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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8780724" data-attributes="member: 6790260">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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University" target="_blank">Western university system</a> 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."Except it isn't superhuman in a world where people can use magic, is it? It's completely human! Ordinary humans can do it."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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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