Many forms of government have existed, and now exist, in our world…many forms of government can be depicted in fiction (including ones we haven’t yet seen in reality, like, um, a completely fair one.)\u00a0\u00a0 Epic fantasy is frequently criticized for having monarchies and aristocracies\u00a0 (and the writers thereof accused of romanticism about the Middle Ages.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So a reasonable question is “Why are the political systems in Paksworld what they are?”<\/p>\n
And the answer is, “I studied history at Rice under F.S. Lear and K.F. Drew and C. Garside.\u00a0 That explains everything.”\u00a0\u00a0 And I see a row of stubbornly frowning faces in front of me, with thought balloons over their heads saying “That explains NOTHING<\/em>.”\u00a0 And I’ll bet the stubborn faces would still have those thought balloons if I added, “OK, there was also prehistory and cultural anthropology…”<\/p>\n Fine.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s the (partial–you never get ALL the details or I’d never have time to write fiction)\u00a0 explanation.\u00a0\u00a0 Lear’s history classes focused on the political and legal history of Greece and Rome…with assigned reading that gradually made sense of what contributed to what bits of it.\u00a0\u00a0 Cultural anthropology and archaeology classes dealt with social structure in specific situations\u00a0 (hunter\/ gather societies, early agricultural societies, etc.)\u00a0\u00a0 Studying history and pre-history and anthropology side by side filled some of the gaps in each.\u00a0\u00a0 I could not ignore any of that when writing fiction; the world-building had to include a history that was more than events, the “clash of empires” kind of thing.\u00a0 In the meantime, after college, I’d had plenty of time to read more–in anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and yes, more history–to add more to the mix of things I felt had to balance in any fictional world.<\/p>\n Every size of culture (from a 20-30 person band up to the Persian Empire) has a range of likely political solutions to “How do we make this group thing work?”\u00a0 Roles and routines can be created from necessity and then become Tradition when the necessity no longer exists.\u00a0 Small groups can take the time to listen to everyone’s opinion (they may not, but they can) whereas in large groups, the time it takes (with no way to filter the input) may not be practical even if the will is there.\u00a0\u00a0 (Where does everyone sit\/stand?\u00a0 Who\u00a0 is going to watch the children while this is going on?\u00a0\u00a0 Who’s minding the goats?\u00a0 Who’s harvesting the grain?\u00a0 Who’s keeping watch so the enemy doesn’t surprise us?)\u00a0 Even in small groups, there will be social pressure not to express a very divergent opinion, social sanctions against those who disturb too many people.<\/p>\n Some groups of each size are “looser” and some “tighter”–often, but not always, in response to environmental pressures (from climate, from weather, from disease, from contact–friendly or hostile–with other human groups.)\u00a0\u00a0 A charismatic person finds it easier to influence others–and thus can gain power beyond what his\/her talents and strength would suggest, and change group dynamics from more,\u00a0 to less, democratic.\u00a0 As societies enlarge (if they do) the organization does not scale up smoothly…new structures emerge, often with substructures that reveal the earlier, small-scale organization.\u00a0\u00a0 Changes in the substrate–the environment, broadly conceived–stress existing structures and force change in them.\u00a0 The obvious (one-leader, all powerful) may in fact be different in reality (small group of powerful and competing individuals partly concealed by the one obvious leader, who is their puppet.)<\/p>\n So to Paksworld.\u00a0 I wanted a range of political situations that could reasonably exist in the same time period, in regular contact with one another, and having histories that made sense to me.\u00a0\u00a0 As it’s a fantasy world, some of that history can be unreal in our terms.\u00a0\u00a0 In our late medieval period,\u00a0 on one continent with regular contact among them, there were absolute monarchies, smaller principalities (also strictly hierarchical and headed by one person),\u00a0 theocracies,\u00a0 city-states independent (mostly) of outside political control and governed by councils of wealthy citizens,\u00a0 village clusters with a democratic bent, and more.\u00a0\u00a0 Various invasions had affected the political system and legal system of different areas differently, but they all had a common experience of devastating conflict.<\/p>\n So–with all this rattling around in my head–there was Paks quarreling with her father on the edge of civilization–a farmhouse beyond the nearest village, very close to or over the edge of anyone’s map of what belongs under one name.\u00a0 Is it Fintha?\u00a0 Is it Tsaia?\u00a0\u00a0 Nobody there knows or cares.\u00a0\u00a0 She goes from her traditional family,\u00a0 past the little village–the first organization–small enough that every voice can be heard, if they’re willing (and they are, mostly.)\u00a0\u00a0 Down the slope to the larger town where she meets the recruiting team…and that town is part of a larger domain.\u00a0 Rocky Ford is in Tsaia, on the map.\u00a0\u00a0 That means it’s part of a monarchy, strongly influenced by religion.\u00a0\u00a0 Why is Tsaia a monarchy?\u00a0 Because of the magelords and their beliefs about magery–one of the things they took from the elves (the wrong elves)\u00a0 who tutored them in magery was a belief that strong magery created a right to rule.\u00a0 Why is it strongly influenced by religion?\u00a0 Because Tsaia lost the Girdish war.<\/p>\n In the magelord era, therefore, Tsaia (and Fintha) were governed top down from kings through the hierarchy of nobility; magery’s limitations being such that a group of slightly lesser magelords could influence (even overcome) the strongest.\u00a0\u00a0 So those monarchies were not as absolute as some, but more absolute than a constitutional one.\u00a0\u00a0 In Paks’s day, the king of Tsaia governs with a council of nobles, under the watchful eye of the Fellowship of Gird.\u00a0 Neither the royal power–nor the law in Tsaia (the Code of Gird in Tsaia)– is as absolute as either is elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0 Gird is the patron, Girdish is the state religion, but several others are tolerated.<\/p>\n The pre-magelord Old Humans were “primitive” to the magelords and functioned in their small groups with simple democracy tempered by respect for age and ancestor worship.\u00a0 (This being a fantasy, they really did hear from their ancestors.)\u00a0\u00a0 This simple democracy survived even after the magelord invasion, at the level of serf society…within the vills that a magelord claimed, the few decisions they were allowed to make were made by listening to all.\u00a0 Thus when resistance was organized–when magelord powers were failing–the “cells” of the resistance were initially all pure simple democracy.\u00a0 This changed with the pressure on them, and with the natural human tendency to prefer some over others.\u00a0\u00a0 But Gird’s rebellion was based on the idea that all the participants were equally valuable (if not equally skilled) and every voice should be heard.\u00a0\u00a0 (His was often loudest.)<\/p>\n As\u00a0 Gird’s organization grew–and especially because it had to be secret at first–it needed other levels, and the barton\/grange system developed to meet the need.\u00a0 With the war won,\u00a0 with the shift from fighting to survive<\/em> to administering a former kingdom under new laws<\/em>,\u00a0 Fintha developed as a theocracy with a hierarchical bureaucracy and a lingering outcrop of pure democracy: the Marshalate.\u00a0\u00a0 All Marshals could, in theory, attend, and all Marshals could cast one vote.\u00a0\u00a0 Between meetings of the Marshalate, the Marshal-General made the decisions, but if those decisions ran against the Marshalate’s decisions, there would be a march on Fin Panir.\u00a0\u00a0 Does this make Fintha a theocratic republic?\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t think so…Marshals are not elected by the members of granges, but commissioned by the Marshal-General.\u00a0\u00a0 That detail is a legacy that goes back beyond Gird, to the gnomes who taught him military science and helped him with the Code of\u00a0 Gird…they have a rule of law, in their way, and consider that the most important thing.\u00a0 Law is Law.<\/p>\n In Lyonya, simple democracy among the Old Humans prevailed until the elves came.\u00a0\u00a0 Elves had their own hierarchy of individual power, with the elvenhome ruler imposing his or her vision on the others, who worked within that vision.\u00a0 Luckily for elves, their rulers were immortal, so they didn’t have to scramble between successive rulers, each with a different vision.\u00a0 Magelords who came to Lyonya and literally fell under the spell of the elves created a human monarchy within the elven monarchy (thus, to the elves, acted like proper elven younglings, keeping everything in order and sharing in a vision of beauty.\u00a0 They were clearly junior to the elves, but they were amenable to the overall vision.\u00a0 The influence of the Old Humans, via intermarriage, made a limited concept of equality and sharing power acceptable.)<\/p>\n Aarenis displays both magelord and merchant-ruled societies, with the magelords standing in for European nobility and the merchants as, well, merchants.\u00a0\u00a0 Nearly all the magery of magelords disappeared centuries ago, but the older political structures survive in the places the last effective magelords ruled; Pliuni (until its destruction by Siniava),\u00a0 Andressat, Cilwan, Fall.\u00a0 In all these , the structures still show the influence of\u00a0 personal loyalty, fealty, as a guiding principle, and remnants of the old magelord nobility are still in place.<\/p>\n In contrast, many Guild League realms (Valdaire, Foss Council, Vonja, Sorellin, etc.)\u00a0 either lost their magelord rulers earlier, or were founded after the end of magelord domination in Aarenis.\u00a0 The memory of magelords lingered, making the guilds\u00a0 unwilling to allow a monarchy, and instead these city-states are run by relatively few–a council of wealthy merchants who elect a senior.\u00a0 (Think Venice and its Doges)\u00a0 They are technically republics (but the word is not known there) in being elective representative governments (with limited suffrage.)\u00a0\u00a0 Each guild elects its representative to the Council, the masters of that guild in that city-state voting.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Their guiding principle is profit.<\/p>\n In Cilwan, where both traditions are crammed together, this has meant increased vulnerability to political unrest.\u00a0\u00a0 The same problem has caused unrest in the north, from time to time (and in the current books)–the more serious Girdish see law–the Code of Gird–as the most important guiding principle;\u00a0 those adherents to the feudal organization in Tsaia see fealty, personal loyalty, as most important.\u00a0\u00a0 These big issues demand book-sized stories.<\/p>\n So…a variety of political organizations (and some not yet shown) because that’s what fit my understanding.<\/p>\n The so-far-unpublished Paksworld stories are set in various locations, allowing me to show more of areas that were just “there” or only lightly touched, in the books.\u00a0\u00a0 The two sold so far are set in different times and places in Aarenis: one is in Fall within the time period of Crown of Renewal<\/em>;\u00a0 the other at the margin of land claimed by Vonja decades in the past.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many forms of government have existed, and now exist, in our world…many forms of government can be depicted in fiction (including ones we haven’t yet seen in reality, like, um, a completely fair one.)\u00a0\u00a0 Epic fantasy is frequently criticized for having monarchies and aristocracies\u00a0 (and the writers thereof accused of romanticism about the Middle Ages.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/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":[108,62,12],"class_list":["post-2151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-contents","tag-background","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151"}],"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=2151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2153,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions\/2153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}