World-building: Families
May. 12th, 2009 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jessara40kThe Families are the nobility of Erde, but it's a fairly informal and open nobility. Anyone can try to found a Family, but a lot of new Families fail. the requirements are to have Family accounts held separate from the Family Founder/Head's personal accounts, registered rules for succession, and show the ability or potential ability to provide at least minor trust funds for offspring born three generations from the Family Founder (his or her great-grandchildren).
The registered rules for succession can range from as simple and restrictive as 'Unless disinherited the previous Family Head's first-born son succeeds upon death, with succession following the male line' to the complicated mix of inheritance and election, allowing or compelling 'retirement' of the Family Head and specifying a council of advisors with certain authority used by some of the highest ranking Families.
There are three principle ways Families receive their income. First there are the Families who mostly own land, the most traditional way to support themselves, ranging from a few farms and rental properties to ruling a kingdom, queendom or principality as the Royal Family. Secondly there are those Families that receive their income equally from land and businesses. Finally there are Families that get the majority of their money from businesses, ranging from small, specialised businesses just starting up to the sort of multi-nationals that find it more economical to create purpose-bred than employ low-level labour and most new Families fall into this category now.
The highest ranking Families are the ones who rule states or own the sort of company that finds it economical to produce purpose-bred for low level clerical and menial work. Beyond that the relative status of different Families is highly variable and a lot more dependent on income than would be the case in our world.
Some Families are fairly casual about breeding, will acknowledge all the children produced by their consorts, even if the Family member wasn't actually involved (for instance if Natalya had taken a third, female consort from outside the Terenevs she'd treat any children that consort had as her own), and don't particulary care about maintaining pure ethnicity as long as they get strong alliances. Then there's the other extreme, Families who will not accept consorts from or offer consorts to Families that do not share their ethnicity, and check the bloodlines of the consorts they accept to ensure their parents and grandparents were the 'right' ethnicity. Both of those extremes are very rare, with the casual extreme usually being a business based Family with provisions for limiting the damage an incompetent Family member can do and the pure ethnicity extreme often being a Royal Family which takes consorts from among the commoners of their state, rewarding favoured subjects with a royal consort. The more common attitudes are in between, ranging from 'ethnicity doesn't matter, but children are only acknowledged as part of the Family if one genetic parent is of the Family', to 'consorts may be offered to Families of other ethnicities, but only consorts of the Family's ethnicity are accepted'.
The registered rules for succession can range from as simple and restrictive as 'Unless disinherited the previous Family Head's first-born son succeeds upon death, with succession following the male line' to the complicated mix of inheritance and election, allowing or compelling 'retirement' of the Family Head and specifying a council of advisors with certain authority used by some of the highest ranking Families.
There are three principle ways Families receive their income. First there are the Families who mostly own land, the most traditional way to support themselves, ranging from a few farms and rental properties to ruling a kingdom, queendom or principality as the Royal Family. Secondly there are those Families that receive their income equally from land and businesses. Finally there are Families that get the majority of their money from businesses, ranging from small, specialised businesses just starting up to the sort of multi-nationals that find it more economical to create purpose-bred than employ low-level labour and most new Families fall into this category now.
The highest ranking Families are the ones who rule states or own the sort of company that finds it economical to produce purpose-bred for low level clerical and menial work. Beyond that the relative status of different Families is highly variable and a lot more dependent on income than would be the case in our world.
Some Families are fairly casual about breeding, will acknowledge all the children produced by their consorts, even if the Family member wasn't actually involved (for instance if Natalya had taken a third, female consort from outside the Terenevs she'd treat any children that consort had as her own), and don't particulary care about maintaining pure ethnicity as long as they get strong alliances. Then there's the other extreme, Families who will not accept consorts from or offer consorts to Families that do not share their ethnicity, and check the bloodlines of the consorts they accept to ensure their parents and grandparents were the 'right' ethnicity. Both of those extremes are very rare, with the casual extreme usually being a business based Family with provisions for limiting the damage an incompetent Family member can do and the pure ethnicity extreme often being a Royal Family which takes consorts from among the commoners of their state, rewarding favoured subjects with a royal consort. The more common attitudes are in between, ranging from 'ethnicity doesn't matter, but children are only acknowledged as part of the Family if one genetic parent is of the Family', to 'consorts may be offered to Families of other ethnicities, but only consorts of the Family's ethnicity are accepted'.
