Landed nobles like to have "an heir and a spare". Most people with "Lord" or "Lady" in front of their name are actually spares. Their income follows the
same general guidelines as commoners.
, but with their advanced educations and preferential treatment, their income tends to skew towards the high end of the spectrum.
But what about those with land and titles?
Most of their income from a lord or lady's personal demense and a small amount of their income comes from crown duties, scuttage and the milking of royal perks, especially
the hosting of retinues.
A personal demesne
In most cases, title holding lords or ladies gets the dragon's share of his income from his personal demense.
In feudalism, the king or queen has dukes and duchesses that rule large swaths of territory in the name of the monarch. The Dukes and duchesses have counts and countesses that rule swaths of territory in the name of their duke and the counts and countesses have barons and baronesses who rule their land in the name of their count.
With so much land being ruled by someone else in the name of someone else, things can get confusing but a lord's personal demesne is
his. He gains all the income from it and he has to pay all the expenses for the demesne. This means he has to pay the workers or at least feed them and handle any day-to-day issues in his demesne.
Frequently this mean a lord rules over farmland and collects the surplus crops from the peasants or serfs working the land.
But many lords own other things instead of or in addition to farmlands. This includes mines, timberland, fisheries,
reagents growth, hunting grounds and urban centers.
Taxes in urban centers
are complicated enough to warrant a separate article, but for everything else, the lord of demesne usually collects
all of the produce of the land and has to pay
all the workers and expenses. Whatever is left is over is what the lord gets to keep. This means if the local ruler is an incompetant manager or otherwise hits a rough patch, one can easily find lords and ladies deep in debt even if they appear wealthy and prosperous to casual onlookers.
Crown Duties and scuttage
A crown duty is effectively the closest thing Scarterra has to an income tax and it only impacts landed nobles. Effectively a count owes the duke a percentage of his income and the duke owes the king a portion of his net income.
Usually this is pretty small, sometimes non-existant. typically ranging from 0-10%. Given how limited a lord is in his ability to audit vassals, it is not especially hard for a noble to underreport his income. This is part of the reason crown duties are usually pretty small. It is gauche for a duke to lie about his income if he is only being charged a 2% crown duties.
In this way a king or other other high level ruler can keep tabs on which of his vassals are doing and which are struggling.
Under feudalism, every level of the hiearchy is obligated to provide military service to the level above them when called upon. Sometimes, a lord can pay scuttage, which is money given in terms of military service.
A few stingy kings and rulers charge a small scuttage for every year of peace time where military service is not called on, but usually scuttage is only invoked during times of war, in which case scuttage can be very high indeed, ranging anywhere from 20% to 50% of a lord's net annual income.
Knights
Knights, Samurai, Guardians,
Talon and Fang Warriors whatever you call them knights are usually elite warriors either of noble blood or have otherwise ennobled for their great deeds.
In Scarterra, they don't have to be cavalry warriors though many are. As a rule of thumb, landed knights usually have a small desmense capable of generating enough income to hypothetically replace their weapons, armor, and mount once a year. This ranges between 600 and 2000 silver pieces a year for the full spectrum of struggling knights to very wealthy knights.
though it most cases they spend this money other things.
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