nobility
- Thread starter flykiller
- Start date
Anything and everything. Bertie Wooster, Howqua, John Churchill, anything and everything.
What the imperial nobility is not is all of one thing or another. They're not all inbred fops. They're not all merchant princes. They're not all military commanders. They're most definitely not all sitting in a manor house managed an agrarian fief.
Mr. Miller has repeatedly stated over the years that he views the Third Imperium as a Feudal Technocracy.
While raising wheat and sheep are technical activities which are mutually beneficial, so are a lot of other things.
IMTU nobles act as "living treaties". Each world joined the Imperium in various ways. Each world has rights and responsibilities vis a vis the Imperium which were negotiated at the time of admission. Nobles are created and/or assigned to keep an eye on those rights and responsibilities.
Wil's setting detail of starports being Imperial fiefs is a form of this. Not every starport IMTU is a fief, but many are and almost all have a noble concession or sinecure attached to their operations.
Consider Chamax Horde. Raschev has a fusion power station gifted to the planet by the Imperium. IMTU a similar gift within the Imperium would most likely come with a knight or noble "attached".
Look at the TVA in the US, a huge flood control and rural electrification project that has metastasized in several ways since the 1930s. Such a project could have been part of a "hearts & minds" campaign to convince a world's leadership to join and a noble would have come attached.
Imagine a balkanized world with all the planetary trade and diplomatic wrangling that implies. A (supposedly) impartial Imperial noble or nobles could act as the WTO, IMF, and World Court there.
What is Imperial nobility? Anything and everything, Fly, anything and everything.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Subsector dukes are first and foremost tax collectors. They are also masters of the Imperial payroll for their slice of the take and can thus reward underlings.
Next they are territorial governors in that they oversee the Imperial apparatus within their subsector, including giving advice to Imperial military assets as to what they should be up to.
The best description I have come closest to is they are similar to mob bosses...
Next they are territorial governors in that they oversee the Imperial apparatus within their subsector, including giving advice to Imperial military assets as to what they should be up to.
The best description I have come closest to is they are similar to mob bosses...
Sinecures, concessions, and monopolies.
Only Knight X can run numbers on Arglebargle-IX, only Baron Y controls loan sharking on Bargleargle-XI, only Count Z controls prostitution in the Corleone Cluster.
Works for me!
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Hmm.
Maybe more like political machine subordinates, doling out perks privileges and favors in exchange for loyalty and helping with favors for others, while occasionally rising above such matters to work on larger political and patriotic problem-solving.
So a mob boss isn't going to necessarily go on a recruiting/bond drive for the Fifth Frontier War, or at least everyone understands it's going straight to the noble mob treasury, whereas a noble political machine could/would do their patriotic duty to rally their fief for 'the cause' and it's not necessarily a graft operation.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Pretty sure scouts would be looking to expand into new territory, like 'discovering' Las Vegas, and operating Red Zone no-go zones for every one in the Imperial Mob.
Bagmen would be merchants.
And bureaucrats would be the accountants running the dirty books.
Drakon
SOC-14 1K
There is a line in either the Godfather, or the Sopranos, about how "you kick up to me, I kick up to the guy above, and he kicks up to the guy above him, like it has been since the days of the Caesars."
If you view government as essentially a protection racket with legitimacy, then the analogy to the mob is not far off. But it does not necessarily mean criminal activity or direct graft. A noble is given a fief to support him, to act as his wages for the various jobs the Imperium has of him. Agricultural and mining interests are only part of the mix. Rents and other legitimate business opportunities would arise. Perhaps crops have led to investments in manufacturing capabilities.
I see the fief a noble is given as a commission to improve the land, and make it profitable (i.e. taxable), peaceful, and growing. A benefit to the Imperium, rather than a problem for it.
If you view government as essentially a protection racket with legitimacy, then the analogy to the mob is not far off. But it does not necessarily mean criminal activity or direct graft. A noble is given a fief to support him, to act as his wages for the various jobs the Imperium has of him. Agricultural and mining interests are only part of the mix. Rents and other legitimate business opportunities would arise. Perhaps crops have led to investments in manufacturing capabilities.
I see the fief a noble is given as a commission to improve the land, and make it profitable (i.e. taxable), peaceful, and growing. A benefit to the Imperium, rather than a problem for it.
my view as well. but a protection racket? no marine is going to fight for a protection racket. no sailor is going to sit at his panel during a meson battle for a protection racket. no world is going voluntarily to join a protection racket.
during the drawdown of the roman/byzantine empires many conquered citizens welcomed their new german/moslem lords because these new rulers' tax rates were not nearly as debilitating as those of the imperial governments. if the imperium is a protection racket then it would be equally unstable and prone to infiltration and subversion by the zhodani and vargr.
Despite what T5 says, I don't see a fief as always being land.
Instead, I see a fief as an economic activity. Much like land, an activity can be preexisting, exist only as a potential, improved, expanded, and so forth. A fief could be so many square km of good bottom land or so many downtown city blocks. It could also be a power grid, a sinecure as a legal arbiter, a "slice" of a planetoid belt, a supply concession, a section of orbit over the mainworld, a downport, or a maker monopoly.
The Imperium is a feudal technocracy. I see the nobility involved in more technological activities than agricultural technologies.
Returning to the Imperium as a protection racket, I enjoy tweaking sensibilities with references to the Corleones and Sopranos as much as the next guy. I don't actually think the Imperium is a criminal organization however. (Some nobles may be criminals however.)
At worst, some regions of the Imperium probably resemble Daley's Chicago, Pendergast's Kansas City, Brayton's Rhode Island, Tweed's New York, Crump's Memphis, etc. There's a cozy "jobs/favors for the boys" and "one hand washes the other" operation with the local nobility, local megacorp reps, local Imperial bureaucrats, and other movers & shakers all in each others pockets, private clubs, balance sheets, and theater boxes.
If you read between the lines when TTA describes Aramis and it's Marquis, you'll definitely get a whiff of the type of low grade but endemic political corruption I'm talking about.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Sometimes it's a combination of the two, like Spice Mining.
You get what seems a worthless desert planet, over which you exercise very little direct control except in certain fortified areas, but you can go out and harvest worm spit, and take any measures deemed necessary to ensure production and export levels are maintained.
You get what seems a worthless desert planet, over which you exercise very little direct control except in certain fortified areas, but you can go out and harvest worm spit, and take any measures deemed necessary to ensure production and export levels are maintained.
Dangerously close to Pit time, there...
But note that, for those who see governments as protection rackets, they can legitimately point out that every Marine, Sailor, Soldier, and Airman does already... The question is if their chosen racket is worthy of that or not has to be answered one being at a time. And not every such being is even given the choice.
The difference between an extortion racket and a government military tax collection squad is immaterial when they come for your stuff; likewise, if the neighboring place's collectors are worse (would leave you less), youve' got a damned good reason to fight ti preserve the local one.
The protection racket trope would be a common and probably highly effective argument used by the Solomani against the Imperium: the system is rigged to allow the megacorps and their pets, a corrupt Imperial nobility, to enjoy peace and prosperity while most of the regular folk are forced to toil on high law, high population worlds.
I can agree with this, but one thing to consider is just how available and low cost land is on many worlds. There are few worlds with billions of people and 70%+ water, so for most Traveller worlds, LAND is plentiful, it is people to do something that are valuable. I could picture 'homestead laws' being common on many worlds ... live on the land and pay taxes and after 5 years the 1000 acre tract is all your's - free and clear.
After all, they have 1 million people and 10x the land area of Asia! Land they have no shortage of. So a grant of the power grid in the largest city where 400,000 of the 1 million people live might be a much better 'fief' for a noble in a 'Feudal Technocracy'.
I mean, sure he owns a huge tract of land, too. Who doesn't?
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Someone has to be Justice of the Peace; and get a piece of the action.
So do I. The nobility would also be involved in the administration of Imperial justice, naturally. On the interstellar level, IMTU, the nobility must "vet" all planet to plant extradition requests.
Among other things, vetting interstellar extraditions prevents Hi-Pop Arglebargle-IX from dispatching the 177th Process Serving & Bail Bondsmen Armored Grav Brigade to Lo-Pop Jerkwater-III every time they need to "extradite" fugitives from Arglebargle's rather draconian shoelace length laws.
MTU's idea of fiefs being more than a plot of land means some nobles could have a planetary judicial role on some worlds. Canonically, we do know that the Delphine, the Imperial Duchess of Mora, is also that the planet's sole legislator. She writes and enacts all that planet's laws or, more accurately, a staff she closely supervises writes the laws which she enacts.
With the Delphine example, we could imperial nobles acting on other, purely planetary, judicial roles. Imagine an imperial noble on a balkanized world filling the role of our World Court of the Hague or the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO.