I'm noodling about with ideas for a game set in modern Taldor and I wanted some concrete examples of the new Grand Princesses' progressive policies for conservative nobles to be mad about. Ideally I'd like ten, and thought I'd share what I've got so far and see if anyone had suggestions or inspiration for others.
So, without further ado:
(1) Liberalizing Inheritance Law:
Prior to War for the Crown the Primogen Crown could only be inherited by men. In book one the Senate votes to overturn that law and allow Eutropia to inherit. What about other titles? Given the number of female Grand Duchesses in charge on prefectures in "The First Empire" presumably the rules varied from duchy to duchy and title to title. So, the policy change is a national level rule allowing all inheritable titles to pass without regard to sex.
(2) Abolition of Slavery:
Older sources talk about daily gladiatorial games between slaves in the arena of Oppara. There is an abolitionist movement across the Inner Sea, and it seems natural that Eutropia would be on board, so an obvious policy.
(3) Legalizing Beards:
Older sources had a distinction between commoners and nobility policed by the idea that only nobles were allowed to have beards. I *think* this has been retconned in canon, but I liked the idea that it hasn't been enforced in ages but was technically still on the books. It gives conservatives something to grump about that isn't terribly high stakes and puts Eutropia in the position of saying "Look, we need to sift through all our old cultural cruft and tidy up the stuff that we all know isn't working".
(4) Reopening the Qadiran Embassy:
I don't know of any references to an official Qadiran embassy in Taldor in canon, but for my game there hasn't been one in years. In much that same way that the modern US doesn't have official diplomatic relationships with places we're antagonistic with, Taldor just doesn't officially talk to Qadira. Eutropia being dovish and in conflict with the hawkish "Make Taldor great again by going to war with Qadira" faction, a policy of official diplomatic ties seems to make sense.
(5) Transferring Wealth from the Nobility to Infrastructure:
One common description of Taldor is as full of lavishly decadent nobles and broken down infrastructure. The natural thing for Eutropia to do seems to be to tax some wealth out of the nobility to invest in cleaning up the industrial and economic infrastructure of the nation. The peasants will like it, the nobles will gripe, and PCs may get work seeing off bandits or clearing monsters or whatnot.
But then I start to run out of steam. For a game focused on noble politics, I want to have some political factions with pretty concrete policies. "Eutropia is progressive, Count Bad-Guy is regressive" is too vague. Anyone have ideas for further concrete steps Eutropia could propose?
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She could push for the strengthening of central bureaucracy which would directly undermine the rights and privileges of the nobles and she could expand the civil services and draw more of its members from the lower Classes undermining the role of hereditary power in the central government.
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6) Legislative introduction of equality between the inhabitants of the prefectures and provinces, providing them with equal protection and rights in accordance with imperial laws.
Is this Eutropia one who instituted a parliament, or does she remain an autocrat?
zimmerwald1915 wrote: Is this Eutropia one who instituted a parliament, or does she remain an autocrat? One thing I'm trying to pin down is how laws are actually made in Taldor.
On one level it looks very feudal. There is an Empress/Grand Princess Eutropia who runs the nation. The nation is made up of prefectures run by Grand Dukes/Duchesses. The prefectures are cut into counties and Counts/Countesses, and the counties into Baronies. All pretty standard monarchy fare.
But, there is also a Senate. The Senate is made up of hundreds of hereditary nobles (who sometimes are and sometimes aren't the landholders above) who "administer" the empire. Sometimes it sounds like they just implement policy set by the Empress, but they also have enough independent power to set the rules of succession against the wishes of the reigning Emperor. The inciting incident for the "War for the Crown" AP is the Senate voting to let Eutropia inherit and (prior Emperor) Stavian III freaking out about it.
My pet theory is that on paper they are simply ministers administering the will of the Emperor, but in reality a thousand years of being the people that actually run the tax collection system and sign the army's paychecks has left them de facto independent. I haven't seen many references to nobles with significant militaries of their own, every professional soldier seems to be a national level "Taldan Horse", "Taldan Phalanx", or "Taldan Navy", which makes me think the Empress has a near monopoly on legal control of the military.
There is not, as far as I can tell, any democratic input into the system other than the occasional revolt. The peasantry in Tandak (one of the provinces) attacked and dismembered the former Grand Duke after a perceived betrayal (though his fall from grace also involved being stripped of his rank by the then Emperor). One of the subplots I'm thinking of running would be Andoran Eagle Knights poking around in Tandak (which borders Andoran) trying to encourage the peasants to give it another go and join Andoran. There is no reference to any sort of reprisals punishing the population, it seems like his niece just takes over and everyone is more or less willing to live with the occasional mob murder of (formerly) high ranking nobles.
There is a lot of talk of the decadence of the nobility and the decay and impoverishment of basically every organ of government and civil society. My pet theory is that noble rule in Taldor is actually pretty dysfunctional and fragile. My Tandak will be one where the Emperor actually stripped Bozbeyli (the dead Grand Duke) of his titles *after* he was killed to cover the fact that the peasants got away with it ("I wanted that to happen" sounding better than "Holy shit, *how* screwed up is that province?! I had no idea, I was drunk in the capital at a fancy ball.") One of the things I'd like to do is put noble Taldan PCs in the position of either trying to reform the nation or topple it over. Eutropia is pretty firmly in the reform camp, the basic system is fine, it just needs an renewed sense of duty from the aristocrats, some legal reforms, some investments in infrastructure, and everything will go back to glory. Ideally, I'd like the PCs to more or less implicitly believe that at the start of the game and see if they still do later on...
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Howl of the Wild that released today reminds us that in it's expansion Taldor displaced and took over the ancestral lands of several nonhumans by conquest. One notably being the Centaurs who were driven into Verduran forest.
One thing Eutropa could be doing that would piss of the nobles is attempting diplomatic apologies and reparations to those peoples.
It's also noted that there's an extremist faction among the Verduran Centaurs who utterly depise Taldor and Andoran and are obssessed with revenge. They and other factions like them in cultures with similar circumstances would likely see such any "apology," as a mocking insult and want to return Eutropa's diplomats to her in a pieces. An act the hardliner nobles would likely ruthlessly exploit to undermine her rule.
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Spamotron wrote: It's also noted that there's an extremist faction among the Verduran Centaurs who utterly depise Taldor and Andoran and are obssessed with revenge. They and other factions like them in cultures with similar circumstances would likely see such any "apology," as a mocking insult and want to return Eutropa's diplomats to her in a pieces. An act the hardliner nobles would likely ruthlessly exploit to undermine her rule. Incidentally that hardliner group of centaurs plays a significant role in the current AP, Wardens of Wildwood!
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Ring_of_Gyges wrote: But, there is also a Senate. The Senate is made up of hundreds of hereditary nobles (who sometimes are and sometimes aren't the landholders above) who "administer" the empire. Sometimes it sounds like they just implement policy set by the Empress, but they also have enough independent power to set the rules of succession against the wishes of the reigning Emperor. The inciting incident for the "War for the Crown" AP is the Senate voting to let Eutropia inherit and (prior Emperor) Stavian III freaking out about it.
My pet theory is that on paper they are simply ministers administering the will of the Emperor, but in reality a thousand years of being the people that actually run the tax collection system and sign the army's paychecks has left them de facto independent. I haven't seen many references to nobles with significant militaries of their own, every professional soldier seems to be a national level "Taldan Horse", "Taldan Phalanx", or "Taldan Navy", which makes me think the Empress has a near monopoly on legal control of the military.
One of the potential endings of War for the Crown has Eutropia cede power to the Senate, another has her delegate regional governors the ability to appoint senators rather than being hereditary, and another has her implement an elected assembly to counterbalance the Senate. You could implement a blend of the three - ceding power to the senate in exchange for concessions on policy, and then balancing the empowered senate by creating a bicameral legislation using an obscure technicality.
Looking at real-life history, the Roman Empire ended up with its senate being a mostly toothless accessory to the executive branch, but originally during the Republic there was an Assembly of the Centurions (a military assembly) and an Assembly of the Tribunes (civilian) that the senate checked. The Byzantine senate then got even more toothless and ceremonial. But it would be interesting for Golarion's equivalent to reverse course because of a legal technicality everyone else has forgotten - Taldor still has elected Tribunes, a relic of the ancient empire that was never abolished, and Eutropia using that to checkmate the Senate while they think she's handing them the reins of power in exchange for crumbs would be an interesting political story beat, and allow you to implement a bicameral legislature, like Britain has - the elected Assembly and the inherited/appointed Senate, with the sovereign becoming more of a constitutional monarch.
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