[Discuss] Oaths of fealty and their confliction with other orders

[Rob McDonald]

On 3/4/08, Robert Croson, Jr <robert at arcm.com> wrote:
>
> On 4 Mar 2008 at 19:20, Rob McDonald wrote:
>
> > There is a debate and argument going on in Eston at the moment about a
> > conflict of orders, and what supercedes what.
> >
> > Basically, the army was ordered by the marshals to move out to somewhere
> or
> > other, but at the same time the Head of some religion in Eston received
> a
> > request for help along theological lines. He asked his followers for
> help,
> > and a duke responded, ordering his region lords to respond. They in turn
> > ordered their knights, who headed off to help. Now some of those knights
> > were in the army that had been ordered by the marshals to move so of
> course
> > accusations of treason abounded, and the argument became both IC and
> OOC.
> >
> > To my knowledge, a duke's region lords owe their fealty first to him,
> and
> > then to the king above him, and so similarly their knights owe fealty to
> > their region lords above anyone else.
>
>
> Correct.
>
>
> > This means that if there was a
> > conflict in orders, an order from your lord would trump any order from
> your
> > marshal, correct? Since it is he who you have an oath directly to.
> However,
> > the judge has just stepped in, and stated that an order from a marshal
> > appointed by the king trumps any other order, since his power is given
> to
> > him by the king.
>
>
> The proper thing to do would have been for all the lords to pull their
> knights
> from the army. They could have formed a new army for the theological
> emergency, assigned all the knights to it, and given it a new marshal with
> new
> orders.
>
>
> > This is wrong, isn't it? We are trying to become more duchy-dentric, so
> a
> > knights loyalty is to his duchy above his realm, hence a king's marshal
> does
> > not have more control over you than your lord does, as far as I
> understand.
> > I want to step in and set things straight here, because confusions like
> this
> > are only going to set up bad habits that need to be stopped. If I can
> get
> > some consensus on this it would be much appreciated.
>
>
> Here's how it works, from *my* point of view:
>
> The region lord has ultimate authority over the knight. By assigning that
> knight
> to an army, he has given that authority to someone else: the marshal of
> the
> army. That knight now follows that marshal's orders.
>
> If the region lord wants that knight to not follow the marshal's orders,
> he
> should remove him from the army. Basically you've set the knights up for
> failure
> by not doing so.
>
> When this situation occurred, the judge/marshal/general/ruler should all
> have
> complained to the region lords and duke, and should not have been
> threatening
> individual knights.



Thanks for the quick replies. I'm not even involved in this, I just
thought it was an interesting problem occuring through the current
changes.

Although I agree that the region lords hand over authority to a
marshal when they assign knights to the army, it is also impossible
for them to see
into the future to such a time where orders may conflict between them and
said marshal. Removing knights from the army and setting up a new army and
marshals and putting them into it seems very cumbersome to simple avoid the
fallout that would otherwise ensue.

If the region lords have the right to pull their knights from the army and
order them around themselves, then that should just be taken as implied when
they order a knight to deviate from a marshal's order, in my opinion.
Removing them from the army and setting up a new one just seems like a few
extra button clicks to achieve the same end.

Also, it's not quite like the duke is countering his own orders. Giving
someone the authority to order your men for now does not mean he orders them
as you, but with your blessing. If you decide that for now you want to order
them in a different way you are just exercising your right over your men and
temporarily revoking the other guy's powers over them.

It's the same as when parent's send their kids to school. You give the
teacher reign over your kids whilst they are there, and they are able to
order them as a type of 'acting parent', but if a parent decides they don't
like the way a teacher is treating their child they can exercise their right
over their own child. In doing so they aren't contradicting themselves, but
deciding that the teacher's control is something that they don't like
and didn't see coming, and so deciding to revoke that right there and then.

There seems to be agreement that the region lords are the ultimate arbiter
over their knights, which is exactly what I thought, but there seems to be
some difference about what should be done in practice.

Some clarifications: - no individual knights are being accused, the duke is
the one involved
                              - when I say king's marshal, I am paraphrasing
what the marshal and others said about his authority and where it is derived
                                 from, i.e. the king. I am unaware how the
armies of Eston are hierarchically structured
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