History for RPG - Part I - Sacred Kingship
INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY FOR RPG
I'm going to start out a new series, called History for RPG. The goal will be to use my knowledge in history (up to PhD) to present small historical capsule. But since historical capsule by themselves are dime a dozen (and anybody can wikipedia things), I will bring it one step further: I'm going to make sure anybody can understand it AND provide a feature for D&D. It can be an NPC, a class, a class feature, a quest hook, a location, and so on. I hope this will be both useful for people to learn about things AND provide good gameable content.
For any historian, anthropologist or anybody coming from social science, I ask in advance to be gentle: I am trying here to simplify everything. I will not be backing my claims, making footnotes, explaining complex terms or anything. I'm just describing stuff, wikipedia like, to provide content for RPGs.
Introduction - Sacred Kingship
This Part I will focus on lndo-European kingship ideology through an analysis of royalty societal function and its tutelary ritual, the sacrifice of the horse. More precisely, I will explain the link between the function of the king in the ritual and his function in society as a mediator and tutelary figure of the tripartite ideology. I will look at three particular culture (Vedic, Irish and Roman) and it is based on my own personal research (you can find my Master Thesis on the subject on the internet if you can read french). My approach allowed me to highlight the links between the domestication of the horse, the prestigious and symbolic role of the king and the role of sacrifice in maintaining social harmony. I believe this will be of use for people that have culture influenced by Indo-European cultures and any of those with polytheistic background using kingship. I chose this subject first because I did my university studies on that particular subject.
Just to set the stage for the blogpost: Indo-Europeans are a loosely defined abstract group of culture that existed within prehistory. I will not get into the rabbit hole of "does it exist? where do they come from? is it legit?" and so on. What I'll say is that there are a lot of evidence from history linguistics, archeology and comparative mythology that points out to groups of "people" across Eurasia that shared culture in various form. Because culture (including here language and mythology) is structured by ideology and also structures in return ideology, we generally look for crosscultural pattern, generally in mythology, to find socio-cultural structures to determine how they tought, behaved and became. We will be using Georges Dumézil a lot in this text, and he defines himself the ideology (taken here not in the political sense but as "ideo-logy") that he studied from the Indo-European as being "the inventory of directive ideas that command reflexion and conduct within a society".
This blogpost will be divided in four main sections: I will speak about the tripartite structure of Indo-European ideology, the symbolic kingship, the horse sacrifice (the most important ritual we have from kingship), and finally what to make of it in a D&D game.
Section I - Tripartite Structure
One of the main ideological structure that was studied extensively by Dumézil is the "tripartite structure". For him, there would have been three "functions" (social function, or mode of existence): the first function, or the sovereignty-justice-religion-magic-spiritual authority function (1F from now on); the second function, or the warrior-combat-vitality-action-temporal power function (2F from now on); and the third function, or the production-fertility-subsistance-prosperity function (3F from now on). Schjodt (1996) says that this tripartite functionality, as an ideology, "may be an dieal and a means to analyze the forces which secure the course of the world and human life" for those people.
You can see this in various depiction or mythological story. For example, the capitoline triad of Rome with Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus (respectively 1F, 2F and 3F). Or even in the medieval time with the cleric order, military order and third estate in the famous oratores bellatores laboratores (those who pray, those who fight, those who labor).
1F is linked with sovereignty and cult first and foremost. This is why it is linked, in those culture that extended the ideological structure to the social structure, to priests class such as brahman (Vedic) or druid (Celtic), or at least priestly role, such as the flamen (Rome). In mythology, it is generally associated with magical divinity or kingly figure, such as Varuna (Vedic) or Odinn (Germanic). It is also associated with divine contract, such as with Mitra/Mithra (in ancient Persian, there is a linguistic link between the divinity Mithra and the word for "contract").
2F is linked with war, strength and willpower. It is an highly independant function and is sometimes even at odd with the 1F. Since most societies organized their fighting force, it is more easily seen: any soldiers, warriors, knights, etc. is part of the 2F. Some societies even separated or segregated them symbolically from the rest of their world because of this: roman soldiers were camping outside Rome in ancient times. In terms of divinity it's quite simple: Thor, Mars, and so on.
3F is fertility and fecondity, linked with the craftsman, the peasant, the herdsman and so on. It also encompass beauty, love, sensuality, riches, and so on. Freyr and Freya (Germanic) are good representatives.
(I wanted to put up a Cu Chulainn picture, but he seems to have been stolen by weebs and I couldn't find anything worthwile)
Section II - Symbolic Kingship
In some particular Indo-European descendant culture, the king was a chieftain, or simply a warlord (hence its strong association with the 2F). But what is interesting for us here is what he might have been in the ideology of the Indo-Europeans (whether or not this ideology was put into practice everywhere at all time within that culture is something else).
From his linguistic root, we find that he was link most likely with the verb "to stretch out" and "to right" (for english speaker it's easy to see, the word being (loosely written here) hreg)). In other language, there is a strong connotation with law and law-making (think of the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilus, that wrote the religious and social laws of the people).
The crux of my research was to show that the king, although he has a link with every F, especially 1F and 2F, is actually the epicenter of all those: he is inside and outside the structure because, symbolically, he maintains it (and therefore maintains society). This maintenance of the whole structure is also what is affecting the cosmos: this is why when the king is bad (metaphysically), the whole kingdom suffers. As they say in the movie Excalibur: "the land and the king are one".
He has both the temporal power and the spiritual authority. He is both judge and regulator of his cosmos, and his strength depends on his truth and justice, both represented by his humility towards the gods. If for the Indo-European, the man is at the center of the family, and the elder at the center of the community, and so on, then the king is at the center of the world, an axis mundi. He is a figure of totality (because it touches every aspect of the cosmos) and possess within himself something that attract, unite and bind all different aspect of human society.
Section III - Horse Sacrifice
The horse sacrifice then is one of his ritual (and one of the only we have traces) means to achieve this unity and binding with all the F and between heaven and earth. Let me first describe said ritual in its simplistic form from the Vedic case (we have proof from the Roman and Irish too, although in different form) from Mallory (1999, p. 135-136): « It began in the spring under the direction of four priests, acting under the patronage of the king who was dedicating the sacrifice to the divine representatives of his warrior class. A prized stallion was selected as the victim and after rituals initiating the ceremony, the stallion was set free to wander for an entire year, 400 warriors trailing behind to ensure that the course of the stail ion was neither interfered with nor that it had contact with mares. Ancillary rituals took place throughout the year until the horse was returned for the final three day finale. This involved, among other things, the horse pulling the king's chariot, a large sacrifice of variety of animals, and the smothering of the horse, after which the king's favorite wife 'co-habited' with the dead stallion under covers. The horse was then dismembered into three portions[ .. . ].»
By co-habiting, the author mean most likely a ritual/sexual relation between both. It's important to understand this is so: the horse is actually the king. This is why his bodyguard go with the king-horse for a year; why the king-horse is let loose for a year, determining his kingdom boundaries; why the king-horse can lay with the queen; and so on. I will not go into detail, but it has to do with the role of the queen (representing Sovereingty, i.e. a goddess version of the principle, therefore, the heaven) and the horse (a divine figure of both 2F and 3F).
The sacrifice in itself is about opening up a dialogue with all the party reunited: all the people of the land, but also heaven and earth. It's about performing an act of creating and recreating a social and cosmic order. It's about forming a divine contract that bears witness to the prosperity, peace and justice (the three positive offset of the three F) that the king represent.
Further Readings:
Conclusion - Content
What can we do with this ? Well from a theoritical or worldbuilding view, it has a lot of important points for anybody with a more polytheistic approach to their kingship. Kings were rarely "just kings". They always had a ritual role, whether it was this particular ritual or not. From a gaming perspective, I devised three things:
Quest hook: A local lord requires a mighty steed to perform his annual ritual sacrifice. It's important that it'd be pure white and migthy, or else the gods will get angry and the whole land will be cursed.
Location: Grassland location, atop a hill. A migthy magical stone that when touched, can tell prophecies of kings of old. If someone touches it, it will bestow a geas to perform something heroic in order to find the new king of the land. If accomplished, the stone will grant a magical diplomatic immunity (reaction roll bonus for diplomacy), great combat prowess and commune once per month with the gods.
Class feature:
I'm going to start out a new series, called History for RPG. The goal will be to use my knowledge in history (up to PhD) to present small historical capsule. But since historical capsule by themselves are dime a dozen (and anybody can wikipedia things), I will bring it one step further: I'm going to make sure anybody can understand it AND provide a feature for D&D. It can be an NPC, a class, a class feature, a quest hook, a location, and so on. I hope this will be both useful for people to learn about things AND provide good gameable content.
For any historian, anthropologist or anybody coming from social science, I ask in advance to be gentle: I am trying here to simplify everything. I will not be backing my claims, making footnotes, explaining complex terms or anything. I'm just describing stuff, wikipedia like, to provide content for RPGs.
Introduction - Sacred Kingship
This Part I will focus on lndo-European kingship ideology through an analysis of royalty societal function and its tutelary ritual, the sacrifice of the horse. More precisely, I will explain the link between the function of the king in the ritual and his function in society as a mediator and tutelary figure of the tripartite ideology. I will look at three particular culture (Vedic, Irish and Roman) and it is based on my own personal research (you can find my Master Thesis on the subject on the internet if you can read french). My approach allowed me to highlight the links between the domestication of the horse, the prestigious and symbolic role of the king and the role of sacrifice in maintaining social harmony. I believe this will be of use for people that have culture influenced by Indo-European cultures and any of those with polytheistic background using kingship. I chose this subject first because I did my university studies on that particular subject.
Just to set the stage for the blogpost: Indo-Europeans are a loosely defined abstract group of culture that existed within prehistory. I will not get into the rabbit hole of "does it exist? where do they come from? is it legit?" and so on. What I'll say is that there are a lot of evidence from history linguistics, archeology and comparative mythology that points out to groups of "people" across Eurasia that shared culture in various form. Because culture (including here language and mythology) is structured by ideology and also structures in return ideology, we generally look for crosscultural pattern, generally in mythology, to find socio-cultural structures to determine how they tought, behaved and became. We will be using Georges Dumézil a lot in this text, and he defines himself the ideology (taken here not in the political sense but as "ideo-logy") that he studied from the Indo-European as being "the inventory of directive ideas that command reflexion and conduct within a society".
This blogpost will be divided in four main sections: I will speak about the tripartite structure of Indo-European ideology, the symbolic kingship, the horse sacrifice (the most important ritual we have from kingship), and finally what to make of it in a D&D game.
One of the main ideological structure that was studied extensively by Dumézil is the "tripartite structure". For him, there would have been three "functions" (social function, or mode of existence): the first function, or the sovereignty-justice-religion-magic-spiritual authority function (1F from now on); the second function, or the warrior-combat-vitality-action-temporal power function (2F from now on); and the third function, or the production-fertility-subsistance-prosperity function (3F from now on). Schjodt (1996) says that this tripartite functionality, as an ideology, "may be an dieal and a means to analyze the forces which secure the course of the world and human life" for those people.
You can see this in various depiction or mythological story. For example, the capitoline triad of Rome with Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus (respectively 1F, 2F and 3F). Or even in the medieval time with the cleric order, military order and third estate in the famous oratores bellatores laboratores (those who pray, those who fight, those who labor).
1F is linked with sovereignty and cult first and foremost. This is why it is linked, in those culture that extended the ideological structure to the social structure, to priests class such as brahman (Vedic) or druid (Celtic), or at least priestly role, such as the flamen (Rome). In mythology, it is generally associated with magical divinity or kingly figure, such as Varuna (Vedic) or Odinn (Germanic). It is also associated with divine contract, such as with Mitra/Mithra (in ancient Persian, there is a linguistic link between the divinity Mithra and the word for "contract").
2F is linked with war, strength and willpower. It is an highly independant function and is sometimes even at odd with the 1F. Since most societies organized their fighting force, it is more easily seen: any soldiers, warriors, knights, etc. is part of the 2F. Some societies even separated or segregated them symbolically from the rest of their world because of this: roman soldiers were camping outside Rome in ancient times. In terms of divinity it's quite simple: Thor, Mars, and so on.
3F is fertility and fecondity, linked with the craftsman, the peasant, the herdsman and so on. It also encompass beauty, love, sensuality, riches, and so on. Freyr and Freya (Germanic) are good representatives.
(I wanted to put up a Cu Chulainn picture, but he seems to have been stolen by weebs and I couldn't find anything worthwile)
Section II - Symbolic Kingship
In some particular Indo-European descendant culture, the king was a chieftain, or simply a warlord (hence its strong association with the 2F). But what is interesting for us here is what he might have been in the ideology of the Indo-Europeans (whether or not this ideology was put into practice everywhere at all time within that culture is something else).
From his linguistic root, we find that he was link most likely with the verb "to stretch out" and "to right" (for english speaker it's easy to see, the word being (loosely written here) hreg)). In other language, there is a strong connotation with law and law-making (think of the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilus, that wrote the religious and social laws of the people).
The crux of my research was to show that the king, although he has a link with every F, especially 1F and 2F, is actually the epicenter of all those: he is inside and outside the structure because, symbolically, he maintains it (and therefore maintains society). This maintenance of the whole structure is also what is affecting the cosmos: this is why when the king is bad (metaphysically), the whole kingdom suffers. As they say in the movie Excalibur: "the land and the king are one".
He has both the temporal power and the spiritual authority. He is both judge and regulator of his cosmos, and his strength depends on his truth and justice, both represented by his humility towards the gods. If for the Indo-European, the man is at the center of the family, and the elder at the center of the community, and so on, then the king is at the center of the world, an axis mundi. He is a figure of totality (because it touches every aspect of the cosmos) and possess within himself something that attract, unite and bind all different aspect of human society.
Section III - Horse Sacrifice
The horse sacrifice then is one of his ritual (and one of the only we have traces) means to achieve this unity and binding with all the F and between heaven and earth. Let me first describe said ritual in its simplistic form from the Vedic case (we have proof from the Roman and Irish too, although in different form) from Mallory (1999, p. 135-136): « It began in the spring under the direction of four priests, acting under the patronage of the king who was dedicating the sacrifice to the divine representatives of his warrior class. A prized stallion was selected as the victim and after rituals initiating the ceremony, the stallion was set free to wander for an entire year, 400 warriors trailing behind to ensure that the course of the stail ion was neither interfered with nor that it had contact with mares. Ancillary rituals took place throughout the year until the horse was returned for the final three day finale. This involved, among other things, the horse pulling the king's chariot, a large sacrifice of variety of animals, and the smothering of the horse, after which the king's favorite wife 'co-habited' with the dead stallion under covers. The horse was then dismembered into three portions[ .. . ].»
By co-habiting, the author mean most likely a ritual/sexual relation between both. It's important to understand this is so: the horse is actually the king. This is why his bodyguard go with the king-horse for a year; why the king-horse is let loose for a year, determining his kingdom boundaries; why the king-horse can lay with the queen; and so on. I will not go into detail, but it has to do with the role of the queen (representing Sovereingty, i.e. a goddess version of the principle, therefore, the heaven) and the horse (a divine figure of both 2F and 3F).
The sacrifice in itself is about opening up a dialogue with all the party reunited: all the people of the land, but also heaven and earth. It's about performing an act of creating and recreating a social and cosmic order. It's about forming a divine contract that bears witness to the prosperity, peace and justice (the three positive offset of the three F) that the king represent.
Further Readings:
- David Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language: for archeological and linguistic reasoning behind Indo-European research, and horse findings (general)
- Georges Dumézil, everything he wrote basically: for comparative mythology, kingship and tripartite structure
- Mircea Eliade, Sacred and profane: to understand better in simplistic terms (although controversial from an academic perspective) how ancient people thought about symbolic interpretation of ritual and the efficiency of them within the cosmos
Conclusion - Content
What can we do with this ? Well from a theoritical or worldbuilding view, it has a lot of important points for anybody with a more polytheistic approach to their kingship. Kings were rarely "just kings". They always had a ritual role, whether it was this particular ritual or not. From a gaming perspective, I devised three things:
- A quest hook/adventure
- A location
- Class features for Figthing-Man
Quest hook: A local lord requires a mighty steed to perform his annual ritual sacrifice. It's important that it'd be pure white and migthy, or else the gods will get angry and the whole land will be cursed.
Location: Grassland location, atop a hill. A migthy magical stone that when touched, can tell prophecies of kings of old. If someone touches it, it will bestow a geas to perform something heroic in order to find the new king of the land. If accomplished, the stone will grant a magical diplomatic immunity (reaction roll bonus for diplomacy), great combat prowess and commune once per month with the gods.
Class feature:
- Upon reaching level 4 (Hero), the Fighting-Man receives a free warhorse companion. He will be always loyal and need not check morale. He will be able to feel what the player wants and vice-versa (not telepathy). Upon reaching level 6 (Myrmidon), the Figthing-Man can possess for one hour the spirit of the animal and be within it. While doing so, his body is unconscious on the ground. If the horse dies, the spirit return to the body. If the body dies, the spirit of both are destroyed.
- Upon reaching level 9 (Lord), the Fighting-Man can perform jointly with a Cleric of at least level 5 a special ceremony. To do this, he must protect a free roaming horse for 7 days while he himself meditate. When the horse comes back, it is rightfully sacrificed to the gods and they will grant (if they are agreeable and the power is not used more than once per year) to one of three request:
- Divine Boon: the Figthing-Man can use the Commune spell
- War Boon: an added bonus in a future mass battle or siege, generally in the form of favorable morale and weather
- Fertility Boon: can change weather, have a better crop/harvest or break a curse on the land
Well this was fun. I hope it will be useful. I'd be very interested to know if people like this format with both historical context and game content. Let me know in the comment please!
EDIT: In one of the earlier Dragon Magazine, there was a suggestion that level-ing up required a special ceremony and sacrifice to the gods. You could very well add that to obtrain level 9 as a Lord, this is what is require: a horse sacrifice.
EDIT: In one of the earlier Dragon Magazine, there was a suggestion that level-ing up required a special ceremony and sacrifice to the gods. You could very well add that to obtrain level 9 as a Lord, this is what is require: a horse sacrifice.
I really like that! Keep 'em coming
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure ! Next one will be on a totally different subject: a person in Late Antiquity. We'll see how it goes.
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