House of Cards GM Log

IMC: Nobles of Amber

posted by Ginger at 12:24 PM, October 16, 2004 | Filed under : IMC , Traveller's Guide to Amber | Comments and Followups

Arref has a post up about the nobility of Amber. The relevant information is summarized in this wiki entry, but there are a few underlying themes that are worth mentioning separately.

Most important is that the nobility of Amber is tiny in size. In a city of about a million, there are fewer than 100 hereditary peers. Not all of them have landed holdings (most don’t). In addition to the titled nobility, there are several hundred life peers and perhaps a thousand knights. All of these persons owed direct fealty to Oberon. There was no subinfeuidation, and the right of arms was closely controlled.

It’s clear that Oberon kept his power tightly concentrated.

On the other hand, Reid tells tales of the days when the merchant houses had small armies. One wonders what the state of the nobility was like in those days, and what intervened to make Amber the way it was at the end of Oberon’s reign.

Follow up: the trackback URL for this entry is: http://www.whiterose.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/4473

1 Comments

Arref
Oct 30, 2004 3:46 PM

Likewise IMC:
in a city of 100,000 people, there are less than 50 hereditary noble familes.

I could easily imagine 'someone' in the past trying a private army takeover considering how small the royal family and standing guard are.

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