In my story, witches - as in “female mages” - are the ruling class. Magic is accessible to any girl, and magic is learned, not innate. Girls are taught magic by their mothers, then they go into government service if they prove equal to the task (many don’t.) A small coven makes most of the major decisions regarding society, but they’re not in everyone’s faces, as people are able to take care of themselves for the most part. The only reason that this does not result in mass social inequality is because the society is relatively small and self-contained, with only about 250,000 people in total. Witches marry and have children, so they are fairly widespread, and the average witch is no wealthier than the average nonmagical adult, even if she is part of the government. A larger-scale society with this kind of system would have much more stratification, just because you need more complex social structures to govern large populations.
Your videos have informed my writting better than the most prolific youtubers! I have been able to find themes in my own lore i never expected to find by just giving it a bit more depth and attention. We forget how important our culture, games, food, climate, way of work, etc, shape our lives and therefor our own stories.
Nice! I usually stick with "our grandfathers kicked your grandfathers' asses and do you really want to get it again?" But that's with a more Ancient World focus. My current Bramble Marches campaign is a lot more medieval in tone. In that realm they use a mix of nationalism based around a myth (that's actually mostly true) of reclaiming ancestral land, the ever-present threat of monsters, and a religious dialectic based on civilization-vs-chaos.
"our grandfathers kicked your grandfathers' asses and do you really want to get it again?" works quite well for a few years but they get cocky rather easily
Okay, how do I describe my world's coherently? Well, to start, as I mentioned in other comments, the people live under the rule of a goddess-queen. There are two levels of nobility that are fully accessible to the masses, though one of them is more so than the other by habit rather than any sort of law. The "upper" nobility originates from the individuals who stayed and stood beside the goddess during the darkest times of their people's existence, before their nation formed and when they were very nearly exterminated by their enemy, a rival faction of gods and goddesses. This goddess became their queen because they all trusted that she would continue to look out for them, and the "upper" nobility came about from her most trusted aides. The "lower" nobility is mostly of those who have elevated themselves to a higher level of trust from the goddess and the "upper" nobles. While anyone can potentially join either nobility level - and plenty do, though the majority enter "lower" nobility - the "upper" provide public service and security while the "lower" provide culture. In other words, "upper" nobles prevent collapse while "lower" nobles prevent stagnation. Regardless, despite the status, nobility functions more as an unwritten formality than an official mandate, hence the mobility between them. Eventually, the nobility does get officially dissolved, but the masses essentially demand that the goddess remain their queen, which, in fairness, is understandable as she has never wavered in her commitment or efforts to protect them. Even the changing of govermment is viewed by the people as simply the latest of her efforts.
That's an interesting system. Something to think about that I've wanted to see depicted in more worlds is how an immortal ruler may change. A lot of the time immortal god king characters are either depicted completely static throughout the centuries with more or less the same leadership throughout their existence or they're depicted as slowly turning more evil or mad as time goes on. Both approaches are valid, but I love to see a more "shifting" depiction of an immortal ruler's demeanor. IRL when we look at person's career throughout the decades of their life we see them transition from "season" to "season". Whether they're a ruler, an artist, or athlete they tend to have periods of their lives that make noticeable differences in their work. You'll see a painter go through a decades long "blue period" where they make more somber work, you'll see an athlete try a more aggressive play style for several seasons and then return back to a defensive one, you even politicians and dictator transition from hands-on to hands-off leadership styles. Lots of the time these changes are linked to events that effect their mood, outlook, or philosophy. Like a marriage, death of a loved one, or a conversion of religion. For an immortal monarch these sort of things that are just "seasons" in a person's life could become eras in a kingdom's history. Like a God King may spend a decade as a reclusive ruler after traumatic event, or maybe Goddess Queen will spend a century convinced that all of society's woes could be fixed by strict adherence to her religious doctrine and then spend the next century just as convinced that religious freedom is necessary for a healthy civilization. History books would have chapters devoted to things like the King's honeymoon period after his first marriage, or the years of hardship after the same king attempted to build an oversized monument to memorialize his wife after death. I got carried away writing, but I think there's a lot of interesting largely unexplored implications of having a single ruler stay in power for centuries
@@ElusiveMysteryMan I have started developing such a story more, but I only just got started. The basics I currently have is that she was pretty hands-on before the nation was founded, mostly because of the war that was going on, a war where she was fighting to protect humanity as well as the mythological races (elves, dwarves, centaurs, orges, etc.). Admittedly, the bulk of my inspiration for this sort of society was Monster Musume, which sounds dumb (and it is), but once you get past the... "plot," it actually raises some pretty good questions and points about what such a society might entail. As for the goddess, while not exactly a creator deity, she did care for all sentient species and races since she first learned of them, which did not exactly please the other gods and goddesses. Even so, she fights her battles defensively, aiming for survival rather than dominance. She succeeds for nearly all of the war, right up until the very end, when some of her trusted aides turned out to be double agents and pulled an Order 66. While they failed to stop her, let alone cripple her, they did devastate her forces and their future constituents, which finally pushed her over the edge (I've got the outline down, but I'm still working out the compelling details). As the other deities shift towards extermination, she and some of her surviving forces launch a massive retaliatory strike against them. They successfully obliterate the bulk of these deities, and the goddess sends her forces away to gather the rest of the survivors while she "finishes up." If you want a reference for the whole retaliation, think first of the cinematic from the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic where the Sith attack the Jedi Temple, followed by her going Anakin on the Separatist leaders on Mustafar. There is more, but I'm getting into big spoilers now, and I haven't gotten the final segment down yet, so I'm cutting this backstory off here. As for the nobility system, I just made it up as I went, constantly adding, removing, changing, and just tearing down and rebuilding whenever it got too unwieldy. Eventually, it got to where the "upper" nobles comprise of 12 families who each oversee some aspect of their society: food, medicine, education, infrastructure, security - you get it, right? The "lower" nobles, while much more numerous, ended up being focused on arts, media, and entertainment, from artists and writers to journalists and athletes and everything else. This makes them more likely to bring about changes in their culture, both the good and the bad. Of course, through all manner of partnerships, overlap occurs between noble families and levels, and this fluid nature ensures that there is social mobility for everyone. The closest thing to a constant in this society is the goddess-queen's reign over them all. When she was hands-on in their nation's founding, the aftereffects of the war still weighed on and took their toll on her. Thus, even in the early days, she set things up so that her people could largely rule over themselves. However, the ones who would form the "upper" nobility refused to let her just slink away - not because they felt that she must rule, let alone with absolute authority, over them, but because they were afraid of what she might do to herself and/or to others should she just disappear. Essentially, putting her in charge was, in a strange way, their psychotherapy for her, so while she maintains regular contact with all, even if the "upper" nobles get arguably the lion's share of it (for most of their history anyway), she otherwise goes mostly hands-off for her reign. Of course, she does get more hands-on when she and the "upper" nobles start designing a new and more democratic government, but it was driven by events that prompted to finally seek stepping down from rule. Unfortunately for her, while the people do support the transition, which gave them their first election and thus their first chancellor, they did not like the fact that she refused any nomination for the office, so they held their first referendum along with their first election in order to keep her as their queen. And sure, while she publicly thanked them for continuing to put their faith and trust in her, in private, she was... less than pleased about them unknowingly foiling her planned retirement. In the end, she splits duties between her and the chancellor, mostly with her overseeing foreign affairs while the chancellor oversees domestic ones. There is obviously a lot more going on, but it is far too much to put into one YT comment thread. I have posted a few comments on other videos of this channel that describe other aspects of my society, so feel free to seek those out if you want more.
@@DavidRichardson153 That’s a pretty cool take on this concept. Society changes, but the goddess remains constant, apart from all the political chaos. My guess is that the goddess keeps things from going too far off the rails by being a supernatural anchor for society, and her presence is obvious to everyone.
@@rawlenyanzi6686 Even the goddess goes through some changes. About the only constant would be her presence and not so much her political stances. Sure, her stances do remain largely consistent, but not entirely, hence her attempt to finally step down, even though it does ultimately fail. Still, that was a question that always fascinated me: what would an actual eternal ruler do? Obviously, this is merely one possible outcome, but the usual answer of them going mad and/or insane from... whatever the chosen cause is (even if it does seem to be the likely and/or realistic outcome) is just overused and thus boring.
@@DavidRichardson153 I was more thinking that the mere fact of her presence is the constant, the sense that all is right with the world even if society is always changing.
I think you're wrong about the initial premise. I think Thomas Hobbs gets it more right when he says our only natural rights are the right to anything we can take by any means necessary and to defend what we have by any means necessary. However, no one wants to live in a world like this, not even the strong since even they have to sleep. So we give up our basic rights to live in an orderly society with rules, customs, and laws that we're expected to follow. The truth is, it's hard to say only the wealthy class benefits or that they mainly benefit. They typically pay the most in taxes, have the least direct representation in democratic governments, and typically benefit the least from popular social programs if not at all. I mean universal health care or college aid doesn't really benefit the wealthy so much as it benefits the poor. Which leads to another truth that you don't recognize but certainly plays a huge role in cultural hegemony, and that's the notion that groups always look to provide for their members so long as they have the resources to do so. The closer knit the group the more true this is. The truth of the matter is there are both top-down forces as well as bottom-up forces within any society, as well as middle-out forces.
The wealthy pays the most taxes but they do everything so they have to pay next to nothing. They outsource their earnings to other continents where the taxes are as little as possible, like Amazon and Apple do with Ireland or the Netherlands, while the rich themselves try to evade and pay as little as possible by investing in NGO like trust funds. They have their representation settled by lobbyists and direct contact to the politicians. There are enough scandals of politicians who get an extra nice vacation paid by a company or someone personally who'd really really like them to do policy in their favour. - One of the most recent examples of this I can think of that isn't even in the state government is the mayor of cincinatti who wants to sell the city owned train lines. (His campaign was funded by the same company he wants to sell it to) Universal Health care and collage aid are benefits the lower classes had to literally fight for. Every minor benefit wasn't granted out of the benifit of the group, but after a long struggle. Bismarck for example only made a state wide health insurance system in Germany only because he didn't like that the Unions were doing it themselves without any state control. It's always POWER and the way they use it. If the upper classes could let us rot, the would and will.
