bloodlines

[Arentak]

The BRWiki lists blooded counts for many, if not all provinces in Anuire. Does that seem like too many bloodlines running around out there?

It seems like a count might not need to be blooded, as he has no connection with the land.

[Sorontar]

I'm sorry but I had trouble understanding your question. Are you talking about the rank of Count or a numerical count?

If the first, then the idea is that being blooded brings power. Power for some is to be invested in charge of a domain, which may include feudal control of a single province, in vassalage to the regent of the realm. So most provinces would have a regent in control of them.

If the second, then are you saying that too many people are blooded? The idea is that being blooded brings power so a lot of the nobility/upperclass would be blooded. There would be a lot of interbreeeding for political and blooded reasons. The lowerclasses would not be as blooded, but would have a much larger percentage of the population.

Sorontar.

[Birthright-L]

At 02:30 PM 6/25/2009, Arentak wrote:

>The BRWiki lists blooded counts for many, if not all provinces in
>Anuire. Does that seem like too many bloodlines running around out there?
>
>It seems like a count might not need to be blooded, as he has no
>connection with the land.

The assumption I`ve used in the past (based on some numbers in the
published materials) is that scions represent 1 in 1,000
Cerilians. That makes for a lot of them who don`t actually control
provinces or holdings of their own.

Gary

[kgauck]

1) I don't know why you would presume counts have no connection to the land.

2) Half of Europe today is descended from Charlemagne. Over the generations many people might dilute their bloodline, but many will not, seeking out the best blooded mate they can find. Given the size of bloodlines at the top we should expect to see a very large numbers of smaller bloodlines.

3) In order to maintain a sufficient breeding pool, at least some counts need to have near-peer bloodlines to serve as occasional breeding partners to the regent level bloodlines. Creating some counts with 40 bloodlines implies that counts elsewhere can't be too low, or younger decedents of the top lines will usurp their counties.

4) The counts almost always have bloodlines in the published materials. I can't think of one that does not, but its much harder to exclude all exceptions, so I'll just say almost all. At the rank of lords, it appears that somewhere on the order of half the lords in the published materials have bloodlines, and half (or so) do not. Given such a high prevalence of blood among the lords, counts basically need to be blooded, or be usurped by their vassal lords.

I think that half of lords being unblooded is not sustainable in a long term noble system. It makes more sense on a variety of levels for lords to have half the blood strength of typical counts, and so generally have tainted bloodlines with a blood strength between 5 and 10.

[rjurikwinds]

At 02:30 PM 6/25/2009, Arentak wrote:

>The BRWiki lists blooded counts for many, if not all provinces in
>Anuire. Does that seem like too many bloodlines running around out there?
>
>It seems like a count might not need to be blooded, as he has no
>connection with the land.

The assumption I`ve used in the past (based on some numbers in the
published materials) is that scions represent 1 in 1,000
Cerilians.

I've used closer to 1 in 100; You can assume that a count has at least a wife, and a bunch of kids (1 to 5) - and several cousins, parents, brothers, and nephews that are related hence blooded even though they don't HOLD the title or head position (say another 1-10 of those), add in a few lords and that gets you 1 in 100 having a bloodline if you have 1 Count for 1000 inhabitants.
Personally I would say that the count's nephew (4th in line) DOES have some connection with the land: indeed, should the Count and his immediate family die the Land might be expected to choose him.

[Birthright-L]

At 03:07 PM 6/26/2009, rjurikwinds wrote:

>I`ve used closer to 1 in 100; You can assume that a count has at
>least a wife, and a bunch of kids (1 to 5) - and several cousins,
>parents, brothers, and nephews that are related hence blooded even
>though they don`t HOLD the title or head position (say another 1-10
>of those), add in a few lords and that gets you close to having 1
>Count for 1000 inhabitants.

1 in 100 is an awful lot if you figure Cerilia has a population in
the millions. At that rate, one could have nearly every village
elder with a bloodline.

>Personally I would say that the count`s nephew (4th in line) DOES
>have some connection with the land: indeed, should the Count and his
>immediate family die the Land might be expected to choose him.

I think we`re getting a little confused by the term "connection with
the land" here. Does it mean simply having a bloodline and,
therefore, some sort of connection to the Land (through the Land`s
Choice or any other abstraction of the relationship between Cerilia
and scions) or does it mean the ability to influence events through
the collection and expenditure of regency (RP)? The former is a bit
of a slippery slope, because any character in the setting
should/could have some sort of connection to the land as the Land`s
Choice can, apparently, affect anyone.

Gary

[kgauck]

1 in 100 is an awful lot if you figure Cerilia has a population in
the millions. At that rate, one could have nearly every village elder with a bloodline.


Two points here. One is the proportion of blooded to unblooded, of which 1% is still distinctly low, and the distribution of blooded where a hundred people doesn't need its own blooded representative close at hand as in a village elder, it can mean a distant court has one more cousin to feed.

The number of nobles in the middle ages was around 2% of the population. This doesn't count knights or gentry, just proper nobles. But further, blooded characters are distributed not only in the landlords, but in the guilds, temples, and all of the source domains.

So, compared to a medieval situation at best half of the nobility is blooded, and that requires us to see all senior priests, guilders, and landlords as members of a common class of rulers who intermarry, interact socially, and have a common nobility. Assuming less connection means more mid-level priests, guilders, and lords who are unblooded.

The 1% figure means that slightly more than half of all nobles in any domain are unblooded (because regents and provincial nobles are always blooded) and there is no room for spare blooded people to be distributed as village elders or other kinds of spare blooded people outside of domain rulership.


I think we`re getting a little confused by the term "connection with the land" here. Does it mean simply having a bloodline and, therefore, some sort of connection to the Land (through the Land`s Choice or any other abstraction of the relationship between Cerilia and scions) or does it mean the ability to influence events through the collection and expenditure of regency (RP)? The former is a bit of a slippery slope, because any character in the setting should/could have some sort of connection to the land as the Land`s Choice can, apparently, affect anyone.

Its not being blooded that creates the connection to the land, its the act of investiture. But everyone who is enfiefed is invested with a connection to their fief. And the connection is not with an individual, but with their bloodline, so in rjurikwinds, when a Jarl dies, all of his kin share a connection to the land and might be selected as heir. Generally those with a stronger connection (children) are more likely to be selected, but as we work our way out to weaker connections through distant cousins the chance of selection grows weaker until we get to, apparently anyone, which is very rare.

But this connection is the source of inter-group competition. Depending on how strong you see it, such competition can be intense, or mild.

What all scions possess isn't a connection to the land, but a sensitivity to the land. They can feel what is going on, but the land doesn't respond to them.

[Birthright-L]

At 12:16 AM 6/27/2009, kgauck wrote:

>>1 in 100 is an awful lot if you figure Cerilia has a population
>>in the millions. At that rate, one could have nearly every
>>village elder with a bloodline.
>
>Two points here. One is the proportion of blooded to unblooded, of
>which 1% is still distinctly low, and the distribution of blooded
>where a hundred people doesn`t need its own blooded representative
>close at hand as in a village elder, it can mean a distant court has
>one more cousin to feed.
>
>The number of nobles in the middle ages was around 2% of the
>population. This doesn`t count knights or gentry, just proper
>nobles. But further, blooded characters are distributed not only in
>the landlords, but in the guilds, temples, and all of the source domains.
>
>So, compared to a medieval situation at best half of the nobility is
>blooded, and that requires us to see all senior priests, guilders,
>and landlords as members of a common class of rulers who intermarry,
>interact socially, and have a common nobility. Assuming less
>connection means more mid-level priests, guilders, and lords who are
>unblooded.
>
>The 1% figure means that slightly more than half of all nobles in
>any domain are unblooded (because regents and provincial nobles are
>always blooded) and there is no room for spare blooded people to be
>distributed as village elders or other kinds of spare blooded people
>outside of domain rulership.

I`m of the opinion that the majority of those who are "nobles" or
"aristocrats" in the BR setting are not scions, that bloodlines are
very rare, and that the ability to collect regency comes through a
large number of Commoners, many of whom will have some sort of
title--probably not a noble title like baron or count, but they will
have some sort of rank in society. But those titles are largely
administrative rather than a reflection of their status as scions.

People have different estimates for the total number of Cerilians,
but if there are a conservative ten million, at 1% of the population
we have a hundred thousand scions. Consequently, there are around
ten thousand blooded wizards. I`ve always been annoyed by folks who
point to the "six or seven score" described in the original
materials, but even I quail at the idea of that many. There would
likely be a similar number (10k) of Azrai`s scions. Given the
corrupting nature of that bloodline the relatively small number of
awnsheghlien makes that seem problematic.

Where does the 2% figure come from, BTW? Sounds like an interesting source....

Gary

[AndrewTall]

I take the '6 or 7 score' as meaning wizards over L5 - any lower level wizards are indistinguishable from magicians in spells. Exclude non-humans and 6-7 score doesn't sounds too bad as a number - more than 1 or 2 L5+ wizards in the average realm means that everyone who is anyone has one and ye fireball battalion is just around the corner. That said, like all canon, it might have done with a little more thought and clarification...

As to percentages, I think it depends a lot on whether you count weak tainted lines, genetics and social bed-hopping indicate a lot of minor blooded scions will proliferate around any regent, so you should have several dozen in most realms - and if you follow the game 'theme' that scions rise to rule, then you get most serious nobles (anyone worth mentioning in the domain tables) as blooded to some degree. You can of course infer genetic issues - perhaps only a select few 'worthy' children get the bloodline cutting out most unrecognised children, or severe social issues on scion procreation, but neither is likely to hold for goblins, vos, etc even if they weren't likely to be ignored by everyone else anyway...