Chapter 151: The Hierarchies Of Power

Thankfully, this treatment of thieves had sent a message across the criminal circle of the Inanis city that the site of the brewery was off limits. While they could try their luck, they would just end up getting arrested if they were lucky and killed at sight if they were not.

John and the rest hoped that this would also dissuade the nobles from taking any risks. The noble hierarchy of the Grantz kingdom was rather complex and had changed over time. It was said that the founding kings of the Grantz kingdom were much weaker than the more recent ones.

Because of this, they needed the help of other nobles who did not really have any ranks. They were just feudal lord with their independent lands and armies. Eventually they united under the first king of the Grantz kingdom, but even then the king himself was relatively weak.

The kingdom's own army was the army that belonged to the king and was its personal guard. If there was a war to be fought, the king could not do so on his own. He would need the support of all the nobles or at least the majority.

The other nobles could choose not to fight and stay in their territories, but then they would not get a share of the spoils, either. At that time, the kingdom was not truly a kingdom and more of an alliance of different lords.

But with each successive generation of the king, their power rose. Their power structure changed as well before it finally reached the current one, which was a hybrid between a militaristic and aristocratic.

The Current king of the Grantz kingdom would rule over the entire kingdom and would then assign parts of lands to other nobles. This land would either become theirs permanently if they were a ranked noble, such as a baron or above. 

If they were not a ranked noble and had instead been made newly noble or had bought their way in, they would not be assigned any land and would need to procure it themselves. Any unclaimed land in the kingdom where no one lived belonged to the king by default.

If an unranked noble built their territory on land such as this while they would be safe, if the king desired so, he could freely usurp this land at any moment. Thus the unranked nobles always wanted to either rise up to the lowest rank or at least build up sufficient fortune before that ever happened.

This was just the aristocratic structure of the kingdom. Then came the hybrid military part. Previously, the king needed the support of his fellow nobles, but over time, the army of the kingdom started to expand in size.

Some nobles also fell and had to join the army to survive. Eventually, those very nobles rose up in ranks according to their merits and gained power once again. But this was where the dichotomy between the military and aristocracy started.

There ended up new kinds of aristocrat that held a military rank as well as a noble rank. This allowed them to have their own personal army as a noble and also command a certain number of the kingdom's army.

Then there were other nobles who were commoners who joined the army and gained great merits to that granted them the title of a noble. The main difference that was there between the nobles and military ranks was that one was inherited and the other was not.

Thus many military personnel wanted to get a noble rank so that their family would have a secured future. But then the noble's own power was often less than that of a high ranked warrior in the military.

Thus the difference ended up being in either long term security, or short term power. If a sufficiently high ranked military officer had a valid reason, he could very well go and decimate a nobles territory and kill that noble.

This was something the nobles greatly feared. But even if they wanted to increase their own personal army, it was often quite hard to do so. If they wanted good warrior, they needed to offer good conditions and pay, but it was only the kingdom's royal army that could offer that.

Thus no warrior would choose a lower nobles offer than that of the kingdoms. Thus, the nobles could only hope to recruit weaker warriors and nurture some of their offspring to make sure that they had some extra power.

Gifts played a great role here as any person with an Epic Ranked Gift was nearly guaranteed to become a noble if they chose to do so. And if it were a noble that got an epic ranked gift, they would have a greater chance to recruit stronger warriors and increase their own power.

It was a complex power structure that interwove the different hierarchies that depended on each other. Thus, now the situation arose where a noble family needed some of their people to either be in the army as well or have a strong gift.

The Inanis family was one of the best examples of this complex situation.

The founder was a commoner who rose through the ranks of military before being made into a noble. Then the subsequent heirs kept up the military tradition and raised their noble rank as well till it reached the current level of Count.

By now, needing military merits had become the chief method of raising the noble rank. If a noble family did not have anyone in the military, they would forever stay stagnant in their rank and eventually deteriorate.

This was a very situation that was carefully crafted by the Royal family over the years as they gained several smart people among them. The situation kept most of the power in the hands of the king, but it also didn't make them too powerful so as to force all the nobles.

Even if the nobles wanted to do anything about it, they simply did not have the power and had to submit to the current structure.