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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8780699" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Because, as already granted by others, magical knowledge requires time to develop. Ruling classes do not. Almost as soon as you have settled existence--which is required for all casting traditions except Warlock and Sorcerer (and maybe Druid)--you have class distinctions and rulers. In order for an actual "we focus on studying magic" class to develop, you need to already have a relatively stable, steady society, because it takes a LOT of time to become a truly powerful spellcaster.You have not actually defended this; you are just asserting, yet again, that having spellcasting is simply, always, universally superior in all ways, and that's simply not true. Unless and until you actually defend that the spellcaster is obviously superior, you are making a circular argument: spellcasters are superior because spellcasters are superior, so obviously spellcasters are superior.Not at all. I understand that quite well. I also understand that spellcasting does not automatically guarantee legitimacy. In fact, it may cause a serious deficit of legitimacy! It's absolutely not an unequivocal ticket to eternal legitimacy.Uh...actually, I hate to break it to you, but..<a href="https://acoup.blog/2022/09/23/collections-teaching-paradox-crusader-kings-iii-part-iia-rascally-vassals/" target="_blank">.that's actually exactly how vassalage came to become the dominant political situation in medieval Europe</a>. The "divine right of kings" stuff only came centuries later. (Warning, that linked blog post is a bit long, but it's actually really good, and written by an actual professor of history!)Rome had maintained a large and complex bureaucracy by having a large and broad educated middle-class that could fill such positions. However, as the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the stability and interconnectedness required to maintain such an educated middle class disappeared, meaning when it finally fell apart, there was a dearth of actual administrators to manage society. Regional leaders--warlords who set themselves up as "kings"--had to default to something, so they went with the comites (singular comes, pronounced "co-MACE"), from which we draw the modern word "count" in English and "comte" in French. Literally, the "companions" of the warleaders. And then the Missi Dominici ("Lord's Envoys" or "Ruler's Envoys") ensured that the comites actually adhered to the king's commands. Except...the missi ALSO declined in power as the early post-Roman kings started to weaken and lose direct control of their territory. As a result, the vassalage system literally was a matter of "this is the person who inherited this title and that's just the way it is."Except...that didn't happen nearly as often as you're claiming. Like, that should have happened the instant there was a stronger claimant, or a weak ruler, or whatever else. And....it didn't. Repeatedly. You almost always had actual conflicts resulting in wars of succession rather than everyone defaulting to one ruler or another. Further, subjects outright abandoning a weak ruler simply because the ruler was weak? Never happened. Your description of medieval history is simply completely inaccurate.Again...that only cropped up after vassalage became the default organization system of Europe. So you're literally talking about only after the rise of a mundane aristocracy, adding in this need to appeal to religious authority.Besides....there are quite openly interventionist deities. Which is why I dismissed "deified kings" much earlier in the thread. Gods can very quickly tell you whether your deified king is actually deified or is just a dude who knows some nifty tricks. That's gonna put a pretty major damper on people claiming such specialness.Again: you haven't actually defended this. You've just asserted it, and then worked from that assertion as though I should simply accept it because it was asserted. That's not an argument.This is just repeating the slippery-slope argument from above. Unless you can actually back up the inevitability of this progression, there's no reason to accept this argument.</blockquote>

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