{"id":123,"date":"2009-02-12T19:01:20","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T01:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=123"},"modified":"2009-02-12T19:01:20","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T01:01:20","slug":"snippet-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=123","title":{"rendered":"Snippet"},"content":{"rendered":"

This snippet is the first in the book (in the present version) to resonate with the title Oath of Fealty<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Location: Duke’s Stronghold, shortly after word reaches there\u00a0 (finally!) that Kieri Phelan is a) the rightful heir to the throne of Lyonya and b) on his way there.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The snippet is in snatches, leaving out bits that aren’t relevant to the title issue.<\/p>\n

Arcolin woke to the memory of yesterday’s surprises and the realization that he needed to parade the whole Company.\u00a0 They had given their oaths to Kieri, who had now left them.\u00a0 They must now give their oaths to him.<\/p>\n

Outside, the previous evening’s storm continued, alternating brief snow flurries with rattling sleet and icy rain.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps it would stop by noon; Arcolin went down to breakfast and found Valichi staring thoughtfully at the weapons on the dining room wall.<\/p>\n

“If he hadn’t been such a fool about Tammarrion’s sword,” Valichi said, “things would\u00a0 have been very different.<\/p>\n

(Gap for most of breakfast)<\/p>\n

“Think the weather will clear today?” Arcolin asked. “I need to take their oaths, the whole Company.”<\/p>\n

The two captains stared at him, then at each other.\u00a0 “I had forgotten,” Cracolnya said.\u00a0 “If he’s not coming back–if he’s the one to break the oath–then we all–”\u00a0 His voice trailed away.<\/p>\n

“We all swore to him personally,” Arcolin said.\u00a0 “Whether the Crown and Council confirm me or not, for the time being we need a single oath to bind us.\u00a0 And–”\u00a0 he shrugged.\u00a0 “That’s to me.”\u00a0 As he said it, he realized he would also have to travel to the villages again, taking their charters and getting the oaths of mayors and councils, making a copy for the Crown.<\/p>\n

(another gap)<\/p>\n

By midafternoon, the storm had passed, though furrowed clouds still covered the sky.\u00a0 Arcolin had the Company paraded in the main court, cohort by cohort, to take their oaths.<\/p>\n

……………<\/p>\n

Tsaia is a true feudal realm, with land granted in return for military service (or the promise of it, at least)\u00a0 and society organized on the basis of personal oaths of loyalty from top to (almost) bottom. \u00a0 It’s quite possible to have kings, nobility, titles, pomp and circumstance and *not* be feudal (the term is often misused today for anything someone thinks is antiquated, classist, brutal.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In its purest form, I’m not certain it ever existed: there were always exemptions, outliers, people who didn’t fit into the hierarchy.<\/p>\n

It’s a form of barter, if you think of the alternative ways of deciding who gets what piece of land–all of which require money.\u00a0 In the cash poor centuries,\u00a0 a leader’s army was made up of the households of his friends.\u00a0\u00a0 Taxes\u00a0 were in work and in kind: a vassal might owe his lord ten knights and twenty infantry, but also so many man-days a year of work on anything the lord wanted, and so many quintals of grain, so many sheep, so many cattle, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 (Henry VIII required nobles to maintain a horse herd in proportion to the size of the estate, with mares of at least a minimum size to be bred to approved stallions…because the army needed mounts.\u00a0\u00a0 Kings and queens made “progresses” through a kingdom, staying with one noble after another and being fed at the noble’s expense (pretending you had a dire illness in the household might evade the duty one year, but not all years.<\/p>\n

The chain of oaths could be (and was) broken…and then the lower-end folks had to decide which oath to honor.\u00a0\u00a0 The king wasn’t going to be there to protect you when your count\/duke\/earl found out that you’d decided to honor king and country before the local power.\u00a0 OTOH, if the king marshaled enough military might to take out the local lord and you had been sticking to him…you were just as sunk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This snippet is the first in the book (in the present version) to resonate with the title Oath of Fealty.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Location: Duke’s Stronghold, shortly after word reaches there\u00a0 (finally!) that Kieri Phelan is a) the rightful heir to the throne of Lyonya and b) on his way there.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The snippet is in snatches, leaving out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4],"tags":[106,13,26,28],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-contents","tag-contents","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-snippet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}