ooc excerpts: noblesse oblige

[miel_ducas]

Miel shivered, as though he'd just touched a plate he hadn't realised was hot. 'We're falling behind,' he said. 'Come on, don't dawdle.'

They walked quickly, past men supporting their wounded friends on their shoulders, others hauling ropes or pushing the wheels of carts over the rims of potholes. 'Of course,' Miel said abruptly, 'if he decides to let you teach us, common courtesy requires that we teach you something in return.'

'Does it?'

'Oh yes. Reciprocity is courtesy, that's an old family rule of the Ducas. We pay our debts in kind.'

'Really. We've got money for that.'

Miel shook his head. 'That's wages,' he said. 'And wages are a political statement. If I pay you, that makes you my servant, it's a different sort of relationship. Between gentlemen, it's a gift for a gift and a favour for a favour.'

'I see,' Vaatzes said. 'So if you teach me something in return, that's instead of money.'

'Of course not, you're missing the point. I'm a nobleman and you're a whatever you said, foreman. Therefore, courtesy demands that I give more than I get.'

Vaatzes thought about that. 'To show you're better than me.'

'That's it. That's what nobility's all about. If you want to be better than someone socially, you've got to be better than them in real terms too; more generous, more forbearing, whatever. Otherwise all the transaction between us proves is that I'm more powerful than you, and that wouldn't say anything about me. Hence the need for me to give more than I get. Simple, really.'

There was a pause while Vaatzes thought that one through. 'So I get the money and something else?'

'Yes.'

'In that case, fine. You have to teach me something.'

'That's right.'

'Thanks,' Vaatzes said. 'Thanks very much. So, what do you know that you could teach me?'

'Ah.' Miel grinned. 'That's a slight problem. Let's see, what do I know? Another thing about nobility,' he continued, 'is that you don't actually know many things, you just know a few things very well indeed. I could teach you statesmanship.'

'Meaning what?'

'How to debate in High Council,' Miel said. 'How to budget, and cost a project, how to forecast future revenues. Negotiation with foreign ambassadors. Court protocol. That sort of thing.'

Vaatzes frowned. 'Not a lot of use to me, really'

'I suppose not. So what does that leave? Estate management; no, not particularly relevant. I think we're just left with horsemanship, falconry and fencing.'

'Right,' Vaatzes said. 'All three of which I know nothing about. Which would you say is easiest?'

'None of them.'

'In that case, falconry or fencing. Horses give me a rash.'

Miel laughed. 'Maybe I'll teach you both,' he said. 'But it'll all depend on what Orsea decides.'

Vaatzes nodded. 'You've known him a long time, I think.'

'All my life. We grew up together, twenty or so of us, hanging round the court. Back then, of course, he was just the Orseoli and I was the Ducas, but we always got on well nonetheless—surprising, since my father was right up the top of the tree and the Orseoli were sort of clinging frantically to the lower branches. But then Orsea married the Countess Sirupati, and she's got no brothers and her sisters aren't eligible for some technical reason, so they got married off outside the duchy; as a result, Orsea was suddenly the heir apparent. Count Sirupat dies, Orsea becomes Duke. Couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow, either.'

'So you didn't mind?'

'Mind? Of course not. Oh, I see, you're thinking I might've been resentful because he got to be the Duke. Not a bit of it. The Sirupati would never marry the Ducas.'

Vaatzes looked puzzled. 'But I thought your family were high-ranking aristocrats.'

'We are. Which is the reason. Quite simple, really. The great houses aren't allowed to marry into the ruling family. Otherwise there'd be no end of God-awful power struggles, with all of us trying to get the throne. So we're all excluded; stops us getting dangerous ideas. If the Duke's only got daughters, he has to find his heir from the lesser nobility, people like the Orseoli. It's a good system. But you should've figured that out for yourself, if you've got a special intuition for how things work.'

'Well, I know now,' Vaatzes said. 'I guess I didn't figure it out for myself because it's a good idea, and those don't seem to happen much in politics. Who made the rule, anyhow?'

That struck Miel as a strange question. 'We all did,' he said. 'Gradually, over time. I don't think anybody ever sat down with a piece of paper and wrote the rules out, just so. They grew because everybody could see it made sense.'

'An intuitive feel for how things work,' Vaatzes said. 'Maybe there's hope for you people after all.'

[K.J. Parker, Devices and Desires, ch. 4]

Which left him, the Ducas, with no master to serve, no work to do, no purpose ... That was an extraordinary concept. The Ducas can't exist without duty, just as a flame can't burn without air. Take it away and you're left with a man — thirty-odd, moderately bright but with no skills or abilities relevant to his own survival; thinner, permanently cured of any dependence on his customary affluence and luxury, an adequate rider, swordsman and falconer, just about capable of boiling an egg. Worse specimens of humanity managed to stay alive and make some sort of living, but why would anybody bother to live without a function? The Ducas without duty was no more than a mechanism for turning food into shit and water into piss, and a cow or a pig could do that just as well, if not better.

[K.J. Parker, Evil for Evil, ch. 11]

You could fill a book — someone probably had — with the selflessly heroic deaths of the Ducas. Dying of thirst in the mountains, the Ducas gives the last mouthful of water to the rebel leader he's captured and is taking back to face justice; awestruck by the example, the rebel carries on to the city and meekly surrenders to his executioners. Fighting a duel to the death with the enemy captain, the Ducas gets an unfair advantage when the enemy slips and falls; to forbear to strike is to give the enemy a clear shot, which he's obligated to accept since he too is fighting for the lives of his people; the Ducas holds back and allows himself to be killed, since duty to an enemy overrides his duty to his own kind. In such a book, there'd be pages of notes and commentaries at the end, explaining the complex nuances of the degrees of obligation — nuances which the Ducas understood and calculated in a split second, needless to say. If there had been such a book, it would have curled and turned to ash in the burning of Civitas Eremiae, and nobody would add a supplement recording Miel Ducas and the Mezentine in the quagmire. Did that matter? If not for the paradox, it should have been the perfect exemplar to round off the lesson: the Ducas makes the sacrifice, knowing there will be no page for him in the book ...

[K.J. Parker, Evil for Evil, ch. 18]

Trained soldiers know their duty, just as well as the Ducas knows his. Duty is obligation, the bastard child of loyalty and the will to serve; when you think about it, just another roundabout way of saying love. No wonder it causes so much pointless damage.

[K.J. Parker, Evil for Evil, ch. 18]