World History Discussion

[Nanashi(kari)]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Five_X]

Octavian and Charlemagne were still violent conquerors who maintained their power and authority through violence. Charlemagne especially, unless you've forgotten about the Saxons, among other people.

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I'll admit Octavian brought stability after decades of civil war, but he was still a conqueror and a tyrant by definition.

I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just 'cause some moistened salad lobbed an adoption at me, they'd put me away!

[LegalLoliLover]

Weren't the older definitions of dictator and tyrant much less... pointed than the modern definitions?

[Kamera]

For the former yeah probably, for the latter not really.

[Theadier]

I join the discussion saying that my favorite emperor is Trajano, because he was born relatively close to the place where I live and because one of the considered best emperors had to be of Hispanic origin.

and if the title tyrant at least in classical Rome has much less negative nuances than those it obtained a posteriori.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Yeah, tyrant started as a neutral descriptor for a type of ruler, but then became a pejorative, though that pejorative has remained stable. Also, in a Roman context, I think you're mixing up tyrant and dictator. Tyrants were Greek, dictators were Roman.

[Five_X]

Except for Tyrannosaurus Rex, which has always been sick as hell.

[LegalLoliLover]

It's funny that "orthodox" history declares Yoshitsune (AKA Ushiwakamaru) has the good guy and the Taira as the bad guys, despite the fact that the only reason that Yoshitsune was even able to fight the Taira was because Kiyomori spared their lives to begin with. As I mentioned before, in these settings, you don't become the "bad guy" by doing things considered "evil" nowadays, such as the killing of women, children, and other civilians. You become the "bad guy" by not giving a shit about conventions, such as respecting (Buddhist) monk and emperor. Of course, if you have the power and like salt, you can always double down on your "blasphemies" by calling yourself the Demon King, like Nobu did, but that's only if you have some sort of "edge" that essentially makes you invincible against most of your opponents of the time. In the case of Nobu, it was guns and (a mild interest in a different) God.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Except for Tyrannosaurus Rex, which has always been sick as hell.

True, especially with feathers.

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It's funny that "orthodox" history declares Yoshitsune (AKA Ushiwakamaru) has the good guy and the Taira as the bad guys, despite the fact that the only reason that Yoshitsune was even able to fight the Taira was because Kiyomori spared their lives to begin with. As I mentioned before, in these settings, you don't become the "bad guy" by doing things considered "evil" nowadays, such as the killing of women, children, and other civilians. You become the "bad guy" by not giving a shit about conventions, such as respecting (Buddhist) monk and emperor. Of course, if you have the power and like salt, you can always double down on your "blasphemies" by calling yourself the Demon King, like Nobu did, but that's only if you have some sort of "edge" that essentially makes you invincible against most of your opponents of the time. In the case of Nobu, it was guns and (a mild interest in a different) God.

Nobunaga was just competent, not invincible. The only reason he beat the Uesugi, Takeda, and latter Hōjō is because he outlived their great daimyo and was able to take advantage of their successors' relative mediocrity.

Also, of course the conventional historiography places the Genji as the good guys, since they and their supporters wrote the history of the Genpei Wars, no?

[LegalLoliLover]

Yes, given that Nobunaga got Caesar'd, he was obviously not literally invincible, but stuff that was previously lauded as powerful, such as the Takeda Cavalry and the much large Imagawa army, were defeated surprisingly easily.
Well, I certainly agree with your last part, in that the winner is generally the ones who write history. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, which makes the losers the good guys, but that might just be an author's choice, given that Luo Guanzhong simped for Zhuge Liang.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

The Takeda cavalry mostly fell because Katsuyori and his younger generals insisted on a charge against Nobunaga's arquebusiers in terrain not well-suited for a charge. I'm fairly certain Shingen decisively beat Ieyasu and Nobunaga, and Kenshin defeated Nobunaga at I think Tadorigawa?

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As for the Imagawa army, I mostly agree with your assessment, but with the caveat that his balls of steel had to be accompanied by Yohimoto's carelessness. Still, I admire Nobunaga for the risk.

[LegalLoliLover]

Then the question is how much of the Takeda loss was based on the guns and how much on the terrain. As for Okehazama, there's this thing that, for some reason, most soldiers throughout Asian history just don't like fighting in the rain, not necessarily because of any tactical reasons. They just don't like the rain. During the European campaigns vs. the Qing Empire, the European commanders noted that the Chinese (or Manchurian, if you want to get technical about the actual empire) soldiers weren't afraid of bullets but were afraid of raindrops. Therefore, actually attacking in the rain is often an easy way to attempt a surprise attack. Sometimes, it works (as with Nobunaga at Okehazama). Sometimes, it doesn't (Guan Yu at Fan Castle).

[Nanashi(kari)]

This is kind of random but there is something I noticed recently. In Europe from the middle ages onwards it happened with certain frequency of a ruling dynasty to change through cognate succession when there was no male heir so a female relative would inherit the lands and eventually her children thus changing the dynasty to her husband's.
However I realized this seemingly didn't happen in ancient Europe and other regions of the world in any age. In these cases even if a female ruler came to power she was either married into the dynasty or remained unmarried.
Realizing this was kind of a shocker because for me the concept of lands changing of hands by this means was universal to royalty and nobility. Probably because it is common in fantasy works.

[Five_X]

This is kind of random but there is something I noticed recently. In Europe from the middle ages onwards it happened with certain frequency of a ruling dynasty to change through cognate succession when there was no male heir so a female relative would inherit the lands and eventually her children thus changing the dynasty to her husband's.
However I realized this seemingly didn't happen in ancient Europe and other regions of the world in any age. In these cases even if a female ruler came to power she was either married into the dynasty or remained unmarried.
Realizing this was kind of a shocker because for me the concept of lands changing of hands by this mean was universal to royalty and nobility. Probably because it is common in fantasy works.

It's perhaps best to understand post-Roman European aristocracy as essentially a caste system. As property law became more entrenched and codified under Salic law and former warlords increasingly spent more of their time managing their court than conquering new lands, a system of simultaneously ensuring harmonious social relations, predictable property inheritance, and relative peace and prosperity was necessary. The aristocrats of Europe are and were ultimately descended from forebears who had acquired their territory through violence, and those early warlord-era kinship ties reformed into the social dynamics of noble courts. It was important to maintain social hierarchies within this caste, and as through Salic law, biological patrilineal descent was the accepted format. Salic law inherently excludes women from most inheritance, and perhaps because the polities of post-Roman Europe were established by homosocial warrior groups, women do not figure as prominently as in many ancient and non-European societies. There are certainly many other reasons for how gender relations ended up this way in post-Roman Europe, but this is probably one of the less woo explanations. I'm no expert in this, but I also tend to view social history through the materialist lens of hierarchy establishment and management of scarce resources.

For what it's worth, the concept of a dynastic "pedigree" in the European context derives etymologically from the late Middle Ages, around the 15th century. While earlier aristocrats definitely emphasised descent by blood, it's the late medieval and early modern nobility who made it into the stuff we're familiar with from "medieval" fantasy works.

[Skull]

Speaking of this topic, there was always something about this that confused me. So as far as I understand it, the British House of Hanover ended because Queen Victoria was a woman and therefore when she died, her son Edward VII inherited the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha instead via Patrilineality from his father - Prince Albert. Fast forward to the present day and Charles III is going to be coronated soon but seemingly the House of Windsor is going to remain despite Charles being the son of Prince Philip of the House of Glücksburg.

[Dullahan]

Turns out if you're a reigning monarch you can just declare the dynastic name to be whatever you want. (This is what Elizabeth II did in 1952, and is why all her children were referred to as the House of Windsor during her reign. Charles could change it if he wants, but he probably won't.)

[Five_X]

The succession rules of the 溫莎 dynasty (1917-2035) were truly ornate and arcane, befitting of the exotic island culture they came to identify with.

[Nanashi(kari)]

Another random medieval thing I noticed lately is that during the early middle ages there was a greater diversity of germanic names among the royalty and nobility. Likely a vestige from when names were coined rather than draw from a pool of established names.
Later on a lot of these names were dropped and after the middles ages they also started to use non-germanic names as well such as biblical and latin names. It's a shame, I find those dithematic germanic names of old to be very soulful.

[Petrikow]

Seems to generally coincide with increased Church influence. Biblical names were just way more faithilicious and all that.

[Kamera]

Gee, I wonder if there was a major hegemonic power based on mainland Europe at that time that could've mass produced these Germanophilic nobles