Editing Noble (section)

== Noble Title Examples ==

Since there's roughly two metric assloads (to put it in scientific terms) of noble titles and all their variations this is simply a short list of some titles that a PC might encounter (or maybe even adopt) in a game set in a typical pseudo-Europe or maybe a Middle-Eastern or Oriental setting. Some of these titles are considered to be simply the "native" term for a more recognizable term like emperor or count, however some of them operated quite differently than from what their translation suggests.

*'''Emperor''':The Big Mac Daddy of all titles. He whose dong is larger than all other dongs.  An Emperor is the head of an empire, which is a nation that rules over other nations.

*'''Boyar''': Title used in Russia and a few other slavic countries.

*'''Emir''': The ruler of an emirate.

*'''Shah''': A title used in Persian and "persianized" societies, meaning king.

*'''Shahanshah''': This is the title of a Persian emperor meaning king of kings. Competed with Padishah for being what the guy in charge called himself. 

*'''Sultan''': Roughly but not exactly meaning king, it's a semi-religious title used in Islamic countries that controls a sultanate.

*'''Padishah''': Translated to "master king", basically a king with an even larger dong.

*'''Count''': The lord of a county, used in most of Europe. The equivalent in Britain would be an Earl.  In Europe, Counts did a lot of the administrative heavy lifting to make feudalism work since a county was usually about as large a block of land as one could reasonably cross by horse in a day.  Politically their biggest frenemy was usually the local bishop, who could make life easy or very hard depending on how pious (read as: generous) a count was.

*'''Marquess/Marquis/Margrave''': These guys were the leaders of a 'March' i.e. a border province, and had thus the military responsibility to defend said border on top of the administrative/feudal ones. Hence the accordingly more prestigious title than Count, but still below Duke.

*'''Duke''': The ruler of a duchy. A high ranking title, usually subordinate only to the king. Not be confused with grand dukes or archdukes, which carry higher status and are much more likely to be sovereign.

*'''Baron''': The ruler of a barony. Usually the lowest noble rank, it's often used by villains in fiction such as the Baron Harkonnen from [[Dune]]. This may be due to the historical "robber barons" which were local lords in the Holy Roman Empire who set up unauthorized toll booths and illicitly seizing the goods of merchants.

*'''King''': The male ruler of a kingdom (female rulers were called a queen regnant). Theoretically completely sovereign, kings dominated not only most of Europe but their equivalents in the rest of the world too.

*'''Daimyo''': A lord in feudal Japan. These were the guys who hired samurai in order to guard their lands.  The balance of power between the Emperor and the Shogun hinged largely on who had more support from the Daimyos; most of the time it was the Shogun.  

*'''[[Meme|Doge]]''': The ''elected'' dictator-prince of Venice.  The position was a life appointment which was occasionally bought by having the current Doge meet some unfortunate demise and then paying off enough of the electors.