I'm not suggesting one has to accept, there's a reason its a two-way decision. But dismissing them because 'who are you?' is much different than saying 'you are below my station' if thats applicable, or 'this is not a good time, im leading a battle tomorrow, lets do this later', or 'your family is too dishonourable for me to engage in', or 'i owe your uncle a blood debt, so until i honour that familial debt, i refuse to kill his nephew', or 'the judge says duels are illegal and i follow the law', or 'my religion does not approve of this duel', or 'i ate an orange, and a frog told me to refuse your duel', or 'you have refused to swear fealty to the noble hierarchy and thus i do not consider you worthy of dueling until you do so', or 'you challenge everyone to a duel for the slightest prevarication, ill not be the strawman you vent yourself upon, go attack an actual strawman' et cetera.
Estateless nobles are relatively rare amongst our creme de la creme of nobility, and estateless nobles usually lack the gold income to fund swordskill (unless they had done so previously). Point is that the player characters are the top nobility that are elligible and worthy enough to become lords, dukes, councillors, or rulers, whether they actually do so or not. Dismissing them as a nobody smacks of treating those eligible, worthy nobility as less than they are. And *that* should get a duel request.
Viva la revolucion de nobilitie unlanded contra nobilitie royal!
I agree that there is an imbalance of swordskill and rank within BM, particularly with ex-advy nobility, and some use that to be overly aggressive in duel challenges.
