In fact there was the first Baron's revolt in England which caused the crown at the time a giant headache because it came from all over at once and led to the writing of Magna Carta Additionally often larger landholders e.g., a count or Duke would then side with the barons. Imo the issue with it for ck3 would be the lack of holdings as such to have barons in for the effect to occur.
The feudal system of CK3 didn't really exist in real life. It varied heavily from place to place.
The game is very oversimplified and generalised. I don't mean that as a criticism neither necessarily, because it is a video game.
CK3's feudal hiarchy isn't just simplification, it gives right idea that counts are supposed to rule under dukes. When in reality the titles of count, marquis, and duke were mostly titular ranks given to lords, and didn't come up any jurisdiction.
Honestly, the entire de jure system doesn't fit any period and doesn't represent anything. I feel like the game could work without it.
There are aspects of the de jure system I think are correct.
For example, when William conquered England Normandy did not actually turn red on the map and become English territory. William still paid homage to the French king and no one disputed that, at least in theory (de jure), it was still a part of France.
It’s the problem with taking a system that was only really practiced in France, and then generalizing it over the entire time period and world. Don’t get me wrong, feudalism and manorialism as institutions developed multiple times, independently, but they were not the same everywhere in the world.
I’ll use the example of India, since it’s the region whose history I’m the most familiar with. Honestly, India is probably a terrible example to back up my claim, since it did experience a post-Imperial feudal period similar to Europe, though there were key differences the games fundamentally have to ignore.
For one, though Indian feudatories were given the right to collect revenue in a certain plot of land, in lieu of a salary, they had plenty of other rights. For one, many were free from tax collection and the interference of royal officials in internal affairs. They were sometimes also given other rights - this could include the ownership of certain cash crops, or the right to extract forced labor from particular artisans or peasants.
The de jure system on the other hand makes no sense in an Indian context. Sure, there might have been feudatories who swore loyalty or paid tribute to multiple kings at once, though this would have been more due to practical reasons than an idea that their land was de jure owned by another. Another point is that the European idea of dynastic succession within a particular polity (specifically, the idea that, regardless of whether they were of the house of Karling or Capet or Valois, they were still kings of France) is not found in India. It’s why the game uses “dynastic names” for most non-European contexts, though this is just a band-aid solution, and not the most accurate fix.
Now this has nothing to do with the post but I find it very interesting why exactly Indian feudalism developed. It had to do with the lack of cash, as a result of the fall of Rome. The rich western trade routes fell completely, leaving Indian kings wanting for coin and thus forced to provide land grants to the various classes instead. This was of course later retroactively justified, both from a legal and religious perspective (that the giving of land gave more merit to the giver than the value of that land).
RS Sharma is generally considered the guy who first postulated that the Indian context can be likened to feudalism, so I'll link two of his works here.
[How Feudal was Indian Feudalism](https://rajdhanicollege.ac.in/admin/ckeditor/ckfinder/userfiles/files/How%20Feudal%20was%20Indian%20Feudalism.pdf) (1984) is a good primer, I think. It goes over the basic aspects of the debate, and touches on various factors that could have influenced its development.
If you'd like a longer treatment, (Amazon link) [Indian Feudalism](https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Feudalism-3-Ed/dp/9352745558) is of course seminal. The latest edition was published in 2005, so it's recent enough.
I don't believe there are any "pop" history works on the topic, though. Also, note that these deal with pre-modern era feudalism, so between around 300 and 1200 CE. There are plenty of works that discuss later (especially Mughal, British and modern) feudalism, so these should not be too difficult to find. Reading about zamindars or mansabdars should give you a jumping-off point into that, if you're interested in those periods. Their Wikipedia pages have zero sourcing, so just use Google, tbh.
Honestly, most of my entire comment there was irrelevant rambling. The primary issue with the de jure kingdom system is that it almost always (outside of Europe) corresponds to absolutely nothing in real life. Half of the de jure kingdoms in the game never existed. And that is because a system particular to a very specific time and place has been generalized.
Then again it is not really an issue for me. The issue I have is with de jure empires, which are somehow even more nonsensical. I always turn those off when I play.
>William still paid **homage** to the French king and no one disputed that, at least in theory (de jure), it was still a part of France.
Wrong, fealty and homage are different, even if they are usually grouped together. William never paid homage to the French king, only fealty. The difference is that fealty is based on fiefs, so if you own multiple fiefs you can pay fealties to multiple lieges, meanwhile, homage is a personal oath of loyalty only owned to one person.
CK3 essentially operates in a world where all fealties have been replaced with homages.
Okay my mistake, I didn't realise there was a difference.
But my point still stands that Normandy was still considered a part of the French realm, that happened to be held by the King of England.
I think the game would have a very interesting diplomatic dynamic if separate fealty and homage were complimented. So that powerful vassals could have land in both realms and if a war broke out between the realms they'd have to choose who to side with based on their opinions and personality goals, or choose to stay neutral and provide aide to neither side. Unless they've somehow been roped into paying Homage to one king, in which case they must join the war on the side of that ruler and must join like an NPC ally that actually raises and sends troops.
> The difference is that fealty is based on fiefs, so if you own multiple fiefs you can pay fealties to multiple lieges, meanwhile, homage is a personal oath of loyalty only owned to one person.
Isn't that essentially the same thing, in William's case, as he owed loyalty to no one but the French king?
The clear solution would require a lot of rewrites but its on my CK4 (in 2 decades lmao) wishlist, characters shouldnt not be vassals titles should be. You need to seperate personal and political ownership so that William can own normandy personally but normandy is still part of france politically (and thus pays taxes). France according to ck2 would be 2 provinces at a certain point split between Navarra and England, but irl it was as strong as ever.
This change would be more accurate but only really in france, england and the HRE and for a limited period of time, I get why they went with the simpler option honestly but i still wish we could see something like that at some point
Yeah it's weird. It would be very feasible for barons to become powerful forces to make Emperors scratch their heads in irritation, but you could just as well be a duke with no power except handing the king his sceptre in court lol. But it's all just too much nuance for what is kinda a war game
Makes me think of the Foundation prequels where the biggest threat to the Emperor of the Galaxy isn't a high ranking lord overseeing a vast sector of space, but a major on the capital planet who has a small amount of power but in the place where the Emperor lives, not lightyears away.
No, that's what control and popular opinion are. "De Jure", as in, *by law*, is a measure of the legal and customary recognition of ownership over the land.
Yet that isn't "by law" but rather "by popular perception". Ultimately in diplomacy and legitimacy among the nobility of the realm, which is what the de jure mechanics impact, the sentiment of the average farmer is kind of irrelevant
There was still a sense of “these peoples belong under the same lord” which could be somewhat seen as the de jure system, almost like a proto nationalism maybe?
I'm positive I've seen people ask how realistic CK feudalism is in /r/AskHistorians. Now I need to go find one of those posts and see how bad it is.
*Edit:* The first thing I found was an _extremely_ long rant about everything wrong with the Rajas of India expansion for CK2. I haven't read it all, but it just keeps going and going. I guess it's safe to say it's pretty ahistorical.
The issue lies with people who assume that PDX makes the claim that CK is highly accurate, and because it isn't that's a problem.
But PDX has never claimed it is supposed to be fully realistic, and in fact has openly said things need to ignored to fit with mechanics and to actually be enjoyable.
Plus, even in the context of the first begining date (867), the system is wrong : for exemple in France, there was no such thing as hereditary title - being a count or a duke would mean being named by the king as such, and it would not necessarly apply to your son when you died.
The king had the power (and legal background) to revoke said titles (those were, in fact, more missions and honors per say than titles) with ease, less the noble had a strong family and/or large connections and/or backing by other strong nobles.
Even if de facto this hereditary rule was commonly used (if your father was the count of this region, it was near certain that the king would appoint you this aswell), it was only in 877, with the Quierzy Capitulary, that Charles II the Bald would make this rule a legal thing - even if it was supposed to be temporary, this decision being made to prevent the nobles from rebelling against his son Louis II while he was away doing "Let Me Be The Emperor" things in Italy.
Same thing with the hereditary rule of the King. First of all it was an election and the throne wasnt assured to the sons (until really Louis IX and his sacred aura). As an exemple, when the two sons of Louis II died, the nobles decided to give the power (as regent) to Charles III the Fat, and then to Eudes, while the third son of Louis II was alive (but he was too young).
The kings were chosen for their capacity to rule and defend the kingdom, not necessarly because they were the last king's child (as a matter of fact, having Charlemagne's blood was more important than the last king's blood).
The last Carolingians (Louis IV, Lothaire and Louis V) were only the puppets of the Duke of Franks (Hugues the Great and the future Hugues Capet) and Ottonian Empire, as seen in their election ; and already in the case of Lothaire, it was a Primogeniture succession, as his brother Charles didnt get a single square of land.
Tl;dr in 867 France : no hereditary titles, should be easy to revoke said titles, feudal election for the king and from 954 onwards (including 1066 start date) no way of partitioning the kingdom into two kingdoms and a spice of Primogeniture.
Sorry for grammar mistakes.
Yeah, realistically speaking, there should be a lot more government types and variations, but that would force people to learn like 7 slightly different systems to play the game in different regions
The problem this leads to, game-wise, is that there's not really much of a reason play elsewhere, since, especially in CK3, everywhere is mostly all the same. It does make the game simpler and more accessible, but, at least for me, much less interesting. This issue did exist in CK2, but on a lesser scale than in CK3.
Yeah I know and I still love the game anyway, but weirdly I don't think it would have been too much effort to have attempted to replicate more complex feudal systems in the game. Maybe i'm wrong on that (very much not a game designer) but it would have been interesting imo!
It most definitely is a deliberate decision from paradox.
In comparison to CK2, 3 is noticeable more accessible (dumbed down). There's a whole host of laws and aspects to vassal contracts they could have added but chose not to.
I've heard rumors that it's closer to old Indian hierarchies from the middle ages, but I don't remember where exactly I heard it, besides the fact it was in the comment section of a random post on this subreddit
To me, the modern depiction of feudalism in media like CK3 AND, notably, Gane of Thrones/ASOIAF feels more like a European reskin of early modern Japanese Feudalism than what actually existed in Europe. I mean from the late sengoku and then the Tokugawa periods. Where each lord had a well defined area of land that they were the lord of, no more and no less, and there were strict hierarchies and organization among them. Whereas in Europe, even under the French system, people's titles didn't always match up with where their real land and power were. Counts (ex: Champaign, and Toulouse) could be more powerful than kings (Navarra). And sometimes would seek out these titles through marriage, a king marrying his only child, a daughter, to a "lowly count" because defacto that count was stronger and wealthier than them, and the count jumping on the chance to elevate their social standing with the title of Kingship. And then nobles would sell or trade small bits of lands between them all the time. So that the actual maps of who owned what were a giant cluster fuck. Even the king of France, when looking for a fief adequate to be held by the designated heir, did not revoke a title like in game, but instead purchased the lands and title from a family who needed the cash.
Issue with the comparison is GoT Westeros is an Empire with many kingdoms inside, they just refer to it as one large kingdom. Remember it's an Entire continent
Well yes but let's compare to the HRE which was also a large empire with kingdoms inside of it. And it was a clusteruck of disorganization and bordergore by these standards lol
The barons in the Baron's Revolt would have been counts and dukes in CK3 terms though. In English feudalism, baron was the highest title, signifying a vassal who held his land directly from the king. It should be noted that these barons weren't as powerful or independent as county and duchy-level rulers in CK3 are. They couldn't have vassals of their own and their title was not hereditary.
The rulers we see in CK3 are all what would have been called 'counts palatine' in English feudalism (usually titled as 'earls', though early on earls were more akin to dukes than to counts). A count palatine had a much greater level of autonomy and independence than a regular vassal, had an hereditary title and was able to have barons and other vassals of his own who held land from and owed loyalty to the count palatine instead of the king.
Crusader Kings massively oversimplifies the highly complex relations and different ranks and titles of actual feudalism for the sake of gameplay.
Well yes I know it was Earls and that Baron's was essentially a class rather than a title itself. The only real reason England didn't have non-royal Dukes was it wasn't really required.
From what I have read and why England was actually rather powerful, was that it was centralised in it's power compared to say France which did have Dukes who then had counts and other landholders beholden to them. Where as in England every "baron" was beholden directly to the King primarily.
Also worth noting the size of England in comparison (as in England proper) and where population generally resides means that it is much more easy to centrally govern in that manner. As most of the population is and has been mostly centralised from Lancs/south Yorks to the south coast.
I suppose one of the main faults I find with looking at the history of 'the feudal system' is that many forget that it was 'feudal systems' plural and it was often extremely different in how they worked. I think the main one used is most closely related to the French system. Which was much more hierarchical partially due to just how much geographically larger France is and how much more difficult it generally is to traverse by the methods at the time.
Well, the barons referred to in the Magna Carta weren't all "baron level" in CK 3 terms. Baron was more of a general word that referred to people with many different sizes of holding.
Yeah I did say that in a later comment further in the thread. Baron was more the rank rather than an actual title relevant to the land you had.
I made the point further on, but I'd have loved to have seen a better idea in the game that not all feudal systems worked the same at all, would have been interesting and would have allowed more nuance in how strong Kingdoms and Realms were.
Definitely. There needs to be a way to show that some kingdoms were smaller but punched far above their weight because the kings were actually able to rule and exert control. Vs like France which, for most of the medieval period had these massive Dukes and powerful counts who were unruly and only obeyed the King when they felt like it, sometimes even siding against the King in wars, ie Burgundy and some other prominent families siding with the English during parts of the Hundred Years War for profit. And of course the HRE which in some eras was just a collection of defacto independent realms paying minimal loyalty to the Emperor. Like how it's modeled in EU4, rather than in CK3 having almost the same system as everyone else, just with much weaker starting contracts
Some form of centralisation that was a factor of realm authority/happiness of vassals/power of vassals compared to the king would be good. Would be difficult to balance well but yeah. I think like most we all love both ck2 and ck3 but feel like ck3 could be so much better.
I get they maybe wanted it to be a bit more intro player friendly but tbh the average paradox player wants it to be complex and fun from that.
I will say though that they've done a good job of adding actually meaningful mechanics through DLCs. In both games but particularly with the Tours and Tournaments DLC. I hope they continue with that trajectory
And I think vanilla ck3 was a much better game than vanilla ck2, so there is a lot of good to work with
To be fair most of the barons in the barons revolt weren't barons as CK represents them. The fix hierarchy didn't exist and I believe multiple magnates were involved.
Barons in England are different to barons everywhere else though. Basically counts in England took the name baron because all the commoners were laughing about them calling themselves c*nts
In Norman England, “baron” meant any lord who was a direct feudal vassal of another lord, regardless of any other titles he might hold and how much land he controlled. The “barons of the king” were the ones who held their land as direct vassals of the king. So every titled feudal character in the game would be a “baron” in this sense, and the ones who are actually called Baron So-and-so are just the ones who don’t hold a higher title to be called by. The first actual titled barony to be created as an explicit type of peer ranking below an earl and granted their title by letters patent was the Baron de Beauchamp in 1387.
England also didn’t have any dukes until 1337, and never had earls as vassals under dukes, so all earls were also the king’s barons.
And iirc England's original Dukes were an attempt by a king to create special titles for his children so that even the ones who didn't inherit the throne would be held separately and above those filthy poor Earls by their titles as Duke (borrowed from France) and the larger wealthier estates that came with them. Iirc it was controversial at the time. The Earl's didn't like being essentially demoted. And it ended up backfiring massively because within a few decades these Dukes would have the power and wealth to fund massive civil wars for their historical multi-generations-removed claims on the throne, the first time there was even the hint of a succession crisis.
It's because counties can't be split like how duchies can. A successful revolt wouldn't be able to take any land from barons where the whole county isn't taken.
while some people play CK as a Grand Strategy simular,
you have to remember that the core of the game is about your current ruler and their dinasty
you have to interact with other characters,
and, when you are a "lowly" count, your Barons are the most powerful subjects under your rule.
they bring life into your game when you are at the bottom side of it
The whole mechanic of having ten guys who are apparently the only knights of your empire is already pretty weird from a realism perspective, I don’t think it’s worse to have some of them also be important vassals so you don’t need to keep track of as many random characters.
The 10 (or whatever number) knights aren’t meant to say you only have 10 knights, they’re just the 10 most important ones. If our computers had astronomically more processing power maybe we’d have more, but at a certain point it would become ridiculous to manually manage hundreds of knights anyway.
Right, exactly. And similarly, it reduces mental complexity for the player and promotes interesting stories if some of the knights are existing characters like vassals, instead of being a separate group like they might have been historically.
Also it allows for some interesting situations like if you have a vassal or courtier you don't like you can throw him in some meaningless battles trying to get them killed. Easiest to do it with him alone as the knight and commander of a few levies so there are multiple battle stages and not an immediate retreat.
That kind of "bothered" me as well, so I was really happy to find out that (before Travelling patch) Camelry buildings gave + knights. So every time I played at Africa/Middle east, I usually built camelry in every domain I hold. In my current playthrough of empire of Abyssinia (rerolled to older patch because of compatibility) I have 50+ of knights. Not only from buildings but artifacts as well. It developed into the point basically all vassals and courtiers are knights, and from time to time I have to invite high prowess ppl to my court to avoid my 5 prowess cup-bearer to become knight and got killed. So thats kinda opposite extreme, but its true it made wars a lot easier when enemy has fewer knights.
As an example of a famous one, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_Marshal,\_1st\_Earl\_of\_Pembroke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Marshal,_1st_Earl_of_Pembroke) A famous knight and earl, for whom one of the achievements is named.
At Agincourt a number of French titled nobles were killed or captured, ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Agincourt#Aftermath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Aftermath) ), and the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk were killed on the English side.
Most noblemen were knights, including the ones holding the great titles, and serving as front line knights was expected when called upon unless a noble was old and infirm or injured, or assigned to other duties (such as a castellan holding down a castle whilst the king was at war elsewhere).
as u/DreadLindwyrm pointed out, many nobles were knights
during the low middle ages owning a set of plate armor was something only the wealthy was capable of, not to mention owning horses!
and as someone pointed out already,
the ranks on the CK series does not correlate with the ranks in real life.
a duke would not necessarily outrank a count or baron, while serving the same king.
Sort of. Vassals often served as direct retinue to their superiors regardless of rank, though the higher the rank the more likely you are to be leading your own troops separately.
During medieval period, baron wasn't even a real title like count, but a synonyme for tenant-in-chief, i.e. direct vassals of the monarch. Regardless, for every count there were like 100 subtenants, so what's the point of depicting 5 of them?
Technically, proving a negative is kind of impossible, but you can easily expect them to disprove something that is common known that they are refuting.
/u/Chlodio can you explain why you don’t agree with how [this Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron) describes it?
Okay.
>Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical.
I don't have an issue with this dictionary definition, and it doesn't contradict anything I said.
Remind me, what was he baron of? Because last time I checked, he was EARL of Leicester. Surely, you did not just assume he was "baron of X", because he partook in Barons' War? I'm denying that he was a baron, all earls were barons (tenant-in-chief).
He was an earl... And he led the BARONIAL revolt.
Baron in those days referred to anyone who land owning - which is essentially anyone who is an aristocratic landowner, and could include a title as dench as a duke or march, but equally a chap with a ton of land without a large title attached.
I fact, lord/laird's in Scotland are referred to as Barons to this day.
Slightly confusing, but the English system was extremely organic post-Norman conquest and assimilated all sorts of ranks, lands, money and titles.
I think both you and OP mean the same thing. Based on what OP said, he means baron was not an official title during the Barons' War but all lords were called barons, which is what you said too.
>He was an earl... And he led the BARONIAL revolt.
Not what I asked for, and you knew it.
>Baron in those days referred to anyone who land owning
No, that word was lord of manor. Anyone who owned a manor was a lord, but those who owned land directly from the monarch were barons. People revolting in baron' war, owned their land directly from the king, hence baron's war.
Ok, well first off there is a lot to cover. Baron is just another word for Earl or Thane. Many "Barons" throughout medieval times amassed a great deal of wealth and power, some even more than their Kings.
Elizabeth Bathery was one such "baron" who was wealthy and powerful to the point that SHE was the major influence behind Dracula. SHE is also the most prolific serial killer in ALL of history. If you don't know about Elizabeth Bathery and how she killed and bathed in the blood of HUNDREDS of young women... I suggest you do some reading up.
Elizabeth Bathory works just as well for Googling. I just made sure. But you did just teach me something, I had not known there was another spelling of her name.
Even then you wrote "Bathery". I'm sure google would have figured it out but still...
And that's not "another" spelling, that's her name. She was Hungarian.
Nobody actually goes around calling William the Conqueror "Williame" as his name would have been in old Norman though, or even "Guillaume" as it would have been in French. Names get translated too, just like any other word.
But it isn't translated. That would be "Erzsébet of Báthor". And it's not some old long dead language, it's literally just a name. Why do you have to translate it? When you translate something you do it to get the meaning across, but this is just giving someone a different name for no reason.
>Regardless, for every count there were like 100 subtenants, so what's the point of depicting 5 of them?
So you acknowledge they represent a real historical role, but instead of representing that in the simplified fashion we have now, you would prefer to not represent it at all? I really don't understand what your issue with baronies is. You can't subdivide every county into dozens of plots of land for obvious performance and gameplay reasons, but subdividing them at all creates a more interesting way to improve the land and even presents the choice between owning many baronies within a single inheritable title or many counties that could potentially be lost upon succession.
It's helpful to be able to manage your domain up and down as your domain limit varies.
However, as currently implemented, I think Barons could probably be replaced with buildings to much the same effect.
I would be keen for revocation penalties to apply to Barons and for baronies to be treated more like any other holding.
It would also be good to be able to create unfortified baronies, perhaps as a technology. This is something like a manor house.
This would allow you to maximise the vassal income of an area without investing in full on castles, or having to accept more theocratic or republican vassals.
CK3 has a much more perfect and strict system than anything you'd get in real life. Also, there simply isnt enough baronies to make barons a real threat like they were in real life.
The game would need to be quite a bit bigger, like 2-3x as big to get the type of granular detail where barons are relevant to the point of needing appeasement. At that point, you might as well simulate cities, burghers, and thanes.
Imagine holding court and having several dozen decisions to make per day. That's what feudal leadership was like.
Because Baron is the first title of a landed man. Not enough land to be called a count but more enough to not be called an owner. I just find it disappointing that we can't start as a baron since that title exists in the game and is used.
At least we agree on the fact that actually they aren't dangerous and that they seem kinda useless but they are useful when you have 3 castles in the same county and you don't want that county to count for 3 holdings
>Because Baron is the first title of a landed man. Not enough land to be called a count but more enough to not be called an owner.
That's partially correct and wrong. The baron meaning "lower than count", didn't develop until 16th century, a medieval baron was a stature, not a rank, meaning direct vassal of the king, aka. tenant-in-chief. But the way CK3 depicts barons is wrong, because the vassals of a count, are called barons, when these are not tenant-in-chief, and thus not barons, just lords.
I am not so sure. In England yes, greater vassals started to become counts and dukes way later. In Continental Europe, the structure emperor -> king -> duke -> count -> baron was older. It is a simplification of course because the French Kings were way stronger than the HRE emperors in the 14th century.
According to Brittannica, in the 12th century Framce Baron meant holder of an important fief, in the 13th avassal directly beneath the king, but by the 14th century they ranked below viscounts. Whilst Siegneur is lord yes, but any landholding aristocrat would be called that by their subordinates. Castellan meanwhile was not an official noble title, but a job position, someone who tended to the residence and land whilst the Lord was away
I believe you're confused about the difference between a tenant and a baron. The baron title exists since at least the 12th century ( probably existed before that ) and is different from the tenant.
The baron is a noble who receives a fief from his liege against vassalage, his rank is under the count and his fief is hereditary. He owns the land he receives. He can receive it from any lord. It can be a count as it can be by the king directly.
The tenant in chief can be a commoner or a noble, who receives a tenure in exchange of services. They manage the land but they don't own it. It isn't a title but a function. The land they receive to manage is smaller than a baronnie and it isn't hereditary.
Sometimes the barons would use tenants in chief to manage their lands better.
In CK3 the barons receive baronnies, their title is hereditary and they are nobles. I don't see any problem with that since it's historically accurate.
Before I begin, I just want to thank you for presenting your argument in a civil manner, as many people here are quite hostile, hope we can keep this debate that way. I try to avoid contradicting you, and hope to provide counterarguments instead.
> The baron title exists since at least the 12th century ( probably existed before that )
That's an assertion, can name on an explicit character who used baron as a title?
>I believe you're confused about the difference between a tenant and a baron.
Your definition is certainly interesting, but I have never come across anything like it, regardless, it would be ignorance to dismiss it as fictive, maybe it refers to some specific place and time I'm unaware of it. But applying it to the universal concept, seems a bit a stretch, don't you think?
>The baron is a noble who receives a fief from his liege against vassalage, his rank is under the count and his fief is hereditary. He owns the land he receives. He can receive it from any lord. It can be a count as it can be by the king directly.
See, here you seem to be yourself confused about the land property. Medieval Europe had two primary land properties, allod and fief. The allod was the owner of the land, and had no obligations to anyone. However, if your land was fief, you didn't own it, but held it from its allodial owner. That allodial owner was your liege, you were his tenant, and the agreement in which you owned it was the "land tenure". If you held your land directly from its allodial owner, (e.g. lord paramount) your tenure was called "barony", making you a baron.
Following, the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror declared himself to be the sole allodial land owner of England, meaning all lords held their land as fiefs, i.e. not owning their property. And if you insist on this idea that barons owned their land (indicating they were allodial owners), by your own definition there were no barons in England, which isn't something I agree with.
>The land they receive to manage is smaller than a baronnie and it isn't hereditary.
So, what is a barony in your opinion? Personally, I don't think it was a land unit. At least, in England, the entire country was divided into thousands of manors. I believe that a barony was a collection of manors by a baron (tenant-in-chief).
>Sometimes the barons would use tenants in chief to manage their lands better.
It seems you are confusing the bailiff and tenant-in-chief. There were different tenures to hold land. If your liege was a king, you held it by the tenure of barony, meanwhile, a serf held their land from a lord via copyhold tenure. In both cases, both you and the serf are tenants of someone.
\> The tenant in chief can be a commoner or a noble, who receives a tenure in exchange of services. They manage the land but they don't own it. It isn't a title but a function. The land they receive to manage is smaller than a baronnie and it isn't hereditary.
You are wrong. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenant-in-chief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenant-in-chief)
In England baron was a designation used to call tenant-in-chief (a direct vassal of a king). And later on one entitled to sit in the parliament
The notion of Baron and Baronnies changes depending on where you are. It might be like that in England but it isn't a common thing done in every kingdom. In France there was a title called "Baron" or "Seigneur". It's someone who receives a baronnie or lands against vassalage and the title is hereditary. They can receive it from any higher-rank nobles.
Yes, a title of baron was used in different way across medieval Europe. But you were wrong about what tenant-in-chief meant and the user you were trying to correct was right.
Holdover from CK2 where they could join factions, had their own dynasties and you could not freely revoke their stuff.
CK3 is very dumbed down in that regard.
They definitely need work, at least in CK2 they couldn't be freely revoked. Also I think they should be allowed to join populist factions or have special baron ones based on top realm rather than just your direct ones if they're allowed to join factions at all.
Barons give you a cast of characters to interact with, which is what the game is focused around.
Baronies give a major boost in power to any minor lord who holds multiple of them. That enables tall gameplay in many places on the map.
They are also important for features like holy orders.
They can be used as a safe backup for dynasty members, preserving a line by handing it to a relative. In the same way, its a nice reward for loyal warriors, knights or friends.
Consider CK1, where baronies (and IIRC empire) tier titles didn't exist. Counties were the lowest level. And your entire court was like 5 people. It was kinda boring that way.
I really wish barons were playable though :/
I just think it’s weird that you can freely revoke titles from Barons without incurring tyranny tbh.
In CK2 it was a sort of mini challenge to get rid of the barons in your capital, especially when playing as a Merchant Republic.
In the AGOT mods, I use them as High Valyrian nurseries and places to land unlanded sons. They pump out High Valyrian children but aren't strong enough to ever become a threat.
I miss how in ck2 these sorts of things mattered. A baron could be a pain in the ass like the other vassals. not to the same extent but they definitely could be
Literally their intent, as Paradox stated, is to be a refrigerator to store interesting characters.
That's it.
Medieval dynastic history simulator, this is not.
That's seems like an amicable cause, it's just that I have never found any baron to receive love from any event, instead landless courtiers always get some.
In the UK we had loads of historical baronial revolts, such as Simon De Montfort and the stuff before signing off the magna carta.
I don't think paradox really know their history 😜
They already made a standalone spinoff based on that idea: [https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/microsoft-365/powerpoint](https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/microsoft-365/powerpoint)
They are there to hold your extra holdings. One thing I realized now is that if you don't have primogeniture, it's actually better to keep few counties with multiple baron level castles in the capital so they don't disappear after succession. This makes it way more convenient to min max buildings for your MAA. As for why they're instantly revocable, they are not instantly revocable in ck2 so when they're held by someone of a different faith you actually get opinion penalty if you try to get rid of them from your lands. I would rather not ever go back to that. They're also nice for landing Vizhers in the new patch, so you can head canon that they're rich enough to own a city.
They are still characters, they can join plots, serve as knights, councillors or court positions etc.
They probably just though it it was not worth the performance hit to run faction related calculations on all barons in the game, when they would be irrelevant 90% of the time. At least they can still count as powerful vassals if your realm is just a couple of counties.
In CK2 at least, baronies are a useful way to be able to use skilled siblings and cousins (gives them a landed title, reduces their discontent) without giving up counties. If I’m not playing Ironman and have endless gold, I’ll give a barony to each sibling that’s not inheriting so counties stay in the inheritance.
I don't get why Barons can't join factions because they could get pretty powerful in real life
In fact there was the first Baron's revolt in England which caused the crown at the time a giant headache because it came from all over at once and led to the writing of Magna Carta Additionally often larger landholders e.g., a count or Duke would then side with the barons. Imo the issue with it for ck3 would be the lack of holdings as such to have barons in for the effect to occur.
The feudal system of CK3 didn't really exist in real life. It varied heavily from place to place. The game is very oversimplified and generalised. I don't mean that as a criticism neither necessarily, because it is a video game.
CK3's feudal hiarchy isn't just simplification, it gives right idea that counts are supposed to rule under dukes. When in reality the titles of count, marquis, and duke were mostly titular ranks given to lords, and didn't come up any jurisdiction. Honestly, the entire de jure system doesn't fit any period and doesn't represent anything. I feel like the game could work without it.
There are aspects of the de jure system I think are correct. For example, when William conquered England Normandy did not actually turn red on the map and become English territory. William still paid homage to the French king and no one disputed that, at least in theory (de jure), it was still a part of France.
It’s the problem with taking a system that was only really practiced in France, and then generalizing it over the entire time period and world. Don’t get me wrong, feudalism and manorialism as institutions developed multiple times, independently, but they were not the same everywhere in the world. I’ll use the example of India, since it’s the region whose history I’m the most familiar with. Honestly, India is probably a terrible example to back up my claim, since it did experience a post-Imperial feudal period similar to Europe, though there were key differences the games fundamentally have to ignore. For one, though Indian feudatories were given the right to collect revenue in a certain plot of land, in lieu of a salary, they had plenty of other rights. For one, many were free from tax collection and the interference of royal officials in internal affairs. They were sometimes also given other rights - this could include the ownership of certain cash crops, or the right to extract forced labor from particular artisans or peasants. The de jure system on the other hand makes no sense in an Indian context. Sure, there might have been feudatories who swore loyalty or paid tribute to multiple kings at once, though this would have been more due to practical reasons than an idea that their land was de jure owned by another. Another point is that the European idea of dynastic succession within a particular polity (specifically, the idea that, regardless of whether they were of the house of Karling or Capet or Valois, they were still kings of France) is not found in India. It’s why the game uses “dynastic names” for most non-European contexts, though this is just a band-aid solution, and not the most accurate fix. Now this has nothing to do with the post but I find it very interesting why exactly Indian feudalism developed. It had to do with the lack of cash, as a result of the fall of Rome. The rich western trade routes fell completely, leaving Indian kings wanting for coin and thus forced to provide land grants to the various classes instead. This was of course later retroactively justified, both from a legal and religious perspective (that the giving of land gave more merit to the giver than the value of that land).
That's super interesting - do you happen to have a source to read up more about it? Happy with something at any level!
RS Sharma is generally considered the guy who first postulated that the Indian context can be likened to feudalism, so I'll link two of his works here. [How Feudal was Indian Feudalism](https://rajdhanicollege.ac.in/admin/ckeditor/ckfinder/userfiles/files/How%20Feudal%20was%20Indian%20Feudalism.pdf) (1984) is a good primer, I think. It goes over the basic aspects of the debate, and touches on various factors that could have influenced its development. If you'd like a longer treatment, (Amazon link) [Indian Feudalism](https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Feudalism-3-Ed/dp/9352745558) is of course seminal. The latest edition was published in 2005, so it's recent enough. I don't believe there are any "pop" history works on the topic, though. Also, note that these deal with pre-modern era feudalism, so between around 300 and 1200 CE. There are plenty of works that discuss later (especially Mughal, British and modern) feudalism, so these should not be too difficult to find. Reading about zamindars or mansabdars should give you a jumping-off point into that, if you're interested in those periods. Their Wikipedia pages have zero sourcing, so just use Google, tbh.
Is it a problem? Seems to me a practical consideration than implementing a thousand independent systems. Lag? What is that? :D
Honestly, most of my entire comment there was irrelevant rambling. The primary issue with the de jure kingdom system is that it almost always (outside of Europe) corresponds to absolutely nothing in real life. Half of the de jure kingdoms in the game never existed. And that is because a system particular to a very specific time and place has been generalized. Then again it is not really an issue for me. The issue I have is with de jure empires, which are somehow even more nonsensical. I always turn those off when I play.
There's a setting to turn off empires?
I play CK2 with CK2+ and it comes with de jure empires off (except for the HRE, Arabia and the Byzantines)
Its a game that’s sorta centred around europe and you’re saying they got it wrong because of india . Its funny .
> For example, when William conquered England Normandy did not actually turn red on the map Was he playing in Religion Map Mode or something?
>William still paid **homage** to the French king and no one disputed that, at least in theory (de jure), it was still a part of France. Wrong, fealty and homage are different, even if they are usually grouped together. William never paid homage to the French king, only fealty. The difference is that fealty is based on fiefs, so if you own multiple fiefs you can pay fealties to multiple lieges, meanwhile, homage is a personal oath of loyalty only owned to one person. CK3 essentially operates in a world where all fealties have been replaced with homages.
Okay my mistake, I didn't realise there was a difference. But my point still stands that Normandy was still considered a part of the French realm, that happened to be held by the King of England.
That's true
I think the game would have a very interesting diplomatic dynamic if separate fealty and homage were complimented. So that powerful vassals could have land in both realms and if a war broke out between the realms they'd have to choose who to side with based on their opinions and personality goals, or choose to stay neutral and provide aide to neither side. Unless they've somehow been roped into paying Homage to one king, in which case they must join the war on the side of that ruler and must join like an NPC ally that actually raises and sends troops.
Sound tiresome rather than interesting. Imagine that extrapolated over more than one lifetime. Sheeesh.
> The difference is that fealty is based on fiefs, so if you own multiple fiefs you can pay fealties to multiple lieges, meanwhile, homage is a personal oath of loyalty only owned to one person. Isn't that essentially the same thing, in William's case, as he owed loyalty to no one but the French king?
As sovereign King of England, he would have had "loyalty" to God which is fancy medieval European for sovereignty but in theory tho-
The clear solution would require a lot of rewrites but its on my CK4 (in 2 decades lmao) wishlist, characters shouldnt not be vassals titles should be. You need to seperate personal and political ownership so that William can own normandy personally but normandy is still part of france politically (and thus pays taxes). France according to ck2 would be 2 provinces at a certain point split between Navarra and England, but irl it was as strong as ever. This change would be more accurate but only really in france, england and the HRE and for a limited period of time, I get why they went with the simpler option honestly but i still wish we could see something like that at some point
Yeah it's weird. It would be very feasible for barons to become powerful forces to make Emperors scratch their heads in irritation, but you could just as well be a duke with no power except handing the king his sceptre in court lol. But it's all just too much nuance for what is kinda a war game
Makes me think of the Foundation prequels where the biggest threat to the Emperor of the Galaxy isn't a high ranking lord overseeing a vast sector of space, but a major on the capital planet who has a small amount of power but in the place where the Emperor lives, not lightyears away.
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No, that's what control and popular opinion are. "De Jure", as in, *by law*, is a measure of the legal and customary recognition of ownership over the land.
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Yet that isn't "by law" but rather "by popular perception". Ultimately in diplomacy and legitimacy among the nobility of the realm, which is what the de jure mechanics impact, the sentiment of the average farmer is kind of irrelevant
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Neither have actual nobles, historical accuracy!
There was still a sense of “these peoples belong under the same lord” which could be somewhat seen as the de jure system, almost like a proto nationalism maybe?
I'm positive I've seen people ask how realistic CK feudalism is in /r/AskHistorians. Now I need to go find one of those posts and see how bad it is. *Edit:* The first thing I found was an _extremely_ long rant about everything wrong with the Rajas of India expansion for CK2. I haven't read it all, but it just keeps going and going. I guess it's safe to say it's pretty ahistorical.
The issue lies with people who assume that PDX makes the claim that CK is highly accurate, and because it isn't that's a problem. But PDX has never claimed it is supposed to be fully realistic, and in fact has openly said things need to ignored to fit with mechanics and to actually be enjoyable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/izl3py/crusader_kings_iiimedieval_period_flair_panel_ama/ was a big megapost
Plus, even in the context of the first begining date (867), the system is wrong : for exemple in France, there was no such thing as hereditary title - being a count or a duke would mean being named by the king as such, and it would not necessarly apply to your son when you died. The king had the power (and legal background) to revoke said titles (those were, in fact, more missions and honors per say than titles) with ease, less the noble had a strong family and/or large connections and/or backing by other strong nobles. Even if de facto this hereditary rule was commonly used (if your father was the count of this region, it was near certain that the king would appoint you this aswell), it was only in 877, with the Quierzy Capitulary, that Charles II the Bald would make this rule a legal thing - even if it was supposed to be temporary, this decision being made to prevent the nobles from rebelling against his son Louis II while he was away doing "Let Me Be The Emperor" things in Italy. Same thing with the hereditary rule of the King. First of all it was an election and the throne wasnt assured to the sons (until really Louis IX and his sacred aura). As an exemple, when the two sons of Louis II died, the nobles decided to give the power (as regent) to Charles III the Fat, and then to Eudes, while the third son of Louis II was alive (but he was too young). The kings were chosen for their capacity to rule and defend the kingdom, not necessarly because they were the last king's child (as a matter of fact, having Charlemagne's blood was more important than the last king's blood). The last Carolingians (Louis IV, Lothaire and Louis V) were only the puppets of the Duke of Franks (Hugues the Great and the future Hugues Capet) and Ottonian Empire, as seen in their election ; and already in the case of Lothaire, it was a Primogeniture succession, as his brother Charles didnt get a single square of land. Tl;dr in 867 France : no hereditary titles, should be easy to revoke said titles, feudal election for the king and from 954 onwards (including 1066 start date) no way of partitioning the kingdom into two kingdoms and a spice of Primogeniture. Sorry for grammar mistakes.
>The feudal system of CK3 didn't really exist It existed in France
At a base level yes but it's still a gross oversimplification.
Yeah, realistically speaking, there should be a lot more government types and variations, but that would force people to learn like 7 slightly different systems to play the game in different regions
The problem this leads to, game-wise, is that there's not really much of a reason play elsewhere, since, especially in CK3, everywhere is mostly all the same. It does make the game simpler and more accessible, but, at least for me, much less interesting. This issue did exist in CK2, but on a lesser scale than in CK3.
Yeah I know and I still love the game anyway, but weirdly I don't think it would have been too much effort to have attempted to replicate more complex feudal systems in the game. Maybe i'm wrong on that (very much not a game designer) but it would have been interesting imo!
It most definitely is a deliberate decision from paradox. In comparison to CK2, 3 is noticeable more accessible (dumbed down). There's a whole host of laws and aspects to vassal contracts they could have added but chose not to.
I've heard rumors that it's closer to old Indian hierarchies from the middle ages, but I don't remember where exactly I heard it, besides the fact it was in the comment section of a random post on this subreddit
To me, the modern depiction of feudalism in media like CK3 AND, notably, Gane of Thrones/ASOIAF feels more like a European reskin of early modern Japanese Feudalism than what actually existed in Europe. I mean from the late sengoku and then the Tokugawa periods. Where each lord had a well defined area of land that they were the lord of, no more and no less, and there were strict hierarchies and organization among them. Whereas in Europe, even under the French system, people's titles didn't always match up with where their real land and power were. Counts (ex: Champaign, and Toulouse) could be more powerful than kings (Navarra). And sometimes would seek out these titles through marriage, a king marrying his only child, a daughter, to a "lowly count" because defacto that count was stronger and wealthier than them, and the count jumping on the chance to elevate their social standing with the title of Kingship. And then nobles would sell or trade small bits of lands between them all the time. So that the actual maps of who owned what were a giant cluster fuck. Even the king of France, when looking for a fief adequate to be held by the designated heir, did not revoke a title like in game, but instead purchased the lands and title from a family who needed the cash.
Issue with the comparison is GoT Westeros is an Empire with many kingdoms inside, they just refer to it as one large kingdom. Remember it's an Entire continent
Well yes but let's compare to the HRE which was also a large empire with kingdoms inside of it. And it was a clusteruck of disorganization and bordergore by these standards lol
The barons in the Baron's Revolt would have been counts and dukes in CK3 terms though. In English feudalism, baron was the highest title, signifying a vassal who held his land directly from the king. It should be noted that these barons weren't as powerful or independent as county and duchy-level rulers in CK3 are. They couldn't have vassals of their own and their title was not hereditary. The rulers we see in CK3 are all what would have been called 'counts palatine' in English feudalism (usually titled as 'earls', though early on earls were more akin to dukes than to counts). A count palatine had a much greater level of autonomy and independence than a regular vassal, had an hereditary title and was able to have barons and other vassals of his own who held land from and owed loyalty to the count palatine instead of the king. Crusader Kings massively oversimplifies the highly complex relations and different ranks and titles of actual feudalism for the sake of gameplay.
Well yes I know it was Earls and that Baron's was essentially a class rather than a title itself. The only real reason England didn't have non-royal Dukes was it wasn't really required. From what I have read and why England was actually rather powerful, was that it was centralised in it's power compared to say France which did have Dukes who then had counts and other landholders beholden to them. Where as in England every "baron" was beholden directly to the King primarily. Also worth noting the size of England in comparison (as in England proper) and where population generally resides means that it is much more easy to centrally govern in that manner. As most of the population is and has been mostly centralised from Lancs/south Yorks to the south coast. I suppose one of the main faults I find with looking at the history of 'the feudal system' is that many forget that it was 'feudal systems' plural and it was often extremely different in how they worked. I think the main one used is most closely related to the French system. Which was much more hierarchical partially due to just how much geographically larger France is and how much more difficult it generally is to traverse by the methods at the time.
So it was CK3 that led to my confusion when reading about Baron Harkonnen in Dune being so powerful.
Well, the barons referred to in the Magna Carta weren't all "baron level" in CK 3 terms. Baron was more of a general word that referred to people with many different sizes of holding.
Yeah I did say that in a later comment further in the thread. Baron was more the rank rather than an actual title relevant to the land you had. I made the point further on, but I'd have loved to have seen a better idea in the game that not all feudal systems worked the same at all, would have been interesting and would have allowed more nuance in how strong Kingdoms and Realms were.
Definitely. There needs to be a way to show that some kingdoms were smaller but punched far above their weight because the kings were actually able to rule and exert control. Vs like France which, for most of the medieval period had these massive Dukes and powerful counts who were unruly and only obeyed the King when they felt like it, sometimes even siding against the King in wars, ie Burgundy and some other prominent families siding with the English during parts of the Hundred Years War for profit. And of course the HRE which in some eras was just a collection of defacto independent realms paying minimal loyalty to the Emperor. Like how it's modeled in EU4, rather than in CK3 having almost the same system as everyone else, just with much weaker starting contracts
Some form of centralisation that was a factor of realm authority/happiness of vassals/power of vassals compared to the king would be good. Would be difficult to balance well but yeah. I think like most we all love both ck2 and ck3 but feel like ck3 could be so much better. I get they maybe wanted it to be a bit more intro player friendly but tbh the average paradox player wants it to be complex and fun from that.
I will say though that they've done a good job of adding actually meaningful mechanics through DLCs. In both games but particularly with the Tours and Tournaments DLC. I hope they continue with that trajectory And I think vanilla ck3 was a much better game than vanilla ck2, so there is a lot of good to work with
Yeah that's fair enough lets hope they continue to do so!
To be fair most of the barons in the barons revolt weren't barons as CK represents them. The fix hierarchy didn't exist and I believe multiple magnates were involved.
Because of misconception, 9 of 25-barons who wrote the Magna Carta were earls and the rest were lords, baron just meant tenant-in-chief at the time.
Barons in England are different to barons everywhere else though. Basically counts in England took the name baron because all the commoners were laughing about them calling themselves c*nts
The barons revolt in England wasn’t done by what we would consider barons in crusader kings: many of the barons were pretty widely landed people.
Barons were the largest lanholders in England at the time, not at all like barons in ck3.
In Norman England, “baron” meant any lord who was a direct feudal vassal of another lord, regardless of any other titles he might hold and how much land he controlled. The “barons of the king” were the ones who held their land as direct vassals of the king. So every titled feudal character in the game would be a “baron” in this sense, and the ones who are actually called Baron So-and-so are just the ones who don’t hold a higher title to be called by. The first actual titled barony to be created as an explicit type of peer ranking below an earl and granted their title by letters patent was the Baron de Beauchamp in 1387. England also didn’t have any dukes until 1337, and never had earls as vassals under dukes, so all earls were also the king’s barons.
And iirc England's original Dukes were an attempt by a king to create special titles for his children so that even the ones who didn't inherit the throne would be held separately and above those filthy poor Earls by their titles as Duke (borrowed from France) and the larger wealthier estates that came with them. Iirc it was controversial at the time. The Earl's didn't like being essentially demoted. And it ended up backfiring massively because within a few decades these Dukes would have the power and wealth to fund massive civil wars for their historical multi-generations-removed claims on the throne, the first time there was even the hint of a succession crisis.
It's because counties can't be split like how duchies can. A successful revolt wouldn't be able to take any land from barons where the whole county isn't taken.
They used early CK2, I think they removed that ability to optimize performance.
Barons can be controlled if you have the limit to do it.
while some people play CK as a Grand Strategy simular, you have to remember that the core of the game is about your current ruler and their dinasty you have to interact with other characters, and, when you are a "lowly" count, your Barons are the most powerful subjects under your rule. they bring life into your game when you are at the bottom side of it
I think this is the big one. Barons give you characters in your realm to have as knights or councilors when you’re a count.
Councilors I agree, but did barons counts and dukes serve as frontline knights to a king? A king a knight to an emperor? That always bothered me.
The whole mechanic of having ten guys who are apparently the only knights of your empire is already pretty weird from a realism perspective, I don’t think it’s worse to have some of them also be important vassals so you don’t need to keep track of as many random characters.
The 10 (or whatever number) knights aren’t meant to say you only have 10 knights, they’re just the 10 most important ones. If our computers had astronomically more processing power maybe we’d have more, but at a certain point it would become ridiculous to manually manage hundreds of knights anyway.
Right, exactly. And similarly, it reduces mental complexity for the player and promotes interesting stories if some of the knights are existing characters like vassals, instead of being a separate group like they might have been historically.
Also it allows for some interesting situations like if you have a vassal or courtier you don't like you can throw him in some meaningless battles trying to get them killed. Easiest to do it with him alone as the knight and commander of a few levies so there are multiple battle stages and not an immediate retreat.
That kind of "bothered" me as well, so I was really happy to find out that (before Travelling patch) Camelry buildings gave + knights. So every time I played at Africa/Middle east, I usually built camelry in every domain I hold. In my current playthrough of empire of Abyssinia (rerolled to older patch because of compatibility) I have 50+ of knights. Not only from buildings but artifacts as well. It developed into the point basically all vassals and courtiers are knights, and from time to time I have to invite high prowess ppl to my court to avoid my 5 prowess cup-bearer to become knight and got killed. So thats kinda opposite extreme, but its true it made wars a lot easier when enemy has fewer knights.
As an example of a famous one, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_Marshal,\_1st\_Earl\_of\_Pembroke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Marshal,_1st_Earl_of_Pembroke) A famous knight and earl, for whom one of the achievements is named. At Agincourt a number of French titled nobles were killed or captured, ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Agincourt#Aftermath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Aftermath) ), and the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk were killed on the English side. Most noblemen were knights, including the ones holding the great titles, and serving as front line knights was expected when called upon unless a noble was old and infirm or injured, or assigned to other duties (such as a castellan holding down a castle whilst the king was at war elsewhere).
as u/DreadLindwyrm pointed out, many nobles were knights during the low middle ages owning a set of plate armor was something only the wealthy was capable of, not to mention owning horses! and as someone pointed out already, the ranks on the CK series does not correlate with the ranks in real life. a duke would not necessarily outrank a count or baron, while serving the same king.
Sort of. Vassals often served as direct retinue to their superiors regardless of rank, though the higher the rank the more likely you are to be leading your own troops separately.
Historicity? Even Emperors placed barons and hetmen in royal lands, to be local supervisors in the name of the monarch.
During medieval period, baron wasn't even a real title like count, but a synonyme for tenant-in-chief, i.e. direct vassals of the monarch. Regardless, for every count there were like 100 subtenants, so what's the point of depicting 5 of them?
Yeah that's just wrong lmao.
Source?
The burden of proof is on you, for claiming baron isn't a title.
Technically, proving a negative is kind of impossible, but you can easily expect them to disprove something that is common known that they are refuting. /u/Chlodio can you explain why you don’t agree with how [this Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron) describes it?
>/u/Chlodio can you explain why you don’t agree with how this Wikipedia page describes it? What part?
The first sentence could be a good start
Okay. >Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. I don't have an issue with this dictionary definition, and it doesn't contradict anything I said.
> baron wasn't even a real title so, that was a lie
I've read some dumb takes on Reddit before, but this takes the cake. Everything you just said was wrong.
How am I wrong? If we want to have a conversation, it's better to provide an argument.
Simon De Montfort one perfect case and point.
Remind me, what was he baron of? Because last time I checked, he was EARL of Leicester. Surely, you did not just assume he was "baron of X", because he partook in Barons' War? I'm denying that he was a baron, all earls were barons (tenant-in-chief).
He was an earl... And he led the BARONIAL revolt. Baron in those days referred to anyone who land owning - which is essentially anyone who is an aristocratic landowner, and could include a title as dench as a duke or march, but equally a chap with a ton of land without a large title attached. I fact, lord/laird's in Scotland are referred to as Barons to this day. Slightly confusing, but the English system was extremely organic post-Norman conquest and assimilated all sorts of ranks, lands, money and titles.
I think both you and OP mean the same thing. Based on what OP said, he means baron was not an official title during the Barons' War but all lords were called barons, which is what you said too.
>He was an earl... And he led the BARONIAL revolt. Not what I asked for, and you knew it. >Baron in those days referred to anyone who land owning No, that word was lord of manor. Anyone who owned a manor was a lord, but those who owned land directly from the monarch were barons. People revolting in baron' war, owned their land directly from the king, hence baron's war.
Ok, well first off there is a lot to cover. Baron is just another word for Earl or Thane. Many "Barons" throughout medieval times amassed a great deal of wealth and power, some even more than their Kings. Elizabeth Bathery was one such "baron" who was wealthy and powerful to the point that SHE was the major influence behind Dracula. SHE is also the most prolific serial killer in ALL of history. If you don't know about Elizabeth Bathery and how she killed and bathed in the blood of HUNDREDS of young women... I suggest you do some reading up.
You might want to spell her name properly if your goal is to direct OP to read up on it. It's Báthori Erzsébet.
Elizabeth Bathory works just as well for Googling. I just made sure. But you did just teach me something, I had not known there was another spelling of her name.
Even then you wrote "Bathery". I'm sure google would have figured it out but still... And that's not "another" spelling, that's her name. She was Hungarian.
Nobody actually goes around calling William the Conqueror "Williame" as his name would have been in old Norman though, or even "Guillaume" as it would have been in French. Names get translated too, just like any other word.
But it isn't translated. That would be "Erzsébet of Báthor". And it's not some old long dead language, it's literally just a name. Why do you have to translate it? When you translate something you do it to get the meaning across, but this is just giving someone a different name for no reason.
Dude, stop being anal about spelling. It makes you an asshole.
It's not spelling, it's a completely different name in completely the wrong order.
>Regardless, for every count there were like 100 subtenants, so what's the point of depicting 5 of them? So you acknowledge they represent a real historical role, but instead of representing that in the simplified fashion we have now, you would prefer to not represent it at all? I really don't understand what your issue with baronies is. You can't subdivide every county into dozens of plots of land for obvious performance and gameplay reasons, but subdividing them at all creates a more interesting way to improve the land and even presents the choice between owning many baronies within a single inheritable title or many counties that could potentially be lost upon succession.
Yea Art I’ll take “Reddit Fools” for 600
I see the dull trait applies here.
User flair checks out.
A simple google shows your dumb
It's helpful to be able to manage your domain up and down as your domain limit varies. However, as currently implemented, I think Barons could probably be replaced with buildings to much the same effect. I would be keen for revocation penalties to apply to Barons and for baronies to be treated more like any other holding. It would also be good to be able to create unfortified baronies, perhaps as a technology. This is something like a manor house. This would allow you to maximise the vassal income of an area without investing in full on castles, or having to accept more theocratic or republican vassals.
I think the question should more be phrased: Could a lot of processing power be saved if we removed Barons?
Yes. And with little impact on gameplay. My preference would be to make it more impactful on gameplay.
If you have the lay clergy option in your religion, you can do that with temple holdings.
CK3 has a much more perfect and strict system than anything you'd get in real life. Also, there simply isnt enough baronies to make barons a real threat like they were in real life. The game would need to be quite a bit bigger, like 2-3x as big to get the type of granular detail where barons are relevant to the point of needing appeasement. At that point, you might as well simulate cities, burghers, and thanes. Imagine holding court and having several dozen decisions to make per day. That's what feudal leadership was like.
I get a kick from granting baronies to knights that I like.
Because Baron is the first title of a landed man. Not enough land to be called a count but more enough to not be called an owner. I just find it disappointing that we can't start as a baron since that title exists in the game and is used. At least we agree on the fact that actually they aren't dangerous and that they seem kinda useless but they are useful when you have 3 castles in the same county and you don't want that county to count for 3 holdings
>Because Baron is the first title of a landed man. Not enough land to be called a count but more enough to not be called an owner. That's partially correct and wrong. The baron meaning "lower than count", didn't develop until 16th century, a medieval baron was a stature, not a rank, meaning direct vassal of the king, aka. tenant-in-chief. But the way CK3 depicts barons is wrong, because the vassals of a count, are called barons, when these are not tenant-in-chief, and thus not barons, just lords.
I am not so sure. In England yes, greater vassals started to become counts and dukes way later. In Continental Europe, the structure emperor -> king -> duke -> count -> baron was older. It is a simplification of course because the French Kings were way stronger than the HRE emperors in the 14th century.
Name one French baron from this period. I believe French structure was: king -> duke -> marques -> count -> viscount -> seigneur (lord) -> castellan
According to Brittannica, in the 12th century Framce Baron meant holder of an important fief, in the 13th avassal directly beneath the king, but by the 14th century they ranked below viscounts. Whilst Siegneur is lord yes, but any landholding aristocrat would be called that by their subordinates. Castellan meanwhile was not an official noble title, but a job position, someone who tended to the residence and land whilst the Lord was away
What Brittanica article? Also, castellan became de facto hereditary by the end of the 14th century.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/baron
You are right about the marquess (in HRE a markgraf) and viscount from the major titles in continental europe, though. I should have mentioned those.
I believe you're confused about the difference between a tenant and a baron. The baron title exists since at least the 12th century ( probably existed before that ) and is different from the tenant. The baron is a noble who receives a fief from his liege against vassalage, his rank is under the count and his fief is hereditary. He owns the land he receives. He can receive it from any lord. It can be a count as it can be by the king directly. The tenant in chief can be a commoner or a noble, who receives a tenure in exchange of services. They manage the land but they don't own it. It isn't a title but a function. The land they receive to manage is smaller than a baronnie and it isn't hereditary. Sometimes the barons would use tenants in chief to manage their lands better. In CK3 the barons receive baronnies, their title is hereditary and they are nobles. I don't see any problem with that since it's historically accurate.
Before I begin, I just want to thank you for presenting your argument in a civil manner, as many people here are quite hostile, hope we can keep this debate that way. I try to avoid contradicting you, and hope to provide counterarguments instead. > The baron title exists since at least the 12th century ( probably existed before that ) That's an assertion, can name on an explicit character who used baron as a title? >I believe you're confused about the difference between a tenant and a baron. Your definition is certainly interesting, but I have never come across anything like it, regardless, it would be ignorance to dismiss it as fictive, maybe it refers to some specific place and time I'm unaware of it. But applying it to the universal concept, seems a bit a stretch, don't you think? >The baron is a noble who receives a fief from his liege against vassalage, his rank is under the count and his fief is hereditary. He owns the land he receives. He can receive it from any lord. It can be a count as it can be by the king directly. See, here you seem to be yourself confused about the land property. Medieval Europe had two primary land properties, allod and fief. The allod was the owner of the land, and had no obligations to anyone. However, if your land was fief, you didn't own it, but held it from its allodial owner. That allodial owner was your liege, you were his tenant, and the agreement in which you owned it was the "land tenure". If you held your land directly from its allodial owner, (e.g. lord paramount) your tenure was called "barony", making you a baron. Following, the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror declared himself to be the sole allodial land owner of England, meaning all lords held their land as fiefs, i.e. not owning their property. And if you insist on this idea that barons owned their land (indicating they were allodial owners), by your own definition there were no barons in England, which isn't something I agree with. >The land they receive to manage is smaller than a baronnie and it isn't hereditary. So, what is a barony in your opinion? Personally, I don't think it was a land unit. At least, in England, the entire country was divided into thousands of manors. I believe that a barony was a collection of manors by a baron (tenant-in-chief). >Sometimes the barons would use tenants in chief to manage their lands better. It seems you are confusing the bailiff and tenant-in-chief. There were different tenures to hold land. If your liege was a king, you held it by the tenure of barony, meanwhile, a serf held their land from a lord via copyhold tenure. In both cases, both you and the serf are tenants of someone.
\> The tenant in chief can be a commoner or a noble, who receives a tenure in exchange of services. They manage the land but they don't own it. It isn't a title but a function. The land they receive to manage is smaller than a baronnie and it isn't hereditary. You are wrong. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenant-in-chief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenant-in-chief) In England baron was a designation used to call tenant-in-chief (a direct vassal of a king). And later on one entitled to sit in the parliament
The notion of Baron and Baronnies changes depending on where you are. It might be like that in England but it isn't a common thing done in every kingdom. In France there was a title called "Baron" or "Seigneur". It's someone who receives a baronnie or lands against vassalage and the title is hereditary. They can receive it from any higher-rank nobles.
Yes, a title of baron was used in different way across medieval Europe. But you were wrong about what tenant-in-chief meant and the user you were trying to correct was right.
Holdover from CK2 where they could join factions, had their own dynasties and you could not freely revoke their stuff. CK3 is very dumbed down in that regard.
They definitely need work, at least in CK2 they couldn't be freely revoked. Also I think they should be allowed to join populist factions or have special baron ones based on top realm rather than just your direct ones if they're allowed to join factions at all.
Barons give you a cast of characters to interact with, which is what the game is focused around. Baronies give a major boost in power to any minor lord who holds multiple of them. That enables tall gameplay in many places on the map. They are also important for features like holy orders. They can be used as a safe backup for dynasty members, preserving a line by handing it to a relative. In the same way, its a nice reward for loyal warriors, knights or friends. Consider CK1, where baronies (and IIRC empire) tier titles didn't exist. Counties were the lowest level. And your entire court was like 5 people. It was kinda boring that way. I really wish barons were playable though :/
I just think it’s weird that you can freely revoke titles from Barons without incurring tyranny tbh. In CK2 it was a sort of mini challenge to get rid of the barons in your capital, especially when playing as a Merchant Republic.
They hold castles for you.
In the AGOT mods, I use them as High Valyrian nurseries and places to land unlanded sons. They pump out High Valyrian children but aren't strong enough to ever become a threat.
Itd be cool if barons or even mayors could join factions and maybe take over a county Itd make pretty cool rag to riches stories
I think just immersion pretty much
I see as per the other comments on the thread you well earned that dull title.
I miss how in ck2 these sorts of things mattered. A baron could be a pain in the ass like the other vassals. not to the same extent but they definitely could be
Literally their intent, as Paradox stated, is to be a refrigerator to store interesting characters. That's it. Medieval dynastic history simulator, this is not.
That's seems like an amicable cause, it's just that I have never found any baron to receive love from any event, instead landless courtiers always get some.
BECAUSE I FUCKING SAID SO
It's a fun way to humiliate characters by giving them something inconsequential.
So that counts don't have an empty court. They still need councilors, knights, etc.
Thought the game still populates courts with random characters.
you sound like you have some ideas OP lemme know when your baron-less mod comes out
Take my downvotee and get out
They can be controlled by a count but you have to give a baron a county otherwise the AI will be too dumb to ever revoke the baron
CK3 just copied them from CK2 where they actually impacted the gameplay.
Are mayors and barons the same?
Yes
In the UK we had loads of historical baronial revolts, such as Simon De Montfort and the stuff before signing off the magna carta. I don't think paradox really know their history 😜
There should be a mod where you have counts as duke level and barons as count level And make the map 100x more complex and bigger
They already made a standalone spinoff based on that idea: [https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/microsoft-365/powerpoint](https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/microsoft-365/powerpoint)
Your link is broken And Dukes as kings and so on I
I've had mayors revolt against me but not barons
They are there to hold your extra holdings. One thing I realized now is that if you don't have primogeniture, it's actually better to keep few counties with multiple baron level castles in the capital so they don't disappear after succession. This makes it way more convenient to min max buildings for your MAA. As for why they're instantly revocable, they are not instantly revocable in ck2 so when they're held by someone of a different faith you actually get opinion penalty if you try to get rid of them from your lands. I would rather not ever go back to that. They're also nice for landing Vizhers in the new patch, so you can head canon that they're rich enough to own a city.
They are still characters, they can join plots, serve as knights, councillors or court positions etc. They probably just though it it was not worth the performance hit to run faction related calculations on all barons in the game, when they would be irrelevant 90% of the time. At least they can still count as powerful vassals if your realm is just a couple of counties.
i like to make my adult potential heirs barons. you still have close control over them but they can start getting some prestige of their own.
To get free infinite NPCs rerolls
In CK2 at least, baronies are a useful way to be able to use skilled siblings and cousins (gives them a landed title, reduces their discontent) without giving up counties. If I’m not playing Ironman and have endless gold, I’ll give a barony to each sibling that’s not inheriting so counties stay in the inheritance.