About House Valentione...

[Chewy2nd]

Actually there are no dukes in England. They have earls instead. But the wife of an earl is a duchess.

Despite having a degree in this stuff I have never been able to figure that one out.

There is Dukes, Prince Phillip himself is the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Andrew is the Duke of York, Prince Richard is the Duke of Gloucester, and Prince Edward is the Duke of Kent. The next in line, Prince Charles is the Duke of both Cornwall and Rothesay, Queen Elizabeth II herself is the Duke of Lancaster. Though to be fair, I only know about the Princes having second titles due to being British myself, lol.

[Celvantis]

Monarchy and nobility is kinda my thing, but everything been answered already.

yes, Duke is the highest form of nobility. (Monarchs being royal rather then noble, theocracy aside).
Dukes report directly to the sovereign in return for management of a area for the sovereign and under them is a complex tree of nobles who run even smaller patches of land for them.

Normally lesser nobles report to the one above in the structure, being the bannerman as stated.

The counts we have met thus far -may- well be bannerman to dukes in the city who control the house, and land (which most seemed to of lost anyway....) who would be bannermen to the Archbishop.

For house Valentione, means they could be anywhere in what is a large and complex system that may well have a hundred noble houses of various ranks, but as a lesser noble (being lower then a count, and even counts are sneered at on a sovereign level) they have only the power of that rank, which is this case is near jack all.

This does change from country to country, but the basic structure remains similar.
Under the duke is a Marquess (which not all countries have, england doesn't but france did.) Under a Marquess, is a count or in England that being the equal rank of a Earl (which has no female form and thus is a countess.), Then Viscount and right at the very bottom of the stucture is a Baron. Normally a baron doesn't have any clout to meet with anyone of any real importance.

Historically Knight had been linked to being a form of lower nobility under the normal structure, but has been linked more recently with being a chivalric order which seems to be the case with Ishgard.

[FJerome]

There is Dukes, Prince Phillip himself is the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Andrew is the Duke of York, Prince Richard is the Duke of Gloucester, and Prince Edward is the Duke of Kent. The next in line, Prince Charles is the Duke of both Cornwall and Rothesay, Queen Elizabeth II herself is the Duke of Lancaster. Though to be fair, I only know about the Princes having second titles due to being British myself, lol.

We've got non-royal Dukes, too, the Duke of Bedford and such, but I think Shadygrove typoed and meant "Count". We have Earls instead of Counts in the English/Scottish/British peerage systems, though confusingly we do have Countesses.* (Ask me about suo jure Countesses, if you dare.)

As for Dzemael, he mentions that the Count existed several generations ago, which may be the solution to this - it could have been the highest title Dzemael held at the time and they've since been elevated to a Dukedom. That's not completely unusual in a peerage system, most of them feature some form of power-creep. Dukedoms did use to be only for members of the royal family here and the rank of Marquess took a couple of centuries to evolve after some of the Earls became Marcher Lords.

[Anonymoose]

As for Dzemael, he mentions that the Count existed several generations ago, which may be the solution to this - it could have been the highest title Dzemael held at the time and they've since been elevated to a Dukedom.

Interestingly, both the previous Count Dzemael and current Count Dzemael are referred to by various NPCs. In fact, the guard I quoted, whose father had the same name and also served the count? His son, same name again, currently works as a Culinarian at Costa del Sol and says:

<sigh> Sometimes I question if opening the Flying Shark was the right decision. But if I wasn't bowing and scraping to some pretentious Ul'dahn mechant, I reckon I'd be doing the same to Count Dzemael. That may have suited my father and grandfather, but I've aspirations for a better life.

What gets me is the lower-case instance; those sworn of House Dzemael have sworn to "protect the count's lands."