Editing Noble (section)

== Overview ==

Nobles who aren't completely drunk on power know that he needs peasants as much as he needs them (after all, without peasants, who's gonna work for you to generate money and pay you taxes?), so they do their best in keeping the people happy, or at the very least treat them like human beings. Those who're on an eternal power trip usually don't last long when the peasants have had enough and decide to rebel ''en masse''. Or at least you would ''think'' that it would work like that, but the fact of the matter is that heavily armored cavalry tend to crush peasant rebellions in most cases so most of them don't particularly care about how badly they treat their peasants. Rebellion is made even more difficult by the fact that often tyranical nobles in the real world would grant favors to a portion of the peasant population at the expense of all the other peasants, pitting the peasants against each other. A more modern example of this tactic would be in Colonial Africa, where Europeans would often favor one ethnic group in a region over the others, breeding resentment and making it harder for the Africans to unite against their oppressors (and unsurprisingly leading to continued strife between said groups that has sometimes culminated in genocide, like the Hutu-Tutsi conflicts in Rwanda).

Nobles, when defined broadly enough, are present in pretty much every society with a concept of wealth and power. The difficulties of translating such titles and the meanings they convey however could be quit difficult, as while a title could roughly translate to "king" or "marquess" it might not exactly have the same significance or powers as in Europe.  It is useful to keep in mind that in almost all historical examples the nobility also represent the warrior elite of that civilization, with extensive life-long training in both [[Rip and tear|feats of personal badassery]] and the skills necessary to command armies.  Typically the way this works is a brilliant commander rips apart an old and decadent kingdom and then gives the pieces to his best bros, who in turn pass both land and knowledge down to their kids, and so on.  Eventually the competent conquerors' descendants devolve into useless louts and a brilliant commander repeats the cycle.

Usually nobles had great financial resources, though it wasn't unheard of for nobles to fall on hard times, be forced to sell off estates, or be eclipsed by up and coming burghers. Usually their titles and land were hereditary, though some titles had to be rebestowed by the monarch to the heir and monarchs sometime gave titles that would dissolve with the death of the holder. Usually noble titles came with an associated plot of land though unlanded, honorary, courtesy and other such titles existed; if you noticed the word "usually" was used a lot then congratulations, you realized how much of a headache the aristocracy can be.