I made up these rules before the viscount was introduced. You could change 'senior count' to 'count' and 'count' to 'viscount', if you like.
Hans
Local Honors & Soc
- Thread starter Sir Brad
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I made up these rules before the viscount was introduced. You could change 'senior count' to 'count' and 'count' to 'viscount', if you like.
Hans
Viscount would be on the same level as Marquess, but the Marquess has seniority.
a marquess is the lord of a frontier or undeveloped county, giving them less authority and standing but more autonomy than an Earl or Count.
a Viscount is a courteous title given to Government functionaries, also to the Deputies & Heirs of Earls/Counts and Marquess, or to those who hold diminished Counties or over grown Baronies
Viscount is to Count what Barrett is to Barron.
a marquess is the lord of a frontier or undeveloped county, giving them less authority and standing but more autonomy than an Earl or Count.
a Viscount is a courteous title given to Government functionaries, also to the Deputies & Heirs of Earls/Counts and Marquess, or to those who hold diminished Counties or over grown Baronies
Viscount is to Count what Barrett is to Barron.
Not Imperial vicounts. (And not British either; a British viscount is a noble ranked between a baron and an earl).
Hans
The Danish title that is considered the equivalent of an earl (and translated into English as 'count') is 'greve'.
(What? We are posting trivia about nobles now, right?)
Hans
And Marquis is a derivation from margrave/margraf - border count. I don't want to dig out Fox-Davies for the citation. (That book weighs more than my oversized feline...)
Traveller also makes only a weak Gentle/Peer/Noble/Royal distinction.
In proper heraldry...
Gentlemen and Knights are not Nobles. They're gentles.
Barons to Dukes are usually Nobles. Their wives and children are nobles as well, but only the titleholder is actually a peer. The consort is accorded the privileges of a peer without actually being one.
Grand Dukes, Archdukes, Princes, Kings, and Emperors are usually royals, as are their children, grandchildren, and occasionally great grandchildren. Their peerage is presumed; in most of the countries, only the gentry and nobles could marry the royals without the royal "degrading"... More than one paper title was given to allow a common to marry a lesser royal...
Baronets are a historical oddity. They essentially are hereditary knighthoods, nothing more. Traveller Baronets are totally unrelated conceptually - they're Barons of an Archduke, instead of Barons of the Emperor.
And, since T5, all the ranks of gentry/nobility/royalty are likely to have fiefs. So, it's not commensurate with real historical systems of nobility.. it's its own funky feudalism...
| Archduke | Duke,Count,Marquis,Baron,Knight |
| Baronet,Knight | — |
In the UK a Marquess ranks above an Earl (Count) and below a Duke. Same with in France & Spain. I don't know where Marc got his ideas for order of precedence in the the 3I peerage from.
Which is the same distinction as between nobles and ignobles. Gentry is also referred to as 'untitled aristocracy' and is on the noble side of that divide.
True. I was conflating gentry and nobility and royalty. Perhaps I should have used 'middle and lower class' and 'upper class' instead, since some gentlemen and esquires did sink into the middle class (being defined in part as the eldest sons of knights and younger sons of nobles in perpetuity). The whole issue is complicated by the definitions of squires and gentlemen changing over time.
In Denmark marriage between nobles and commoners were against the law at one point. I must confess I haven't been able to find out exactly where the dividing line ran.
Hans
It's either a mistake or a deliberate "you're-not-on-historical-Earth-any-more" feature. I've always suspected thqat it was a mistake but thought that it worked nicely as such a feature.
(I was really annoyed when GT reversed it -- fortunately that didn't stick).
Hans
I vote for [mistake]. Not enough of his original audience (in the USA) would ever know it was incorrect.
I vote for archaism. Originally, Margraf (border-graf) was a slur. It didn't last, however, as the margraves very quickly (2-3 generations) became more powerful than the central graffs - larger holdings, more men in livery.
Oh, and at least one printing of CT corrected it to have marquis over count.
I didn't know it was originally a slur. I'm familiar with the Dutch and German etymology of the word and never encountered that in any primary source. Interesting.
Quite possible, but does it matter? There's no way to settle the question unless one of the original writers speak up (and even that is subject to memory glitch).
What matters, IMO, is that it serves to distinguish Imperial nobles from Old Earth nobles (if Imperial nobles being more powerful than Old Earth emperors isn't enough
).Hans
Freedom is an elusive thing. 
However, I like the system Hans developed; looks like the kind of thing some Imperial College of Arms would work up so as to make sure all the proper forms were followed when entertaining non-Imperial nobility (not to mention making sure that TL1 chief understood where he ranked in the scheme of things). I believe I will adopt it. How are you calculating the modifiers?
However, I like the system Hans developed; looks like the kind of thing some Imperial College of Arms would work up so as to make sure all the proper forms were followed when entertaining non-Imperial nobility (not to mention making sure that TL1 chief understood where he ranked in the scheme of things). I believe I will adopt it. How are you calculating the modifiers?
Buried deep within Fox-Davies The Art of Heraldry.
That's exactly what I envisaged back in the day. Here's an excerpt from my old article (it was rejected by JTAS Online, so i guess I won't lose anything by posting it here).
The Imperium has solved this problem by creating the Imperial Division of Heraldry (IDH). This is ostensibly an Imperial department for the registration of heraldic coats of arms and equivalent devices, but in reality its most important function is to evaluate local titles, offices, and positions and translate them into equivalent Imperial social positions. On the recommendation of the IDH the holder of a given title, office, or position automatically receives a knighthood in an appropriate Imperial order. This just as automatically gives him or her a fitting position in Imperial society.
The IDH defines a scale of social levels called 'rungs' (as in rungs on the social ladder). The lowest rungs are occupied by 97% of the population of Charted Space. Rung 0 is used for slaves, and is not employed inside the Imperium, where slavery is forbidden. Rung 1 is for individuals outside the fabric of society: tramps, pariahs, outlaws, etc. Rung 2 to 10 are used for the lower and the middle classes. The remaining rungs, from 11 and up, are used for the roughly 3% that constitutes the upper classes and are the only ones the IDH directly affects. Even this is only in theory. 3% of the Imperium's population comes to 450 billion. In practice a large part of the upper classes of low- and mid-tech worlds are ignored, but even so, the IDH files contain more than 25 billion entries.
The IDH considers a lot of factors when they decide on the appropriate rung for a given position. Chief among these is the "base", i.e. the number of "commoners" a title "represents". In the case of a feudal society this would simply be the number of people ultimately owing fealty to the noble either directly or through vassals, but other cases can be a lot more vague. It can be based on commercial holdings, industrial possessions, religious mana, moral authority, voting stock, scientific standing, or anything else that makes one person defer to another.
Other considerations may affect the decision. Titles may be defunct, in the sense that the power originally inherent in a base has been taken away from the title (as for example in the case of the European nobility on Terra in the 25th Century Pre-Imperial), but as long as the local population still respects the title, the Imperium will do so too.
Nobles with differently sized bases may all have the same title; if local protocol demands that a noble with a base of a million people be treated just like his peer with a base of a billion people, then the IDH will also treat them alike (In such cases the individual that would be on the highest rung in any case normally determines the rung for everyone).
A sovereign ruler will normally be rated as higher than a noble with a similar sized base who is the subject of a higher authority (either literally or in the abstract sense; a constitutional monarch is regarded as under the authority of his people; subject to his subjects as it were).
The heir to a title is usually rated at one rung below the holder, while younger offspring are rated two or more rungs below, much depending on the regard their particular society holds for them; such guidelines are always open to interpretation. The sons of a Guider of the Tribe's Destiny of a Grundish steppe-tribe, for example, are specifically excluded by law from succeeding him. But since they act as his executive officers, they enjoy a prestige scarcely less than his own and are consequently rated only one rung below him.
Finally, the IDH is influenced by a number of prejudices. Holders of elective offices are generally rated lower than equivalent hereditary rulers; members of low- and mid-tech societies are rated lower than members of high-tech societies; rulers of entire worlds are rated higher than rulers of parts of a world even if their bases are the same size; and minor non-human races are rated lower than human and major non-human races.
There is a large number of Imperial orders of knighthood. Some of these, like the Most Valorous Order of the Emperor's Guard (E.G.), the Most Courtly Order of the Starship and Crown (S.C.), the Most Illustrious Order of the Arrow (O.A.), and the various orders of the domains are used to reward individuals for service to the Imperium; they are not normally used just to grade local planetary dignitaries. For this purpose the most commonly used are the Most Excellent Order of the Third Imperium (T.I.), the Most Distinguished Order of the Golden Sun (G.S.), and the Most Exalted Order of the Star of Sylea (S.S.) (The last should not to be confused with the Most Noble Order of the Domain of Sylea (D.S.)).
[The grading orders are all non-canon.]
All modifications are guidelines only. Positions that reach rung 24 and above will almost invariably receive an Imperial noble title (So the ruler of a planet with 400 million citizens (rung 20) and a tech level of TTL15/GTL12 (+4 rungs) would be at least an Imperial baron, quite possibly more).
The IDH defines a scale of social levels called 'rungs' (as in rungs on the social ladder). The lowest rungs are occupied by 97% of the population of Charted Space. Rung 0 is used for slaves, and is not employed inside the Imperium, where slavery is forbidden. Rung 1 is for individuals outside the fabric of society: tramps, pariahs, outlaws, etc. Rung 2 to 10 are used for the lower and the middle classes. The remaining rungs, from 11 and up, are used for the roughly 3% that constitutes the upper classes and are the only ones the IDH directly affects. Even this is only in theory. 3% of the Imperium's population comes to 450 billion. In practice a large part of the upper classes of low- and mid-tech worlds are ignored, but even so, the IDH files contain more than 25 billion entries.
The IDH considers a lot of factors when they decide on the appropriate rung for a given position. Chief among these is the "base", i.e. the number of "commoners" a title "represents". In the case of a feudal society this would simply be the number of people ultimately owing fealty to the noble either directly or through vassals, but other cases can be a lot more vague. It can be based on commercial holdings, industrial possessions, religious mana, moral authority, voting stock, scientific standing, or anything else that makes one person defer to another.
Other considerations may affect the decision. Titles may be defunct, in the sense that the power originally inherent in a base has been taken away from the title (as for example in the case of the European nobility on Terra in the 25th Century Pre-Imperial), but as long as the local population still respects the title, the Imperium will do so too.
Nobles with differently sized bases may all have the same title; if local protocol demands that a noble with a base of a million people be treated just like his peer with a base of a billion people, then the IDH will also treat them alike (In such cases the individual that would be on the highest rung in any case normally determines the rung for everyone).
A sovereign ruler will normally be rated as higher than a noble with a similar sized base who is the subject of a higher authority (either literally or in the abstract sense; a constitutional monarch is regarded as under the authority of his people; subject to his subjects as it were).
The heir to a title is usually rated at one rung below the holder, while younger offspring are rated two or more rungs below, much depending on the regard their particular society holds for them; such guidelines are always open to interpretation. The sons of a Guider of the Tribe's Destiny of a Grundish steppe-tribe, for example, are specifically excluded by law from succeeding him. But since they act as his executive officers, they enjoy a prestige scarcely less than his own and are consequently rated only one rung below him.
Finally, the IDH is influenced by a number of prejudices. Holders of elective offices are generally rated lower than equivalent hereditary rulers; members of low- and mid-tech societies are rated lower than members of high-tech societies; rulers of entire worlds are rated higher than rulers of parts of a world even if their bases are the same size; and minor non-human races are rated lower than human and major non-human races.
There is a large number of Imperial orders of knighthood. Some of these, like the Most Valorous Order of the Emperor's Guard (E.G.), the Most Courtly Order of the Starship and Crown (S.C.), the Most Illustrious Order of the Arrow (O.A.), and the various orders of the domains are used to reward individuals for service to the Imperium; they are not normally used just to grade local planetary dignitaries. For this purpose the most commonly used are the Most Excellent Order of the Third Imperium (T.I.), the Most Distinguished Order of the Golden Sun (G.S.), and the Most Exalted Order of the Star of Sylea (S.S.) (The last should not to be confused with the Most Noble Order of the Domain of Sylea (D.S.)).
[The grading orders are all non-canon.]
Code:
[FONT="Courier New"]TABLES
Approximate
Description Rung Old Terran Imperial Order
(May differ in some societies) Equivalent of knighthood
3RD IMPERIUM
Appointed noble 11 Knight Officer
Rich and/or powerful non-noble 12 Magnate Commander
Hereditary noble, small or no base 13 Banneret Knight Cmdr.
Base of thousands 14 Baron Grand Cross
GOLDEN SUN
Base of tens of thousands 15 Viscount/Count Officer
Base of hundreds of thousands 16 Marquis/Duke Companion
Base of millions 17 Archduke/Prince Commander
Base of 10s of millions 18 King Knight Cmdr.
Base of 1-3 100s of millions 19 Emperor Grand Cross
STAR OF SYLEA
Base of 4-9 100s of millions 20 No equivalent Companion
Base of 1-3 billions 21 No equivalent Commander
Base of 4-9 billions 22 No equivalent Knight Cmdr.
Base of 10-30 billions 23 No equivalent Grand Cross
Base of more than 30 billions 24 No equivalent [See below]
MODIFICATIONS:
TRAVELLER TECH STATUS GURPS TECH STATUS
Pre-industrial society -4 TL 0 to 3 -4
Industrial society -2 TL 4 -3
Pre-stellar society -1 TL 5 and 6 -2
Early Stellar society 0 TL 7 and 8 -1
Average Stellar society +2 TL 9 and 10 0
High Stellar society +4 TL 11 +2
TL 12 +4
Sovereign ruler +1
Elected or appointed official -1
Heir to position -1
Younger child -2
Minor non-human race -1[/FONT]
Hans
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
I anxiously await Magnus's input...
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
He uses noble ranks quite a bit in his T5 ATU. He may want to apply your thoughts, or a version of your thoughts.
Wait no more.
I rather like Hans' take on the Nobility, it reminds me of a table I did ages ago. Still his is much better and more in depth than mine which was nothing more than an expansion of the standard Soc levels.
Not sure I will use it, but I most def dig it.
I rather like Hans' take on the Nobility, it reminds me of a table I did ages ago. Still his is much better and more in depth than mine which was nothing more than an expansion of the standard Soc levels.
Not sure I will use it, but I most def dig it.
