Siddermark legacy

runsforcelery wrote:

PeterZ wrote:*quote="runsforcelery"*
Note that I said Clyntahn was inherently suspicious of Siddarmark. That was not the case for all previous Grand Inquisitors. Indeed, it became a real factor only when Siddarmark didn't simply survive Desnarian aggression but kicked Desnair's arse and built the army it possessed at the time of the jihad. I've made it pretty clear (I thought) that the Republic's preeminent military position was the result of about 2 centuries of gradual evolution in the crucible against Desnair; prior to that, the Republic's army of infantry with landowner and merchant-class officers was regarded as hopelessly outclassed by its cavalry-centric neighbors. They were regarded as rubes, lacking in any professional military class and doing the best they could (i.e., not very damned well) with no clue of how things really worked and with no real military potential.

Nor did the Church have any particular problem with republicanism when Siddarmark was first organized. As you yourself have pointed out (I believe), the Church herself could be considered a republic, although the "franchise" has become much more restricted than the Writ initially intended. As a result, there was no pressure on the Republic to adopt another form of government back in the day when it was not considered a military threat and it had not become a "Charisian portal" into the mainland. I think you are persisting in looking at Safehold's history as a single, frozen photograph --- that is, it was always as it was prior to Merlin's arrival --- when, in fact, it has been growing, changing, and evolving for the better part of a thousand years.

The Go4 is an aberration which results from perhaps the last 150-200 years of the Church's history, and the concerns Clyntahn and his associates may nourish don't necessarily have anything at all in common with the vast majority of the Church's previous generations of leadership.

This is very interesting, thank you. Let's see if I understand your implied progression of Siddermark's rise to prominence.

Siddermark was formed as a republic. It's population and prosperity grew along with all the other developing great nations. Because the limited franchise allowed for easier access than a strict hereditary aristocracy and created incentives for the acquisition of property, Siddermarkians invested heavily in trade rather than traditional military persuits. That's why the canal system was so much more developed in Siddermark than other mainland nations. This would explain the strength of the Siddarmarkian banks as well. This continued until its growing wealth and relative lack of military drew the attention of the more aristocractic empires such as Desnar about 200 years ago. You described what followed quite well.

What intrigues me is the period of wealth development Siddermark enjoyed prior to becomming a target for the more militaristic nations. The Safehold template is for the consolidation of power into increasingly few hands. As Siddermark grew more prosperous, its governing bodies did not try to consolidate access to power. Instead the great families expanded and distributed power more widely. Surely there was a temptaion to sieze the wealth and growing power in their individual hands? If political power flowed through the great families much like power flows through the US states or the various parties in terran Parliaments, I can see the incentives for each family to expand relative to the other families. That presuposes a desire to retain the notion of an expanding franchise when the families could just as easly move towards a true aristocracy and permanently restrict the franchise to defined family groups.

Why didn't those in power seek to limit the franchise to their benefit before the franchise was expanded still further when they had the opportunity? There seems to be underlying principles embraced by Siddarmarkians that inhibit the progression towards an aristocracy. I am curious to why that is and what those principles are.*quote*

Peter --- I think you're overthinking this a bit.

For one thing, Siddarmark's canal system isn't "so much more developed in Siddarmark than other mainland nations." You've seen more of the canal network in Siddarmark, but please remember that I am continuing to fill in details on the map as I go along. The canals in Siddarmark are much more fully developed than someplace like Desnair, true, but not than in someplace like South Harchong or the Temple Lands, and the canals feeding through the Border States to the Temple Lands are quite sophisticated. That isn't to say that Siddarmark isn't substantially more prosperous than many another Safeholdian realm, but it's less a matter of the Writ's mandated infrastructure than it is a matter of mindset and the understanding of the function of a legal code.

I don't intend to give you all the details about the Republic's formation at this time. They may never be included in one of the books at all, and probably won't be unless they become germane to the story I'm telling at that point. However, the Republic is quite old. It's form of government does not date from the Day of Creation itself, but that's actually true of most of the great realms of Safehold by Merlin's time. Most of the original enclaves "just grew" into nations and, along the way, independent enclaves merged with one another. In many cases, it was that merger which created the new nations' aristocracy; the folks who had been the ruling class of an enclave received specific titles as part of the merger process. Not all of those mergers were peaceful, either, although Mother Church had a tendency to step in if things got too . . . rambunctious.

What sets the Republic apart from most of the other realms is that it has a written Constitution dating back centuries and that the Siddarmarkians have a profound respect for the rule of law and the sanctity of constitutional principle. People were generally more willing to peaceably join a growing nation if they could count on being integrated into the system which would respect their existing rights and in which they could feel confident they wouldn't find themselves subject to the caprice of an entrenched aristocracy. There's a reason places like Desnair and Harchong had a tendency to expand through conquest, whereas Siddarmark expanded by remarkably peaceful voluntary annexations up until it found itself forced into a war it didn't really want against Desnair.

The Republic was considerably less prosperous than Harchong back in the day, but that situation has been shifting for several generations now. There is a pronounced dichotomy between the economies and (to a significant extent) social dynamics of North Harchong and South Harchong, but there is an even more pronounced dichotomy between the economies and social dynamics of Harchong and Desnair and those of Siddarmark or Charis. In both Siddarmark and Charis (and in pre-jihad Chisholm, to a considerable extent) the constitutions and societies enshrined the rule of law. Even in Charis, where Haarahld was a very powerful monarch, there were specific limitations on what he could do in the face of existing law. That is, he couldn't simply set it aside if he found it inconvenient and the sort of kleptocratic corruption which typifies both Harchong and (to a lesser extent) Desnair was unknown in Charis and would have been completely unacceptable to Charisians.

Chisholm was headed in that direction under Sharleyan and her father, the continued to be hampered by the aristocracy's passive (and not so passive) resistance to the authority of the Crown, since the enforcement of a rule of law was one of the Crown's hammers in its battle with the nobility. The Corisandian lower classes trust the monarchy to enforce the rule of law and protect them from the predation of the aristocrats, and this is one of the reasons why the lower classes' loyalty to Sharleyan is as fervent as it is. One of the hampering factors and Chisholmian industrialization, if you will recall, are the fees and tolls — arbitrary fees and tolls, in many cases — Chisholmian aristocrats are accustomed to charging on goods passing through their domains. The Imperial Crown hasn't been able to quash that tendency on the nobles' part (and limitations on the imperial power to simply arbitrarily decree legal changes are built into the marriage treaty merging Chisholm and Charis), but what Sharleyan has managed is to prune back aristocratic prerogative in that regard and see to it that the costs of doing business don't vary unpredictably in mid-transaction. At the same time, the Chisholmian Parliament is in the process of further limiting the aristocracy's power to stifle economic growth . . . which is one reason that the Dowager Countess of Hanth is finding at least some fertile soil for her opposition to Sharleyan and Cayleb.

Corisande had a "rule of law" of a sort, but only because Prince Hektor had figured out that reliable, predictable legal outcomes were a powerful factor in the development of the Kingdom of Charis' wealth and economic power. He never quite grasped that the limitations on the Charisian Crown were a fundamental part of why that was so, and it would never have occurred to him to voluntarily accept such limitations. Nor did he have any particular patience with the notion of allowing anything like proof of guilt or innocence to get in the way of the Prince's Justice. But he did understand that contract law had to be enforced, that investors had to feel confident that they could predict the legal and regulatory environment before they would be willing to invest, and that his merchant class had to be protected against rapacious aristocrats. The fact that he acted on that understanding is one of the reasons he was so widely regarded as a "good prince" by his subjects despite his own predatory foreign policy and the harsh fashion in which he dealt with his domestic enemies (real or perceived). In one sense, the rule of law in Corisande was entirely predictable where criminal cases were concerned: if you were charged in front of the Prince's Bench, you were going to be convicted. That was a given, but it was also something a merchant or an investor could allow for in his plans.

Siddarmark approached the Charisian concept of the rule of law more closely than anyone else on Safehold. The Republic's Constitution set the groundwork for that, and the wealthy class recognized that its wealth depended less on ownership of vast tracts of cropland than it did on the development of the Republic's resources. Again, do not make the mistake of assuming that this was a medieval planet before Merlin turned up. Aspects of Safehold most definitely were medieval, especially in Harchong, but the societies and the economies of many Safeholdian realms were much more sophisticated and articulated than I think many people are assuming. There was always room in Siddarmark for the owners of grist mills, of smithies, of blast furnaces and foundries, iron mines, copper mines, coal mines, coastal shipping vessels, canal barges, dragon-drawn dray lines, and bankers to earn very substantial returns. That was, in fact, true in almost every realm; the difference was that in Siddarmark (as in Charis) the ruling elites had realized they would earn even more substantial amounts in a capitalistic economy approaching as closely to genuine free-market capitalism as possible. Because of that, those ruling elites in Siddarmark had every reason to oppose the formation of an overt aristocracy even if the middle class (which held the franchise) had been willing to put up with one. That doesn't mean Siddarmark didn't have the effective equivalent of an aristocracy; it simply means that the Siddarmarkian "aristocracy's" self-interest was rather differently aligned than it was in someplace like Desnair.

Silkiah was thoroughly corrupted by the Siddarmarkian example and rejected the Desnairian model. That is, the Grand Duchy has a constitution which limits the arbitrary powers of the aristocracy and enshrines the rule of law. This is one reason why Silkiah's economy has done as well as it's done.

By the same token, if you take a close look at Dohlar, you'll see that it falls into a sort of middle ground between the "standard" aristocratic model and the Charisian/Siddarmarkian model. The Dohlaran legal code is written and based upon both precedent and acts of Parliament, in addition to royal decrees, but it is also closer to that of Corisande, perhaps, than to that of Charis in that the great nobles' ability to circumvent the law undercuts much of the advantage of having a written law code in the first place. Nonetheless, the predictability of law and regulation in Dohlar explains the fact that even a relatively inept ruler like King Rahnyld could entertain the notion of cutting himself into a part of the Charisians' steadily growing wealth and power.

This is still really only scratching the surface, but hopefully it will clarify some of my underlying socioeconomic assumptions in building Safehold. And since I now have to depart to go pick all three of the kids up from after school athletic practice, I shall have to into my discourse. I hope there are too many typos in it because I don't have time to hunt them down and exterminate them.