City status in the Isles of Velar

Basis

The first Velaran constitution was enacted after the 1536 Constitution Revolts, where the chief opponents of the crown were the urban lords and citizenries. The landed nobility received other rewards for their loyalty during the crisis, but the cities received substantial constitutional concessions. These cities

In the Velaran kingdom, a town which was not recognised by the crown as self-governing, whether under a charter or by tradition, was at the mercy of its territorial overlord, who could raise taxes, impose other dues and levies and make an array of demands with near impunity. In some cases of gross misconduct on that lord's part, the crown would on occasion grant the town to another lord so as to remove it from the former's control, but unless the latter's lordship was made hereditary this did not grant any protection beyond his lifetime.

Ancient cities

Most of Velar's older cities are categorised as Ancient Cities — or, constitutionally, intrinsic cities. This means that their city status is endogenous and independent of any status conferred by the state and may not be taken away by the crown.

Ancient Cities fall into two main categories: those whose intrinsic city status derives from the enshrined rights of their rulers, and those whose civic administration predates

The major exception to this antiquity is ____, hence the word intrinsic is preferred to ancient.

Chartered cities

In contrast to Ancient Cities, a chartered city does not have any pre-constitutional legal right to city status, and it is only called a city because a royal charter has been conferred on it. There are a number of reasons why this might be the case:

• The city's ruling line may have died out and the city come under republican government
• The city may have been founded after the ___