I dont understand how nobles and nobility in general works and fare compared with the common people, other races, and other institutions, like the clergy and wizards. It is difficult for me, because of my personality, to understand how a persona can wield that kind of power, and how people can obey them, why they dont rebel against it?

So i ask to everyone, how does nobility acts and thinks, what are their beliefs, and to what extent does thier blood matters in the empire in general, since most of the time it seems that the empiere survives despite them, more than thanks to them. Any books of references will be very useful as well, if anyone can mention any. I cant wait until the release of the Slaneesh expansion Thanks to all!

oh sorry, also any info about ulrican nobles or nobles from middenlan and middenheim, will be particulary useful.

dosan said:

Power Behind the Throne

It is a part of the campaign for Warhammer's first edition. The whole book resolves about and around the nobles and cults in Middenheim. You should be able to find it in eBay... or from other sources... It is definitely what you are searching for.

Have to second that quote from the Doc.

All useful info for Nobles and Middenheim can be found in there.

As for why they don't rebel. I'm afraid you need to look into the times a little. People in this setting and that time, have not had any education, have not been spoonfed the "you're a special snowflake and you can do anything you set your mind to", do not have ready access to news/books/..., don't have a great social network (if you get along with half the people in your village, you're a superstar).

You're basically scraping to get by, so upsetting the applecart is not something that is going to get you much personal gain.

Because of the lack of individualism, you are ever so much more a piece of a group/family/unity. If you leave your family, you're walking out on your parents that put so much effort into feeding/raising you. Same with a wife/kids/etc. So everybody you know & care for, live pretty much within 10 miles or less. They can all be "taken care of" by the noble if anything goes wrong.

Now imagine the guard has had nothing better to do than train for combat & patrol/handle hostile incidents, whereas you have spent the last 15 years working and trying to keep OUT of trouble.

Plus, not all nobles are bad news either. They usually have a vested interest in positively influencing trade/traffic, and providing the people with some sort of protection against robbers & thieves.

There is also the matter that to your average peasant the lines on a map don't mean much - if your current lord is conquered in a war the new lord will treat you no differently and in all likelihood very little will change about your life.

As to why the peasants don't raise up and throw down their masters ... where do you suppose they'll get the weapons and training from? If they don't have a lord to keep out raiders (or worse) what are your chances of making it through the next season - when you suddenly have to find time to protect yourself and tend your farms, both? Who among the citizenry remotely has the skill to handle the politics and keep the duchy next door from just marching in and taking the land for themselves. (especially considering how many peasants probably died in the uprising) How many peasants are brave or strong enough to pick up that pichfork and square off against a trained soldier? Who keeps your neighbor from killing you and your family to take your land?

Generally a peasant uprising just isn't worth the effort or the cost to the peasants doing it ... life is hard enough as it is, an uprising only makes things more complicated and miserable.

Rebellions rarely happen in middle-age/dark-age and even renniaasannsanncee RPG settings or the real world:

Peasants are too tired (15 hour workdays), too starved, too isolated; and nobles are dependent upon their uppers for their titles, lands, etc. It is a closed system.

Agitators in WFRP have a great place, but they too are still fighting that uphill battle and they know it. I'd call the "agitator" the ancient ancestor of facebook, but even his pamphlets and cries are drown out by a peasant's hunger, family, and the regular diseased misery of their short lives.

The average lifespan in the middle ages in the real world was something like 39. I'd say shorter in the WFRP setting as there are REAL monsters too. That doesn't leave a lot of time between raising, starving, fighting disease, fighting pests in the crops 15 hours a day, etc.

Emirikol said:

Thank you, I get so sick of hearing people repeat this misconception that the average age was 20 - unless you're averaging every infant death into that number to skew the results the truth is people could, and did, live to middle age.

All this is really interesting!! I love history, but it is difficult for me to understand why people where so easy to control in the middle ages. I see Warhammer similar to the reinassance time in history, so for me is difficult to understand the way of the nobles and the common folk. I will be and agitator if i existed in the warhammer setting, and a true radical, even embracing chaos just for making change. Why the Empire survives despite itself is something i still wonder...

dosan said:

You need look no further than The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America in 1776 for an answer, "all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

You should note that even during the "enlightened" period of the rennaissance, most of the major figures still came from well bred families. Very few people fought their way up from the bottom of the pile.

As for, "how could such a barbaric system thrive"? Two reasons.

One, as has been so excellently explained here, the peasentry are given very little in the way of means to resist their lords. You should note that plenty of rebellions start when environmental circumstances take that which they had been reliant on away.

Two, the early modern and medieval gorverment system is not a system of supporting the people, it is a system of supporting warfare. A complex system of patronage, titles and benefits that make sure that when the call for war is made, nobles across an otherwise disparate and seperated Empire will see fit to raise troops and send them into the feild. They do so for their own benefit, but the levies are nonetheless sent. It's hardly perfect, but it's a competent enough means of developing a coherent defence of the realm.