Tag: nobility

Hello, Do you know any “rules” about wealth that make a noble person seem cultured/refined/ect? What would be considered nouveau riche and garish? Things with jewelry, food, clothing, horses would be nice to know. I mean this in context of ASOIAF/medieval and not today’s standards. The Lannisters are ridiculously wealthy, but since they are an old money family would they make big displays of wealth like the Tyrells? The Tyrells seem to use their wealth to deal with people who covet Highgarden.

The tricky thing is that there were different fashions for this kind of thing that changed dramatically over the course of the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, etc – especially when you factor in the complicating factor of commoners getting richer than nobles by getting their hands dirty “in trade,” which makes the dividing line harder to enforce. 

So for example, big displays of wealth could be very “on-brand” at various times, because nobles are supposed to be “magnificent.” This fashion obviously works in a context in which commoners either can’t afford to keep up with their betters, or aren’t legally allowed to due to sumptuary laws. At other times, understatement and the display of refined aesthetic might be considered the mark of true nobility – this fashion works in a context in which merchants, the rising bourgeoisie, etc. have tons of money but don’t have the social and cultural capital to know the “right” way to display it. 

In general, I would say that some good rules of thumb for refinement are:

  • Don’t Talk About the Price Tag: regardless of what the fashion is about the degree of opulence at the moment, one of the key attitudes of the nobility w/r/t money is that you don’t care how much stuff costs, because you’re supposed to be stupendously wealthy, generous and open-handed, and more concerned with refined aesthetics than commercial calculation. It’s not an accident that one of the oldest tropes about “nouveau riche” is that they constantly talk about how much various things cost, because they’ve still got that bottom line mentality going on.
  • Know the Fashion, Know the Scene: one of the advantages of being a wealthy parasite who doesn’t work for a living is that you have a lot of spare time to do things like keep up with what’s in fashion and what’s not, what the trends are, who the best craftsmen are, etc. Especially in an aristocratic context where what’s fashionable is less decided by manufacturers and specialized press and more about what important individuals (the monarch, the monarch’s immediate family, the monarch’s mistress/mister, various long-time fixtures at court) are wearing, a lot of this knowledge is very personal and having a grasp of it is a sign that you’re close to the right people. 
  • Making Fashion, Not Just Taking It: of course, one of the clearest signs of refinement is that the noble in question doesn’t merely follow the latest fashions but makes them, bending it to their personal aesthetic. To give an example, “Beau” Brummell was a leading aesthete of his day and, thanks to his close connections with the Prince of Wales and his own personal force of charisma, changed the dominant well-to-do men’s fashion of the day from the fop (powdered wigs anf faces, knee britches, stockings, and buckled shoes, tailcoat, lace cravats, etc.) to the dandy (hair worn naturally, clean face, long trousers, white linen cravats, frock or morning coats). 

Were twentieth-century aristocrats lazier than medieval aristocrats? I’m really only going by the fictional versions, but the medievals seem to always be doing something productive, while their 1900s counterparts spend all their time hunting and drinking. Some of it is because Downton Abbey doesn’t have to worry about being invaded by Bertie Wooster, but the medievals work hard at non-military projects too.

The medieval/early modern ones were plenty damn lazy, given that “not working for a living” was pretty much the definition of their social identity and actually doing a day’s work would be acting like a serf. 

However, I would say the main difference is that the medieval/early modern nobility had two things that occupied a good deal of their time:

After the economic/social/cultural/political transformations of the 17th-20th centuries that could collectively be described as “modernity,” the nobility lost those “places” in society. On the land side, they either lost a lot of their land or shifted their money into more liquid capital (which meant they could move to the city)  or gave into the need for fully professional management (ditto, with a side of absentee landlordism). On the politics side, the rise of mass democracies, professionalized civil services, and militaries, abetted in no small part by the fact that the aristocracy had enthusiastically blundered their way into tons of increasingly bloody wars meant that noble titles shifted from a necessity to a liability. 

What was left was their traditional pursuit of the “gentle life.”

If a Westeros noble’s wealth depends on agriculture, how much does he know about agriculture? Can Mace Tyrell sow and harvest a wheat crop?

A noble doesn’t need to know how to sow and harvest a wheat crop and wouldn’t ever learn – indeed, it would be injurious to the dignity of a nobleman to suggest that they should undertake the work of a smallfolk.

However, depending on the nobleman, they might well learn from their maester a good deal about agriculture from a managerial standpoint – what kind of land is best suited for what crops or livestock, how best to rotate crops to maximize yield, the theory of livestock breeding, the uses and siting of various agricultural improvements, etc. – so that the various manors and lands of their fiefdoms are run well. On the other hand, it may be considered that this too is the province of lesser men – bailiffs, stewards, reeves, maesters, etc. – and that all a nobleman needs to know is the old Parthian curriculum. 

And that would largely come down to the ideology of the house. Randyll Tarly clearly leans to the latter view, whereas I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of dragons that, while no Redwyne earns their living by stomping grapes or cutting weeds, they pride themselves on being really, really obnoxious oenophiles. 

Is asoiaf’s depiction of minor lord’s living in poverty realistic? For instance, Godric Borrel can’t afford to repair or heat his castle, has his meals cooked and served by his own family, and even his liege lord can’t afford to equip his own sons as knights.

Absolutely, that’s one of the more realistic things about ASOIAF. Here’s the crucial factor to consider about the economics of the nobility – in feudalism, rents are generally fixed at traditional rates. Which means that the nobility are more exposed than most to economic shifts, especially shifts in prices. 

One of the reasons why we see peasant revolts in the 14th century following the Black Death (which greatly decreased the labor supply and thus raised wages, at a time when noble incomes were declining because their rent-paying tenants were dying or running away) and then again after the Great Price Revolution (which raised the price of everything, and thus was a major real income cut for people on fixed incomes) is that these events hammered the economic position of the nobility, the nobility responded by trying to violently restore the balance of power (both by trying to freeze wages and worker mobility, which often meant attempts at enforcing or re-establishing serfdom), and the peasantry responded with violence in return. 

Now, the greater nobles were better able to adapt to changing economic circumstances – they had more land and more liquid capital, so they could convert more easily to pasturage and thus get into the lucrative cloth trade, they could invest in new commercial and industrial ventures, etc. 

But the lower nobles didn’t. Hence the figure of the impoverished nobleman, who becomes ubiquitous from Don Quixote to Jane Austen to the freaking Bluths.