Does anyone know of any battlemaster-esque republics and democracies that actually existed sometime in the medieval period? The only one I could think of was Ancient Rome, but that is hardly medieval.
Venice, and various other Italian city-states.
Quote from: Slapsticks on September 20, 2011, 03:42:54 AM
Does anyone know of any battlemaster-esque republics and democracies that actually existed sometime in the medieval period? The only one I could think of was Ancient Rome, but that is hardly medieval.
For democracy, I believe the model is Great Britain, post Magna Carta. Republics? Not sure, maybe the Byzantine Empire? Can't say. Allows us to RP realms like what might have existed had fragments of the roman empire continued to continue operating as they did but on a smaller scale somewhere, I guess.
You have many examples before, during and after the medieval times. Some of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthaginian_Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_city-states
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Genoa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_imperial_city
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Confederacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Commonwealth
Oh yea, Republic of Rus' might be a good example too.
Not quite sure how these republics worked, though, but now that he mentions it I do recall there being many examples, especially in central and eastern europe.
Most of those Republics like Venice, Poland-Lithuania and others worked whilst still being very aristocratic. Some of them wouldn't call themselves "republic" though, since the elected Kingship of Poland-Lithuania is very close to the elected Kingship of the Holy Roman Empire which in itself comes from the Germanic tribal law of Kingship. England was certainly not a republic or democracy of any real sort except during the period immediately after English Civil war of the 17th Century, which places it far out of the scope of Battlemaster (and even then they were really apprehensive about making themselves a republic).
The closest thing we have to democracy in battlemaster is Iceland. All the other entities in the list provided by JPierreD were either specifically aristocratically governed with a non-hereditary position such as Prince or were elected by a council of aristocrats/extremely wealthy merchants.
Also the election of Rurik to the Rus' is a very contentious topic, mainly due to the scrutiny placed upon the Primary Chronicle by the Russians who abhorred the idea that they would invite a foreigner, a Scandinavian no less, to rule them. From what I've read they only did this because they couldn't stop fighting amongst themselves. Considering that after Rurik the rulers of most Russian states are usually called "Rurikovich", I really doubt it became any kind of republic. Merovingian inheritence and tribal law and all that snazz.
Jake, we're talking Battlemaster-style democracies and republics, so yes, they should be aristocratic.
I know that is what we are talking about and there is no point at which I disagree with this point except for the relation between Battlemaster's democracies and real world medieval ones. Only Iceland and Ancient Athens come close to what that is, since the Italian city states and Imperial free cities, the next best thing we can find to them, had councils which elected their syndics, doges and princes. This is taking into account the early forms of democracy in the modern age which restricted suffrage to those who had either a certain threshold of land ownership or wealth.
Battlemaster Republics closely mirror medieval republics. Battlemaster Kingship closely mirrors Germanic Tribal kingship, which has numerous similarities to the idea of a republic in that you have a number of voters who are representative of the interests/duchies/chief groups of the kingdom.
Unless we're willing to consider BM as an abstraction of the political process rather then the process itself.
Oddly enough something like the Papal States might be the best example of this, as in practice it was a quasi-democratic system. Functionally England could also be considered a republican monarachy by BM standards.