Nobility

Nobles? Hah! Fops whose only claim to power is their grand-pappy's grand-pappy being someone important!

— An outspoken anarchist

The nobility are traditionally the sole landowning class, but their authority has slowly waned over time. Where once, cities were considered the sole demense of an influential lord, no different from rural territories, the steady increase in city populations has made this impractical. With cities becoming the centre of social life, rural lords pressed for the opportunity to buy parts of the city to build elaborate townhouses - miniature versions of their country manors. This seemingly innocuous development has led to a gradual fracture of noble power in general.

Coupled with the emergence of a merchant class, with many of them commanding more wealth than lords can raise from the land they hold title to, this has gradually led to a fragmentation of ownership in cities. At the same time, this increasing prestige of individual cities has enabled a sharp increase in the number of city-states: cities whose lord declare themselves monarchs rather than continuing to pay fealty to the monarch of some other city, or worse, an itinerant court that never allows court attendees to truly settle into their homes. This trend is especially true in the Asurian Peninsula, where independent cities have been the norm for most of the region for centuries.

Decreasing Relevance

As cities grew in importance, this created a sharp imbalance of power between lords of cities and lords of rural estates. The cities controlled culture, high and low alike, giving a city lord both the ability to influence public thinking, as well as allowing them the freedom to loosen restrictions on the lower classes, thus causing unrest in rural territories that maintained high taxes and oppressive working conditions. At the same time, with both city walls and a large population from which to draw up armies, city lords suddenly dominated the fields of battle, preventing rural lords from stopping their interference by force.

These loosened restrictions on the lower classes eventually led to another significant change: the rise of the merchant class. Where once, investment in trade ventures was the sole province of lords, as they controlled the wealth, reduced taxes allowed savvy artisans - blacksmiths, tailors, and many other skilled workers - to offer up their modest savings to fund increasingly complex trading ventures. The most skilled of these became Merchants: commoners who spent their time directing the trade activities of other commoners under their employ, amassing wealth in the process; a lifestyle very reminiscent to that of many lords.

Combined with city lands being sold, and city lords' increasing need for the money that was being redirected into merchant coffers rather than their own, this in turn led to city lands being sold off to merchants as a means of directing their wealth back into the city lords' treasuries. But unlike rural nobility, the merchants were quite happy to parcel up the lands they purchased, selling them on to artisans, or demanding rent from the working class inhabitants in lieu of the taxes owed to a lord who no longer had the legal right to oust them from the property.

Now, in many cities, the majority of the populace live on land owned by commoners. More and more, merchants control the flow of wealth in and out of the cities. Rural lords have been forced to either compete with merchants directly, or to accept the fact that they have become mere suppliers: the owners of mines, sawmills and farms that supply cities with the raw resources they need. Resources that are not unique and can be acquired elsewhere if they don't keep their prices low enough.

Furthermore, there is an increased perception that these merchants are more worthy of their power and influence than the nobility. Merchants very publicly rise and fall largely based on their own talents, with wealthy but incompetent inheritors foundering in the onslaught of competition. Conversely, noble families hold titles granted to their grandfathers, or even further back, proudly proclaiming the worthiness of distant ancestors while directing their declining wealth and influence towards utter ruin. Bloodline, it seems, no longer matters.

Abdication in Caelester

After the earthquake in Caelester eight years ago, much of the city's surviving nobility fled to the comfort of country manors and townhouses in cities that had not faced such a cataclysm. However, despite the hardship of reconstruction, the city has not fallen into complete chaos in response to the loss of its purported rulers. While some merchants opted to direct their business elsewhere, some of Caelester's most influential companies took great steps to help with the reconstruction efforts, almost universally being recognized as having taken more responsibility than any of the city's nobles. Crime seems no more prevalent than it was with lords around to systematically impose and enforce laws, with the ironic exception of the Caelester Guard acting more and more like the criminal organizations they were meant to root out. These developments have resulted in various proposals. Merchants and Artisans alike have proposed rule by the common people, with Merchants leaning in favour of rule through wealth, and artisans principally centred aroung the Guildmaster's Council that once advised the city's Grand Dukes and Duchesses. Some have even dared to ask if people truly need to be ruled at all.