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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6024969" data-attributes="member: 4937">1) Who is nominally in power? - Queen Bereth Franke and here husband and coregent King Rothgar.  Unanswered, questions: What formal titles does Queen Bereth claim?  Who was King Rothgar before he married Bereth Franke, and what independent power base does he have?)2) Who is actually in power? - In theory Queen Bereth, but in practice the feudal Barons hold sufficient control over their holdings, subjects, and military force of the kingdom that the monarchy cannot dismiss the concerns and rights of the Barons.  A sufficiently large rebellion by the Barons would almost certainly be successful, and minor acts of rebellion such as resisting the imposition of taxes are common.  Thus the Queen must reach at least some level of political compromise with the Barons if she wants to retain control of the realm.3a) Of the various factions not in power, which if any want to be in power? - No sufficient answer.  At this point we don't know if the Franke family has a serious rival to the throne based on an ancient claim.  We don't know if there are Barons that dream of the throne or at least independence.  We don't know whether Bereth has a rival within the Franke family itself who would happily move Bereth out of the way if an opportunity presented itself.  We don’t know if there is a prehuman faction desiring to reclaim its former glory, or what contacts and allies they have within the human community.  We don’t know if Bereth has problems with racial or ethnic groups that desire independence.  Do some of the elves chafe under human rule?  Are there ethnic groups that look quite different than the Viking type and are they well treated and loyal to a ruler who doesn’t look like them?3b) What is the personality of the current ruler? - No sufficient answer.  Is Bereth competent?  What is her alignment?  What traits does she have.  It would be good at least if Bereth and Rothgar were written up as seven sentence NPCs. 4) What rituals and traditions are considered essential to establishing the dignity, legitimacy, and sanctity of the monarchy? - We have the beginning of answer.  Given the importance of marriage in the society, it's almost certain that a royal marriage is very public and highly ritualized.  The solemnity of the royal marriage acts as the sign and surety of marriage as a whole in the entire realm.   Therefore, probably the betrothal, the announcement of the betrothal, the wedding itself, and even the post-wedding journey/procession are surrounded with ritual and elaborate tradition.  Likewise, one of the most important powers of the throne is probably the power to govern marriage.  Like many real medieval kingdoms, it’s not at all improbable that a good portion of the throne’s taxes come through some sort of marriage tax required to become officially married.  This of course creates tensions within the society, as it’s possible that among the very poor the existence of any sort of tax is creating social rebellion in the form of unofficial marriages.  This is likely seen as a danger to public order and morals by some.  In many monarchies, it’s the birthday of the ruler that is an important public holiday.  In this case, it’s almost certain that it is the anniversary of the marriage of the ruler that prompts an important holiday (probably lasting more than a single day, since the anniversary of the marriage of the heir must be similarly solemnized but to a lesser degree).  Similarly, it’s unlikely that this culture uses the word kingdom, or queendom, or even monarchy to describe itself and its system of rule.  With two officially coregel rulers, ‘monarchy’ doesn’t capture the intention – diarchy or even genearchy is more likely.  Likewise, with queens equal to kings, this isn’t a kingdom but a desmanse (domain) or realm.5) How stable is the current political system? – Given the outlet of the society on the frontier, I’d say that it’s probably fairly stable at present.   Discontent with the current political system can always be channeled into carving out your own niche at the edge of the nation.  However, without an answer to 3a and 3b its really impossible to answer this.  If Bereth is incompetent and her enemies powerful, that’s entirely different than Bereth being the greatest queen in three centuries and her enemies few and unpopular.6) What are relations like with neighbors - I think you’ve covered this fairly well in your write up, so I won’t repeat it here.7) What is the present overall alignment of the nation? – When in doubt, neutral is always a good choice.  Even in a society that tilts to LG or CE, it’s likely that a plurality if not an outright majority of people are neutral – too concerned with the everyday realities of their own survival to worry over much by ideologies.  But a tilt here can have pretty profound impacts on the daily life of the society, and critically, on how the PC heroes find themselves relating to it.  Additionally, with a big enough nation you can have different regions and subcultures with different tilts.  For example, out on the frontier, morality has gravitated to a chaotic good viewpoint.  Back in long settled lands, morality has gravitated to a lawful good viewpoint.   Troubling both is a ruthless subculture of river merchants, smugglers, and sometime pirates that tend to chaotic evil.   The LG culture in civilization tends to see the CG’s on the frontier as backward and tends to unfairly equate the lot with the CE subculture.  The CG culture therefore sees the LG culture as being out of touch, arrogant, and oppressive.  You’ll need to come up with cultural markers for the different major cultures – accents, clothing preferences, food preferences, etc.  These different cultural markers behind the culture together, but also creates points of tension and objects of scorn with the other cultures.   Note that if you really want to get complex, you can have competing cultures with the same overall alignment – slightly different takes on how to live well.8) What is the present alignment of the ruling class? – When in doubt, either pick the same as 7, or pick one degree more lawful than what you picked in 7.   It’s usually in the interest of the ruling class to maintain the status quo and encourage loyalty to itself.   However, it is not at all rare that the ruling class is hypocrites.   For example, if the overall alignment of the society is lawful, it’s not unusual for the ruler to be a primarily self-interested chaotic that by some perspectives is little more than a parasite on the culture.  The majority may or may not be aware of the problem since it is fairly easy for a chaotic ruler to pretend to be lawful given the deference that such a society gives its rulers.9) How strong is the dissident faction within the nation, that is, the group of people with the opposite outlook on life? – Every culture is going to have a counter culture.  How strong that counter culture is depends on how much faith people have in the present dominant culture.13) What ethical tension is present because of enduring local traditions that may still exist in contrast to the overall alignment? - I mentioned you've already done a pretty good job of answering this important question, but I think that you have an inevitable hot button issue that you haven't mentioned yet, which is, for lack of a better term, environmentalism.  You have a society based on settling and carving up the rain forest AND you have a society with a significant elven population.   This is almost certainly going to create tension between the human culture that wants to settle everything and turn it into simple safe productive farm and pasture land, and an elven culture which by sterotype is going to want to prefer a wilder, less tamed, more natural nation even at the expense of reduced population, security, and productivity.</blockquote>

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