n7axw wrote:Just a couple of comments... "So far as we know..." Truth of the matter be known, we know very little of that early period from textev. Just enough to fuel speculation; good speculation, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.
Why the earth pattern for an aristocrisy? My own guess is that the archangels must have implemented it. They are the ones who would have known of dukes, earls, barons, etc. And it does fit the medieval pattern they apparently wanted.
Now about the republic... That had to be one of Shan-wei's re-educated colonists; no other way to account for it. For the archangels themselves to have told Safehold about republics and offer choices would be completely contrary to character and the strait jacket they were trying to impose in other ways.
Don
We've invented on Earth a huge variety of governments. Even in the medieval stasis Langhorne and Bedard figured they had achieved, they could count on a variety of governments popping up. Planting one republic among them, and giving it at least the tolerant acceptance by the Church and Archangels, would mean that when - not if, when - other states evolved into republics, that would not be something taken to be contrary to Church doctrine or a cause for a change in it. Siddermark made republicanism safe for the Church.
Safe enough, anyway. I doubt they were thrilled by it, and the support in scripture for all those other kingdoms and aristocracy everywhere does imply a preference for hereditary government forms. Certainly the way the Church has developed, and the way that noble families get tied to the church hierarchy, mean that the Church isn't comfortable with Siddermark and the reduced traction it has in Siddermark's direction. But the straitjacket has to have some give, and I think Siddermark's political make-up is part of that in Langhorne and Bedard's design.
And to make up for it, Siddermark's leadership is still from among a select group of families with a franchise that's distinctly limited. Practically, that's not unlike a monarchy elected from members of an extended royal family by the members of the extended royal family. It may be a lot more subject to change in a genuinely democratic direction - there's no aristocratic ideology to overcome there, "merely" political reform - but the Church has been able to head that off til now.
In some ways, a constitutional monarchy with a parliament with some genuine power that includes representation on a wider franchise is at least as democratic as Siddermark. Charis, Corisande, and Chisholm at least have been heading in that direction even before Merlin. (You have to count teensy-tiny baby steps, especially in Corisande's case, but still, it's measurable movement.) The Out Islands represent another way of taking on the myth of aristocracy: instead of not having that myth but still having leading families of the Republic, they've had an aristocracy that's open to entry by commoners who get money, and an aristocracy that's not necessarily all bound up with land. That's been the model in Charis, at least, and I suspect Emerald. We don't see much of that in Corisande or Chisholm, but we do see a decent bit of social mobility in army and naval service there at least.