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[ZeroGravitas]

the simplest explanation for why you always see patriarchal lineages is because men are bigger and stronger than women, so regardless of any other social factors, men could, in general, enforce their dominance in any individual relationship through intimidation and violence.

That is a simplifacation that ignores the effect of Abrahamic religions on the mores of the people (although Judaism is generally matrilinear regarding who is considered Jewish). There have been several matrilineal societies like in much of Philippines, certain tribes in modern Indonesia, portions of Africa and the Iroquis in Northern America. Of course, not all patriarchaic societies were created by Christianity/Islam, but it had a heavy effect on curbing the position of women. For example, the Spanish/Catholics tried to (with mixed success) limit the position of women in Philippines after taking over. Although to be honest, regarding Europe, it is hard to say what is the effect of Christianity and what comes from Roman influences. Romans, after all, were quite misogynic.

Yeah, I considered discussing path dependencies; you start with a misogynistic culture, it's generally going to continue developing misogynistic institutions (like the priesthood). but that just pushes the question back farther: why were abrahamic religions misogynistic and "matrilineal" - in the sense of CK2 matrilineality. yes, religious/ethnic identity of judaism is tied to matrilineal descent, but that's not really the sense that we're talking about it in ck2; judaism is still organized based on patriarchy and descent through the male line ("Sons of Abraham" anyone)?

and sure, yes, you can point to a few non-patriarchal societies around the world, but the question we're trying to answer is why 99% of all of them are patriarchal? i don't think it's because of women dying in childbirth.

In general, cultural constructions carry thousands of years of baggage and reducing them to unresearched biological factors is usually an attempt to make "nativity argument"; that is, saying that something is the order of nature that should be preserved.

Disclaimer: sorry if I came off snarky, not my intention, not blaming you for anything.

not at all! i didn't intend for it to justify anything. my point was just that all cultural constructions are going to be starting from similar places, and, on this point, at least, seem to have almost all arrived at the same place. it seems logical that political hierarchies based on coercion and violence (tributary systems, feudalism, etc) are built off of domestic relations that contain elements of coercion and violence.

[Majestic7]

and sure, yes, you can point to a few non-patriarchal societies around the world, but the question we're trying to answer is why 99% of all of them are patriarchal? i don't think it's because of women dying in childbirth.

One possible answer to this is that our impression of the world is tainted by misogynic bias.

Now, I don't agree with any new age "mother goddess blah blah" -conspiracy theories about how past was matriarchaic and was suppressed by evil patriarchy etc. However, ethnographic and archeological work really exploded during the Victorian era and in 1900s. People doing the work were the subject of their own cultural bias, so they saw what they wanted to see. The viking burial site I pasted a link about is one example. The cadaver was found with weapons and armor and war-related material, so the archeologists who found her decided she was male. Since obviously only men can be warriors. It is possible that social expectations have shaped the way we see the past in the same way and there has been more roles for women than we realise.

I just hope these kind of questions can be explored clinically and based on evidence, without going into extremes towards any end. (Since there is a certain pressure in certain circles to see the role of women artificially greater than it might have been. This can be seen in popular historical fiction etc.)

[ChairmanPoo]

Huh. You know, I never really considered why matrilineal lineage wasn't a big thing, but that makes a helluva lot of sense.  O.o

no, it really doesn't. average medieval women had 6-7 live births, and only 1-1.5% of women died in childbirth. it wasn't a serious threat.

I find that number dubious. There is not a lot of info on this subject, but what numbers I've found are higher than that

Eg: here they discuss a paper on this

http://birthnerd.blogspot.com/2011/07/pre-modern-death-in-childbirth.html?m=1

. However, from it, we can glean that pre-modern childbirth was more dangerous than it is in the most dangerous-to-birth-in countries today. Some evidence from New England suggests an average maternal mortality rate of 2.5%. That is, for every 1000 births, there would be 25 women who died. In countries with the maternal mortality closest to that, 1 in 6 childbearing woman will die from complications of childbearing; we can expect that the rate was similar in pre-modern times.

[Retropunch]

Cancer wasn't a thing...

It's complicated, actually: While the cancer wasn't as prevalent (according to some research) back then, there were also next-to-none means to diagnose it correctly. Like the answer in the thread says, it's impossible to figure out how really prevalent it actually was.

Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant 'cancer wasn't a thing' in terms of 'stuff wasn't diagnosed as cancer'. As in, you often see papers that say 'cancer is much higher than medieval/ancient/glorious times due to *insert anything*' but lots of things weren't classified as cancer back then that would be now (as that reddit post points out).

and sure, yes, you can point to a few non-patriarchal societies around the world, but the question we're trying to answer is why 99% of all of them are patriarchal? i don't think it's because of women dying in childbirth.

I don't think there is any root cause or singular answer to this - it's a mix of everything. Religion, biology and cultural history all play a part in it and I would imagine each part is roughly equal. I don't think anyone was trying to reduce it to just 'women dying in childbirth = no matrilineal lines' but it does seem like it may be a major factor.

it seems logical that political hierarchies based on coercion and violence (tributary systems, feudalism, etc) are built off of domestic relations that contain elements of coercion and violence.

I don't get what you're saying here - is this the 'all relationships are inherently violent' argument?

[Majestic7]

Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant 'cancer wasn't a thing' in terms of 'stuff wasn't diagnosed as cancer'. As in, you often see papers that say 'cancer is much higher than medieval/ancient/glorious times due to *insert anything*' but lots of things weren't classified as cancer back then that would be now (as that reddit post points out).

This is a historical detail that doesn't interest anyone...

...but in some societies the opposite is actually true, everything was cancer! For example, in Finnish folklore healing the word for cancer was used interchangeable for open wounds that wouldn't heal (some actual cancers do that), tumors and birth defects, things that seemed to eat someone from the inside (like tuberculosis or advanced cancer) and so forth. When actual medicine developed and came here, these other things got their own words and the word for cancer now only means actual cancer.

But yeah, this is just semantics and has nothing to do with your point, which is correct. This detail is still illustrative on the difficulties of understanding history. If something written in 1600s tells of a guy who died of cancer in Finnish, that person might have actually died of a badly infected wound or tuberculosis.

[Retropunch]

Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant 'cancer wasn't a thing' in terms of 'stuff wasn't diagnosed as cancer'. As in, you often see papers that say 'cancer is much higher than medieval/ancient/glorious times due to *insert anything*' but lots of things weren't classified as cancer back then that would be now (as that reddit post points out).

This is a historical detail that doesn't interest anyone...

...but in some societies the opposite is actually true, everything was cancer! For example, in Finnish folklore healing the word for cancer was used interchangeable for open wounds that wouldn't heal (some actual cancers do that), tumors and birth defects, things that seemed to eat someone from the inside (like tuberculosis or advanced cancer) and so forth. When actual medicine developed and came here, these other things got their own words and the word for cancer now only means actual cancer.

But yeah, this is just semantics and has nothing to do with your point, which is correct. This detail is still illustrative on the difficulties of understanding history. If something written in 1600s tells of a guy who died of cancer in Finnish, that person might have actually died of a badly infected wound or tuberculosis.

I found it very interesting - thanks for that Majestic!! I had no idea about that, and as you say it makes it even *more* difficult to ascertain historical rates.

[Persus13]

I'm pretty sure determining what disease a historical figure died of is its own subfield, especially in the case of Alexander the Great. Its also one of the few areas of historical research that the news media will run a story on.


Slightly more related to CKII, what current version total conversion mods do you like? I want to play CKII again, but I want to wait until I can get the Holy Fury DLC to play some more vanilla. I know about the Game of Thrones mod, because its the total conversion mod, and I've seen mentions of Elder Scrolls and Warhammer ones, but I don't know if they're up to date on the current version.

EDIT: Also wow, this thread hit 1000 pages. And I've helping a little since page 470 or so.

[Majestic7]

I haven't checked current mod status, but the total conversions I run are CK2+/HIP for historical games and Warhammer/Game of Thrones for fantasy needs. Elder Kings used to be good, but I think it has been lagging behind for a couple of DLCs?

[CABL]

I'm waiting for HIP devs to update the mod, personally. Honestly, I'm interested in how will the mods such as HIP and CK2+ change the current dueling mechanics, especially since they had such mechanics before HF.

[dennislp3]

I haven't checked current mod status, but the total conversions I run are CK2+/HIP for historical games and Warhammer/Game of Thrones for fantasy needs. Elder Kings used to be good, but I think it has been lagging behind for a couple of DLCs?

They do it funny (Elder Kings)...if you use the dev build (SVN build) its actually up to date...I was playing it today updated to the current DLC with bloodlines and religions and everything adjusted and working.

The steam build and downloads are way behind though. They have a "rolling release" mindset about the whole thing. This actually lets them update quicker than most other mods as they literally push updates every day (though obviously these daily patches are very minor in most cases). You also get to choose when to update the mod so you won't have any updates mess up your save.

here is the post with all the details

Just make sure you follow everything on that post exactly as it says and you are good to go.

[scriver]

I wonder if the GoTmod will implement bloodlines and if that will make the Baratheons like super OP

[spazyak]

Check the army leaders' marshal skill

[smjjames]

I've noticed that there appears to be a bug where if you are in a battle and if you trigger a 'retreat defeat', it'll sometimes completely annhilate that army no matter the numbers.

Is there a reliable way to get the 'chosen one' event chain to happen? I've played a bunch of times and it hasn't happened yet. I've seen a couple of AI characters get it though.

Also, in my last game (which I got bored with around 1309), I converted to muslim via the prosyletizing event (was trying to get the realm wide conversion event though....) and the number of vassal troops a bit more than doubled in number, however, when he died, the vassal troops reset down to about where it was before. The thing is that his successor's martial ability was only a little bit better than the previous (12 vs 14), so, I'm confused as to where the boost came from. I did dole out some viceroyal kingdoms, so, maybe that reduced it? I dunno.

Any good mods out there that add fun? I'm sort of bored and I was waiting for Tropico 6 to come out but that got pushed to March as they're doing further polishing on that game.

[ZeroGravitas]

Also, in my last game (which I got bored with around 1309), I converted to muslim via the prosyletizing event (was trying to get the realm wide conversion event though....) and the number of vassal troops a bit more than doubled in number, however, when he died, the vassal troops reset down to about where it was before. The thing is that his successor's martial ability was only a little bit better than the previous (12 vs 14), so, I'm confused as to where the boost came from. I did dole out some viceroyal kingdoms, so, maybe that reduced it? I dunno.

Vassal troops mostly depend on opinion, not martial. Handing out viceroyalties pisses off your non-viceroyal vassals, so that would definitely reduce your vassal troops.

[smjjames]

Also, in my last game (which I got bored with around 1309), I converted to muslim via the prosyletizing event (was trying to get the realm wide conversion event though....) and the number of vassal troops a bit more than doubled in number, however, when he died, the vassal troops reset down to about where it was before. The thing is that his successor's martial ability was only a little bit better than the previous (12 vs 14), so, I'm confused as to where the boost came from. I did dole out some viceroyal kingdoms, so, maybe that reduced it? I dunno.

Vassal troops mostly depend on opinion, not martial. Handing out viceroyalties pisses off your non-viceroyal vassals, so that would definitely reduce your vassal troops.

Doesn't explain the boost I got on conversion though.