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[ZeroGravitas]

Even if you're calling serfs slaves (which is definitionally wrong; slaves are owned by people whereas serfs are owned by land)

so you see the IMPORTANT DISTINCTION as the legal niceties of *how* the people are owned as opposed to the fact that people can be owned at all.

and that's before we get into how unbelievably stupid it is to think of land as being able to own things.

[ZeroGravitas]

Slavery was very much a thing in medieval times, but I've mainly seen it brought up in the context of piracy in the Mediterranean.

While serfs are very similar to slaves, the key difference is that slaves were considered property and could be bought and sold, while serfs were tied to the land they worked, and at least nominally protected legally.

This isn't even true for serfdom in many times and places. Even where selling serfs as chattels was illegal, it often continued anyway.

[Radsoc]

Sweden was never feudal, so no. I repeat. Sweden, like Norway and Iceland, never shared the feudal social structure and laws the rest of Europe had. After thralldom was abolished in the 14th century, Sweden's farming class populace came to consist mainly of free farmers farming their own land for themsleves. This continued until said land reforms in the 18th century made it easier for great-farmers to buy and consolidate larger and larger amounts of land, meaning the now unlanded farmers now had to farm for them instead of themselves on the land they had previously owned.

Feudalism is a mode of production, which doesn't necessarily require thralldom per se. But, the crown and the nobility emerged from and owned land that had to be tended to by others, even if the crown managed to form alliances with the high-peasants to bypass the ambitions of higher nobility. Taxation (even if some were exempt), in natura or not, in that context could also be viewed as a basis for feudalism.

[hector13]

This has been quite the de-rail. Perhaps take it elsewhere?

[umiman]

While I can't be bothered with most of the squawking up there, I think the subject of Feudalism alongside other Medieval governments and human ownership is fairly pertinent to CK2 as a whole.

In fact, I'd actually be pretty happy if I saw a CK2 dev go into the kind of speculation, relativism, and wild personal fantasy going on in the above. It'd show they at least still have passion in the subject.

I think as long as Godwin's law hasn't been invoked about this discussion about feudalism in a game about feudalism, we should be good.

[Cruxador]

One is owned and not free, the other one is free under contract. You could argue that there is no de facto difference for an individual, but when discussing societies and structure the difference is definitely not just semantical.

One is bound to the land simply by existing, owned by the land. The other is a free person bound by a contract that they have entered willingly. Their employer does not own them, he employs them.

Either way, they're bound to the land by contract. It's not like serfdom was unregulated. The only difference is the terms of expiration and details of compensation.

I know it's popular among Swedes to romanticize Sweden much more so than other nationalities do of their countries

Give me a break, Leader of the Free World and Land of the Free, Home of the Brave and American Dream and Founding Fathers and fucking faces hewn into the goddamn mountainside.

Are you seriously trying to pretend that there wouldn't be a mountain in the shape of Gustav Vasa if y'all had had dynamite during your golden age?
And I've never heard of Americans who say our slavery wasn't really slavery, or that things like the trail of tears and japanese internment were okay.

This is more ridiculous than people who deny that Sweden ever perpetrated genocide. At least there, you can come up with semantic loopholes to wiggle through.

The Sami people sterilized themselves, Sweden help Untermensch families (by preventing children and thus additional mouths to feed). <--- True story.

Please take this attitude and fuck off. I am in no way denying that statare-hood was a fucked up practice. I am equivalencing it to all the other horrible practices of the liberal 19th century. Those were all abuse of free people as well. And you bring up Swedish racism and supremacist nationalism as if that had anything to do with what I'm saying, or as if I was a denialist of it. Seriously, fuck you, and especially fuck you Cruxador for diminishing the atrocities done against the Sami like that.[/quote]Not sure how it's diminishing to say y'all folk diminish it. And not just that particular genocide, seems like you do one every couple hundred years. The Deluge was also pretty brutal, and the Skåne settlement policies would be considered an atrocity by modern standards, though to be fair people were a bit more lackadaisical about systematic oppression in those days. And hey, most countries have some history of bad things - but I'd be hard-pressed to think of another which has this much and still hold themselves up as a pinnacle of social tolerance and morality. Fewer still will have people calling their country moral during that very same period when it happened.

Any time you're not allowed to change your employment status, I think that counts as a slave. Edge-cases are when you're *technically* allowed to change that status, just that doing so is so beyond feasible that it might as well be impossible, like wage-slavery.

and yes this is not a perfect definition so you can take your nitpicking and stuff it up the pope

Honestly that seems like a pretty solid definition to me.

This has been quite the de-rail. Perhaps take it elsewhere?

Eh. Medieval European social structures are not directly CK2 discussion, but they're not more than one step removed, considering it's a game set in the (broadly defined) medieval period of Europe (and her neighbors) with social structures as key mechanics. Even if the CK2 versions are pretty heavily simplified.

[scriver]

Sigh. I guess you're the expert on all things Swedish, California boy.

[SaberToothTiger]

I didn't quite meant to insult you scriver, just shitposting

[ZeroGravitas]

This has been quite the de-rail. Perhaps take it elsewhere?

It's not remotely a derail. The proper way of portraying the historical setting of CK2 has always a topic. Especially when the game's time from extended back to Charlemagne without actually changing the mechanics for Western Europeans.

[hector13]

Y'all aren't discussing how it relates to CKII though.

CKII is a dynasty simulator. Government mechanics is something that would be much more suitable for EU.

Whatever though, I just don't want to read the shite you're talking about, with folk get fucked off with each other and the thread gets locked for people being assholes in turn, particularly when at least one of you has an emotional attachment to what is (was) being discussed.

[Lukewarm]

Jizya is surprisingly powerful. I've got most of southern Burgundy (bar Provence, bc Francica Fuckery) and i'm pulling an easy 15 gold a month and I'm well over two thousand gold while not ruling a full kingdom. Probably helps that I'm a Kajarite, and we have like no moral authority, so counties don't convert. There's an upside and a downside, I guess. I've got to wait for Africa to break or for the Abbasid to weaken enough to give me Mecca and Medina before I can get one.
Also, due to some alliance tomfoolery, Lombardy briefly became Middle Francican before revolts tore it apart. Now the race is to see if the Byzantines run up the leg or if I run down it first.

[Dorsidwarf]

Sigh. I guess you're the expert on all things Swedish, California boy.

Breaking news: it is impossible for foreigners to learn about the history of a country, and all citizens of a country possess complete knowledge of everything that ever happened there.

[ZeroGravitas]

Y'all aren't discussing how it relates to CKII though.

CKII is a dynasty simulator. Government mechanics is something that would be much more suitable for EU.

Whatever though, I just don't want to read the shite you're talking about, with folk get fucked off with each other and the thread gets locked for people being assholes in turn, particularly when at least one of you has an emotional attachment to what is (was) being discussed.

The basic assumption of CK2, often wrongly, is that dynasty = government. One of the core mechanics of the game is title succession, ie, game mechanics for how government power transfers from person to person. There are certain rules that vary between "feudalism", the ERE, and "iqta" such as whether mid-level titles can be revoked by higher authorities at will or whether that's "tyranny" or whether titles can be granted merely for the life of the grantee (which the game calls "viceroys").

The thing that's interesting about the CK2 period is that "what is government versus what is personal" is one of the biggest issues in Western Europe. This is a period with major important historical conflicts over what powers government has and the separation between church and state.

Of course you have to discuss what was historical first, before you discuss how it relates to the game. Like, would there be enough differences between Western Any discussion of how unfree labor should be represented is fair game was there really enough difference between cottars and slaves to bother with? Where would it touch the game? Concubinage certainly made it in because there was an obvious role for it in existing mechanic, and concubines are often taken against their will in the game.

Personally I think there would be more changes to the game if people understood tax law better but nobody ever gets excited about that. 

[pisskop]

950ad

saxony got nommed by the duke of Franconia, who was a tenghri general i forgot to convert.  now an asian rules saxony.
i  was appalled at how quickly he tore through the bordergore of europe (not even kingdoms anymore), so i murdered him and converted the next of kin.

bohemia was weakened by 4 religions vying for control.  the dominant faith was slavic, but lollards and christains and tenghris were present.  i had an exhiled presymid in court, so i claimed it.

pannonia is divided between weak slavic central pannonia, eastern khazaria due to inheritance, southern byzantines, and northern pk.

both muslim empires have further deblobed, and the manchurian khans of the east have unified and nommed into Buddhist khotan and khazaria.  the edyn of khiva was also subjugated.

india is bordergore hell too, but who even cares.

I'm tempted to attack khazaria since ive got pacts all over me for my Bohemian aquisitions, but i saw were tight enough via marriage to form a pact.  second thoughts too since that allows byzantine controlled wallachia to attack too ...


p:. why would tax law be changing the game?  ill bite

[ZeroGravitas]

p:. why would tax law be changing the game?  ill bite

In most European cultures for most game period times, there should be no such thing as passive tax income from your vassals. I'm not talking about your demesne's income, but the automatic transfer of a percentage of income every month up the feudal chain. With Conclave, we got feudal obligations that always include tax. Pre-Conclave, CK2 was actually closer to reality with the default law being feudal vassals paying no passive tax. In any case, passive tax, like a modern "income tax" didn't really exist.

Taxes - of specific types - were levied at specific times for specific purposes, and the specifics varied from culture to culture. Some of these are actually semi-in-game. For example, when you or your heir gets married, you get a choice between a money bonus or a prestige bonus. That's a prime example of a "feudal aid" - one of the few ways the king would actually extract money from his vassals. In-game this is just treated as imaginary money that appears out of nowhere, but in practice it was a major source of feudal revenue. In practice, it was a constant tug-of-war between kings trying to extract more aids and nobles resisting, often violently. One of the major elements of the Magna Carta was to restrict the occasions when the king could extract feudal aids. The generally accepted ones, which CK2 should use or at least be based off of: when the king needs to pay his own ransom; when his heir comes of age; when his eldest daughter is married; and maybe when he goes on Crusade.

And of course there were other types of "taxes." Feudal "incidents" and "reliefs" were a large source, at least in England: when a lord inherited a fief, his overlord would generally expect a payment to "confirm" the inheritance. Of course, the noble could sometimes get away with not paying it, if the king were weak or the noble was in a position to somehow avoid paying. The amount would generally depend on the size of the fiefdoms inherited. In some situations, the king or lord would be able to hold on to the land (and gain the income from it) until the inheritor paid the relief.

There are plenty of other interesting examples. Many countries and rulers collected a danegeld, which was a tax on all landholders to either pay off Viking invaders, or to pay for an army to fight them off. Again, in CK2 terms, this was an event-based tax that began very infrequently (the first English one being collected in 991, and the second in 1002, and again in 1011), but that rulers would often try to collect on more and more occasions, with increasing resistance from landholders.  By the 1050s Edward the Confessor tried to make it a permanent, regular tax, but was forced to discontinue by the nobles. (You can draw parallels to the later "scutage" tax as well, as it was based on land and levied for specific wars or campaigns, though there were attempts to convert it to a regular annual tax. By the 14th century the scutage was obsolete).

Judicial fines were also a huge source of royal revenue. In practice we already see this in CK2 via the sort-of indirect method of "well I can imprison this vassal for whatever reason, why don't I just do that and then ransom him." Also in some events where you demand a fine from a vassal.

These are of course all things that would also make peace time more interesting, since CK2 vassals are always dying and inheriting lands. AI traits would naturally affect how the AI would act in various taxable situations. Ultimately, if the game accurately represented many of the ways feudal lords collected revenue from vassals and tenants, it could eliminate the entirely abstracted "income taxes" that the game has now. This would also differ from culture to culture, including within Europe, and norms would differ as rulers established more regular tax practices, with increasing penalties for expanding them. Obviously the Iqta, Tribal, and Indian areas would need their own rules (and probably the ERE as well as it wasn't feudal).

(Now, that's not to say that by the 14th and 15th centuries, nobles and kigns didn't make a lot of money off of import duties and other commerce-based sources. But that should be a relatively late-breaking development that requires significantly larger and more profitable City buildings and merchant republics.)