EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I did not. Becoming a proper cleric is a long and involved process. It requires a great deal of learning. That's literally where the Western university system got its start: From the Encyclopedia of the Developing World, "Europe established schools in association with their cathedrals to educate priests, and from these emerged eventually the first universities of Europe, which began forming in the eleventh and twelfth centuries."You left out clerics and paladins. Basically the mainority of spellcasters require extensive training. Most do not and would thus already be around once a social hirarchy forms.
Except it isn't superhuman in a world where people can use magic, is it? It's completely human! Ordinary humans can do it.Spellcasting allows a person to do things the vast majority of people can't do. It literally makes them superhuman in their eyes. And thats the real power, not how much damage a fireball does. By appearing superhuman they can claim to be better than other people which is why they should rule and not others.
"Ordinary" only if you're enforcing conformity to our world. Which is the exact assertion I've been challenging, that it is NOT "all else being equal." Because it isn't! Even Fighters are clearly superhuman compared to our world.Spellcasting, the ability to do things ordinary persons can't do is a very big plus on the list of reasons why you should rule and not someone else and why people should follow you.
It's...not convenient at all. Those systems weren't medieval Europe. They worked by VERY different rules and did not actually have a nobility/aristocracy of the kind present in medieval Europe. Vassalage was not the primary means of control; a centralized bureaucracy was, and that bureaucracy depended on the King(/Pharaoh/Emperor/Etc.) for its support and continuity. In the absence of that central authority, government would collapse entirely. This is what I referred to earlier as a "hydraulic empire." Hydraulic empires require extensive bureaucratic structures in order to manage flooding and irrigation, and those needs, being based on environment rather than elective choice, ensure that this governing pattern recurs even if it is disrupted. Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire did not have such environmental pressures ensuring the return of a bureaucratic administration, and thus had to turn to other methods of organization in order to function.And you conveniently leave out all the older systems of government with divine rule like the Pharao of Egypt or the concurrent ones to Rome like Zoroastrianism and Judaism with divine rule.
But it only happened when all of those things came together. There were numerous times where a weak ruler led China and lived out his whole life. Consider, for example, the reign of Empress Wu--who was de facto ruler during the reign of her husband and two of her sons, before reigning outright as the only legitimate female sovereign in Chinese history. She retained her power in large part because the monarchs were weak, and she was able to use their weak reign to legitimize her own rule.It did happen. From mass revolts in China after natural disasters to nobles backing other candidates.
Weak rulers have occurred many, many times in human history, in many, many places. And yet the vast majority of them were not deposed. Society did not just spin on a dime and switch to the newest hotness. Loyalty mattered. Legitimacy--as you were so keen to point out earlier and return to just after this!--often mattered more than qualifications.
Not at all. I haven't seen a single thing you've said that actually responds to any of the arguments I've given.Just look at the proliferation of court rituals and the great lengths nobles had to go to appear proper. They did not do this because they wanted to go through all this but because it was expected of nobles to behave that way. And once enough nobles conformed to a ritual others had to adapt it.
The same would happen to spellcasting, the ultimate "I am better than ordinary persons" and thus sign that you should rule over them.
So, now your turn to defend your position...