Dragaera

Joining a house, or changing houses

Wed Sep 1 13:34:30 PDT 2004

> When the Emperess promisses Morollan a bunch of land - 
> doesn't that land  
> now become Dragon land?   Do its vassals now become 
> Dragonian?  

Keeping in mind that anything we write about this topic is guesswork, my
guess is "no". Land belongs to Empire or to one of the Houses. What changes
hands is the right to exploit that land. Other than social standing, that's
what titles are about. Imperial titles give you the right to exploit
"federal land", as it were. Now, no story (to my knowledge) had directly
implied the existence of this "federal land" but it just about has to exist.
Any time the borders expand, new land will come under the jurisdiction of
the Empire. Someone has to be responsible for it. Not to mention that the
beauracracy probably requires a certain amount of income that arrives
independently of any House machinations.

Now, that's not to say that the Empress can't give the actual land rights to
a House whose council then awards House titles to her chosen recipient. Just
that the normal course is to hand over an Imperial Title and keep the actual
land in the control of the Empress. 

The empire is an interesting case, because the government changes hands on a
semi-predicatable basis. There are likely to be a lot of laws and rules in
place that govern how land is handled and especially how "federal land"
changes hands. If there weren't, then the first thing a new Emporer would do
is give all of the "federal land" to his friends in his own House. I'd
imagine that the exchange of land rights between the Imperial Beauracracy
and the Houses is a political tool that gives the Emporer some power when it
comes to dealing with (or making deals with) uncooperative Houses.

The real problem we have here is that Zerika is an atypical Empress. In the
normal course of things, the sitting Empress (Norathar, for example) would
have the power and prestige of the House behind her. With no House to turn
to for help, Zerika is completely dependant upon the Imperial beauracracy.
As a House of one, she doesn't give us much insight as to how the Houses
normally operate when one of their own is on the throne.

In any case, we can assume that running the Empire requires more resources
than any one House has available, hence the neccesity for there to be
Imperial land and titles (along with their trade and mineral rights) that
can be brokered with the other Houses as required. The usage of Imperial
land/titles as a kind of currency among the houses is probably not too
far-fetched, and would be a good enough reason to preserve a certain amount
of "federal land" so that the Emporer has an income in addition to his House
backing and so that a House doesn't find itself being raided and losing all
of its lands when the next House takes power, wanting its own piece of the
pie.

> >> From the sound of things, Vlad's county has been running 
> things just
> >> fine without a Count for quite a while.
> 
> What have you heard?

Nothing more than a remark by Vlad to Noish-Pa while convincing him to move
out to his new county. Basically, Noish-pa won't have to worry about
managing the place because the people living there have been managing just
fine without a sitting Count around.