Count > Marquis. Was CT Nobility wrong?

[rancke]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
The SM counties are here:

http://www.trisen.com/sol/default.asp?topic=10&page=33

Nice work and quite useful for personal TUs, but they don't fit with the canon, I'm afraid.

* Jewell is a county under the Duke of Regina.

* Judging from the Library Data articles, the Imperium seems to consider subsectors and duchies to be synonymous. They speak of the subsector being the lowest unit of interstellar government, with at duke in charge (apparently the county is not a level of government). Obviously there are exceptions (Jewell, Mertactor, Aramis), but Ibeleive that the Imperium would try to keep its duchies within the borders of one subsector apiece, so these exceptions should IMO be rare.

* I think TA says that Lablon and Corfu are part of the Towers Cluster, but I could be misremembering.

* Aramis is not a duchy (Aramis itself is part of the Duchy of Rhylanor). According to Nobles it is splite between Regina, Rhylanor and Pretoria.

* There is no Duke of Vilis. Presumably it's not a duchy (It probably was one until 986).

* There is no Duke of Lanth (Not surprisingly; he'd be the next thing to destitute; the population of Lanth subsector is very low).

* The Glisten system is the seat of the Duchess of Glisten. I think it may be assumed to be part of her duchy

.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by rancke:
* There is no Duke of Vilis. Presumably it's not a duchy (It probably was one until 986).

* There is no Duke of Lanth (Not surprisingly; he'd be the next thing to destitute; the population of Lanth subsector is very low).

Hans

Nice couple of opportunities there for some high "level" adventure and courtly politics.

Perhaps that senator - I like the way GT Nobles explains that one as well - locked up on the Gaesh was the former Duke of one of these vacant subsectors?

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
* There is no Duke of Vilis. Presumably it's not a duchy (It probably was one until 986).

* There is no Duke of Lanth (Not surprisingly; he'd be the next thing to destitute; the population of Lanth subsector is very low).

Hans

Nice couple of opportunities there for some high "level" adventure and courtly politics.

Perhaps that senator - I like the way GT Nobles explains that one as well - locked up on the Gaesh was the former Duke of one of these vacant subsectors? </font>[/QUOTE]Caveat: None of the following is canon, but I like to think it fits with canon. As usual, anyone who wants to use this for their own Traveller work should feel free to do so.

IMO there has never been a Duke of Lanth. Lanth has a population base several orders of magnitude smaller than the average Imperial subsector. Given that the Imperium does exhibit a modicum of flexibility (Mertactor and Mille Falcs part of Glisten instead of being a duchy of their own, Aramis being part of the Duchy of Thylanor, Jewell being a county under the Duke of Regina), I think it would have avoided creating a cardboard duke with none of the power to back him up. YMMV.

As for Vilis, my take is that it was a duchy until 986 (when Arden and a slew of other worlds in Vilis became independent). The remaining worlds were then reorganized as a county under the Duke of Regina. In one of the adventures I have on a back burner, I mention that Gavin gave the Duke of Arden some personal fiefs on Regina and Efate to compensate him for the loss of his personal fiefs on Arden[*], then 'invited' him to come live on Capital (Where he became part of the "labor pool". As one of the Imperium few 'floating' hereditary dukes the family probably gets more than its share of Cabinet appointments). Children of the family traditionally take a Grand Tour to the family estates and collateral descendents occasionally move to the Marches, but the dukes themselves tend to stay in the Core.

[*] He also compensated the lesser nobles who lost land.


Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
rancke@diku.dk
------------
In my opinion it ought to go without saying that if you work in another person's universe, he and anyone else authorized to work in said universe is implicitly permitted to use your work as background material. But I know it doesn't, so I hereby give my permission for Marc Miller and anyone else authorized to work in the Traveller Universe to use the above as background material.

 

[mike wightman]

Canon or not it's a good read

I wonder if the Dukes of Regina have been blocking Lanth's development over the years?

It would allow them to keep the territory, and some of the valuable resources within, to themselves.

The x-boat link on Echiste never seemed to get finished did it?

 

[Uncle Bob]

Historically, Counts and Marquis had similar responsabilities. But Marquis held frontier districts and were more respected because those were positions of special trust, holding the gates.

I allways assumed that in the Imperium Marquis were disrespected as backwater nobles from the perifery. As Security out there depends on the Navy, not the integrity of frontier fortressses, the landed nobility are less important.

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Viscounts have been retconned in too recently to have had any influence in matters I decided on twenty years ago; and given that there is no level of government for them to be "bumped" to, I can't really say what I might have done with them. Right now, I just ignore them for MTU.

I use viscount two ways: (1) as a title for the heir of a marquis or a duke and (2) as a non-herditary title awarded by the Emperor for services to the Imperium.

The latter viscount does not receive title to planetary systems the way a count or marquis would, but rather receives an Imperial stipend for the remainder of the viscount's life.

I'm not familiar with how the Viscount is presented in GT: Nobles - I introduced the viscount IMTU many years ago to provide a different sort of noble reward for adventurers.

 

[aramis]

I've done similar with knights versus Baronettes; Knights are reward, Baronettes are hereditary.

I use Viscount in lieu of Marquis for mutliworld (small cluster) fees, Marquis for important single worlds.

I use Grand Dukes as Sector Dukes.