Eðalkyn

The term eðalkyn (Եձալքին) – which is singular and plural in Hártal – is the collective term used for the noble families of the Siur polities in western Messenia (and, indeed, translates literally as such in that language). While they are significantly less exclusively dominant in their native lands than can be said for their counterparts in other Messenian countries, they remain a noteworthy element within Siur society and retain substantial, if informal, influence. They are typically considered to be part of the positor class in Siur countries.

History

Early development

The relationship between the nobility and the masses developed in markedly different fashion amongst the Siur to the patterns seen elsewhere in Messenia – something which is most usually ascribed to the dominance of Arlatur philosophies, and their strong admonitions towards individual equality, over the Siur for more than 1,300 years. While the status of the nobility in the pre-Arlatur period among the Sunneni and Vossar peoples bore broad similarities to that found elsewhere in the subcontinent, the Palthian conquerors of the Second Great Invasions questioned ancient titulature out of their own cultural pragmatism, driving political transformations of the Digull. Arlatur, then, was characterised at a very early stage by a disdain of self-declared authority – although Arlaturi themselves were, and still are, at pains to point out that they can quite willingly accept a form of hierarchy that can be empirically justified, rather than merely being an arbitrary social construct enforced from above.

In this way, while the noble houses of the Sirian and Cairan worlds tended increasingly towards structure enforced from the top downwards, Siur structure was created much more from the bottom up. Siur pledges of support to their nobles were explicitly recognised as having a bilateral character, with rights and duties on both sides. Where their counterparts elsewhere were often bound to the lands on which they lived by feudal laws, the Siur were not so restricted; and the knowledge that an overly harsh rule could see people flee a thein’s or thosse’s lands for more auspicious territory elsewhere – even if often only a theoretical possibility, given the extent to which people depended on the land for their livelihoods – frequently acted as a moderating influence on the eðalkyn.

In the early Arlatur period, and especially during the Thjáning years, this perceived anti-authoritarian streak within the new faith was much more tangible. Only with the historic compromise instigated by Hrósar Hjólsmiður, the first brætur of the Arlatur communion – recognising the demonstrated superior ability of the eðalkyn as rulers and administrators while denying them any inherent superiority – did the eðalkyn definitely hold off any threat to their status in and of itself.

The Secote period

The invasion of the Siur country by the Secote Empire at the beginning of the eleventh century significantly changed the dynamic of the relationship between rulers and ruled. Those Siur nobles who were not killed outright in battle were either forced to yield to Secote warlords or be slain out of hand; only a few eðalkyn held out against the invaders, and even these were forced into the fringes. The formerly free Siur were, in many instances, forced into slavery by their new overlords, certainly on a functional level, if not in places very much in actuality.

However, this would be mitigated in time as the former nomads began to settle and to become assimilated into the Siur way of life. Many abandoned their old ways, adopting the manners and mores of their subjects, even taking up Arlatur with, in most cases, reasonable sincerity. By the time that the Secote empire began to collapse upon itself towards the middle twelfth century, the Siurified Secote of the western lands had become, in most practical aspects, only an exotic leavening of the basic Siur stock. The pre-invasion status quo had essentially been restored.

Post-Secote reinvention

This is not by any means to say that the crueller aspects of life under the Secote had been forgotten. One abiding legacy of the lifting of the imperial yoke was the almost complete absence, even renunciation, of anything resembling the kind of manorialism which became a commonplace in the Sabamic lands to the east. Even more strongly than before, the typical Siur held that, no matter how poor his personal circumstances and how powerful the lord over his lands, he could not be compelled; what powers and rights he yielded to the eðalkyn he yielded of his own will, and could take back just as readily.

Exercising rulership over the Siur – proud and fiercely defensive of their independence as free people – required most eðalkyn to develop a fine sense of the limits of their capacity to act, and the extent to which they carried their people’s mandate to act. The term “mandate” is indeed used here very much in its modern sense of a popular accord; in theory, even the most powerful eðalkyn could be forced to surrender his title and lands under the practice of moltalandi, if he lacked sufficient support from his people. While the Siur lands were certainly not stranger to bloodshed during what has been called the Trying Times by historians, any fighting was often as much between factions within a commonhold as it was between commonholds. A strategy of intermarriage with more prestigious and powerful Sirian nobles to the east to gravitate toward the Palthic Empire only sowed tensions that broke out into the War of Right in the 15th century.

However, it has been argued that the need for a Siur ruler to concentrate to such an extent on essentially parochial concerns hampered the development of the region, and ensured that the Siur polities would remain small, divided and, in many cases, economically and militarily weak. Such exceptions as there were to this state of affairs were to be found mostly in the coastal regions, where territories such as Vonskil and Skjóll could parlay their access to the open ocean and the lands beyond into greater wealth and power from the exploitation of those lands, particularly in the Median islands, the eastern coast of Ascesia, and even further afield. The nobles of these regions were fairly generous in their support of hóf that would bolster the commonhold's overall standing. In similar fashion to other parts of Messenia – and perhaps more easily – it was entirely possible for merchants, essentially just the apprentices and retainers of nobles, to rise to high status themselves; indeed, the house of Fálk, which produced Siurskeyti’s first thár Sterkur Fálk, came to prominence in just this fashion. Similarly, although less readily, some noble titles could be extinguished; the current Siur practice by which the house’s identifying landsnöfn could be borne only three generations forward from a thein or thosse – which effectively eliminates a large group who would be regarded as “petty nobility” elsewhere – was widespread by at least as early as 1350.

Leaders or rulers?

The establishment of a unified Siurskeyti in 1623 saw with it the recreation of the position of thár, which had fallen into desuetude since the death of Skjöldvaskur af Norðursundi in 834 CE. This necessitated a further shift in the stature of the eðalkyn, as Sterkur Fálk became the first of a series of monarchs elected by a gradually reducing pool of their peers. With the office defined as open only to the diminishing number of theinar, the thossir and lesser nobility in general found themselves reduced to the level of a chorus – dominant within their own pocket realms, but subservient to greater and more powerful overlords at state level. While this had always been the case to some extent, the increasing force of centralisation within Siurskeyti threatened to push even the most forceful eðalkyn to the sidelines.

With their influence in the political arena thus circumscribed, many eðalkyn turned their attentions to overseas ventures where hóf was once directed – at least in part as a way of gaining for themselves greater unofficial levels of influence. Some theinar and thossir turned the resources which they commanded by virtue of their titles into substantial drivers of economic growth; and this financial clout came to supersede the military force which they were, in any event, no longer able to wield on their own accounts. Much of the economic successes of the period were felt along the narrow band of the Median coast, building upon those territories’ existing advantages and widening the gap between them and the weaker and less developed interior. The growth of this “soft power” perhaps reached its highest point in 1743, when the commonhold of Skjóll annexed the smaller territory of Snórfell (now that part of northern Skjóll adjoining the border with Vinhaxa) not by force of arms, but by purchasing its debt and foreclosing on it – what in modern business terminology would be called a “hostile takeover”.

In the later 18th century Siurskeyti’s rulership became increasingly under the thrall of these new powers, the nýmenn at home and the leifturserkir abroad, to such an extent that the weaker economies of the interior increasingly felt themselves to be commercially held hostage, functioning primarily as resource bases for economic interests controlled from elsewhere. This sense of subjugation was a substantial driver of the move towards secession in the Siurskeyti inland, which culminated in the Summer War of 1812 and the establishment of the polity now known as Helminthasse.

The modern day

With the rise of a more broadly-based political community across the Siur country, focusing on positors of Siur civilisation as primarily cultural and intellectual agents, the status of the eðalkyn has come under increasing question in the Siur country. Certainly, it is fair to say that their position as leaders and shapers of public opinion is markedly weaker than that of their counterparts in Messenian countries of equal or greater size and stature (Savam and Elland stand out in particular in this regard). It has been observed that, just as the Arlatur communion makes far less distinction between “clergy” and “laity” than do other faiths across the world, in the same way the modern Siur people make much less distinction between the nobility and the masses. The former Helmin alráðherra Eir Dæld, probably the most overtly samvaldist-minded holder of that office, made the point for many in claiming that “nobility does not come from what your forebears did; nobility comes from what you do.”

This factor, and the long-standing tradition of many eðalkyn towards taking up worldly careers in public service (of various forms), has prompted a feeling among some members of the Siur nobility of being sidelined – or, as one such put it, “[being] not so much a ruler as a glorified civil servant”. However, the status of the eðalkyn has always carried with it a certain flexibility as to how the influence that remains part and parcel of the role is exercised. The right of a thein or thosse to appoint a ljósendi, a legally-recognised substitute to act in his stead in defined areas, has allowed Siur noblefolk whose talents do not necessarily lie in public service the freedom to direct their energies in more beneficial and more personally satisfying ways, and into a wide variety of fields. In the main, the scions of the Siur noble houses continue today to illuminate the society which they have historically led over the centuries.

Symbology

Unlike the general practice in the Sirian and Cairan lands, Siur eðalkyn do not have heraldic achievements; instead, a particular eðalkyn will hold the right to use a distinguishing mark or sigil known as an égnifur. These marks began as shorthand graphics and were much used in a pre-literate age as a representation of the noble family; there are surviving examples from the pre-Arlatur period of signet rings carrying these symbols. From written form they were transferred to wider use on battlefield banners during wars, as well as entering the lexicon of tathyn traditional to the Siur, where they were customarily tattooed on the left shoulder, so that a warrior could touch the mark with his right (weapon) hand and invoke the power and ancestral traditions of the family before going into battle. Rights over the use of égnifar are strongly monitored and, in the modern age, heavy fines can be levied for their misuse.

Address

In keeping with the less formalised and less hierarchical outlook of Arlatur, terms of address among the eðalkyn are much less structured and certainly far less rigorous and overlain with protocol as compared with, for example, the practice among Savamese nobility. In most instances, a commoner addressing a Siur nobleman will not use any form of address more formal than hæstur (the usual superlative form of the Hártal adjective hár, “high”); even the form lávarður minn, “my lord”, has become deprecated within the last century. This lack of ceremony has sometimes caused difficulties in and with other countries where these matters are handled more rigorously, and it is not unusual for Siur eðalkyn travelling abroad to feel uncomfortable to varying degrees with what they may see as excessive adherence to protocol.

Eðalkyn do make use of an addition to the family name, the landsnöfn, derived from their fief; thus, for example, Heiðra Steinn, the former alráðherra of Helminthasse and the thosse of Halshaugur in southern Sarevi, may use the style Heiðra Steinn af Halshaugi. Customary usage allows this style to be used by the holder of a theinic or thossic title and his direct descendants in the next three generations; by courtesy, the style is also retained by the family member if the present titleholder dies or loses his own title by moltalandi or other means. The landsnöfn is used in formal letters and legal documents, with the family name being used in other circumstances, for private letters and communications not specifically in reference to theinic or thossic responsibilities (to continue the example above, Heiðra Steinn would sign letters in her capacity as thosse with the form Heiðra af Halshaugi, and private correspondence as Heiðra Steinn).