Themiclesian nobility

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The Themiclesian nobility (百姓, prêk-sjêngh) consists of multiple categories of individuals that enjoy varying degrees of social, political, and economic privilege.  

History

Historians note that Themiclesia's "feudalism" was not as uniformly founded upon the agreement to provide military service in return for land as some Casaterran forms were, but instead land-holding was connected to settlement or colonial rights, mineral extraction, political alliance, and consanguinity, in addition to military service. Equally, the system of nobility which initially heavily aligned with privileged access to land, the labour that works land and subsists upon it, and products of them, shows a high degree of intersection as their interests dictate.

Though it cannot be ascertained if the concept of real property was borrowed from Menghe or domestically developed, the earliest form of exclusive real property, that is to say access to the land exclusive of others, seems to have developed in the 6th or 5th centuries BCE, called ts′e′ (采); amongst other uses, they were used on mineral deposits, including lapis lazuli, that motivated Meng people to trade and eventually settle in Themiclesia. It is speculated that because mining was not suited to an individual or nuclear family, the ts′e′ was collectively held by a clan that specialized in mining. Parallels are drawn with early agricultural practices, limited by lack of tools and knowledge, that relied on large-scale labour; under this model, land ownership would also have been communal and hereditary.

Scant evidence from this period suggest most powers were founded upon the structure of clans, leaders being referred to as "elders" (伯, brak; 百 in monumental style). Major clans diversified into multiple modes of production, and others may have approached them seeking commerce or protection. Themiclesia's earliest cities appeared in the 3rd c., and it is thought that in this context hierarchies bewteen non-consanguineous groups appeared during. In the colonialization period that lasted from the 2nd c. to the 2nd c. CE, clans sought to expand their influence through rapid settlement and exploitation of unsettled areas or those occupied by aboriginals. On the one hand, physical distances diluted the clan-elder's powers and the practice of endogamy that held clans together, necessitating novel means of controlling settlements; on the othe hand, the new wealth enlarged the

Royalty

It should be noted that the distinction between palatine and royal prince mirrors that of Ostlandic fürst and prinz. A palatine prince is a lower-ranked sovereign, whereas a royal prince is one borne through kinship with a sovereign.

Palatine princes

The palatine princes (諸王) are the most senior titles recognized by the Themiclesian nobility system. On a symbolic level, the relationship between the sovereign and the palatine princes is one created by a treaty between equals, unlike that with his barons, which is created by vassalage, and with his children, created by descent. This symbolic equality is punctuated by political inequality, whereby the princes have surrendered part of their jurisdiction under the terms of the Treaty of Five Kings in the 3rd century; the independence of their states, from the Tsjinh suzerain, shrank during centuries of negotiations and conflict, but their rulers' nominal parity with the sovereign was retained. This situation persisted until the end of the 10th century, when the palatine princes, by now mascots of political conservatism, were finally deposed.

Though the palatine princes no longer existed as individuals, their titles and privileges remained a useful tool to satisfy several other traditions, such as marriage between social equals. The king, or emperor after 542, customarily took a palatine princess' hand in marriage, and after deposition a noblewoman was symbolitically raised to the rank of a palatine princess. The same was done for the sovereign's biological mother, if she was of a sufficient background and not the same person as his predecessor's consort. When Camia became officially independent in 1703, the Themiclesian government framed this as an elevation to the rank of a palatine prince, which ultimately meant Camia's ruler was an equal to the Themiclesian emperor.

Royal princes

The royal princes and princesses (諸公子), or in some translations the princes and princesses of the blood, are the descendants of the sovereign that do not inherit the throne.  They can be divided into two classes, the inner princes, who have not received a title, and outer princes, who have. The untitled princes are legally part of the royal family, recognizing the sovereign as their paterfamilias, while the ones with titles are considered heads of their own households. Before the palatine princes were deposed, their descendants were too considered royal princes. In terms of rank, the royal princes are junior to both palatine princes and peers of the realm.

The title of an outer prince is substantive; it is officially granted or inherited rather than be borne as a courtesy title through kinship or marriage. Like other titles of this kind, it is passed on to the holder's legitimate male heir, with preference for age. Conversely, the title "royal prince" is better-described as courtesy titles for members of the royal family.

Peerage

Modern Themiclesian laws recognize the holders of two titles to be peers of the realm, in the Tyrannian sense—ordinary peer and titular peer.

Ordinary baron

The ordinary baron (徹侯) originated in antiquity as hereditary leaders of militarized colonies bound to a sovereign, and later it came to be applied to any hereditary nobleman with independent armed forces. In this regard, it is sometimes translated as "marquis" or "baron" in historical texts. The fiefdoms of these nobles were always on the peripheries of the lord's territories, where warfare was frequent, as a baron's defining duty was to defend his lord's territories.

Titular baron

The titular baron (倫侯) literally means "equal of barons". It was originally a categorical title applied to a variety of senior nobles during the Tsjinh kingdom that did not possess military forces (or at any rate not bound by vassalage in their use) but held the same dignity as one that did. It displaced older titles (viz. below) such as the manorial elder and settlement-lord. The fiefdoms of titular peers, as a characteristic, were all located near or within the sovereign's demesne land, so they could be protected by a centralized army.

Non-feudal nobility

By definition, the peerage consisted of hereditary, feudal vassals to the crown, and it is thought that all noble titles were originally feudal in that sense. The lower ones, perhaps succumbing to royal annexation, gradually became not heritable, not manorial, or detached from specific pieces of land. Even the peerage gravitated towards a non-feudal nature in more recent history, though it remains notionally feudal. The two broad ranks of the non-feudal nobility are the counsel and the officer. Both granted to the holder a considerable amount of land whose profits the holder reaped, but he possessed no manorial (administrative and judicial) powers over his tenants.  

The precise entitlements of the counsels and officers varied from time to time. In the Hexarchy and early Tsjinh dynasties, it is generally agreed that counsels and officers were feudal, possessing their own domains that may be passed on to successors, but between then and the 4th century they lost manorial powers and, by the Sungh a fixed domain. Into the Rjang period, counsels and officers were no longer heritable titles and were given as rewards for bureaucratic and military service, providing their holders with an appointed set of lands already under cultivation, whose tax revenues went to them instead of the government. This arrangement remained stable for an exceedingly long time and was not totally abolished until 1715, to centralize finance to refurbish the military forces.

Counsel

The title of counsel (卿) was granted to senior members of the administration or distinguished foreigners serving the Themiclesian government. It gave the holder a fairly large piece of agricultural land and a manor house, for life. The title also provided its holder's successor with privileges to enter the civil service, but the title itself was not heritable. There were two sub-ranks of counsels, the principal counsel (徹卿, r′jêt-sk′rjang) and adjunct counsel (介卿, krêbh-sk′rjang), the former being the more senior. The Principal Counsels, heads of departments in the canonical bureaucracy, are thus named because they tended to be individuals who have achieved this rank in the nobility.

Officer

The title officer (大夫) was granted to relatively junior members of the administration. As with counsel, it also gave to the holder agricultural and housing land for life, without manorial powers, and to his successors preference in entering the civil service. The title is not heritable otherwise. There are three ranks of the officer, the ordinary officer (大夫, ladh-pja), the departmental officer (官大夫, kwar-ladh-pja), and royal officer (公大夫, klong-ladh-pja).

Defunct titles

Dukes

The title duke (公, klong), or "patriarch" in some translations, was used to describe a senior figure in a clan-based polity. This political sense is usually thought to be a derivative from the kinship meaning of an elder male relative. The term is oracularly attested in this primitive usage.

The Themiclesian duke does not have military connotations that is present in the etymology of the Casaterran duke, from Old Sylvan dux, "military leader, commander". All sovereign princes in Themiclesia could be called dukes in the native sense, relative to their peripheral kinsmen. Several promoted themselves to the rank of "king" in recognition of their powers over peers; the remaining retained the title of duke, but their jurisdictions gradually dissolved in the late hexarchy, in favour royal annexation or subordinate barons. After the 5th century, the most powerful noblemen who ruled on behalf of the sovereign took the title "duke" automatically, and within his domain he was permitted to sub-enfeoff barons and junior nobles. Themiclesia's last duke was demoted to baron in the 16th century.

Elders

The title elder (伯, brak) came in several types on whose interconnections historians have not reached agreement. Like a duke, an elder was a clan leader with lands and political powers over his kin and dependent clans, and the lands they occupied; an elder could be a vassal or a sovereign. The principal difference between a duke and elder seemed to be perspective—a duke's ambit tended towards the kind acknowledged by the writer or the Themiclesian state, while that of an elder given descriptively. Within the context of the Themiclesian cultural zone, the duke was usually more powerful and higher-ranking than the elder, but beyond it, the elder was usually a powerful ruler that rivalled the writer's own state.

The region-elder (方伯, pjang-brak) referred to leaders that were, more or less, unassociated with the speaker's state. The leaders of ethnic minority groups and polities were typically called region-elders in older documents.

The manor-elder (甸伯, linh-brak) were heads of clans that held farmland and contributed part of their products, whether in kind or money, to the crown. Manor-elders were once the dominant kind of title in the bronze inscription record, but in the beginning of the Common Era their prominence in historical records began to dilute very rapidly. It is possible that their manorial authorities were absorbed by an ambitious crown, or that clan-based production and administration was disrupted for reasons yet not clearly known. The manor-elders, as a group having lost manorial rights, became indistinguishable from the manor-barons (甸侯) and the urban-lords (邦君), who merged to become titular lords during the early 5th century.

Manor-barons

The manor-baron (甸侯, linh-go) is a relatively obscure title whose significance has troubled scholars for centuries. First, it is uncertain whether it was completely distinct from the manor-elder, and in what way, if it was distinct. On the surface, the prefix "manor-" seems to suggest it was located in an intensively-cultivated region and, by association with the manor-elder, within a firmly-controlled and protected area; however, it also contains the word "baron", which indicates some sort of military charge. One theory states that a manor-baron possessed a military function and paid in their products, but this is not borne out by bronze inscriptions.

Urban-lords

The urban-lords (邦君, prong-kljur) is a nobleman who was given a title to an established settlement. Historians provide that the baron was not only a manorial, feudal leader, he was also a colonial leader; in contrast, the urban-lord possess a title over a settlement to which he has no native connection.

Precedence

As the nobility was continuous between royal dynasties, various historians gave the relative seniority in ceremonial terms, quite uniformly, as follows. Seniority is still stressed in these works even if the rank had been obsolete for centuries.

Extant Defunct
1 Emperor
2 Palatine prince (8th c.)
3 Duke (15th c.)
4 Ordinary baron
5 Titular baron Urban-lord (4th c.)
6 Manor-elder (4th c.)
7 Royal prince
8 Principal counsel (19th c.)
9 Adjunct counsel (19th c.)
10 Royal officer (19th c.)
11   Departmental officer (19th c.)
12 Ordinary officer (19th c.)

Privileges

Seating order

The seating order at court (位, k.rjebh) was a contested honour for most of the history of the Themiclesian court. In important ceremonies, the sovereign sat facing south, while his subjects sat facing north; this tradition, apparently of Menghean antiquity, has been extensively philosophized in later works, but its origins are now thought to be independent of the theories that ancient scholars have proposed to explain it. The palatine princes and dukes, who are nominally sovereigns, too sit facing south. Their subjects, the barons lesser nobles, sit facing north.

Mattresses

Prior to the introduction of chairs, Themiclesians usually sat on bamboo-woven mattresses, which may be elevated off the ground by the means of a bed. A canopy may also be erected over the seat for dignitaries. The number of mattresses one sat on and the number of individuals with whom one shared the mattress were a statement of dignity.

The Themiclesian monarch sat on four mattresses and under a double canopy (重帷). Palatine princes and dukes were too sat upon four mattresses and a double tent, and the Chancellor likewise but under a single canopy.

See also