[Discuss] "Strip titles" recommendations

[Rob McDonald]

On 11/6/07, Mark Moss <battlemaster at mmoss.org> wrote:
>
> On Monday 05 November 2007 22:00, Rob McDonald wrote:
> > Why not just have it based on a vote by the nobles? Nobility has to be
> > recognised by many people for you to be considered a noble. If only a
> > minority supported the king, and he claimed someone to be a commoner,
> why
> > should everyone suddenly treat the accused as such?
>
> I don't think a vote makes much sense.  A vote isn't going to change your
> ancestry:  You're either noble or your not.
>
> IMHO:  If you're going to question a character's nobility, you should at
> least
> make up some evidence that the character wasn't born a noble.  Maybe throw
> in
> some examples where the character spoke or acted in an ignoble manner for
> good measure.
>
> Mark Moss



You're missing the point, rules and laws only apply as long as people abide
and uphold them.

If the majority of nobles believe Lord A to be a noble, then he is a noble
for all intents and purposes. Now, say, he doesn't actually have any
documentable proof of this fact, because ages ago his family somehow managed
to pretend to be nobles or something like that.

Now imagine one guy finds out, and says he is not a noble, and provides
evidence, but everyone else says 'No, you're lying, we're dead sure he's a
noble, you made it all up'.

Then Lord A will still be a noble, because everyone will still treat him as
such, regardless of what any documentation might say. Legitimately he will
not be a noble, but realistically he still will be.

And also, legitimacy is only legitimacy as long as people recognise it as
such. If everyone ignored the king, he would no longer be the king (and by
everyone I do mean everyone in the realm), since he would have no way of
enforcing his will or power. It wouldn't matter if he had royal blood, or
was voted in, or whatever, if everyone stopped seeing him as their ruler how
could he rule them?

I accept it's a moot point, since you are right, Tim, about the minor nobles
in each realm, but it's an interesting one. Documents and proofs are only
useful as long as people will believe them and accept the facts they present
as valid basis for a change in thinking. You only have to look at the
history of science and religion to see examples of this. Some people still
believe the earth to be flat, despite countless scientific evidence to the
contrary, and people will allow their faith in religion to make them believe
in unproveable things (depending on your way of thinking obviously). Hell,
women with husbands who beat them will return time and again to the same
man, despite having countless experience of his attitude, because they
believe him when he says he has changed.

Belief is very, very strong, and can override legitimate fact, and if that
happens in a majority of the population, then the legitimate fact can no
longer really be considered legitimate, except to the minority.

Besides, nobility is terribly subjective at heart. The original noble
families did not start as nobles, because the idea of nobility was not
around when the first people were born. At some point it became a concept,
and at that point, various stronger families became 'nobles', and continued
it through their family, but there was no objective deciding factor for why
the original noble families were noble families, since it was a subjective
human division for people.
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