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.
Morality/chivalry, as noted above, is an "arms-control pact". Among men. Women have no use for morality, biologically speaking. Morality is invented by the alpha males of a society. Women become the morality that they create, and beta males, the majority of males in a society, must rise to the moral standard set by women as a reproductive strategy, otherwise they don't gain sexual access to women (that is to say, most men are actually submissive to women). Thus women are the moral core of society. If women go bad, then the majority of men go bad since being moral no longer has any reproductive value.
Women as a group are hard-coded by evolution to become neurotic (typified by heightened levels of anxiety and depression) when they sense a power vacuum above them, whether through the absence or corruption of the alpha males. This is nature's way of warning them that there is something wrong. This dereliction can be manifested as feelings of betrayal, and might develop socially as a desire for women to assert their independence, but with an underlying animosity toward men and a repudiation of tradition. Women are vulnerable when they reproduce and they need to secure resources to protect their children, otherwise the tribe does not continue to exist. Therefore they become Machiavellian in order to secure those resources, whether it is through prostitution, stealing, fraud, or whatever.
In medieval Catholicism, the Virgin Mary was greatly revered. It is the closest thing to a "great goddess" that we have at a high level of civilization in the real world. It was, and is, said that Mary achieves her power through submission to God. This is a mythological formulation of the above mentioned relationship between alpha males, women, and beta males.
The problem with a theoretical matriarchy is that women gain no reproductive advantage by being the alphas of a society and it tends to occur as an "assume crash positions" strategy of survival for the tribe. Due to biological programming there would be a natural tendency for the Virgin Mary as alpha to become Lolth the Demon Queen of Spiders.
Most often male deities symbolize protection/tyranny and female deities represent creation/destruction, in other words spiritual male is associated with both the positive and negative aspects of society and its rules and values, while spiritual female is associated with the positive and negative aspects of nature. Monotheisms thus tend to have a male deity at the apex to represent the moral consensus regarding good and evil which the society has established.
Catholicism provides a model for how it works in the real world, but for a fantasy world one must rely on conjecture.
Quote from: MightybrainMarriage predates religion and dominates human society (in fact behavior similar to marriage is apparent throughout the animal kingdom) so I can't see any religion opposing or prohibiting marriage lasting long...
Most likely the two go hand in hand, since there is no human culture that does not have religion (totemism is the simplest form). Religion serves two major functions: to prevent the human mind from coming apart and to preserve the wisdom of lived experience holistically through myth and story.
The natural state of the human mind is insanity, which is the cost of human intelligence. Without religion, people as a whole tend to become neurotic, and that neuroticism can degenerate into full blown psychosis. Objective reality is too complex for the human brain to manage, therefore there must be a holistic system in order to process and organize the mass of data into a form that is usable -- that is why we have both a left brain and a right brain, not two left brains.
The purpose of marriage is so that the community knows who the father of the child is. Imagine an attractive 14-year-old girl who turns up pregnant. EVERYONE wants to know who the father is. Every married woman wants to know, because it better NOT be her husband. Every man who wants to marry her wants to know. Her father especially wants to know. In short, there is a good chance that a murder is about to be committed. Marriage is a social contract that avoids that sort of chaos and unnecessary homicides.
Also, without knowing who the father is, it is impossible to construct the lineages upon which tribal society is based.
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AM
Morality/chivalry, as noted above, is an "arms-control pact". Among men. Women have no use for morality, biologically speaking. Morality is invented by the alpha males of a society. Women become the morality that they create, and beta males, the majority of males in a society, must rise to the moral standard set by women as a reproductive strategy, otherwise they don't gain sexual access to women (that is to say, most men are actually submissive to women). Thus women are the moral core of society. If women go bad, then the majority of men go bad since being moral no longer has any reproductive value.
Women as a group are hard-coded by evolution to become neurotic (typified by heightened levels of anxiety and depression) when they sense a power vacuum above them, whether through the absence or corruption of the alpha males. This is nature's way of warning them that there is something wrong. This dereliction can be manifested as feelings of betrayal, and might develop socially as a desire for women to assert their independence, but with an underlying animosity toward men and a repudiation of tradition. Women are vulnerable when they reproduce and they need to secure resources to protect their children, otherwise the tribe does not continue to exist. Therefore they become Machiavellian in order to secure those resources, whether it is through prostitution, stealing, fraud, or whatever.
Ummmmm ... source? You strike a very authoritative tone, but I'm not familiar with any actual authority that takes this position.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on January 04, 2021, 01:56:01 PMI 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.
That is certainly possible. I forgot to address the Praetorian Guard question before. I want the priestesses of this church to have some magical ability, but I want it to be relatively rare and subtle, as it is a lowish magic setting, with a few exceptions. Would these guards need to be pressed into loyalty through magic? Not necessarily. Even witnessing a few "miracles" could make them very devout, especially if their upbringing and subculture encourages it. Are such military forces always a danger of taking over the organization they protect? I'm not sure, but it seems like frequently they don't. It depends on a number of complex factors. If there are other influential military forces at play or if the people are highly opinionated on the issue then it may be hard for a bodyguard force to control an organization like a church. I think maybe full fledged control or queen making might be a bit too drastic, but I could see these knights (I need a name for them) having some influence on the church especially if other factions are at odds - where these guys side could be crucial factor. There is also the issue of how centralized or decentralized these warriors are. If they are very decentralized, even factionalized, then they may have trouble unifying to exert that kind of control and may in fact hold each other in check.
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AM
Morality/chivalry, as noted above, is an "arms-control pact". Among men. Women have no use for morality, biologically speaking. Morality is invented by the alpha males of a society. Women become the morality that they create, and beta males, the majority of males in a society, must rise to the moral standard set by women as a reproductive strategy, otherwise they don't gain sexual access to women (that is to say, most men are actually submissive to women). Thus women are the moral core of society. If women go bad, then the majority of men go bad since being moral no longer has any reproductive value.
Women as a group are hard-coded by evolution to become neurotic (typified by heightened levels of anxiety and depression) when they sense a power vacuum above them, whether through the absence or corruption of the alpha males. This is nature's way of warning them that there is something wrong. This dereliction can be manifested as feelings of betrayal, and might develop socially as a desire for women to assert their independence, but with an underlying animosity toward men and a repudiation of tradition. Women are vulnerable when they reproduce and they need to secure resources to protect their children, otherwise the tribe does not continue to exist. Therefore they become Machiavellian in order to secure those resources, whether it is through prostitution, stealing, fraud, or whatever.
In medieval Catholicism, the Virgin Mary was greatly revered. It is the closest thing to a "great goddess" that we have at a high level of civilization in the real world. It was, and is, said that Mary achieves her power through submission to God. This is a mythological formulation of the above mentioned relationship between alpha males, women, and beta males.
The problem with a theoretical matriarchy is that women gain no reproductive advantage by being the alphas of a society and it tends to occur as an "assume crash positions" strategy of survival for the tribe. Due to biological programming there would be a natural tendency for the Virgin Mary as alpha to become Lolth the Demon Queen of Spiders.
Most often male deities symbolize protection/tyranny and female deities represent creation/destruction, in other words spiritual male is associated with both the positive and negative aspects of society and its rules and values, while spiritual female is associated with the positive and negative aspects of nature. Monotheisms thus tend to have a male deity at the apex to represent the moral consensus regarding good and evil which the society has established.
Catholicism provides a model for how it works in the real world, but for a fantasy world one must rely on conjecture.
Quote from: MightybrainMarriage predates religion and dominates human society (in fact behavior similar to marriage is apparent throughout the animal kingdom) so I can't see any religion opposing or prohibiting marriage lasting long...
Most likely the two go hand in hand, since there is no human culture that does not have religion (totemism is the simplest form). Religion serves two major functions: to prevent the human mind from coming apart and to preserve the wisdom of lived experience holistically through myth and story.
The natural state of the human mind is insanity, which is the cost of human intelligence. Without religion, people as a whole tend to become neurotic, and that neuroticism can degenerate into full blown psychosis. Objective reality is too complex for the human brain to manage, therefore there must be a holistic system in order to process and organize the mass of data into a form that is usable -- that is why we have both a left brain and a right brain, not two left brains.
The purpose of marriage is so that the community knows who the father of the child is. Imagine an attractive 14-year-old girl who turns up pregnant. EVERYONE wants to know who the father is. Every married woman wants to know, because it better NOT be her husband. Every man who wants to marry her wants to know. Her father especially wants to know. In short, there is a good chance that a murder is about to be committed. Marriage is a social contract that avoids that sort of chaos and unnecessary homicides.
Also, without knowing who the father is, it is impossible to construct the lineages upon which tribal society is based.
Quote from: Mishihari on January 05, 2021, 07:44:30 AMUmmmmm ... source? You strike a very authoritative tone, but I'm not familiar with any actual authority that takes this position.
Cloyer makes some interesting claims and a lot of them likely have some basis in reality. I also think it's a bit of an oversimplification. I don't want to get bogged down too much on discussing real world gender issues, but I will touch on them a bit in this reply.
Firstly, I think it would be fun to make this matriarchal church that has similarities to real world churches but also has major differences. I think that it would be interesting and kind of a neat thought experiment and I'm curious how players might react. So, it may well be the case that it's unrealistic in some regards, that should go without saying because it's not the real world. That doesn't mean that I would reject realism entirely, I think it's good to keep fantasy somewhat grounded in reality or at least the perception of reality, but I also don't want such concerns to limit fun or creativity too much. Of course, I did ask for opinions about matriarchal chivalry with the implication that real world concerns should factor in, so I'm entirely open to discussing such topics in regard to my setting, but I would balance realism against other factors, including my own vision of the setting.
Let's me address some of these topics more specifically.
Both men and women have use for morality and both men and women have influenced moral codes of every human society, based in part of the specific characteristics and interests of each gender. Of course, such moral codes likely have more to do with group survival as a whole rather than the specific interests of males and females. In a patriarchal civilization (which historically is most if not all of them) the men in charge are going to create codes of conduct that facilitate that patriarchy. Other sorts of less patriarchal systems - some tribal societies, small isolated ones, or (and this is the big one we ignore) modern society - are going to have different moral systems or codes of behavior.
Do women become neurotic if there aren't men in charge of them? I don't know if that is true or not and it would likely be hard to prove. There may well also be exceptions even if it was the general trend.
Women also do indeed need help raising children. Not only for the times that we are pregnant or nursing but when children are young and need resources, protection, supervision, etc. How ever society organizes itself, there must be women having babies and they must have help from non-mothers including men. A common way for this to happen historically was marriage - so that a man can be confident that his wife's children are his and so he feels good about protecting and investing in his wife (or wives) and children. Marriage also has the added benefit of allowing less competition between men because it is a huge taboo to cuckold another man. That isn't the only way to secure help for mothers though, not even in Western civilization where marriage has been very common and powerful. The nuclear family is a isolated and complete unit is kind of a common thing. Historically extended families lived closely together and helped each other, in fact the entire tribe or village was kind of an extended family. It was likely the industrial revolution and the needs of business and industry that shifted the focus from the extended family to the nuclear family. In agrarian villages, absent the taboos against premarital sex, a single mother could receive the aid of the rest of her family. Surely there were many young medieval widows who lost their husbands to war, injury, accident, or illness and who were able to successfully raise their children with the help of siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and neighbors.
In some smaller groups, where marriage as is practiced in the major civilizations is unusual, sometimes a mother receives help not from her baby's father but from her brothers. The uncles are the paternal figure in a child's life rather than the biological father and those uncles can (evolutionarily) feel confident that they are helping their own genes in their kinship to their sisters. Of course, groups that do this are small and for the most part didn't develop full fledged civilization like more patriarchal groups did. Is that because there is some disadvantage to this kind of arrangement? Probably so, but just because there are some disadvantages doesn't mean that it is impossible.
We also can look at modern society that puts less focus on marriage and monogamy than we did in the past but also has government funded aid and safety nets for single mothers like welfare, food stamps, paternity payments, public school, and (depending on the country) numerous other government programs. Could a pre-modern society support that sort of system of aid for single mothers whose families didn't help them? Possibly so, maybe administered by the church. As with any society, it is going to be hard for large institutions to make up for lack of familial support.
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AM
The problem with a theoretical matriarchy is that women gain no reproductive advantage by being the alphas of a society and it tends to occur as an "assume crash positions" strategy of survival for the tribe. Due to biological programming there would be a natural tendency for the Virgin Mary as alpha to become Lolth the Demon Queen of Spiders.
Is it true that women gain no reproductive advantage by being the alphas of society? I think that is potentially incorrect, though it may be misleading to call women the alphas of this arrangement. From an evolutionary perspective, what is the ideal male lifestyle? Likely being a king with a harem of hundreds of wives and concubines for the king to impregnate while the peasants do the work to support the king and his kids. It's a bit of an extreme example, but that would be maximum male reproductive success. What about maximum female reproductive success? Well, because a woman can only have so many children herself, she doesn't need lots of husbands. She needs to best husband. Maximum female reproductive success would be to have babies with the most alpha of alpha men possible and then to have a bunch of peasants supply resources to the woman and her kids to increase the odds of survival. Both cases are extreme and, in fact, they kind of match up in a way. The people who get screwed, ironically, are the men who don't. That is the beta men who would have to supply resources to the alphas without getting sex or passing on their genes. Of course, in reality we don't see anything quite so extreme, but there is a tendency for that, especially when there is a decline in morality.
Anyway, marriage keeps the above from happening, it moderates the more extreme nature of both men and women, to create a more stable society and sop has reproductive advantages.
Would a matriarchal system present women with an evolutionary advantage? I can potentially see some. Assuming that system I mentioned earlier that is run by women and has no marriage. Without marriage or monogamy, the women are going to be free to do it with the most alpha guys. Even if men were shut out of political power, there would still be macho manly alpha guys, that isn't always associated with political power. We could all imagine a plausible scenario where a young woman is married off to a king with great temporal power is isn't very attractive for some reason - maybe he comes from an extremely inbred royal line and he is mentally disabled and physical deformed - and then the young queen has an affair with the relatively powerless but manly and sexy castle guardsman. So even without political power (which isn't a given in this scenario) there would still be alpha men who are desired by women and who would even be more available without monogamy getting in the way. That is one aspect of female reproductive success that is fulfilled by this system. The other is getting resources from less desirable men. That is potentially harder, though if this religion encourages communities to help mothers and babies or even if it demands tithes and uses those tithes to generally support mothers and children, then it is effectively working towards that ideal female reproductive strategy. Assuming it doesn't cause some kind of societal collapse, which is possible I suppose, but highly speculative. This is actually kind of what happens in modern first world countries where government aid and laws help support single mothers who were probably impregnated by alpha types.
This may be a moot point though, as there are all kinds of religious and social structures in society that don't seem to have an evolutionary advantage. Christianity preaches pacifism, celibacy, and poverty and while in practice most Christians aren't those things, many of the clergy follow that ideal.
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AM
The purpose of marriage is so that the community knows who the father of the child is. Imagine an attractive 14-year-old girl who turns up pregnant. EVERYONE wants to know who the father is. Every married woman wants to know, because it better NOT be her husband. Every man who wants to marry her wants to know. Her father especially wants to know. In short, there is a good chance that a murder is about to be committed. Marriage is a social contract that avoids that sort of chaos and unnecessary homicides.
Also, without knowing who the father is, it is impossible to construct the lineages upon which tribal society is based.
In a society where maternal; support is heavily tied to fatherhood, then yes everybody wants to know who the father is. An important taboo has been broken, important because marriage is what allows men to know who their children are and thus lets them support those children and their mother. In a society where fatherly support of the mother and children in less important, then who the father is isn't as important either. The child knows who his or her mother is, and that is the lineage valued by the society, and the mother's relatives can also be sure that the child is related to them as well and would want to support that mother and child. Including uncles who would have no specific fatherly obligations to their own biological children, if any.
Also, as I touched on above, I fully believe that evolutionary psychology influences every topic we are discussing, but it isn't the end all and be all determining factor of what a religion or culture must be.
I'm not complaining here, just trying to discuss the issues brought up in the post above. The values of this church (as I've so far described them) might not work for maintaining a civilization, but I also think that it is a very complicated matter to consider.
Quote from: Mishihari on January 05, 2021, 07:44:30 AM
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AM
Morality/chivalry, as noted above, is an "arms-control pact". Among men. Women have no use for morality, biologically speaking. Morality is invented by the alpha males of a society. Women become the morality that they create, and beta males, the majority of males in a society, must rise to the moral standard set by women as a reproductive strategy, otherwise they don't gain sexual access to women (that is to say, most men are actually submissive to women). Thus women are the moral core of society. If women go bad, then the majority of men go bad since being moral no longer has any reproductive value.
Women as a group are hard-coded by evolution to become neurotic (typified by heightened levels of anxiety and depression) when they sense a power vacuum above them, whether through the absence or corruption of the alpha males. This is nature's way of warning them that there is something wrong. This dereliction can be manifested as feelings of betrayal, and might develop socially as a desire for women to assert their independence, but with an underlying animosity toward men and a repudiation of tradition. Women are vulnerable when they reproduce and they need to secure resources to protect their children, otherwise the tribe does not continue to exist. Therefore they become Machiavellian in order to secure those resources, whether it is through prostitution, stealing, fraud, or whatever.
Ummmmm ... source? You strike a very authoritative tone, but I'm not familiar with any actual authority that takes this position.
LOL! Four thousand years of people living, believing, and advocating these ideas count for nothing. Instead, some guy who slept through 6-8 years of college, got his letters after his name, paid 50 of his students to take a survey, and then published a paper somewhere is the gold standard (this is
NOT an exaggeration in the soft sciences). No wonder so many people in the Western world are so easily hoodwinked by whoever blathers in front of a camera.
"Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, 'Is it reasonable?'" - Richard Feynman
You might consider an adapted version of the Heinlein idea in Starship Troopers, where the only way to get "citizenship" is to enroll in one of the services. Only in your case, the only way to get the fantasy equivalent of citizenship is to procreate. There's a subtle bias towards woman inherent in that, since it is easier for the woman to prove that she is the mother. That does bring back in the idea that males very much care to prove that they are the father, but for different reasons than in Western history. (Also, lots of ways to try to cheat the system and thus the various means to thwart and discourage such cheats.)
That doesn't force the issue of marriage one way or the other or to any particular degree. Instead, there are probably different sects within the religion that have very definite ideas about marriage or lack of it, around what they see as the best way to establish who are first-class citizens. At the very least, you've got those that have had children, those that are thought to have had children by their peers but can't prove it, those that are thought to be capable of producing children but haven't yet, those suspected of being incapable, and those known to be incapable. Of the latter, they may be effectively slaves not because slaves are castrated but because the castrated can't rise any higher.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 05, 2021, 11:02:38 AM
You might consider an adapted version of the Heinlein idea in Starship Troopers, where the only way to get "citizenship" is to enroll in one of the services. Only in your case, the only way to get the fantasy equivalent of citizenship is to procreate. There's a subtle bias towards woman inherent in that, since it is easier for the woman to prove that she is the mother. That does bring back in the idea that males very much care to prove that they are the father, but for different reasons than in Western history. (Also, lots of ways to try to cheat the system and thus the various means to thwart and discourage such cheats.)
That doesn't force the issue of marriage one way or the other or to any particular degree. Instead, there are probably different sects within the religion that have very definite ideas about marriage or lack of it, around what they see as the best way to establish who are first-class citizens. At the very least, you've got those that have had children, those that are thought to have had children by their peers but can't prove it, those that are thought to be capable of producing children but haven't yet, those suspected of being incapable, and those known to be incapable. Of the latter, they may be effectively slaves not because slaves are castrated but because the castrated can't rise any higher.
It seems like that might be a really hard system to track and verify. It seems like a required tithe to the church, subsequently used in part to fund motherhood, might be easier and more beneficial. I guess it also opens the door for what citizenship entails.
Medieval Chivalry was already deeply connected to the veneration of Mary, which was something almost all the orders of religious knights engaged in pretty seriously. It also had the code of Chivalric love, ostensibly a chaste love meant to show great veneration to damsels and ladies.
Quote from: RPGPundit on January 05, 2021, 11:01:55 PM
Medieval Chivalry was already deeply connected to the veneration of Mary, which was something almost all the orders of religious knights engaged in pretty seriously. It also had the code of Chivalric love, ostensibly a chaste love meant to show great veneration to damsels and ladies.
Are we allowed to talk about that? After all, the hobby has a 40-year history of Christophobia ...
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AMMorality is invented by the alpha males of a society. Women become the morality that they create, and beta males, the majority of males in a society, must rise to the moral standard set by women as a reproductive strategy, otherwise they don't gain sexual access to women (that is to say, most men are actually submissive to women).
Within the space of two sentences, you claim both that morality is invented by alpha males, AND that morality is created by women. You can't have both.
Quote from: Premier on January 06, 2021, 10:36:41 AM
Quote from: Cloyer Bulse on January 05, 2021, 05:13:31 AMMorality is invented by the alpha males of a society. Women become the morality that they create, and beta males, the majority of males in a society, must rise to the moral standard set by women as a reproductive strategy, otherwise they don't gain sexual access to women (that is to say, most men are actually submissive to women).
Within the space of two sentences, you claim both that morality is invented by alpha males, AND that morality is created by women. You can't have both.
Morality, in part, helps to constrain the behavior of both women and alpha males. That isn't all that morality does, but in most civilized societies morality puts limits on both.
Quote from: Bren on December 31, 2020, 05:07:54 PM
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.
I fully support Bren's idea. The Pendragon way or the highway !
Quote from: ShieldWife on January 05, 2021, 10:26:07 AM
In some smaller groups, where marriage as is practiced in the major civilizations is unusual, sometimes a mother receives help not from her baby's father but from her brothers. The uncles are the paternal figure in a child's life rather than the biological father and those uncles can (evolutionarily) feel confident that they are helping their own genes in their kinship to their sisters. Of course, groups that do this are small and for the most part didn't develop full fledged civilization like more patriarchal groups did. Is that because there is some disadvantage to this kind of arrangement? Probably so, but just because there are some disadvantages doesn't mean that it is impossible.
Actually, you DO see shades of this in Medieval society.
Maternal uncles were common choices for fosterage (if a young man needs to learn how to fight, receiving training from a warrior uncle is a common way in fiction; as the uncle can go harder on the protagonist than the father could before looking like a jackass) and for looking after nieces and nephews whose parents have died precisely because their kinship is absolutely assured in an era where fatherhood couldn't be decisively proven (maternal aunts were a close second, but given the patriarchal society an uncle was more likely to have the means of supporting you and "sister's kid" provides motivation while the head of the household being asked to support his "wife's sister's kid" doesn't have the "genetic imperative" and so tends to come up more when the desire is for the child to be subject to injustice by their relatives).
Quote from: ShieldWife on January 05, 2021, 10:26:07 AM
That is certainly possible. I forgot to address the Praetorian Guard question before. I want the priestesses of this church to have some magical ability, but I want it to be relatively rare and subtle, as it is a lowish magic setting, with a few exceptions. Would these guards need to be pressed into loyalty through magic? Not necessarily. Even witnessing a few "miracles" could make them very devout, especially if their upbringing and subculture encourages it. Are such military forces always a danger of taking over the organization they protect? I'm not sure, but it seems like frequently they don't. It depends on a number of complex factors. If there are other influential military forces at play or if the people are highly opinionated on the issue then it may be hard for a bodyguard force to control an organization like a church. I think maybe full fledged control or queen making might be a bit too drastic, but I could see these knights (I need a name for them) having some influence on the church especially if other factions are at odds - where these guys side could be crucial factor. There is also the issue of how centralized or decentralized these warriors are. If they are very decentralized, even factionalized, then they may have trouble unifying to exert that kind of control and may in fact hold each other in check.
Leaving aside the real-world controversies, I think a big question is how would the matriarchal society be different from historical chivalry?
I gave some ideas earlier that were more about looking a bit like what are traditionally bad guys in fantasy (witches). A different model might be the Haudenosaunee society (aka Iroquois). They had a strong military society - but they were matrilocal, where a husband would go to live with his wife's clan. Each extended family would live in a long house and organize around that. Males were still dominant in most of war and government - but in a fantasy parallel, women might have more of a primary role.
Among them, there were parallel government structures - a council of men and a council of women. They had strictly defined spheres of influence - so being matrilocal, clan and house were governed by the women, while other issues were governed by the men.
With religious and magical power, a version of this could exist with women being more powerful. For example, women's councils could be in charge of strategy and treaties, even if men are still charged with the tactics and fighting. Given a strong religious belief, the treaties and strategy might revolve around rare magic and soothsaying.
As for what might be different about a code of chivalry... For one, there might be more focus on families as units to judge and interact with, rather than individuals. So if a young man misbehaves, the family might be punished for raising him wrong and/or failing to control him. That puts more emphasis and responsibility on child-rearing.