by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
[email protected]
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One thing that seems to be common in the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs is that somewhere the hero or heroine is of noble blood. He may be a Viscount as was Greystoke or a Princess as was Dejah Thoris or the daughter of a simple skin-clad chief as was Amar but their blue blood shone through.
But what, exactly, is nobility or royalty?
This is a question that is too complex to answer fully so I will try to give a very brief explanation and encourage the reader to study the subject on their own.
When animals band together for whatever reason, an �alpha-male� takes over to guide and protect the band. With lions, a pride is ruled by such an alpha-male who rules his wives and daughters and male sons who have not yet become adults. Once his sons reach adult-hood, they are driven away. When a younger, stronger lion drives away or kills the reigning monarch, his first task is to kill all the young of his predecessor and immediately impregnate the lionesses.
Horses do the same and at least one film was shot showing a new stallion driving away the elder, taking his mares for his own then killing all foals and colts.
White Sharks (formerly Great White) live in matriarchal bands composed of the ruling female, her sisters and daughters and her young sons. When her sons become adults, they are driven from the pack to live solitary lives along the coastlines until they are needed to breed.
Humans are no different.
The purpose of this is two-fold, first to protect the band from attack. The stronger the alpha, the safer the band is from preditors and second to guide the band to better feeding grounds. Failure to do either of these is grounds for assassination or replacement.
When humans banded together, they also were �ruled� by an alpha-male who protected them from attacks and led them to food and in return he was allowed exclusive rights to breed with all females and the first choice of food.
Eventually, this alpha became referred to as a �king�.
Thus the first �kings� in human life were primarily military in nature, holding power by right of arms. First by his own strength, then by the strength of the soldiers he hired, later by religious or secular law which essentially told people to kiss the kings ass and like it.
As the king expanded his power and range, he needed help in ruling his land and so he appointed his most loyal soldiers to rule areas that were too far away for him to control. These ruling soldiers came to be called the Nobility as he came to be called the Royalty.
Everything up to here is common no matter where you go. All government, be it democracy or nobility and royalty is little more than a military force imposing the will of one man onto as many others as he can. If that one ruler is good, the people prosper, if the king is greedy or bad, the people suffer. And eventually they revolt and are killed off or they kill off the king and his cronies. Until another takes over.
Once we get past this basic fact, details and words change with the nation involved.
EUROPE
European nations are essentially a pyramid with the king on top. He then gives power to a bunch of (military) nobles who rule in the king�s name and who do the same. And so you have a whole list of rankings, each of which is better than the ones below but lesser than the ones above. A brief list from high to low is: Emperor, King, Prince, Arch-Duke, Duke, Marquess, Earl or Count, Viscount, Baron and Baronet. Not all nations use all these titles and many use different names for the same position such as in one country you will be called a Count but when you cross the border, you are called an Earl. France was ruled by a King but Monaco by a Prince, Luxemburg by an Arch-Duke and Russia by a Tsar.
Also, some Barons are ruled by a Count and others in the same country answer only to the King. This is so complex that an entire College of Heralds was created to make some sense of the thing and make certain that when you are announced to the guy in charge, you go in order of importance and don�t have to worry about someone of a lower rank seeing the royal toes before you do. In Europe, every nation has such a College and unlike the people they work for, the Colleges of each country manage to work well with each other.
For the most part, if you rule a country, you are a King. When you conquer a bunch of other countries and resist the urge to mount the conquered kings heads on a pike in return for their promise to kiss your royal arse, they stay kings and you get to call yourself an Emperor.
And everyone who rules in your country (with your permission) who is not a king is a noble and owes you a bunch of things like money and soldiers.
Bottom line is that one guy rules (Emperor, King, Tsar, etc) everyone and a bunch of other people (Nobles) handle the areas he is too busy to rule directly.
How does this work?
A semi-historical example would be when England conquers Wales and kills the Welsh King. Now England and Wales is ruled by a King but because Wales is too far from London, the King appoints a Duke to rule Wales in his name. The Duke kisses the Royal Arse, pays tribute (taxes) to the king and sends the King soldiers so he can conquer Scotland. Now the king conquers Scotland, kills the local king and appoints another Duke to rule in his name. He takes that tribute and adds Scottish soldiers to his army and conquers Canada. But this time the Canadian King promises to be good and loyal and so the English King lets him live and even lets him stay king. Now the English King calls himself an Emperor, Wales and Scotland are Duchies and Canada is a subject Kingdom. And so on.
But the Scots don�t like being ruled by England so they are always doing these pesky revolts. So the Scottish Duke calls a loyal general and hands him the deed to the Highlands and appoints him Baron of those Highlands and suddenly the General is a Baron who swears loyalty to the Duke, not the King. When the Highlands get too big, the new Baron appoints his three best generals Baron, hands them the worst of the land and asks the Duke to change his title to Marquiss because it looks bad for a Baron to have Barons under him.
OK, now the King of England wants to own France but France has too many soldiers to conquer so the King of England calls the King of France and says, �Hey, if you sell me your oldest daughter so she can marry my oldest son, I won�t invade your country because then we�ll be related.� The King of France thinks this is a good way to avoid war and agrees. Then when the King of France and his sons all die off (war, accident, poison) his daughter becomes Queen of France but because she is married to the next King of England, when Daddy-in-Law dies off, France now becomes a subject kingdom to England.
And this is why all this who�s who in European Royalty/Nobility is so complicated.
IRELAND
Ireland is different. First of all it has a continual line of Nobility that is older than anything in Europe. Second, when it was conquered by England, all titles were erased because the winners get to write the History books. And third, because being so isolated, they never got into this whole conquer by marriage or sword thing. At least they did it but kept mainly to their own island. England is for raiding, not for conquest is the Irish thought.
In Ireland you have essentually the Royals and the Nobles. But these are different from European forms. If you are a King (Ri) you rule a kingdom and there were at first five kingdoms in Ireland. If you ruled land within that kingdom, you were a Noble (Tierna). BUT, Unlike Europe where the Nobles kissed the Kings Royal Arse, Irish Nobles didn�t. Yes they had duties to their Ri, mostly giving soldiers and trying to not get caught stealing the Kings cattle, but if an English King visited Cornwall, they�d roll out the Red Carpet for him. If a Munster King visited Claire, the Tierna of Claire would treat his �king� as an equal. As far as that went, the Tierna might even call himself Ri and expect to be independent.
Ireland wasn�t a pyramid so much as a bunch of marbles in a bowl. You owed fealty to your Clan and no one else, which is why �The O�Brien� or �The O�Neill� are valid titles in Ireland as �Baron� is valid in England.
Then your Clan decided which Tierna to ally himself to and if that Tierna allied himself to someone you didn�t like, you could switch sides easier than could an English Baron who would be hanged for treason for doing what the Irish felt was a good idea.
When England conquered Ireland, they imposed their own titles and so Ireland, post-conquest, suddenly had two sets of nobles, the Irish and the English forms. Some Irish kept only the Irish Titles, some kept only the English and some both. This is why the College of Heralds of Ireland buys so much aspirin.
So one major problem is deciding what Rank an Irish Noble had within the European system. Is the guy a Tierna or a Ri? Or is he both depending on the way the wind blows or who he is trying to impress or what alliances he made before breakfast? And if he is Tierna, does he outrank a Baron or a Duke? An Irish Noble who rules three acres may be, according to Irish Custom, still a King in his own right or he may only be some guy who owns a farm. So when an Irish Tierna visits another country, he can for the most part, use whatever title he wants because only the Irish understand Irish nobility.
BARSOOM
When dealing with Mars, we have very little information and must speculate.
Every city on Mars is a separate political entity ruled by a King (Jed). When a number of cities fall under the control of another city (Conquest or alliance or marriage) the strongest king becomes Emperor (Jeddak) and has a palace in his own city but he hands the Kingship of his former city to a son who then becomes the new Jed.
This is conjecture but:
When Helium (ruled by a Jed) sent half it�s excess population to build another city called Lesser Helium, the Jed gave Lesser Helium to one son (B) who was crowned Jed and he gave Greater Helium to another son (A) who was crowned Jed and their father, the original Jed of Helium, was now crowned Jeddak. Son A ruled Greater Helium, Son B ruled Lesser Helium and Father retired and told both sons what to do in his growing Empire.
Then when Hastor called up and asked the Empire of Helium to protect them from the Green Hoards in return for Fealty, the King of Hastor remained in power as Jed and Helium now had an empire of three nations.
Zodanga did the same with the original Jed of Zodanga conquering Alpha-City. He then appointed one son as Jed of Zodanga and another son as Jed of Alpha-City. He also crowned himself Jeddak of the Empire of Zodanga. When he conquered Bravo-City, he appointed another son as Jed of Bravo-City and his Empire grew.
Not all cities had imperial dreams, many remained solitary nations ruled by a Jed. With the dwindling resources, conquest or alliance often meant a sapping of food, water and soldiers that couldn�t be spared.
Now Zodanga decided to conquer Helium and lost. The Jeddak of Helium executed the old Jeddak and he also executed the Jeddak�s sons to prevent future revolutions. He then appointed a new Jed to rule Zodanga and each of it�s cities that had been ruled by a son of the former Jeddak. Since Alpha-City was ruled by a great-great-grandson, he was considered safe and so was given a choice, swear fealty to the Jeddak of Helium or be tossed to the Green Men waiting outside the walls. Zodanga, once a mighty Empire is now just a series of vassal states within the Empire of Helium.
NOBILITY
The Sons and Daughters of the Jeddak are given the honorific title of �jed� and �jeda� but they have little chance of rule until their father dies or conquers another city. The grandchildren of the Jeddak are �of the Royal Family� but are not Royalty themselves, having no chance to rule unless a mass assassination kills off the entire family. After another generation, these become Nobles and are given high government and military posts but their dreams of rule are forever gone.
The same applies to the Sons and Daughters of the Jeds. They are called �prince� and �princess� and their main job is to sit around and wait for their father to die so one can take over or hope their uncle, Jed of whatever-city, dies before he can sire kids so they can move and take over his city.
The children of these princes and princesses are also �of the Royal Family� and eventually become lesser nobles as the generations pass.
On Earth, a King can rule for twenty years or he can rule for two weeks so the turnover is fast and easy, especially when the royal family produces a generation every twenty years or so. It is rare to have a King survive long enough to play with his grandkids.
On Barsoom, if you become Jed at thirty, you can expect to spend the next 900 years on the throne and with new generation coming along every twenty to forty years, You can still rule and watch 45 generations of your descendents come and go. Thus the numbers of nobles grows until they cover the land. This is why on Barsoom, pride of family is great but deeds matter more than title.
On Earth, Nobles are usually appointed based on loyalty, on Barsoom Nobles are bred from unneeded heirs.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to [email protected]
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
Return to the Home Page.
Return to the Amtor Page.
Return to the Barsoom Page.
Return to the Caspak Page.
Return to the Pal-ul-Don Page.
Return to the Pellucidar Page.
Return to the Va-Nah Page.
Return to the Lost Cities Page.
Return to the To Be Announced Page.
