I'm working on a fantasy setting, well one that contains both some mystic and steam punk elements, for an upcoming rpg. One of the factions I wanted for this setting is a church that worships a supreme goddess, representing a sort of divine feminine motherhood sort of idea. This church would be lead by priestesses who serve their goddess, but men would be included in the religion too. I was thinking that there would be men within this church, not as priests but as warriors or protectors (maybe not entirely unlike knights) of the priestesses.

If these male warriors are pledged to the church to protect it and the priestesses, then they would have some sorts of moral codes, honor system, chivalry equivalent. This moral system would come from the church itself. So what would this version of chivalry consist of? What would the religious morals of this church be like?

The easy answer would be that it's the same moral system or honor code that we would imagine, based of a slightly sanitized version of that of medieval Europe. I don't think that is very interesting though, nor do I think it's necessarily that accurate. I kind of see chivalry as being a very masculine sort of code, arising from male warriors under the influence of a relatively patriarchal culture and religion. I imagine an organization not only lead by women, but venerating motherhood and femininity, as coming up with a different kind of moral code. My first thoughts are how their values might be different in regard to marriage, sex, that sort of stuff. But it seems like it might be different for fighting and warfare too.

Anyway, I figured people here, who might be more amenable to discussing gender differences than other rpg sites, might have some interesting insights into this question. 

Quote from: ShieldWife on December 31, 2020, 06:34:43 AMI kind of see chivalry as being a very masculine sort of code, arising from male warriors under the influence of a relatively patriarchal culture and religion. I imagine an organization not only lead by women, but venerating motherhood and femininity, as coming up with a different kind of moral code.

The chivalric code as it is venerates motherhood and femininity. If your myth was of a Goddess who takes a man and bears him a daughter as an incarnation of Herself, I imagine it would be the father and fatherhood that would be revered. You can think of the church as attempting to impose their ideals on their people. A male run church reveres motherhood because they want their women to be perfect mothers. A female run church would likely revere fatherhood following the same reasoning. I doubt the chivalric code would change much except maybe as it relates to war and domination. But I imagine the requirements would be more on controlling the women than the men.

Chivalry is essentially, if you want to look at it this way, an arms-control pact -- its ideal purpose is to keep the most physically dangerous operatives of a society under a code of conduct that limits when, how, and how destructively they have license to use their trained prowess, arms and armour to inflict violence. Chivalry requires not attacking unarmed peasants, requires defending women and children, requires protecting not only the physical welfare but the social reputation of your liege lord, requires upholding your word of parole when given (so hostile forces in war can release you and trust you'll pay ransom later, rather than having to hold you prisoner or kill you), and so on and so on.

As such, the key element to define is what your Goddess church wants to protect in this way. If you wanted to come up with an interesting twist on classical mediaeval chivalry, one possibility might be that men who swear to defend the Lady give up their personal honour in favour of Her honour -- in principle, you can say anything to or about a Lady-sworn champion to his face without fear of reprisal, so long as you make it very clear it's only about him. The moment anything you say can be taken in a way that reflects badly on the Lady, however, you're fair game.

Perhaps Lady-sworn knights even give up their own personal identities -- they are known as the Order of the Nameless, and must wear facial masks at all times, marked with elaborate heraldic symbols that identify them for reference: the Knight of the Tricolour Rose, the Knight of the Wounded Unicorn, the Knight of the Seven Black Sparrows, etc.

First off, that's a very cool premise.

From here

http://www.medieval-spell.com/Medieval-Code-of-Chivalry.html#:~:text=The%20knight's%20rule%20of%20service%20was%20governed%20by,the%20ancient%20code%20of%20chivalry%20into%20ten%20%22Commandments%22.

I found

The Ten Commandments of the Medieval Code of Chivalry:

    Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.
    Thou shalt defend the Church.
    Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
    Thou shalt love the country in the which thou wast born.
    Thou shalt not recoil before the enemy.
    Thou shalt make war against the Infidel without cessation, and without mercy.
    Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
    Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.
    Thou shalt be generous, and give largesse to everyone.
    Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

Most of these don't seem to need a change.  After some thought I came up with just two ideas that reflect what I think of as a feminine style

1)  Always try to talk your way out of a conflict before resorting to arms
2)  The first point of the ten  is very hierarchical, that could be changed to a more cooperative form of governance, thought I'm not sure exactly how that would work

While I can definitely see the appeal of a change, I wouldn't revamp chivalry from the ground up. Too much to remember - especially if it's at all similar to normal chivalry it'll get confusing.

Instead, I'd suggest that you use normal romanticized chivalry with ONE significant change.

I can't tell from your post just how matriarchal the culture at large is relative to just within the church which would likely change things.

Off the top of my head though, the change might be one of command. In normal romanticized chivalry, a knight would do all sorts of things to protect a woman, but he'd do them even against her words. (The classic trope of the maiden saying to flee before the evil X [giant/dragon/evil knight/etc.] comes back) The protection is still expected - but which of them makes the decision of WHEN would change.

You could even have a story of the stupid knight who didn't flee being mashed by the giant (or whatever) when it comes back. The next one who obeyed the woman flees and then comes back when she signals, which was after the giant had drunk the spiked wine that she gave him so that he will be weak enough for the knight to defeat.

I think that this would have a significant impact on the setting without having a bunch of knock-on effects which make the chivalry system meaningless.

I would think it's similar to the "standard" chivalric code but with a twist. Creation might be held as far better then destruction.

If motherhood is one of the revered statuses, then perhaps mercy to all (including the infidel) is encouraged - after all, everyone is someone's son or daughter.

Similarly, men who father many children might be revered over those who went out and fought on a crusade?

Chasity might be seen as some sort of crazy ideal - it shows ultimate reverence to the mother goddess, but you've cut yourself off from her greatest blessing. Such people might be considered near-heretics?

Building an alliance with a neutral/ even an enemy might be seen as more worthy than defeating them.

I suspect that giving one's word to a woman would be seen as more binding to that given to any man.

Quote from: ShieldWife on December 31, 2020, 06:34:43 AM
I'm working on a fantasy setting, well one that contains both some mystic and steam punk elements, for an upcoming rpg. One of the factions I wanted for this setting is a church that worships a supreme goddess, representing a sort of divine feminine motherhood sort of idea. This church would be lead by priestesses who serve their goddess, but men would be included in the religion too. I was thinking that there would be men within this church, not as priests but as warriors or protectors (maybe not entirely unlike knights) of the priestesses.

In a long-running Harnmaster game, I played an Agrikan priest who was secretly an adherent of the Order of Eight Demons -- an order in which only women are priests. There's a little on the order here:

https://www.lythia.com/hrt/agrik/orders/eight_demons/index.html

The Agrikans in general are mostly considered the bad guys within Harn, with the Order of Eight Demons as an little-known offshoot. But from his point of view, the traditional chivalry of the Laranian religion was an evil way to keep women oppressed and weak. He instead had a sort of anti-chivalric code of strength from both men and women. Women were naturally the leaders, and should dominate the men. Men should naturally fight for the women, following their direction.

His ideal was a martial sort of society, which did look more like classical bad guys - with powerful witch leaders, knight followers, idealizing strength, and open sexuality. The iconography took more from fertility cults and dominatrixes. But they celebrated a vision where everyone shared and grew stronger together in the service of Agrik. When they had to rescue a trapped woman, my PC tossed her a weapon and offer her a place in fighting her captors - and would have her execute the survivors.

So maybe that's a little too bad guy for what you're going for, but I found it interesting.


For a steampunk world, though, there could still be a theme of women in charge of traditional industry: building machines like looms, engines, and others -- plus being in charge of sciences like chemistry, building out from cooking. Looms historically were complex technology that wasn't considered "hard" tech because it was women's work - but that could be different in the goddess faction. Likewise, food preparation historically was the first chemistry, but also wasn't considered "hard" tech for similar reasons. Priestess leaders could still be witch-like and/or scientist-like, and have a dominant role.

Certainly one option would be to assume the values are the same. But I'd avoid that. Instead I'd go the Pendragon route and consider what are the virtues the goddess and her religion values. Pendragon does a good job of making the three main religious systems - Christianity, Paganism, and Wotanism distinct and making knights or elite warriors in those systems noticeably different in what they value and strive to attain. So in Pendragon

So for the three main religions

• Christian Religious Virtues are: Chaste, Forgiving, Merciful, Modest, and Temperate. Christian Characters possessing one or more of these traits at a value of 16+ gain a Religious bonus.
  
• Pagan Religious Virtues are Lustful, Energetic, Generous, Honest, and Proud. This covers British and Welsh pagans.
  
• Wotanic Religious Virtues are Generous, Honest, Proud, Worldly, and Indulgent. This covers Germanic and Scandinavian pagans.

Later they added Heathens

• The Heathen Religious Virtues are Vengeful, Honest, Arbitrary, Proud, and Worldly. This covers Saracens and Picts.

For knightly chivalry I'd add in the virtue of Valorous or being brave.

Thanks for the replies everybody. I wanted at first to individually quote everybody's reply, but I think it may be easier to make a general post including key topics addressed by everybody.

To give a bit more context, the region the setting focuses on will have a clash of several cultures. One will be a more technologically advanced culture that has some Victorian characteristics, 19th century technology with some steam punk elements, and generally more modern methods and outlooks. Another faction is the older one, more mystical and less technological, some who are descended from faeries and have supernatural abilities or weaknesses as a result, who live with more agrarian lifestyles and whose political organization is more feudal. The reason for conflict between those two groups is obvious. Then the third major faction is this matriarchal church. These factions aren't mutually exclusive but tend to be rivals.

None of these groups are exclusively villainous or heroic, they all have both good and bad within their ranks.

I was thinking that this Matriarchal church would have certain elements that the Catholic Church did, but with obvious key differences. The church leadership, priestesses, are all women. Warriors are usually men, including the church's knightly equivalent. They see women as rightful rulers of society even if men more often go to war. I was thinking that this church would not value marriage or monogamy, they would see that as an arrangement where women are men's possessions. Instead, women rule because men strive to impress women, to please them and so gain their affections. Monogamy hinders that, so their values are accepting of promiscuity. The sexual ideal is that men accomplish great deeds, show acts of bravery, or otherwise distinguish themselves and so may win a woman's affections and become a father. Inheritance would be matrilineal, so knowledge of who the father is would not be valued. Mothers would be supported by their relatives by help of the church - which values motherhood to the degree that it would likely provide resources for mothers and children. This would make their society more socialistic in practice - paternal inheritance isn't that important but mothers gain support from the community to raise children.

So we come to the warriors of the church. What is their code of conduct like as opposed to knights? Well, like any warriors in service to an organization, they should be obedient to superiors. That goes without saying. Obviously, they wouldn't value celibacy or chastity, nor would the priestesses most likely unless they were members of some particularly ascetic order. They may not value modesty either, maybe they would instead openly embrace a sort of bravado meant to impress the priestesses of the church with their accomplishments. It seems like honesty is a value that would be valued here as anywhere - you don't trust people who say that it's alright to lie. Maybe, though, women's lies to men may be given a pass while a man's word to a woman is considered more legally binding and breaking it could be officially punished.

Would these people value fair play and compassion? My first stereotypical inclination is to think that they would hold compassion, even for truly wicked enemies, in higher regard than knights would, but that they also don't put as much emphasis on fair play. So one of these guys might be more likely to take advantage of an opponent's misfortune, attack from behind, attack unarmed enemies, but after gaining victory may be more likely to try spare fallen foes. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that this would be the more female response.

Technologically, knightly combat would be near obsolete outside of supernatural advantages, so I'm inclined to say that these guys would probably use guns. The church doesn't reject technology, though they aren't the most cutting edge in that regard. Maybe guns with sabers or small swords, maybe armor, I haven't decided yet. That may be more of a matter of giving them a distinct fighting flavor rather than anything directly related to ideology.

If women rule because men seek their approval to win their affections, would the church allow a sort of regulated prostitution where men venerate the sacred feminine with an offering of money and then receive an intimate blessing from a temple prostitute? I haven't decided but it might be in line with some of my other ideas and had some precedence in ancient history.

Are there any female obligations towards men in this world view? I'm not sure. There doesn't necessarily have to be.

Anyway, this post is about to become me throwing out a bunch of random ideas. All of the above aren't intended to reflect any sort of real world agenda on my part, I just thought that it could be interesting to have this very different sort of culture in a fantasy setting, maybe also as a thought experiment.

What you've described sounds interesting, but doesn't sound much like a church or organised religion. If you look at religions around the world, most are monogamous, some allow multiple wives, or multiple husbands. I can't think of any that don't have marriage in some form - even the Church of Satan has marriage. And that makes a lot of sense if you think of the church as a form of societal control. A church that espouses freedom from marriage, doesn't sound much like a church at all. And it sounds more like a male fantasy than a female one; Brave New World, for example.

Marriage and the Catholic Church were somewhat unwilling bedfellows from the beginning. The apostle Paul begrudgingly accepted marriage into the religion; without it, they would have faded into obscurity. They'd much prefer everyone remained celibate and worshipped god. But one of the reasons for the Catholic Church's success is its ability to adapt. Marriage predates religion and dominates human society (in fact behaviour similar to marriage is apparent throughout the animal kingdom) so I can't see any religion opposing or prohibiting marriage lasting long.

Having said that, I could see it working if it was in constant opposition to some other church. You mentioned a Victorian society. I think it would be difficult to separate something resembling Victorian attitudes from the evangelical Christianity that drove it, so maybe that would provide something to oppose.

I think it would be worth considering the in-world agenda for your church. What does this church want, and how does it aim to get it? Churches are hierarchical, so I'd start with the deity and work down, both in terms of authority and timeline. By the time you get down to the code of chivalry it should just fall out. If you try to work from the bottom up I expect it'll get tied up in contradictions.

Take the ideas from Spon and others, and put a bit of a darker twist on it.

Make MOTHERHOOD the apex of the structure.

Keep the traditional notions of Protector/Guardian/etc, but make the male Knights restricted to the infertile/impudent/castrated men.  The idea being those put forward to die first are those that are incapable of pro-creating/contributing to Motherhood. They can not create life, but at least they can be used to preserve it.  2nd highest, OR 2nd lowest social status would both make sense to my mind.

Likewise, restrict Priestess to being mothers.  Or even better, tie magical power/gifts to pregnancy itself.  The further the woman is into her pregnancy, the more powerful the miracles she is capable of.  After birth, her power wanes.  How far is up to you, but I'd tie it to the number of living children she has.  This ties "success" as a Mother to power, in a raw, biological/evolutionary sense.

Infertile woman ... you have a lot of latitude there. Perhaps those who have simply reached menopause take on scholarly/monk-like roles (can be anywhere in the social hierarchy except bottom, to my thinking), while those born infertile are seen as unworthy by the Mother and kept in slave-like positions (lowest social class).


When thinking of these women, I would not underestimate the role of Mother in discipline, authority (Mother May I?), and decision maker.  Give them a bit of a sexist bent, a bit of misandry; "Men can not be trusted with coin least they drink it all away" ... etc.

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2021, 04:10:19 PMWhen thinking of these women, I would not underestimate the role of Mother in discipline, authority (Mother May I?), and decision maker.  Give them a bit of a sexist bent, a bit of misandry; "Men can not be trusted with coin least they drink it all away" ... etc.

The Wheel of Time books would be a good source of inspiration for such an approach.

Quote from: ShieldWife on December 31, 2020, 06:34:43 AMSo what would this version of chivalry consist of?

From what you've said, I think it would be remarkably similar to the real-world one. Ultimately the ideals of chivalry come from the desire to protect the country (or duchy, etc) and its future. One of the reasons women historically are noncombatants is that, given a 50-50 birth rate, a society can better survive the loss of men than women. Men with a code of protecting women will thus be encouraged by a society, and men who mistreat women will be outcasts in one way or another.

What could change is the relative position of women. "I am protecting you," may imply abject inferiority, "different but equal", or "should be venerated", much as historically men might protect an elderly king or queen. Historical chivalry as depicted in post-medieval fiction rather trivialised women. However, it tended to focus on noblewomen, who were well-off enough to be idle, useless, contributing nothing to the world except their beauty and generosity with other people's money. If it were chivalry focused on more capable and useful women - and in a world where magic and the gods are definitely real, a priestess is certainly capable and useful - then it wouldn't have that trivialising aspect.

What immediately comes to mind, of course, is the historical orders martial, the Templars and the like - the militant wing of the Church. Historically these ran mostly parallel and separate to the other orders, it's not like some abbess was sending them off to find the Grail, or escort a bunch of nuns to the Holy Land. But there's no reason a fictional order of a fictional religion couldn't do it.

What I would want to bear in mind is that historically the armed protectors of a person, organisation or realm at some point figure out that the thing they're protecting can't exist without them, and they start demanding more of a say in how things are run, choosing the next leader and so on. Thus the Praetorian Guard auctioning off the position of Roman emperor, and many times legions proclaiming some General as Emperor. And before they actually do so, sometimes the leadership fears their growing power. Thus the crushing of the Templars, etc.

Thanks for the additional replies 

Quote from: mightybrain on January 02, 2021, 09:41:51 AM
What you've described sounds interesting, but doesn't sound much like a church or organised religion. If you look at religions around the world, most are monogamous, some allow multiple wives, or multiple husbands. I can't think of any that don't have marriage in some form - even the Church of Satan has marriage. And that makes a lot of sense if you think of the church as a form of societal control. A church that espouses freedom from marriage, doesn't sound much like a church at all. And it sounds more like a male fantasy than a female one; Brave New World, for example.

Marriage and the Catholic Church were somewhat unwilling bedfellows from the beginning. The apostle Paul begrudgingly accepted marriage into the religion; without it, they would have faded into obscurity. They'd much prefer everyone remained celibate and worshipped god. But one of the reasons for the Catholic Church's success is its ability to adapt. Marriage predates religion and dominates human society (in fact behaviour similar to marriage is apparent throughout the animal kingdom) so I can't see any religion opposing or prohibiting marriage lasting long.

Having said that, I could see it working if it was in constant opposition to some other church. You mentioned a Victorian society. I think it would be difficult to separate something resembling Victorian attitudes from the evangelical Christianity that drove it, so maybe that would provide something to oppose.

I think it would be worth considering the in-world agenda for your church. What does this church want, and how does it aim to get it? Churches are hierarchical, so I'd start with the deity and work down, both in terms of authority and timeline. By the time you get down to the code of chivalry it should just fall out. If you try to work from the bottom up I expect it'll get tied up in contradictions.

I don't know that the free love thing is a female fantasy necessarily or a male one either, I don't think that Brave New World was a male fantasy. There would be downsides to such a system for both men and women, even though it would been fit some people of each gender and harm some of both as well.

Sometimes a a church can get away with have values, at least the ideals, which wouldn't work for a larger civilization. A reasonable interpretation of Christianity might be that the ideal is celibacy, poverty, and pacifism - which you mention. Those things can't work if an entire civilization practices them, but the Catholic Church did uphold those values to a degree and the clergy did also practice them in large part. You even have people like Franciscan Mendicants who do who essentially live exactly as Jesus advocated, but they are rare.

Not having marriage in a society would work better than everybody being celibate. But we don't really need either. In the society I will present, this church won't dominate in the way that the Catholic Church did in medieval Europe, so those outside the church could still have traditional (from our perspective) marriages. Though even within the church and following of the faith, there could be marriage. Marriage could be widely practiced even if its seen as less than ideal, in fact there could be a marriage ritual that is syncretistic with other religions that have or had marriage, just as Christianity melded aspects of other religions. The actual church and the clergy could follow the free love ideals while the common people have lower standards - just like how priests, monks, and nuns in Catholicism are celibate but the Catholic Church still performs and regulates marriage.

In free love is the ideal, though, it probably means that marriage and sexual relations in general, are a bit looser than in Western history. Divorce would likely be allowed, infidelity wouldn't be a major crime, premarital sex wouldn't be shamed - maybe not unlike modern society?

I'm not sure if top down or bottom up is the best way to develop a fantasy religion. If we look once again to the Catholic Church, while it is hierarchal and has a fixed religious canon, there are also many practices of medieval Christianity which did come from the ground up as the values and the needs of the common folk must be accommodated by the church. Pagan syncretism is one aspect, another is how the Liturgical Year corresponds to the seasonal agrarian lifestyle. I'm thinking I might have a hierarchy not entirely unlike the Catholic Church, with different levels of priestesses, but perhaps instead of a single leader like the Pope, there could be a small group who votes on issues for the church.

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2021, 04:10:19 PM
Take the ideas from Spon and others, and put a bit of a darker twist on it.

Make MOTHERHOOD the apex of the structure.

Keep the traditional notions of Protector/Guardian/etc, but make the male Knights restricted to the infertile/impudent/castrated men.  The idea being those put forward to die first are those that are incapable of pro-creating/contributing to Motherhood. They can not create life, but at least they can be used to preserve it.  2nd highest, OR 2nd lowest social status would both make sense to my mind.

Likewise, restrict Priestess to being mothers.  Or even better, tie magical power/gifts to pregnancy itself.  The further the woman is into her pregnancy, the more powerful the miracles she is capable of.  After birth, her power wanes.  How far is up to you, but I'd tie it to the number of living children she has.  This ties "success" as a Mother to power, in a raw, biological/evolutionary sense.

Infertile woman ... you have a lot of latitude there. Perhaps those who have simply reached menopause take on scholarly/monk-like roles (can be anywhere in the social hierarchy except bottom, to my thinking), while those born infertile are seen as unworthy by the Mother and kept in slave-like positions (lowest social class).


When thinking of these women, I would not underestimate the role of Mother in discipline, authority (Mother May I?), and decision maker.  Give them a bit of a sexist bent, a bit of misandry; "Men can not be trusted with coin least they drink it all away" ... etc.

Interesting, I'm all for adding some darker elements to this. I had actually considered the idea of slavery in this setting too and how the three major divisions would view it. I think that eunuch slaves might make sense for this kind of church, though I don't know if those are who the warriors would be. My initial thought regarding slavery and/or eunuchs is that they would indeed be the lowly men, those deemed unworthy of a woman's attention or fatherhood and so made "safe" from wanting to engage in either - this sounds pretty damn dark but I'm okay with that to a degree. I don't want this church to be complete villains, but I'm all for them engaging in activities which modern people who disapprove of. I kinda see a sort of alpha beta divide here, or like chads and virgins, something like that. The women are in charge, they are still mostly heterosexual, they want sex and they want manly men. Warriors are likely to be manly men, that would make for good warriors, and getting to be the chad for all of the nuns seems like an enticing reward for loyalty and bravery in battle. Lower ranking men - criminals, beggars, those deemed unworthy for some reason - I could see them becoming castrated slaves for the church, doing menial labor while women raised children, engaged in religious practice, and did higher level jobs. I'm not sure if castrated slaves should be relied upon to be soldiers. Castrated men are going to have some physical issues and also lack aggression, though despite lacking aggression they still might not be so loyal to the hierarchy that castrated them and may seek to get revenge or overthrow the system. A warrior caste should probably be kept happy, which I think the warriors here could e even if they aren't in charge.

I could maybe see slave soldiers becoming a thing if it happened with a historical shift. Manly knights protected the church and castrated men served it, though maybe the eunuchs served as cannon fodder. Though with the rise of more advanced technology, warfare became more egalitarian. If we have 19th (or even 18th) century technology, highly trained and well armed and armored knights lose to soldiers with muskets. Could the chad knights lose their position to gun wielding eunuchs?

All of the above stuff probably sounds creepy to a lot of people. Though I always like to have fantasy setting have weird cultural stuff in them that modern people wouldn't approve of.  I've done more historically accurate stuff that would be like that before, this something different from our history that might make people uncomfortable.

I like the idea of status and mystical power being tied to motherhood. Though being a mother (which I am in real life) can be a pain in the butt too, which may make it hard for women with lots of young children or that are currently pregnant from having actively important (either magic or leadership) roles in the church. Maybe women who are pregnant or nursing have an important role in the church that doesn't require as much activity - maybe pregnant mothers bless worshipers during ritual rituals. As you mention, maybe only mothers can be priestesses and there is higher status attached to more children. Women haven't had children might be relegated to lower status in the church - helpers of some type - and those who never have children remain in that position into old age. I'd be inclined to see the leadership of the church being post-menopausal women. In any institution of this kind, age and rank are going to be tied to each other, and a mother with adult children not only wont have to worry about taking care of little kids to distract her form her duties (or pursuit of power) but could also have those adult children as political allies within the church who will support her position. If an older priestess who gained prestige from having many children now has numerous daughters who are themselves priestesses and sons who are knights (or whatever I decide to call them, it shouldn't be knights) then she would have more official and unofficial power in the church.

I would also imagine that the church, in fact the entire culture or subculture associated with it, having a degree of misandry associated with it. Not a hatred of men or desire to persecute them, but generalizations both men and women, their respective traits, and a usually esteeming female traits more highly. Of course, these women are going to have sons, brothers, lovers, male friends and they like who they care about and so it seems that their opinion of men couldn't be that low, though I guess the same could be said for modern feminists and it doesn't stop them.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 04, 2021, 02:20:54 AM
From what you've said, I think it would be remarkably similar to the real-world one. Ultimately the ideals of chivalry come from the desire to protect the country (or duchy, etc) and its future. One of the reasons women historically are noncombatants is that, given a 50-50 birth rate, a society can better survive the loss of men than women. Men with a code of protecting women will thus be encouraged by a society, and men who mistreat women will be outcasts in one way or another.

What could change is the relative position of women. "I am protecting you," may imply abject inferiority, "different but equal", or "should be venerated", much as historically men might protect an elderly king or queen. Historical chivalry as depicted in post-medieval fiction rather trivialised women. However, it tended to focus on noblewomen, who were well-off enough to be idle, useless, contributing nothing to the world except their beauty and generosity with other people's money. If it were chivalry focused on more capable and useful women - and in a world where magic and the gods are definitely real, a priestess is certainly capable and useful - then it wouldn't have that trivialising aspect.

What immediately comes to mind, of course, is the historical orders martial, the Templars and the like - the militant wing of the Church. Historically these ran mostly parallel and separate to the other orders, it's not like some abbess was sending them off to find the Grail, or escort a bunch of nuns to the Holy Land. But there's no reason a fictional order of a fictional religion couldn't do it.

What I would want to bear in mind is that historically the armed protectors of a person, organisation or realm at some point figure out that the thing they're protecting can't exist without them, and they start demanding more of a say in how things are run, choosing the next leader and so on. Thus the Praetorian Guard auctioning off the position of Roman emperor, and many times legions proclaiming some General as Emperor. And before they actually do so, sometimes the leadership fears their growing power. Thus the crushing of the Templars, etc.

Yes, there will be similarities with real world chivalry. Male warriors protect women - that is something you will see in any civilization. A group of humans where the men didn't care about protecting the women would probably be pretty barbarous. They will also protect authority, we would also see that whether its in feudal Europe, Japan, or where ever else you have the concept of honorable warriors.

I don't know if I agree that noble women were quite so useless or seen in a trivial way. Just looking at Arthurian legends, as just one example, and we see how important women are to the various events in those stories - including all of the trouble that bad noble women can cause. That may be a bit of a tangential issue though.

As you say, in the act of escorting nuns to a holy site, these warriors may not be so different from historical knights tasked with a similar job. Though they may follow the orders of those nuns instead of the orders of a lord or bishop who arranged the pilgrimage. I do think, though, that there would be differences in their values in certain ways, even in the way that they relate to other warriors who they may be fighting or with the common folk. I also think its fun to make them a bit different than historical knights, its a bit of a thought experiment as well as setting design.

Quote from: Mishihari on January 04, 2021, 12:47:54 AM
The Wheel of Time books would be a good source of inspiration for such an approach.

I'm slightly familiar with Wheel of Time and its setting. I'll look into that a little further for ideas.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 04, 2021, 02:20:54 AM
What I would want to bear in mind is that historically the armed protectors of a person, organisation or realm at some point figure out that the thing they're protecting can't exist without them, and they start demanding more of a say in how things are run, choosing the next leader and so on. Thus the Praetorian Guard auctioning off the position of Roman emperor, and many times legions proclaiming some General as Emperor. And before they actually do so, sometimes the leadership fears their growing power. Thus the crushing of the Templars, etc.

I know nothing about OP's setting, but that sort of thing could potentially be avoided via magic. If you don't want the priestesses doing big flashy D&D style spells, they could still do something more subtle to assure loyalty of their protectors.

Maybe something like a Witcher style process as the price of entry to the order which makes them more powerful, but reliant upon a steady supply of some sort of medicine which the priestesses keep secret. Or they make with their special magic from their goddess. Or something in-between.