books, which gave both a bigger bonus and a restrictive malus. One that paints you as virtuous for extra opinion and piety, but gives extra tyranny. Another that paints you as merciless (but just) for extra Dread gain, which makes (unintimidated) vassals join factions more readily. Stuff like that. Or heck, since we're fantasizing about future DLC, we could imagine a whole Reputation system, influencing how contemporaries and history view your character. A high Virtuous Reputation gives piety and worsens tyranny, a high Merciless reputation gives extra Dread and encourages factions, that kind of thing. Books, bards, and the like could build an individual's or dynasty's reputation, but so could actions. The performance of kingship by the socially constructed models present in these societies demands military performance and so conflicts must be found to do that performance. And the result of those pressures in turn has an influence on the societies they're built around. Rome might be the most overt example of this; its culture bent around its strategic needs, because its leaders needed to justify and succeed in wars to advance. Also, nitpick: Excellent use of the word "performance" in a sincere sense. But of course as implied by the constructivist framing here, these roles are socially constructed (which again, just means 'a thing that humans made rather than a thing that occurs in nature without humans.' 'Socially constructed' does not mean 'fake.') Your example of road-driving is a good one, but I prefer species. Sure, there is an obvious truth within our concept of "species". A pre-human truth, even! Cats and dogs can't have babies. But the way we describe and understand that truth is still socially constructed! Look at hominid evolution. The place where Australopithecus becomes Homo erectus is completely arbitrary--the first H. erectus looked more like their Australopithecine parents than like their Homo descendants--or, for that matter, than the parents looked like other Australopithecines. This isn't just theoretical--most hominid fossils have been given multiple different taxonomic classifications, because the lines are arbitrary. (Maybe "planet" would be simpler to explain? It's a bit less obviously applicable to socially-constructed categories based on biological differences, though.) Loading... Reply 1. [58b4a][58b4a] Niall says: October 7, 2022 at 11:06 pm In many of my classes during my Biology undergraduate degree, entire lectures were spent on explaining the fuzzy lines between species, and how a lot of the divisions as you say are ultimately arbitrary. Loading... Reply 2. [49166][49166] john says: October 8, 2022 at 12:29 am Regarding footnote five, I think the idea is that in the course of the book being written, you'd also be familiarizing yourself with all the obscure precedents and loopholes which could supply a tenuous pretext for some tyrannical act - or if necessary, instructing the historian to invent a few from whole cloth, tailored to whatever specific political problems you're anticipating. Loading... Reply 3. [2c54e][2c54e] Peak Singularity says: October 8, 2022 at 11:28 am Having recently looked into human prehistory, the split between humans and other animals (between *Australopithecus* and its immediate ancestor) ~4 Mya seems to be much larger, than between *Australopithecus* and *Homo*... In the first case, that's where is the split between us and the only remaining relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos), and where the move from tree habitat to savanna happens (bipedism, persistence hunting...). In the second case, *Homo* seems to appear (very roughly ?) at the start of our current Ice Age (aka Quaternary period) ~2.6 Mya, with its (so far) ~50 glacial periods... Not too long ago we thought that the first stone tools industries ("Oldowan") appeared with *Homo* (AFAIK that's where the name *Homo habilis* = "handy man" comes from ?), but we've recently discovered even *earlier* stone tool industries, pointing towards an apparition with *Australopithecus* : Lomekwian ? https://tauromachy.wordpress.com/2018/07/05/ the-lomekwi-tools-and-how-we-maybe-almost-were-not/ Loading... Reply 4. [d59fa][d59fa] Bullseye says: October 8, 2022 at 6:08 pm > FWIW, I haven't heard "performativity" used in an insincere sense... I've heard it both ways. People sometimes accuse political opponents of "performative outrage", meaning "You're not actually upset about this, you're faking it." Loading... Reply 17. [8b38f][8b38f] Paul Goodman says: October 8, 2022 at 12:51 am I'd be interested to hear more about how this stuff works for a ruler who isn't independent. If you're a duke in a larger kingdom, what do you need to do to keep your vassals in line? Presumably you're less free to start wars as a source of prestige and fame. Loading... Reply 1. [f9596][f9596] Jack Dewhirst says: October 8, 2022 at 6:36 am Yes and no. The answer to whether you are as free to war as your liege varies over the game dependent in part upon your liege and his vassals and also the date and type of government. For feudal rules at low levels of crown authority you are basically as free as if you were independent. There are some restrictions, for example if your liege is King or greater rank and therefore has a royal court another vassal might petition your liege to intervene to end any wars between their vassals. Starting at crown authority three for feudal rulers you are forbidden from warring against your fellow vassals. Crown authority three is itself gated behind a cultural innovation which is not available to be unlocked until a certain point in the game. And at crown authority four you are prohibited from warring at all (against an internal or external target) without spending a hook on your liege. However there are still options for a vassal under high crown authority. You may still wage a war if you spend a hook on your liege which you could gain from familial relations or blackmail. You may also alter your feudal contract with your liege to exempt you from the general prohibition on wars against your co-vassals. That last option also has the upshot of making wars declared on your co-vassals cost half as much prestige. It only requires a weak hook to alter the contract in this way, in my opinion given the impact on the general stability of the realm it should probably require a strong hook (seriously good blackmail). Loading... Reply 2. [46483][46483] Tim says: October 8, 2022 at 8:20 am Unless the King is very powerful, you can attack other vassals and even foreigners if you think you have the strength to succeed without breaking any laws. You just need a culturally appropriate casau belli. Loading... Reply 3. [c9593][c9593] guy says: October 8, 2022 at 9:22 am Until your liege hits a certain level of Crown Authority you totally can start wars as a source of prestige and fame. However, when you're playing a duke, you shift away from general opinion bonuses to specific opinion bonuses and the briefly mentioned relationships. There's a scheme, sway, that can give you +25 decaying opinion with a targeted character. You can straight-up give people money, though you can't afford to keep more than a couple vassals happy that way. You can marry off kids to vassals for an alliance to keep them in line, which is particularly important for clan vassals as mentioned previously. Feasts and hunts and holding court give you opportunities to raise the opinion of random vassals, and when you have like five vassals you care more about a random count than when you have sixty. Your five strongest vassals want to be on your council, and at small vassal counts you're likely to actually let them. Depending on how gender preferences line up you can sleep with them. Loading... Reply 1. [1c772][1c772] Adam says: October 8, 2022 at 9:37 am "Depending on how gender preferences line up you can sleep with them." My wife and I had a game where we formed the empire of Britannia out of our original holdings in the Duchy of Meath. We did have one guy who broke up a coalition to break England away from the empire by seducing 4 of the participants and making all 4 his lovers. It was amusing. Loading... Reply 1. [8ea90][8ea90] Endymionologist says: October 8, 2022 at 3:17 pm It's a bit toned-down in CK3, but in CK2 homosexuality was the key to power, enabling a male leader to fill every council position and commander role with amazing talent from all over the realm. Loading... Reply 18. [f0b81][f0b81] 42 says: October 8, 2022 at 3:10 am Using war to build Prestige may work in some cases, but it is generally a bad move in my experience. First, the only true moment of instability are successions, because of the "short reign" modifier + the fact that some vassals may have claims on your titles. And successions are generally the moment where you also lack the tools (money, mens and casus belli) to effectively wage wars. Second, even if victorious, external offensive wars generates discontent among vassals and losses in battle diminishs your own forces, thus lowering the bar to trigger revolts. It may work if you are far larger than your neighbors (and their allies) and can win short wars, but not for mosts kingdoms. It can also work if you can manage to get some ennoying vassals to get killed in battles. But in general, short term consequences (attrition, loss of control, war exhaustion) outweigh long term rewards, because factions are generally a short term problem. Once you get rid of the "short reign modifier", managing vassals becomes (maybe too) easy : more childs, more hooks, more positive modifier, more skills, more vassals in jail.... Loading... Reply 19. [5c45f][5c45f] Chris M says: October 8, 2022 at 4:06 am You earned a million awesome points by mentioning King of Dragon Pass! All the magic and weirdness of Glorantha aside, how well do you think that game captures pre-state iron age socities? Loading... Reply 20. [df05b][df05b] blagae says: October 8, 2022 at 5:36 am In the first part of this series, you mention some upcoming criticism: > That is not to say I am going to shy away from criticism here (although most of that will be in the third part of the series), but I thought disclosure here would be appropriate. I will admit that there was no mention of which content your third part would be (so maybe you shifted around the order of your chapters), but I was quite surprised to not find any significant counterpoints or historical rectifications today. Loading... Reply 1. [3f4e8][3f4e8] Bret Devereaux says: October 8, 2022 at 3:00 pm Shift in the structure of the series as I went. Critiques are in part 4, next week. Loading... Reply 21. [5caf6][5caf6] chris says: October 8, 2022 at 6:43 am "Our man Ajannas III (forming the new empire actually breaks the numbering, since the primary title changes, but I'm going to keep calling him Ajannas III) " Isnt this supposed to happen with titles? Like Francis II (holy roman emperor) Francis I (emperor of austria). Loading... Reply 1. [51556][51556] Jaojao says: October 8, 2022 at 6:51 pm But for a counterexample we have Frederick III, German Emperor. Then again I think regnal numbers are an anarchronism for most countries in this period, at least Muslim ones Loading... Reply 22. [199ef][199ef] Peter Thomson says: October 8, 2022 at 8:55 am "but by and large pre-modern thinking was that things should continue to be done the way they have always been done, which makes a lot of sense in a world where technological and social change moved quite slowly." I'm not sure this is true. Medieval social change did not move that much more slowly than ours, and could often move quite quickly. What they did do was justify changes by reference to the past - an old thing was thought more legitimate. In practice, this just meant that changes were justified and rationalised as continuations of some past practice - even when that practice was obscure, irrelevant or long obsolete. Novelty was arbitrary, and smacked of tyranny, hence often came painted as a past revived. Loading... Reply 1. [09e98][09e98] Arilou says: October 8, 2022 at 11:13 am That depends. The limited amount of social change (coups, rebellions, wars, etc. that rearranges the social pyramid in terms of who is where) were absolutely quick, but people also generlaly underestimate how *blazingly* quick social change has been for the last 250 years or so. A lot of people are only two or three generations away from people living an entirely different kind of life, while for most medieval people if they go two or three generations back there's.... more farmers. Loading... Reply 1. [d59fa][d59fa] Bullseye says: October 8, 2022 at 6:01 pm My grandfather's grandfather didn't use money, because it's the root of all evil. It's hard to imagine that being an option today. Loading... Reply 2. [705bb][705bb] Mary says: October 8, 2022 at 11:58 am Sometimes even nonexistent. Claim descent from a fictitious character from the Matter of France Loading... Reply 1. [d59fa][d59fa] Bullseye says: October 8, 2022 at 6:02 pm Or, better yet, a god, if your religion says that's possible. Loading... Reply 23. [f1d47][f1d47] Patrick Sean Mullins says: October 8, 2022 at 10:23 am The 'Tabletop Warrior' thing makes me imagine some medieval analogue of Dr. Devereaux's blog, breaking down the mechanics of chess and how accurately the chess game systems model actual military operations. Loading... Reply 24. [2c54e][2c54e] Peak Singularity says: October 8, 2022 at 12:17 pm And, yes, yet *again* I'm going to point to the 2020 post-apocalyptic (extra-)planetary 4X / wargame Shadow Empire as an example of a game with Crusader Kings and King of Dragon Pass -like constraints : Taking the example of declaration of war (and not of the various other diplomacy and spying related Decisions and Stratagems that also have related effects) : A declaration of war, especially on a Major Regime, typically comes with several penalties, which are going to be aggravated by : - having a good relation with that Regime - having a non-aggression treaty with that Regime (3 different levels) The penalties are : - decrease of happiness across your whole Regime : Population, (public) Workers, Soldier Morale, Leader Relation (with "you" as an "immortal Holy Ghost of Regime", which is a much more typical 4X trope.) - decrease of Population and Leader Loyalty (which acts as a "drag" for Happiness/Relation, both upward and downward) - decrease of your Word score (which is even *more* important than Loyalty, but mostly impacting diplomacy and relations with your Leaders and the Factions they will tend to form, but also whether your Soldiers will vote (if allowed to) towards Autocracy or Democracy.) - Prestige Damage, which is quite a bummer, because it decreases your Political Point generation, which is needed for all kinds of decisions, some as lowly as raising new Formations. - Last but not least, an increase in the Fist profile The Fist Profile is one of the 3 Regime Psychology Profiles (there are also 3 Society Profiles and 3 Politics Profiles). And every Leader will have more or less strong likes and dislikes over 2-4 Profiles, which means that they will have their Relation (with you) increased or lowered depending on how the 9 Regime Profiles move (in a range from 0 to 100). And Leaders will tend to join Factions which will slowly accrue likes for up to 3 Profiles (1 in each group), which will determine how powerful they are politically. The leaders that joined them will also see their Profile likes slowly increase to fit those of the Faction. Also, after the early game, Profiles inside a group are going to be competing with each other : if Fist rises by 4 points, this will also reduce Mind by 2 points (burning 1 point of Fist in the process), and reduce Heart by 1 point (burning 2 points of Fist in the process) : for an effective increase of Fist by only 1. (Somewhat rough math, but should be mostly correct.) All of this to explain : if you suddenly declare war on a friendly neighbor, then your Fist is going to rise a LOT, which is going to move various Leader Relations themselves quite a lot. (And then there's also the various Regime-wide bonuses including unlocking new Stratagems coming with having and *keeping* each of the 9 Profiles high enough - remember how increasing Fist reduces Heart and especially Mind ?) Finally, Factions can make Demands (more or less often, depending whether your Regime is politically a Parliament, Senate, or Politburo...), refusing them will lower Faction Happiness and your Word, but accepting and then failing to *deliver* on them in time will lower them even more ! And, coming back to declaration of war, Fist-loving factions will typically ask you to raise your Fist rating, conquer a city (which might require declaring war), increase your overall Victory score... (which comes from controlling population and territory : you need at least 50% average of both *and* your next Major competitor to be 25% lower than you to win the game - Shadow Empire is much more of a typical 4X/wargame(?) in this sense...) Loading... Reply 25. [51556][51556] Jaojao says: October 8, 2022 at 6:57 pm I do not quite understand the point of linking to 'natural law' when discussing commonality in human morals crossculturally. That seems like a specifically European idea, the article traced the concept from Greek philosophy to mediaeval Christian ideas. Or have other cultures/regions had analogous ideas? Loading... Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Search for: [ ] [Search] Updates every Friday! You can support this project via Patreon, and by spreading the word! 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