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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gilladian" data-source="post: 6024813" data-attributes="member: 2093">Oy Celebrim! You've  asked me questions it will take a year to answer, and go far beyond what I need for a few weeks of adventure... but I'll have fun coming up with the answers!Just a little bit because the politics are playing in to my current adventure idea; the Queen is indeed the true ruler, though by law her husband is equal in authority as her spouse. This society is quite gender-equal, and also sees marriage as a VERY strong bond; two people who marry become almost as one politically and economically, though divorce is not forbidden and is legally provided for both parties.The barons run the army; their sons and daughters are the backbone of the fighting troops, who are used mostly as border guards, naval troops (marines, I'd guess) and internally as something like the national guard. The King and Queen have their own tax-collecting agency, which is only moderately lax, and is disliked by everyone, Barons and commoners alike. Most individuals would probably find their loyalty more on the side of their baron than the kingdom, but they still have a sense of national identity. There is a middle class, but it is fairly small. Most ships and such are owned by the nobility, though it isn't forbidden for anyone else to own one; they're just unlikely to be able to make that initial investment. Much of the middle class is craft-oriented; they'd be small-time merchants, but not larger scale. It's also not impossible to buy one's way into the Baronial ranks; if you can get a deed of property, and go establish a village on the edge of the kingdom, and keep it going for a few years, you become a Baron. So there's a lot of natural buy-in in that respect. Or you can always marry your eldest child to a Baron or Baroness and move up that way...I'm developing an adventure wherein the PCs are trying to track down the Red Saint's historic movements. And there is a current group in power (the Queen) who really would prefer they not succeed, because she's afraid they'll discover a dark family secret (the Franke family had the Red Saint assassinated 500 years ago). If the common people find this out, it could cause trouble for the Queen; the Red Saint is a popular folk-hero today. It would be rather like people now finding out that (a real) Robin Hood had been murdered by Sir Guy of Gisborn, and then Guy's daughter married King, and her great-grand-kids are still on the throne today... maybe not a reason to overthrow them, but still a chip away at loyalty to them.</blockquote>

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