Kings & Nobles - How does all that work?

The ultimate job of a nobleman is to produce heirs to carry on the blood line.  Nothing is more important to the family, and the family is the priority.  Whether it is arranged marriages or other matters, unmarried nobles will be under nearly constant assault from their parents and relatives.  To be clear, we’re really only talking about those nobles who are in the line of succession.  But because of the importance, an unmarried noble should expect to receive far more “help” and advice than they would have ever wanted.  This is a fantastic way for the GM to hound any player characters who take the Noble Birth advantage!

But let’s get into stuff that more directly affects campaigns.

It is the belief of the world builders of Fletnern that absolute monarchies do not work.  Often while GMing games within Fletnern, some PC will insist that due to the divine right of kings ______ is true.  There is no divine right of kings in Fletnern.  Most rulers are blessed by the major religious of their territory, but there is no divine right of kings.

Why not?  Well, first off, there is no centralized church.  Fletnern is not Earth and the Roman Catholic Church does not exist - never did.  So there is no global church.  Even in the case of religions that exist in multiple places, there are no established global authorities.  Heretics exist and if they stay quiet enough, they are never discovered by the rest of the church.  Further, while a local parish may accept the bishop at the main city’s cathedral as his superior, no bishops accept other bishops as their superiors.  So the High Priest of Rhum will not look to the High Priest in Helatia as a superior.  The High Priests in Helatia have been trying to make this work for a generation and they seem to only have driven their peers to greater defensiveness and annoyance.

So logically, if a noble ruler had the divine right of kings, which divine would they look to?  Clearly Manoto god of war would have a different chosen ruler for a city than Laenta goddess of home and marriage.  With many gods and even more religions, there cannot be a divinely chosen ruler.

But authoritative, hereditary rulers do and did exist.  But they simply do not have the type of awe and authority that say the King of England would have had prior to the Magna Carta.  Yes, a “king” would be able to sentence someone to death, but if he was seen to be doing so unfairly, he would likely have the beginnings of a revolt on his hands.  Of course, he still has the “bully pulpit” and would have every chance to appear before his citizens and explain how evil the executed man was, but he will need to tell a believable story.  So we do see the citizenry as holding the rulers in check.

Most of the governments that exist in Fletnern seem to make sense when based on the history of those places, at least we think they do.  Most of them we really have thought through.  The most common is what is called a Prince Governor.  Though each is slightly different, the Brinston model seems the more common style.

When the Prince Governor is either dying, retiring or has infuriated the noble houses, a new Prince Governor is to be chosen.  The noble families begin negotiating with each other almost from the time that the last Prince Governor was chosen.  The small number of very powerful families / houses have large numbers of smaller families that back them.  They back the big houses in order to be better friends with them in order to be allowed to do more trade deals with them and hopefully improve their wealth and power.  So while there are really only a small number of houses that make the final decision, they are able to do this because of the power brought not only by their own family but by all those smaller houses backing them.  The short answer is:  The noble houses choose who will be the next Prince Governor.

But it is nowhere near as simple as that, and that doesn’t feel very simple.  The people must be able to get behind the new Prince Governor.  He is not simply a figurehead, but he actually has some authority.  If the houses seem to be too even and likely to be unable to make a good decision, they will begin promoting their candidate(s) to the populace.  If the people are parading in the streets in support of one person and seem to dislike the other, then the nobles will likely be forced to install the one, no matter which house he is from.  The citizens like war heroes, and war heroes are most commonly the ones chosen for Prince Governor.

Only Rhum actually elects its mayor, and it is a difficult and arduous process.  In nearly every other country or city-state, the top guy(s) are chosen by a select group of people, most often the nobles and/or land owners.  With all of this going on behind the scenes, the ruler is held in check, if by no one other than the collected noble families.