The Royal Court
The Court is Structure in the following heirarchy
—The King
—The King's Council of 7 one each from 7 different noble
families
—The Lord Commander of Arthedain's Army
—Prince Captain of the Royal Guard
—The Elector Princes
—The Seers and Guardians of the Palantíri
—Mentalists, Herbalists, and Alchemists
—Representative Artists, Artisans, Craftsmen, and Merchents, chosen by the
King's Council
—Court Historians and Record Keepers
—Lesser servants to the King and his Court
—Outside Lords and Ladies invited into the Court
Structure
The King's Council
It is composed of the heads (pl. "Hirereter"; sing.
"Hiraratar") of the seven principal families of the North
Kingdom, the Great Houses, each of whom owns considerable
property and maintains men-at-arms independent
of royal forces. With the threat of invasion, the Great
Houses traditionally put their forces at the disposal of the
King, although squabbling over rank and strategy is
common. The seven Great Houses are, in order of power:
the Tarmas, Ekettas, Orros, Hyarrs, Emeries, Foros, and
the Noirins.
Each Great House sports its own two-colored banner
and distinctive dress. Six of them draw their names from
areas of Númenor, from whence they fled with Elendil
before the Downfall, In contrast, the Eketta clan, the most
militant and ambitious, takes their name from a Dúnadan
weapon, the eket (a short stabbing sword).
The other noble families—with the exception of the
Tarma clan, who are also traditionally militaristic—view
the Ekettas with alarm. The Tarmas, as ambitious as the
Ekettas, have been intriguing for centuries to gain control
of the northern part of Siragalë, land adjacent to the
territories over which their fortress, Tarmabar, stands
guard. They are losing that struggle, because the Halflings,
settling the area the Tarmas' claim, prefer to look directly
to the King for whatever leadership they want or need.
Culture
Arthedain is a land of two laws, one royal
and the other noble. Lesser folk obey both;
while an appeal to royal justice to overrule
a lord's decision is possible, it is always
difficult and seldom safe. Each of the seven
Great Houses, whose leaders comprise the
King's Council, controls a substantial portion
of the North Kingdom's lands. Other
than granting the King's messengers the
right of way and heeding royal decrees that
directly affect them, each Great House is
like a small kingdom unto itself. Many of
the smaller fiefs have similar privileges.
Royal roads and the land beside them indisputably
belong to the King, but much of the
land rests in other hands.
The green and rolling lands of northern Siragalë, for
example, were, until Argeleb II's decree of 1601, claimed
by House Tarma, under title of grants and privileges made
by previous Kings and the Elves who actually had the legal
rule of the country. The Tarmas had done little to farm
the land, but did patrol it and granted great pieces of it to
their Knights, who in effect were disenfranchised by the
King and the Hobbits. Thus, the anger of the Tarmas is
more easily understood; to them, law and custom, as well
as their ambitions, had all been violated.
Servants, farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen residing in
a noble fiefdom will swear allegiance first to the King and
then to the House which both protects and governs them.
More so than in Fornost, the structure of government in
many of the fiefs is an authoritarian one. Towns and
villages are often free to choose their own local leaders,
and they are usually at odds with local lords over the extent
of each other's authority, balancing the noble's traditional
rights against the townsmen's charters and privileges. The
towns attract the more independent thinkers among the
Commons for this reason. In the countryside, for deciding
the simplest matters, such as when to harvest or who will
pay to replace a damaged fence, the lord or his officers
must be consulted.
Leader Title
Family Leader
Parent Organization
Related Ethnicities
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