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

[Kylie]

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. 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.
> 
> 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.
> 

I think once the Lord has committed his knight to an army, he has given 
control to the Marshal.  Basically his knight repairs and training is 
being funded by the army (sponsor) and the Lord has committed his CS to 
the army.  Sure, the Lords orders would supersede the Marshal's if he 
felt fit to override them, but I think this would be completely frowned 
upon.

Its like an ally saying, "I'm sending 5k to help in the battle" and then 
without notification, having their army turn around and do something 
different.

As a Marshal, I expect every noble in my army to follow orders.  If 
someone doesn't, I ask why... if they say they have other interests to 
follow from their Lord, I say: "well have your Lord remove you from my 
army.  My sponsor is not forking out warchest gold for your Lord's 
interests, but for the armies interests".