Ishgard's military

[Haprimac]

snippo

Let's see if I got this right. So, to summarize:

- A commoner can become a dragoon, especially if their parents are killed by dragons or a dragoon adopts the orphan.
- A commoner can become a knight of the High Houses if they kill a dragon and bring proof of the deed.
- A commoner could technically become part of Heaven's Ward if they graduate from Scholasticate and are chosen over the nobles? Think there was something about only certain amount of people that were chosen by the Vault. Need to check on that...

- Armed commoners are frowned upon except the Dragonslayers who keep to themselves. (This slowly changes after Stephanivien's efforts.)
- Nobles are expected to become knights.
(... Reminds me. What about Francel? Stephanivien and Laniaitte - who works at Sea of Clouds - are expected to be knights by the Count.)
- High Houses are known to take wards, especially Haillenarte.


What I still want to know:

- How do knights of the High Houses identify themselves as? This probably isn't right at all, but do they add "de Haillenarte" or somesuch to their names as well?
- The ranking system... Is it any way similar to GC? I think the hyur at Falcon's Nest was called liutenant, but I'm not 100% sure.
- Who become temple knights? Just your avarage nobles that aren't part of the four High Houses? That can't be right, though... Aymeric and Estinien were shown to wear temple knight gear in one of the short stories. Or was the whole Dragonslaying thing so that they could become temple knights instead of catch the attention of the four High Houses?

[Khalithar]

Snip

Damn, forums ate my post, it was a good one to. This one won't be as good but I'll do my best!


As far as Francel goes, he still appears to be on the young side and in the Scholasticate we see nobleborn men and women alongside commoners. So it is my belief that the Ishgardian nobles have a choice of either becoming knights or priests, however in various parts of Ishgard we see some noblewomen mention their relatives or their sons and how they died fighting the dragons. So for the girls I believe the expectation is that they will become knights or priests and/or pop out kids to continue Ishgard's legacy. Steph's dad views his son's whole manufactory/engineering thing as just a bad hobby or a phase he's going through and at first clearly expects him to eventually outgrow it and become a knight even if Steph says straight out that's not very good with a sword or whield.

It also appears that the Ishgardians don't have a problem with their nobles marrying regardless of profession, in the Drk storyline we learn that an Inquisitor got married and had a daughter, it appears to be perfectly acceptable to them so their clergy clearly doesn't have any kind of expectation of chastity or anything like that.

As for the Knights identifying themselves, it appears that visually that's with done with armor and they address each other and introduce themselves as "ser" or "lord." With the whole "de Fortemps" and "de Haillenarte," I believe that is meant to identify them as being part of the "main" bloodline of the House. When it comes to the ranking system, I'd say no, it wouldn't be anything like the GC system, based on how Ishgard's noble Houses are and what we see, the ruling Lord of the House appears to be the first and last word on issues.

Based on that I believe the authority flows downwards, that is to say, the Lord holds absolute power and it's up to him to assign the soldiers. Count Edmont acts as ruler of his house and Artoirel is his second in command, I assume that nobles would assign a group of soldiers and would (ideally) choose their leaders based on that person's abilities and skills. In the fishing storyline from 50-60 for example you learn that a noble house has two sons, an older and a younger, once the older one disappears the younger one becomes a cruel tyrant and is basically running the house in to the ground but because of his authority no one can stop him.

So for the commoners proving themselves, it's my belief that a commoner that shows themself to be a capable dragonslayer will most likely receive a field promotion from their commanding noble, whoever that may be. So for the commoners to receive a promotion, I'd call it a Dragonslaying Meritocracy with the ones showing themselves to be the most talented being given command. For the nobles I imagine there's a whole layer of infighting, toadying, and politics that we don't really see on the surface.

For the Temple Knights, first thing I'd say is that based on Ishgard's highly political culture, there wouldn't be any unaligned noble families, it's my belief that they would all have to declare their loyalty to a house for their own survival. As for who becomes Temple Knights, we're not really given a clearcut answer to that and we don't meet many that really explain it. Aymeric for example was a bastard child rumored to be son of Pope Thordan, but despite that bloodline he was described as having displayed skill and talent from a young age and his position was earned despite him presumably having no ties to any noble family (that we know of), once again showing me that a lot of Ishgard is meritocracy based.

That leads me to believe that anyone, commoner or noble, could become a Temple Knight if they show sufficient skill. Since the Temple Knights act as the arm of the church though, my first guess would be that those that are particularly attracted to join would be those that want to serve Halone/the church directly rather than answer to the four noble houses. Since worship of Halone is so deeply ingrained in their culture, I'm of the opinion that a lot martially inclined Ishgardians that are really pious would jump at the chance to serve the church directly. Also, since Aymeric was a bastard child that rose to such a place of prominence, I could definitely imagine some commoners would see it as a way to rise in power without being subject to the whims of the noble families.

Edit:

Snip

I wouldn't say the Inquisition is a "secret" police. They are very visible and every Ishgardian seems to be aware of them. The Drk's also don't really hold the people to the noble's laws, the dark knights appear to act out of their own sense of moral codes, we learn the first one murdered a priest that was a pedophile, even though it was an open secret, there was no "real" evidence to that effect but he did it anyway. You also learn from Sidurgu that the drk that taught him slaughtered a bunch of Ishgardian knights that were murdering the innocents in Sidurgu's village. The dark knights operate outside of any real law and act on their individual sense of morals, I generally hate analogies but in this case, the dark knights are supposed to be like Batman, operating outside of the law to do the right thing.