THE NOBILITY

The nobility is the upper echelon of society. Every nation, autocratic, democratic, or theocratic, has a nobility or an equivalent rank, and they make up roughly one per cent of the world’s total population. Controlling three quarters of the world’s wealth, they are proud peoples, and they often discriminate against those who are not nobles, including the common aristocracy, which is made up of burghers, merchants, politicians, and officers. However, even within the nobility, it is fractious. Since the end of the First Calamity, the merits of men often led to their elevation to the nobility regardless of previous status if the head of state willed it. This has led to an increase in social mobility and tensions between the old and new regimes. As a result, many nobles do everything in their power to oust their young rivals, from using political division, monopolisation of markets, and giving suicidal orders on the battlefield to outright assassination. However, some prefer to use more cunning means. The nobility have no control if they have no support from the people, and one of the ways that a new noble garners support is by awarding wealth to his or her people that they know old nobles would never do. Such awards can come in the form of physical gifts like coin and estates or non-material gifts like titles and shares in a company. Hence, the new regime has become able to vie with the old regime in recent decades over control within a nation.

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