Greenfield
Adventurer
The Economy thread having devolved into a "More medieval than thou" contest, I thought I'd start a discussion about what the hallmarks of "medieval" were, at least for western Europe.
First, nobility.
In most games we deal with a generic "King" so-and-so, or "Lord" such-and-such, and leave it at that. There's a lot more to it than that, however.
Some nations had many people with the title of "King". Ireland was known as the land of kings because every few miles you'd find someone else with that title. These were actually clan chiefs, however, and it was an elected position. They didn't follow the feudal structure at all. Calling these men "King" was the English way of trying to translate their leadership structure into something they could understand.
But Ireland did have a High King, the one person elected as the final arbiter of important matters.
"Prince" was a title given to a lot of people, not just the sons of a king. "Crown Prince" referred to the heir apparent to a throne, but otherwise it simply meant the male child of a king. Thus it could also refer to the King's brothers or cousins, since their parents had held the title at some point.
A Count was someone who ostensibly ruled a County. The English term would be Earl.
This link - Royal and noble ranks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - has a full table of the various rankings, from Emperor all the way down to "Gentleman", with translations across a dozen languages.
As a note, my own understanding of title Knight is that it isn't inherited, but awarded, and so a man might be Melvin, Earl of SouthSomewhere, or he might be Sir Melvin, Earl of Southsomewhere. Famed naval Commander Francis Drake was Captain Sir Francis Drake, and later Admiral Sir Francis Drake. The "Sir" appellation was independent of any other titles he held.
Originally, titles came with lands. And lands came with people to work those lands. It was impossible to own land without a title. The term "Landlord" was invented to describe someone who did own land, but had no title, and it was a much later evolution, when the middle class began to amass wealth. Nobles found that they were unable to support themselves strictly on their taxes, and there were merchants who had enough cash to bail them out. But they had to give them something for it, and thus the landlord was born.
But during the dark ages, land belonged to the local lord or the church, and nobody else.
Farmers were serfs, and were more or less property. They weren't free to go off and become adventurers, or even traveling salesmen. Serfs were not slaves, in that they couldn't be sold, but neither were they free. They needed permission to travel, and it was rarely given. Sold, perhaps, but not given.
Some few who had bought their freedom were called Freemen. Presume that adventurers are either Freemen, or Serfs who had fled their masters. A man who was "Free born" was someone whose parents had been Freemen, and thus were born without obligation to any master, and had no debt to pay.
Such people tended to be craft workers, artisans and skilled laborers. They had no land to farm, so if they didn't want to starve or be thrown in prison, they worked a trade. As this class grew, they formed the guilds.
To join a guild, the usual path was through apprenticeship. Your parents would make an arrangement with a master of the trade, and would pay for your education. You'd probably live with your new master, whose responsibility it was to teach you your letters and numbers, means and measures, and everything else you needed for the trade. You'd start with the dirty jobs, the basic unskilled labor, but as you learned you'd move to more skilled work.
At some point you would be awarded the rank of Journeyman, which meant you were free to leave your master and travel to seek employment with other masters, if you so chose. At this point the master is no longer being paid to teach you, but instead he's paying you for your work.
When, in time, you begin to feel like your masters have very little else to teach you, you might apply for Master rank on your own. To do this you'd prepare a sample of your work, using every trick of the trade you know. This would be your "Master piece", which would be judged by a group of masters to see if it was of good enough quality. This is the equivalent of applying for your Masters Degree in modern times, and is actually where both the application process and the name come from.
The other way to make something of yourself was to join either the military or the clergy. In both fields, positions of rank were purchased, not earned. A man who came up through the ranks might be a master soldier, but he'll get no respect from the other officers, since he was obviously of lower birth. A "proper" officer got his rank the old fashioned way, through bribery!
It was a common belief that the nobility truly were a breed apart from the common man. Access to better diet, particularly meat and other proteins during childhood, let the wealthy grow taller and healthier, to the point where they really did look like a superior breed.
This, of course, lead to the infamous practice among the various royal families of "Keeping the bloodlines pure" by marrying only members of other royal families. Marriages were commonly arranged for political or financial alliance, so love had very little to with it. As a whole, European nobility became such an inbred clique that certain hereditary genetic defects became a real issue. Hemophilia was one of the better known problems, but some nobles were encephallic idiots, and were simply hidden by their families until it was time to marry them off, preserving the family name (and defective genes) for another generation.
Among commoners, marriages were often arranged, but the wishes of the children were often the driving force, with the parents simply agreeing on the details.
Food was almost always vegetables. "Porridge" for breakfast wasn't anything resembling oat meal. The term came from "Potage'", meaning vegetable soup, usually the leftovers or cuttings of the previous evening's meal tossed into the stock pot.
Inns served the "common board", which usually involved bread and soup or stew. A rich inn might include some cheese with that. A wealthy person might order a specific meal, but that was custom service, and was the exception, not the rule. Note that the soup/stew seldom had any meat to speak of. It might be thickened with flour, or maybe with eggs, but that was about it.
Oh, and you wouldn't recognize the flour they used. Coarse, dark, and depending on the type of mill used to grind it, it might include shredded chaff, or even stone dust. It might be wheat, rye, barley or oat flour, and was neither fine and fluffy nor bleached.
Most pubs or inns made their own beer or ale. So, for that matter, did most homes.
Turnips were the featured vegetable in a lot of meals, since the potato wasn't around until Sir Walter Raleigh introduced them to his estates in Ireland. He also brought over the "foul weed" called Tobacco. Both came from the new world. "Corn" referred to the barley corn, not maize, which again came from the Americas.
A plow was a frame with a sharpened wooden stick that went into the ground. The metal plowshare was invented in the new world to cut through the rich loam of the great planes. European farmlands had been plowed and farmed for centuries, and were badly depleted. What fertilization there was came courtesy of sheep and cattle droppings, or from seasonal flooding.
First, nobility.
In most games we deal with a generic "King" so-and-so, or "Lord" such-and-such, and leave it at that. There's a lot more to it than that, however.
Some nations had many people with the title of "King". Ireland was known as the land of kings because every few miles you'd find someone else with that title. These were actually clan chiefs, however, and it was an elected position. They didn't follow the feudal structure at all. Calling these men "King" was the English way of trying to translate their leadership structure into something they could understand.
But Ireland did have a High King, the one person elected as the final arbiter of important matters.
"Prince" was a title given to a lot of people, not just the sons of a king. "Crown Prince" referred to the heir apparent to a throne, but otherwise it simply meant the male child of a king. Thus it could also refer to the King's brothers or cousins, since their parents had held the title at some point.
A Count was someone who ostensibly ruled a County. The English term would be Earl.
This link - Royal and noble ranks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - has a full table of the various rankings, from Emperor all the way down to "Gentleman", with translations across a dozen languages.
As a note, my own understanding of title Knight is that it isn't inherited, but awarded, and so a man might be Melvin, Earl of SouthSomewhere, or he might be Sir Melvin, Earl of Southsomewhere. Famed naval Commander Francis Drake was Captain Sir Francis Drake, and later Admiral Sir Francis Drake. The "Sir" appellation was independent of any other titles he held.
Originally, titles came with lands. And lands came with people to work those lands. It was impossible to own land without a title. The term "Landlord" was invented to describe someone who did own land, but had no title, and it was a much later evolution, when the middle class began to amass wealth. Nobles found that they were unable to support themselves strictly on their taxes, and there were merchants who had enough cash to bail them out. But they had to give them something for it, and thus the landlord was born.
But during the dark ages, land belonged to the local lord or the church, and nobody else.
Farmers were serfs, and were more or less property. They weren't free to go off and become adventurers, or even traveling salesmen. Serfs were not slaves, in that they couldn't be sold, but neither were they free. They needed permission to travel, and it was rarely given. Sold, perhaps, but not given.
Some few who had bought their freedom were called Freemen. Presume that adventurers are either Freemen, or Serfs who had fled their masters. A man who was "Free born" was someone whose parents had been Freemen, and thus were born without obligation to any master, and had no debt to pay.
Such people tended to be craft workers, artisans and skilled laborers. They had no land to farm, so if they didn't want to starve or be thrown in prison, they worked a trade. As this class grew, they formed the guilds.
To join a guild, the usual path was through apprenticeship. Your parents would make an arrangement with a master of the trade, and would pay for your education. You'd probably live with your new master, whose responsibility it was to teach you your letters and numbers, means and measures, and everything else you needed for the trade. You'd start with the dirty jobs, the basic unskilled labor, but as you learned you'd move to more skilled work.
At some point you would be awarded the rank of Journeyman, which meant you were free to leave your master and travel to seek employment with other masters, if you so chose. At this point the master is no longer being paid to teach you, but instead he's paying you for your work.
When, in time, you begin to feel like your masters have very little else to teach you, you might apply for Master rank on your own. To do this you'd prepare a sample of your work, using every trick of the trade you know. This would be your "Master piece", which would be judged by a group of masters to see if it was of good enough quality. This is the equivalent of applying for your Masters Degree in modern times, and is actually where both the application process and the name come from.
The other way to make something of yourself was to join either the military or the clergy. In both fields, positions of rank were purchased, not earned. A man who came up through the ranks might be a master soldier, but he'll get no respect from the other officers, since he was obviously of lower birth. A "proper" officer got his rank the old fashioned way, through bribery!
It was a common belief that the nobility truly were a breed apart from the common man. Access to better diet, particularly meat and other proteins during childhood, let the wealthy grow taller and healthier, to the point where they really did look like a superior breed.
This, of course, lead to the infamous practice among the various royal families of "Keeping the bloodlines pure" by marrying only members of other royal families. Marriages were commonly arranged for political or financial alliance, so love had very little to with it. As a whole, European nobility became such an inbred clique that certain hereditary genetic defects became a real issue. Hemophilia was one of the better known problems, but some nobles were encephallic idiots, and were simply hidden by their families until it was time to marry them off, preserving the family name (and defective genes) for another generation.
Among commoners, marriages were often arranged, but the wishes of the children were often the driving force, with the parents simply agreeing on the details.
Food was almost always vegetables. "Porridge" for breakfast wasn't anything resembling oat meal. The term came from "Potage'", meaning vegetable soup, usually the leftovers or cuttings of the previous evening's meal tossed into the stock pot.
Inns served the "common board", which usually involved bread and soup or stew. A rich inn might include some cheese with that. A wealthy person might order a specific meal, but that was custom service, and was the exception, not the rule. Note that the soup/stew seldom had any meat to speak of. It might be thickened with flour, or maybe with eggs, but that was about it.
Oh, and you wouldn't recognize the flour they used. Coarse, dark, and depending on the type of mill used to grind it, it might include shredded chaff, or even stone dust. It might be wheat, rye, barley or oat flour, and was neither fine and fluffy nor bleached.
Most pubs or inns made their own beer or ale. So, for that matter, did most homes.
Turnips were the featured vegetable in a lot of meals, since the potato wasn't around until Sir Walter Raleigh introduced them to his estates in Ireland. He also brought over the "foul weed" called Tobacco. Both came from the new world. "Corn" referred to the barley corn, not maize, which again came from the Americas.
A plow was a frame with a sharpened wooden stick that went into the ground. The metal plowshare was invented in the new world to cut through the rich loam of the great planes. European farmlands had been plowed and farmed for centuries, and were badly depleted. What fertilization there was came courtesy of sheep and cattle droppings, or from seasonal flooding.
Thanks for the content!
