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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5597999" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, yes, but he also thinks that certain choices are inevitable on the basis of the existing social relationships defined by the means of production, and further he believes that certain choices and only certain choices are irreversible.  So, he would grant that society can vacillate for a time, but as he would put it, what is not impossible is inevitable.That's not really a debate I can get into within the rules of the forum.  Suffice to say that I understand some people think Marx quite intelligent, and I on the other hand believe he's a raving loon and a megalomaniac with no more self-awareness and logic than your average schizophrenic.  Ok, sure.  At the time the Queendom came about, a disunited people found themselves at a strategic disadvantage with a highly agressive expansive neighbor with superior magical arts and technology.   To aid in their desire to maintain their independence, they choose to emphasis their relationship to their neighbor through marriage.  That is to say, they essentially said, "See, we aren't your enemy.  We are under the rule of your sister."   Because the people had no previous overlord, and because their Queen ruled wisely and had an idependent streak the quite independent people admired, and because she had only daughters, and because prior to unification it was natural first to see the role of high monarch as one that should naturally pass from woman to woman, and secondly it was natural to uphold this cultural difference as a marker that distinguished them from their much larger neighbor (were patrilinear succession was standard) and thereby became a sort of point of cultural pride.  Of course, this only happened because the original Queen was skilled enough of a leader to make her wishes seem quite natural and desirable.  Among those concerns were the fear that if she didn't succeed in creating a rule matrilinear succession to the throne, that her daughters wouldn't inherit it.  But repetition made for habit and in the course of time that became the only way to do things and its still a source of cultural pride that they do things differently than their neighbors.Of course, to fully explain this in the way I'd want to would probably take a novel, wherein the choices of the men and women were explained according to their beliefs and natures.  But in game terms, the Queen is a 'player character' (not that I've actually game this out).  Or in more general terms, she is a Hero(ine) and as such her character and actions have far ranging effects.  One of those effects was the establishment of the only heriditary Queendom on the game world (and one of only two societies whose sovereign is female that I'm aware of, since I haven't really explored the whole world).This is a very good point.I quite agree.  One of the central differences between the modern and the pre-modern is the notion that the world is ruled by laws rather than men.  Interestingly though, I think it is the Feudal System that first begins to blur this line and becomes the stepping stone from Rule of Man to Rule of Law.   This is because the Feudal System encodifies the relationship between the leige and his subject.   This leads directly to such things as the Magna Carter and eventually to the modern idea of a Constitution, but certainly back at the time of the feudal system society is governed primarily by private to private relationships.  Not to put to fine a point on it, but I think you can go a long way toward making your world feel suitably ancient by having things which we would now consider gross injustices be reutine: officials require bribes in order to do their duty, judges require payment before they'll hear a case, lords hear cases in which they are a party, taxation is arbitarily applied, the office of tax collector is up for sale to the highest bidder, people are judged according to their station, punishment is by a modern perspective grossly outsized to the crime, slavery is accepted as a part of life in even 'good' societies, and so forth.  You don't have to put all of that into every society, but neither should your civic society parallel the modern.</blockquote>

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