Thoughts on the Ynnraile government

[Yvain Wintersong]

On the wiki, I listed the Barony's theme as "Celtic/Arthurian". So for the government, I could just have lots of knights at a big round table, plus a wise and powerful sovereign (myself), but Ari's Straylight stuff has inspired me to try to be a little more interesting.

So I got to thinking - how would that sort of thing work in the modern day? How might a modern country have knights, quests, and the like?

At the top of Ynnraile's government is myself, the Baron. I appoint the Barony's greatest citizens - the brightest, most virtuous, most dedicated - as our knights. There are usually fewer than a hundred knights at any one time, and sometimes as few as twenty or thirty. Usually, before become knights, they were scientists, businessmen, priests, or some other profession in which they excelled and caught my eye.

The knights do not have a fixed government post. Indeed, aside from a few absolute necessities, Ynnraile doesn't have a fixed government at the Baronial level. Instead, the knights wander the land (by horse, car, train, or whatever other method they prefer) searching for wrongs to be redressed. Once they find something, they settle down and start redressing it. Each knight has access to a part of the Barony's treasury, and with it they can hire staff, buy supplies, and fund relatively large undertakings. They also enjoy the right to declare new laws on a very small scale (usually at the village level, or to tell single people or corporations what they may or may not do) and to waive or ignore most Baronial laws when it suits them to do so. Their projects may range from hunting down a cell of criminals to improving soil fertility to constructing a new transport corridor - whatever strikes them as most important.

Some knights stay in Avakair, the capital, and wait for problems to arise. When a petitioner comes to the Baron with a grievance, the Baron dispatches those knights to see what they can do.

At the end of the year, the knights meet in Avakair and discuss their progress with the Baron. The Baron may choose to increase or decrease the resources available to each knight, as well as the trust and esteem in which he holds him/her, and the fame which that knight receives in the Baronial media. It is very rare for a knight to be de-knighted, but can happen if the knight grossly violates moral codes.

The end result is that the government of Ynnraile lacks any semblance of bureaucracy. Any problems that exist are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and any problem that doesn't bother anyone enough that they complain about it is not dealt with at all. Non-criminal trials (such as lawsuits) are extremely informal affairs, based mostly on both sides telling the nearest knight what they think, and the nearest knight saying what he thinks they should do about it (and enforcing his opinion, if need be). Lawyers are not officially banned, but no knight in several centuries has put up with them during a case.

The paucity of fixed laws originally attracted libertarians and capitalists from around Shireroth, but they soon found that if they, for example, built factories with substandard working conditions, a knight would come along, notice, and demand that they improve them. If they built a casino, and the people who lost money at the casino ended up regretting it, they would usually petition a knight, who would observe its effect on the local community and decide whether or not to shut it down. The end result was that the conditions in Ynnraile ended up being similar to the conditions in most other places, but with less fuss.

This system has several holes in it and I probably would not recommend it for any real country, but I think it will be more interesting to develop than writing about your standard democratic-republic.

[hypatias mom]

Shades of Don Quixote, but with real problems to redress. I like it!