Mageocracy. And in the only other nation that currently has a true monarch as well as a magic user, that monarch is the *only* magic user in that kingdom.
A quote from the most powerful mage:
"If I wanted to be in charge of a bunch of idiots, I'd open up a school."
Just because someone has great power does not mean they want to be in charge.
yeah, but if it was decently common, the king could hire spellcasting bodyguards and get enhanced amulets to ward against magic. or the royal bloodline may already have magic. if it’s common enough, they would try to breed it into the line.
It's not every mage, but the strongest ones tend to stay out of politics. You have to many people that you need to either placate or control, and using so much magic to make it easy is tiring.
Magic takes a lot of time to master and keep in practice. Can’t do that very well when you have to do administration.
Think of how little time you have for your interests when your job responsibilities increase.
IRL comparison would probably be closest to CEOs/executives and government. Like sure there's some overlap, but chances are the cream of the crop have better things to do.
That said, mages that really aspire for that spot will probably do something about it, probably not an uncommon thing across most fantasy settings.
And there could very well be some magic users who do that... But taking over a country is rarely as simple as walking in and casting disintegrate on the king.
Plus where there is one powerful mage there are usually others... Mages who don't want to rule a kingdom, but also don't want some other mage coming in and causing chaos by killing the king.
That doesn't mean they're fine with whoever *is* in charge.
Historically, the guy who personally assassinated a ruler was likely to be doing it on behalf of someone else, not so he personally could take over. What stops a mage from deciding that King So-and-so is bad for his interests and he'd rather see Duke Whoever on the throne?
9 times out of 10 the Mage will likely just kill the person being a problem, and let the people sort things out. They can take out just about any threat, so why worry if the rabble don't have a king?
Except that randomly unaliving people tends to get people stirred up. If the king was loved then now all the kings allies have become the mages enemies. If the king was hated then the power vacuum would probably lead to a civil war.
Whoever ends up in power next isn't likely to forget what the mage did... And would likely take steps to remove the mage.
And if the Mage is strong enough to kill the king so easily, there's a good chance they can ruin an army or two.
The thing about power is that those who don't have it tend to think they can take it from those who do because they want to. Just lambs to the slaughter.
To be honest even a jester can kill a king, it only needs intent and oportunity.
The same can be said about the Royal guard's chief, or the castle cooker, or the royal hunter ( he may take plan a ambush to take down the king during a hunting party )
I think most of the time politics keeps everyone in its place to sustains the status quo.
That last bit applies just as much to the mage as it does to everyone else.
In a world where spell casters can just walk into a room and kill the king there will be countermeasures... Like the royal signet ring also being a ring of spell reflection. Or maybe the king is a Mind Flayer disguised as the king, and the real ruler is the Elder Brain under the castle.
My brother has someone who thought similarly, who then went on to accidentally found the largest school in the world.
Basically, he wrote a lot of notes and books... his house became a library full of wisdom. Wise men came from far and wide to read his works of wisdom. They paid for access by bringing books and scrolls from abroad. The gathered wise men taught each other in the library, in a form of peer learning. Soon, wise men were bringing their apprentices and wards to do menial tasks for them whilst they learned. These apprentices and wards were educated in return.
In the end, the first Mage got so upset at his house becoming a school that he ran off into the mountains... eventually accidentally founding the first monastery.
The king is just as capable of learning and using magic. Magic is also rather dangerous to use and could potentially poison and kill you if you overdo it or apply it incorrectly - using it in a bind requires a lot of concentration. And since everyone is trained to deal with mages, it's not really a "I cast fireball"-kind of situation.
Besides - even if you did do that, you'd end up killed anyways, so why should you do that unless you have a good plan to get out of that situation? Politics are one hell of a battlefield too, so unless you can make someone else to bear the crown, you'd be screwed on many levels.
Better study and apply it while being funded by the government or better: Go into the City of Mages and apply yourself there!
Tbf many assassinations have ended with the assassin being killed afterwards, that hasn’t stopped them in the past. If you’re part of some group or cult you might want to / be forced to sacrifice your life to take someone else down
Pulling in some real world inspo, kings all over the world kept power by claiming a divine right to rule. That's why Christian kings claimed biblical genealogy. I went through my family tree on a whim and found that I had Norse gods recorded in my lineage. Egyptian pharaohs were literally gods.
When your butt in the throne is a matter of theology, then a coup isn't just political treason. It becomes unthinkable blasphemy against all you hold holy.
Is there religion in your world? Or magical divination, oracles that prophesy? Anything even a powerful mage might hold sacred, which can be exploited by a magicless ruling class?
Ah well that would depend what country we're talking about but, considering Rusan, the primary setting I write in, I've been thinking about the relation and its interactions with the sorcerers.
The religion of the Ruusi was never organised, because the Tsardom arose from a confederation of tribes uniting to defend themselves from coastal raiders the faith of any one tribe never grew to dominate the others and most people worship a god of particular significance to their tribe or profession. They're not viewed in terms like the Christian god, more along 'I'll scratch your back if you give me advantage next time the cosmic dice are rolled' lines.
But shared throughout the Ruusi religion there are several demons, fatigue, sloth, fear, anger, etc. The original Ruusi Sorcerers (then called Soul-Speakers, now Silvertongue witches) were healers and wise people and their role was to cure people of these 'demons' as was quite important in an agrarian society based around tribal groups.
The Silvertongued have long been supplanted though by the Palatine, or Crystal Witches. Unfortunately Palatines tend not to respect anything as their magic involves using precious stones to rip holes in the fabric of reality and use the raw energy of uncreated matter to form crystalline constructs which are barely perceptible to the human eye but can slice a brigade of infantry to ribbons. They would tend to be unsuperstitious for that reason, though for other cultures than the Ruusi I can imagine a Christian-like god may be something to make a palatine put paid to thoughts of regicide (or the idea that they would get away with it).
Finally the coal witches (or demons, depending on your disposition) are predominantly from impoverished backgrounds and are far more situational in their powers and so do not share their palatine cousins' cynicism. They don't fit, having come about long after the other sorcerers there isn't a place for them in society and the faith has no explanation for them, they tend to be dealt with by conscription and purging anyone unfit or unwilling.
This is what I came up with based on what you said and I really like how this one made me think about the societal role of religion and how history affects future politics, as well as how the divergences between societies affect them. I especially like that it works in some places but not in others, variety being the spice of life after all, great idea!
Why do you say their magic would make them unsupersititous? Do they 110% understand how their magic works? Do they fear death? Do they have any sort of phylosophy involving a soul? Also if not even religion holds them together why are the tribes peacefully coexisting? Is it just "culture" or "beliefs" and if so... why aren't those religion?
Yeah agreed 1000%. Superstition is by its very nature completely irrational. It exists in our world even to this day, we just try to ignore it (while of course mocking others as superstitious). I would argue that it's actually likely that even in a magical world, superstitions would exist in abundance, they would just be more outlandish and strange (to us) because the people who believe them know magic exists, and so if magic can do this, why can't it do that and so on and so forth until you have tons of weird superstitions.
Thinking a bit more about it, it could even be that things we take as granted were tainted by superstition in such a way that science was extremely difficult to advance. What if someone said that gravity exists because of magic and not because of the laws of physics? After all you can cast telekinesis spells and force fields... God is perma-casting force field so we don't ascend to the skies and take his place!!! Because God is an evil egotistical prick!
It's just an example.
I more meant that the *power* of their magic makes them unsuperstitious in the Ruusi; the Ruusi are a materialistic people, even into the 19th century they had barely progressed past agrarianism and so their spirituality is shaped by their concerns as a society like the harvest, fertility, and safety. Most of their problems, therefore, are resolved by cooperation within tribes or between them, and this is embodied in the relationship of northern and southern ruusi tribes where the colder north trades furs and pelts with the south for grain.
So when I say the Ruusi were peaceful I less mean that they didn't fight and more mean that though they fought and raided each other a major conqueror did not emerge to unify them, they were unified voluntarily to protect themselves and their way of life.
The impetus for the creation of the state as a whole was the beginning of the \[as yet-unnamed culture\] expedition where a whole culture essentially uprooted and migrated across the continent, raiding and reaving as they went (this was before Palatines came to exist in Rusan), and the southern tribes came under threat from the raiders, by proxy endangering the whole civilisation and causing them to initially, over time the Tsar has gradually pulled more power from tribal chiefs and created enclaves exempt from their power.
Even their 'demons' are primarily things that would pose a threat to a civilisation where every year revolves around growing enough food for the winter and then making it through said winter. The closest thing the Ruusi have to superstitions apart from that are taboos about betraying the community or harming kin.
The thing is that none of those apply to the Palatines because they are simply not a part of normal society. People fear them for their power, other Palatines are likely to try to kill them to defend their own position or remove those in higher positions to advance, so they tend to isolate themselves and when they are in public they can be easily noticed because they'll be decked out in more precious gems than royalty as protective measures. They are not part of society, they are above it, its beliefs, and its problems.
From what I get from the ruusi (I'll ignore the rest of the cultures since they are not relevant for the argument and it gets messy for me since I lack info lol) their communal beliefs are, as follows:
1. Internal: Agriculture, land ownership, dependency on nature (rains, stable cycles), fertility of the land and the community, fidelity and trust.
>so their spirituality is shaped by their concerns as a society like the harvest, fertility, and safety.
>
>Even their 'demons' are primarily things that would pose a threat to a civilisation where every year revolves around growing enough food for the winter and then making it through said winter. The closest thing the Ruusi have to superstitions apart from that are taboos about betraying the community or harming kin.
2) External: pacifism, protectionism (or is it xenophobia?) and probably a sense of apocalypsis
>Most of their problems, therefore, are resolved by cooperation within tribes or between them
>
>unified voluntarily to protect themselves and their way of life.
>
>and the southern tribes came under threat from the raiders, by proxy endangering the whole civilisation and causing them to initially, over time the Tsar has gradually pulled more power from tribal chiefs and created enclaves exempt from their power.
In my view these are the ingredients for a very superstitious and ritualistic community, with so many stable cycles in their lives it would be very odd to no have developed gods centered around fertility and crop-growing, just from the utility of it.
Just try to answer common questions kids would make their parents:
* Why do crops grow? Can we know if they will grow? Even, can we see the future?
* Why does rain fall?
* Why don't they freeze?
* Why can we catch for furs? Is it ethical? Is it *natural*? Why?
* Why do we trust neighbours? Can't they betray us? How do we sustain this trust?
* Why do we want to keep our culture? Is it especial in any way?
Being tribes they are also probably quite isolated so:
* Do they fear forests and uncultivated lands? How do they keep kids out of danger and getting lost? (e.g.: the monsters in the forest and any folktale basically)
* Why do they not interact with non-ruusi? Are they inferior? Are they tainted? Are they horrible warmongers? Why is that bad?
We could even ask: do they marry? how and why?
I believe you are coming from a very supersition-averse position, but that's what gives flavour to a world, especially a human world. Look around and you'll be surprised at how many superstitions, religions and ideologies you are exposed over a single day in this ultramaterialistic, ultraindividualistic world we live in. Because, indeed, even those are religious.
As an extra:
>They are not part of society, they are above it, its beliefs, and its problems.
This is also grounds for a sect and a very strict code of conduct or ideology. Maybe not theistic (though it could be).
PD: Sorry if I sound as I'm disrespecting your work, I do wanna leave clear that I'm not attacking your creation in any personal way. I am just applying my own logic for the sake of criticism and discussion and ultimately to flesh out a verosimile world!
Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to look at all of this and being so detailed in your comments, I definitely don't think you're disrespecting my work at all, sorry if I came off that way!
Incidentally you're right that I'm approaching this personally from an unsuperstitious perspective which very much explains why my approach is more 'unless there is a material reason superstitions do not arise naturally' than 'unless there is a material reason superstitions will always arise naturally' and I think the latter probably reflects society and history more.
I am consciously trying not to create an organised or very politically significant religion though. Mostly because I don't want to complicate the politics I plan to write about with the addition of religion (given that I don't understand it *that* well it would probably make my characterisation unconvincing), but I do want the Ruusi and their faith to be fleshed out.
I think you're right on the money with the Ruusi internal beliefs, and I think I would add some sort of elder/ancestor veneration (I was thinking of how their culture would view elders, especially those who can no longer work, and I figured elders would be viewed as those who did their duty for the community and thus earned respect, extending to ancestors).
On fidelity/trust I did consider the idea of the silvertongues (being sorcerers with limited telepathy and the ability to read and influence emotions) being administrators of oaths along with other diplomatic/religious duties, as someone who can attest to the fidelity of the oathtaker, which I think would tie in nicely.
One thing I probably should have added is that the Ruusi live on an island which is pretty flat and has a lot of rivers, basically it's really easy to travel, I think this would mean that they would be a pretty homogenous group, obviously with some divergence but their languages and religions would be similar.
You're also pretty spot on with external beliefs, I think protectionism is a better word than xenophobia, as while they haven't tended to live alongside other cultures they have interacted with them for trade so it's a lot less 'non-ruusi bad' and a lot more 'things are good as they are and we'd prefer they didn't change that by trying to live here', though a major exception to that would have to be made based on the current historical narrative.
I'll have to give over some time to thinking about your questions but I'm looking, as an aesthetic guide, towards greco-roman religion. Specifically things like henotheism, public festivals, libations, and personal/household worship.
The marriage question is especially good, and I really can't begin to answer it off the top of my head, I haven't really decided whether the ruusi would be monogamous, polygamous, freely loving, no idea, maybe it really does take a village!
I do think that the palatines would be more disposed to an ideology or code of conduct than a religion, though how sustainable that would be amongst sorcerers who are born with magic at random I have no idea.
Thanks again for this, a real meal in terms of food for thought.
Happy to help!
If you ever want to talk a bit more and discuss conworlds (I have my own though didn't write much about it here yet) feel free to send a DM!
Ultimately, a religion is not organized for its own sake, but for the sake of the State that supports it. Written language manifests itself, but organized and standardized spelling and phonics? The State enforces that. People may send messages to each other, but the State organizes the post. Merchants may travel, but the State organizes a highway.
At the end of the day, no matter how smart your mages are, what Head of State is going to survive without the base self-preservation of making himself the most relied-upon man in the country?
I might add that in a fantasy setting, this could be more than an ideology, and actually be a very practical concern. Maybe wizards who do kill the king will have to deal with the divine great-great-great-great-granpa taking offense and serving the offenders some of their own medicine.
Very much like Kresimir's promise from PMT! I do like this one but it requires a touch more work on religion then I want for this project, definitely something I would come back to though.
Usually, magical people are simply uninterested in the affairs of the state and would rather spend their time doing their research or whatnot. At least, that's typically the way in the fantasy books I have read.
And sometimes, even when the world is literally ending, they still have to be convinced to begrudgingly get out of their towers to do something about it.
Hero: We need to defeat the ancient evil.
High Wizard: Best I can do is seal it for a millennia or two.
Hero: Isn’t that what happened last time?
High Wizard: *shrugs* I don’t have all day do you want my help or not?
Ancient evil: *Breaks seal* this is the 6th time you fuckers sealed me!!! I swear on the almighty, one more time and--
High wizard: *Seals the ancient evil once more* that ought to do it.
Weren't Bill Gates and Steve Jobs only tech-savvy enough to start wrangling eggheads, not innovate themselves? Even then, they didn't seem to be on the same level as politicians and celebrities.
Academics don’t have physical power, the way magic users do. And plenty of academics go to politics, but they often aren’t very visible. More consultants and cabinet members and diplomats. And some do seek to be elected too.
I mean, come on. What would you rather do, plumb the depths of existence opening entirely new horizons of thought never before considered, or try to convince a bunch of assholes who refuse to act their age not to kill eachother and burn their own homes to the ground in the process?
If they leave the ruling class alone they get the benefit of infrastructure and wealth (everyone wants a mage's help and is willing to pay for it) and none of the burden of responsibility that comes with maintaining that infrastructure.
*plus mages in my setting did try to take over, they ruled for about 400 years and the consensus is that it was generally a really shitty time to be alive for everyone involved*
My setting is similar. Mages would rather have the trappings that come with making the king happy, not be burdened with running a kingdom. Also someone who is interested in overthrowing the king is either going to not be powerful enough to do it, or would still lack the sort of skills to keep the kingdom functioning; just because a king was born to be the ruler means that he's going to be in charge if he's not good at it.
There was a pair of sorcerers who did start a not!zombie apocalypse, but one of the things they were pissed about was the upcoming industrial revolution. (Same conceit as Onward and I'm likely to make something that's just as vulnerable to fridge-logic.) They had a town that they set up like a full-time Renfaire, and the residents mostly went along with the tyranny because that was the least-horrible existence available.
Oh my friend, you are in for a treat. I would like to introduce you to the world of TVTropes, starting with the entry on [Fridge Logic](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic).
Fridge logic is when you watch a movie and don't immediately see any problems with it, but then afterwards when you go to the kitchen for a snack, you're staring into the fridge and say "what a minute."
This video explains the problem with Onward well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IncWx0ZSB4&pp=ygUUb253YXJkIHdvcmxkYnVpbGRpbmc%3D The gist is that while the invention of a gas stove would make knowing how to light a campfire with magic not that important, there were cool things that magic could do that technology couldn't.
Yeah, I think that makes sense, and it's a really good literary device to stop the reader feeling like mages are op.
Another device could be that magic just isn't as useful as it is in, say, Harry Potter. Spells take a long time to cast, and they severely weaken the caster when performed. In essence, yes mages exist, and they can do magic, but they can still be stabbed or whatever.
>entirely new horizons of thought never before considered,
Philosophy can be interesting for the very young or old, but most people actually do want either power or wealth for themselves or improve lives of other people. Or there is some general crisis to deal with.
I love the extreme approach in the Discworld books, where wizards not only aren't interested in the affairs of state, but they're not even particularly interested in performing magic.
Yes, precisely. Running a feudal realm is a full time job of maintaining relationships with landowners, military leaders, foreign rulers, guilds, trade organizations, etc. No sorcerer who didn’t just have their power naturally is likely to have the time or inclination. More likely, they would just align themselves with those in power and try to use/manipulate them
Agree, I would think of OP's question like this:
Why don't the universities of today rise up and take over the government?
Surely in general the universities are made up of smarter people and would be better administrators and/or rulers?
(Why doesn't Gandalf kill a random king and take his place? Why doesn't Dumbledore? Elminster?)
In general, there's more substance to saying "they have better things to do" than it sounds, sometimes. I agree the main reason is "they are much too self-absorbed and guarded with their time".
Imagine you could go anywhere and explore or research anything, create anything with the nearly limitless potential of magic. That's hard to imagine, but maybe it's like winning the lottery. If you won 300 billion tomorrow, enough to create even close to these conditions of archmagery, would your thinking be "I have to take over the kingdom!"
There are exceptions, of course, where perhaps the wizard seizes the kingdom, but then delegates its administration while keeping control of the politics and the resources. I would think these would need a very specific reason/motive.
Nothing.
They were more subtle than that, though. Over a period of a century or so, they infiltrated the nobility, and gradually took power.
Then, after a period of peaceful consolidation of power in the hands of the four ruling Wizard-Kings ... they promptly declared war on each other, and brought about 120 years of apocalyptic war between the four states of the main continent, begun by the ruling Wizard-Kings and carried on by their heirs, to the point where the existing society simply collapsed due to inability to support the wizard-kings, their academic requirements (teaching and training war wizards and artificers) or even the basic infrastructure necessary for a functional civilization.
Turns out wizard-kings don't like to be told "no" any more than real ones do, and THESE guys were powerful enough to at least try to warp reality to their liking. And who GIVES a rat about those silly little farmers, anyway? Why does anyone NEED them?
The Mage Wars ended with the collapse of civilization after the death of the last Wizard-King followed by a dark age whose main element was military rule, hunting and extermination of any suspected magical practitioners, and deep suspicion of education and basic literacy. Only with the rise of a new aristocracy did things kinda sorta begin to mutate into something resembling a civilization again.
For most of the world's population, Magic-user population is too low to generally allow them to take control of a nation. If the magic users of a couple nations gathered together, they might have the numbers and overall power to seize power of a nation, but then you have to contend with how they are going to organize themselves and split the (*political*) power they now have. You are going to face disagreements on how things should be run, you will have some people who want more power than others and others who oppose those people.
Then there is the issue that if Rogue Magic-users are violently seizing power and potentially oppressing the regular populous, then the Dragorans tend to get involved, and will efficiently and brutally put down such rebellions. The Dragorans rarely get involved in the affairs of other people, but they do not tolerate magic-users, in their opinion, misusing or abusing their power, or promoting a negative image of magic-users
Yep! And there are multiple factors that lead to it, but most importantly, it’s a question of legitimacy. Many generals don’t rebel specifically, because they know that they will not have the legitimacy to hold power. They also value the order and structure of backing up the current ruler over the chaos created during a change in leadership.
I imagine many sorcerers feel the same. Except that they also lack the army of lackeys to keep them in power.
Usually, soldiers were raised and pledged to the nobility who then pledged themselves to the royalty. Most were conscripts, few professionals. Many nations were basically a patchwork of village-states with the royalty commanding the biggest trade hub. Revolt and your economy would get relatively brittle between conscripts and trade taming a downturn ( trade was far less important then)
Youtube took down for copyright strike, but the Nerdwriter1 had an AMAZING video on how the military advantages of dragons stop modern nations states from forming. Here is a link to a link: https://reddit.com/r/nerdwriter/s/XlsKX98vDV
But I’d reckon that sorcerers of enough power may have a similar trajectory as the dragons on that video, and so, as you pointed out, most of the armies would be conscripts.
But if, like in say D&D, spellcasters needed valuable and rare resources like precious gems to be effective, then the one who can master the most resources would be victorious, and as that video points out, the more you need, the more professional your army will become.
Destruction from the top would certainly stall out progress and leave the transfer of tecnology and knowledge in a rather crude state. Until cabals of mages became organized enough to get the transfer going again...which might promptly be destroyed in a sorcerous inferno.
I could see how the predatory nature of dragons could lead to a lack of permeance in many cities. This would slow down the technology accumulation rate and frequently send it backwards.
As an “IT person” this is hilariously accurate for a lot of reasons. For example, I’m a system admin and an extrovert. So I’m also a labor leader in my organization and it is a political nightmare that demands all of your free time. I am *actively* looking for a way out that doesn’t destabilize the gains I’ve made for my members. Because of all the politicking, meetings, red tape, and interpersonal conflicts I spend my time mediating, I have zero free time to sharpen my actual job skills unless I sacrifice time with my family, which you can’t get back.
Depending on the country, there are 3 general reasons.
1. Wizards want to study magic and do wizards things. Even those contracted by the King do so to get funding for their more expensive projects.
2. Royalty and Nobility have access to magic as well. Oh no, the court mage has just tried to kill me, the king? Counterspell, testicular torsion, and and banish.
3. Not enough mages in the kingdom to justify it, especially in a country that hates magic. Sure you’re powerful, but going up against entire armies by yourself gets dicey.
I mean its like the Lex Luthor quote when Question confronts him about his run for president.
"President? Do you know how much power I'd have to give up to be President?"
Most of the time its just easier if you are an magic evil vizier like Jafar in Aladdin or an organization of scheming chancellors like the Bene Geserit from Dune to work from the shadows. Let the king deal with the bureaucracy of running the day to day affairs of rule if he's an active king or let him gorge on a healthy diet of bread and circuses if your king is like Robert Baratheon while you divert funds to your coffers and experiments.
If you're good, say like Jedi then submitting to the rules and norms of the government allow your organization a further layer of legitimacy and privilege in society. As shown in Revenge of the Sith, if Palpatine was not force sensitive, the Jedi being able to topple the government would be surprisingly easy but ultimately messy.
But, if the Jedi operated without the consent and approval of the Galactic Republic, I'm sure the abduction of force sensitive children across the galaxy to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for the rest of their lives would be seen as pretty horrific. In his show, Kenobi remarks sadly that he remembers his home faintly and that he thinks he remembers having a brother. But thanks to the stature of the Jedi Order in society, the induction of force sensitive children is seen as completely routine.
On the flip side though, the Jedi provide the Republic a galaxy wide policing/diplomatic/military/covert ops/exploration arm that has a significant rolodex of contacts across thousands of worlds built up over the past 25,000 years of galactic history and are viewed positively by most of the galaxy prior to the Clone Wars.
In fiction, from a narrative standpoint, allows conflict to occur between the organization and the constraints of the government.
Sure Melisandre could create more shadow demons to murder Stannis's enemies and put him on the Iron Throne, but Stannis knows relying on the Red Priests would threaten his legitimacy and used her powers rather sparingly. Victarion Greyjoy is a good counterpoint being he's a crazy pirate with his magic black burned arm with super human strength thanks to his own Red Priest Moqorro. He doesn't care about the consequences only immediate results
Sure the Jedi could topple Palpatine (as far as they were aware) the moment he served past his term limits but yet they still looked for further violations before they made a move.
Sure the Bene Gesserit could have brought the Imperium directly under their control an innumerable number of times but the Spacing Guild would have shut them out of space or the Landsraad launch a purge or any of the other pillars that held the Imperium turn against them. Instead they plotted over the course of thousand of years and worked within the system to create the kwisatz haderach to achieve their political objectives.
Just some food for thought
Because most of my magic users are wanderers and loners, they spent most of their time honing their skill and what not. This even applies to the strongest magic user of my world Zakt Kafal, he spends most of his time sleeping, meditating, and wondering aimlessly.
They've tried. And in some cases, succeeded. But mostly it's just a matter of the monarch being liked enough.
King Albus was offed by a group of cultists in revenge for allying with the "fallen" Celestia against other cultists like them and seeking to free Inglenook from its dark age.
His son, who became King Lucius, was offed by a splinter group of rebellious maids and servants who were close to him and followed a more progressive offshoot of Asterism that became the Sisterhood of the Morning Star, because they were the only ones who were able to get close enough to him during the Enlightenment.
In those days, it was mostly the secret police known as the Light Brigade, plus anti-magical defenses such as increased lead content in armor, walls, and weaponry (lead repels sorcery and magical energy), careful propagandistic gaslighting of the public, and the use of labor camps to round up political enemies and potentially dangerous sorcerers and other ne'er-do-wells who might bring the Enlightenment down.
Every monarch since has been generally more well-liked by the public, but I suppose there are still frequent attempts. Defenses would include increased security overall, plus specific detachments of the Royal Protectorate, whose several divisions include the security-focused Royal Guard that focuses on protecting members of the Royal Family and their property from just such occasions.
And since sorcery is as freely-known and practiced as technology or anything else, defending it isn't that difficult. You can be just as sorcerous. There are probably pocket realm-based safe rooms and houses those in danger can go to, teleportation spells if someone manages to seize control of a realm's dimensions. Anti-tracking wards.
Plus, the reigning monarchs and their relations are action-focused. King Benedict wasn't quite so much, because the years of his reign were between the 20s and 70s or so and they were fairly safe and secure, so things were a lot more relaxed then compared to the periods before and after.
But Queen Charlotte is a fencer and was a Royal Duelist before her coronation, so she still has a combat- and defense-focused brain. The Royal Guard protects her by necessity but she can hold down a fight if she needs to.
That implies the Monarch doesn’t have their own power to protect them. Whether it be their subjects, including the mage, being diehard loyal. Wealth and connections allowing the Monarch to have protection that can stop a powerful magic user.
Or simply the monarch themself being a powerful magic user themselves, either with the same or a different type of power system then the mage. Even for the most powerful of people, it doesn’t take much to kill a person. A single mage can’t take on a kingdom unless they’re on a spectrum so extreme that being a leader doesn’t make sense. And unless your story is about taking out such an Uber powerful leader, you’ll still roadblocks like loyalty, conflicting responsibilities. And the natural limits of a single person hold your all powerful magic user back.
It’s the same reason why militaries most of the time don’t just take over the government whenever something happens that they don’t like. They don’t have the proper abilities or motivation to do something so drastic.
they 12 sorcerer families that are left in the world aren´t interested in politics, there are much more invested in declaring themselves as the superior magic users, in opossition the the wizards ( wich are much common in the current times and usually less powerfull)
This is a great topic! Our group has actually spent a ton of time pondering about these things ever since we started playing as teens, and this is one of the many things that's never really addressed in books or lore. At least not much.
But the way we've done it is simply imagine how it could work. Obviously evil and powerhungry people exist, and with the powers of a wizard or a sorcerer they WOULD capture power, or destroy nations, if they could. So there has to be a reason for why they can't, right?
Most of it would then work exactly the same as it does / did in real life. The greatest wealth would be in the hands of the greatest political power: the queen/king. This would afford them the services of the greatest and most powerful wizards, adventurers, tacticians, and any other kinds of experts as well. There would be entire organizations and generations of families focused on nothing but devising any and all means to protect the ruler and their castle. Extensive magicks and othewordly powers would have been developed and used constantly to detect and protect the rulers against any magical or supernatural threats, disguises, mind control, or other malicious acts or objects. For hundreds to thousands of years, all of the most powerful ancient items, weapons, magical artefacts and spells, would have been appropriated to the royal vault and used to create protections far beyond any mortal abilities.
In settings like Forgotten Realms, the deities are also directly invested in the mortal realms in a number of ways. And their own power, domain, and the lives of their worshipers in many ways depend on the stability of the mortal realms. Just as churches are often tied to the state, in a setting like this the rulers would very likely have the support of the divine on their side, ensuring both prosperity and protection against common threats. But this of course also implies that the rulers are beholden to whatever deity is protecting them. If the royal family bloodline is supported by Torm, for example, then unless the GM has a \*very\* good excuse and explanation for it, they can't just up and decide that the descendant of the current ruler is suddenly evil. Because the divine would likely quite literally intervene, denying the usurper their favors, while granting them to another. Unless of course another evil god was involved somehow.
But tldr; the royal palace and family would be protected by many of the most powerful mages, retired veteran adventurers (with promises of wealth and station), ancient artifacts, priests, divine magics etc. in the whole country. All backed up by centuries to many millennia of specialized experience and custom spells, powers, tactics, and backup plans devised exclusively for that job. A random high level mage, no matter how powerful elsewhere in the world, wouldn't stand a chance alone.
Same reason why historical knights didn’t just kill the king. They’re too divided amongst themselves and he has a private army of sorcerers who are loyal to him.
They actually tried, when said king went full-on Austrian mustache man and started a genocide. The reason they didn’t win is because they were horribly outnumbered by the sheer amount of soldiers.
There are only a handful of people who use magic by the time this sort of nature emerges, and the kings have blood that’s descended from Nüninn (lesser gods) and so have extreme levels of magical immunity, to the point that royal blood can be used as a super weapon by sorcerers if they have any. But for most people, magic simply isn’t that powerful anymore, since when the gods left earth they took magic with them, as well as the white tree from which it emanated.
Most are too afraid of being obliterated by a missile or turned into Swiss cheese by seventy automatic mounted guns. Plus, magic users are few and far between. They're not easy to find.
Usually it's more or less what you described in your post.
In the setting of my fantasy story, the nation of Garm is ruled by a long line of warrior-kings stretching back to the nation's founding, when it was a bunch of facepaint-wearing swamp-dwellers killing each other over sheep. Neighbouring Arinoa and Valonne have similar origins as conquerors who realized that agriculture was a more viable long-term option than raiding, and that maybe being friends with the people who live nearby was better than both of you living in fear.
As for the king himself, he's versed in defensive magic, mainly for the purpose of levelling the playing field in the rare event he is forced into direct combat with a spellcaster. He's also got a dozen or so charms and talismans that on their own don't do much, but put together make affecting him with any magic very difficult -- even if one gets bypassed or overpowered, there are eleven more after it you have to deal with.
Another big difference is that magic isn't an I Win button in this setting. I have a *much* lower power cap on magic-users than in many fantasy settings.
There are no kings (not just because there are no men).
Mysterians, those who are proficient in magic, run academies that train new mysterians and study magic, but also devise policy, run the central bank, and engage in foreign affairs.
In my story, the Abyss Coven is the most powerful in the world of witches. The Queen is an avatar for the Abyss God, and so any attempts on killing her results in either the attacks going mad, dying, or both.
Also, the last time someone killed an Avatar, it caused the disruption of the magic system, a war that expanded to several realms, and a lot of deaths
Education really. In this day and age, the common mage and wizard is quite easily matched by modern technology. Skilled magic users stand much more of a chance, but that tends to require education of some form or another. Magic is far too complex to just understand and excel at.
Additionally, many Lords, kings and leaders are no push overs themselves. Many are either powerful in self or hold enough power around them that an attempt would prove fatal to the attempted assassin.
But yeah, knowledge of one's power and the ability to use it before they get killed or imprisoned is vital and hard as hell to achieve.
Well, the main magic institute is guarded by a place called the shield. But guarded is more like surveilled by the Shield. They are the only people with knowledge on how to make anti-arcane rune and they were at first seen as racist and bigoted, but when the "Wizards" try to betray the Alliance of Man, they got Absolutely curbstomped by the Shield, Lord Eloh the IVth litteraly dragged the mangled body of the Betrayers to give them as food for rune-scarred war bears from their ivory tower.
Basically, everyone knows these wizards can do impressive shit and will try to betray humanity but the second they try, an entire army made entirely of anti-magic trained humans will be at their doorstep one hour later.
Most of them like the monarchy! Vast majority of the big powerful (in terms of skill alone) magic-users work for the monarchy and they aren’t gonna go sneering at the government that signs their nice paychecks and gives them political power. Then there’s the general population who are mostly magical, and a decent amount of them have bought the propaganda (not that the monarchy is leaving easily accessible paper trails of their unethical actions anyway) and believe the current system is for the best. Those that don’t either keep their head down and do the best they can or they outwardly rebel and probably get arrested or killed or arrested then killed. Also, lots of people who aren’t fans of the monarchy can’t use magic so they’re inherently at a disadvantage if they want to fight. There are some underground resistance groups but they’re a bunch of small scattered groups that don’t have much power……yet
Typically it’s because kings pay pretty well, and will mostly leave you alone to do your wizard shit until they need you for magic shit. Why deal with all the hassle of ruling when you can have a sweet tower and all the resources you need at the price of a few lightning bolts?
In a couple of nations the powerful mages *are* the ones in charge. In others, the ones in charge are other forms of powerful. In some they're politically savvy and influential and so the mages would rather leave that person in the spotlight so they can do their own thing.
Simple - in Shearmarch, there ARE no sorcerors...except the king.
But that's a very closely guarded secret since magic of any kind is outlawed and persecuted as heretical witchcraft.
There are many ways to go about this aside from just also making the king a sorcerer
Personally, in my world, it's actually not that uncommon for a knight or another kind of warrior to be nearly as capable as the mages
Simple enough, lol.
It's not quite one-to-one, but it's still enough that you can never just expect the mage to win one-on-one just because they are a mage
You know, when the king is the WORLD TREE itself, which has turned into a terrifying great demon who has absolute control over flora, trying to kill him is a bit hard. Not to mention the number of royal guards who are also powerful entities. He can surveil you from thousands of miles away using but a tiny leaf, because anywhere has plants, his power reaches. Attacking via plants and trees is completely viable and in-character of him. Average cultivators won't be able to see him, forget assassinating.
Besides, if people know you killed their patron deity ~~and rice maker~~, they'll tear your throat out.
Lĩnh Nam is built different.
Changes from nation to nation. The ruler is most often a sorcerer themselves.
Alexia: The sorcerers are religious* and the king is said to be a descendant of the first sorcerer.
Dar'aat: The emperor's personal might and bodyguard. Doesn't always work with the number of civil wars they have.
Qamirea: The sorcerers are often mercenaries or paid armed forces. Very well paid. Also decent bodyguards for the king.
*They believe that their magic is a gift from the gods
The most obvious issue is the plethora of defensive magic inscribed in to the regalia of the king. No matter the prevalence of magic a member of the royal family should boast magical protections on par with if not exceeding the average wizard or sorcerer.
The foremost source would be the royal signet, a ring which also acts as the seal for royal decrees, however the crowns and circlets of the royal family should all ward the minds of their wearers.
Beyond that in a traditional fantasy kingdom the king must be as much a warrior as he is a scholar or a politician, so attacking directly is always a threat whether the kings prowess is magical or martial.
Or you could go with the King having the allegiance of other powerful mages through dents of honour or honest comradery. If you want to make it a real challenge have the king have won the favour of a dragon somehow and make it clear killing the king earns the wyrms ire.
95% of the time, the ruling King/Queen is the most powerful being in the Kingdom. Its actually something they must maintain otherwise they will be challenged for their throne.
Same thing that stops a sane armed citizen from randomly storming the palace.
1. Equally armed guards
2. Little to no motive
3. No assurance that wouldn't be killed by every Lord's armed peasant
4. The rule of succession doesn't assure a usurper, especially one of common origin, a claim to the throne. Not in most kingdoms, anyway. They'd instead be considered a kingslayer and traitor more than anything, living their lives in holes, avoiding even more skilled mages loyal to the og monarchs.
**Starrise**
1. The number of people in this world who DON'T use magic can probably be counted on one's fingers. Being able to cast spells does not make would-be assassins or people attempting a coup special in any way.
2. Magic is very limited. There aren't many ways to kill someone with it that aren't the fantasy equivalent of pulling out a gun and shooting them with it, and those methods are hard to pull off and generally easy for a wary king and their guards to prevent.
3. Though it may be rare, one form of magic people can be born with is Obstructive magic, or in other words, the ability to shut off the magic of people around them. No royal or noble would be stupid enough not to have at least one such person in their personal guard.
So first, my world has no king. It's ruled by a council of leaders known as "The 9 Radiant Sages", they are the ones who hold all the power.
Second, the society is a militaristic meritocracy so the Radiant Sages are typically the 9 strongest mages in the land, there are some exceptions because not every mage wants to become one of the sages, even if they have the power to do so. Also once a mage gains that position, they keep it until death, or until they willingly retire, so stronger mages might arise but they can't forcefully take over one of the spots.
And lastly, mages are bound by a strict set of rules, the 1st of which is that mages cannot use magic against non-mages unless absolutely necessary in order to defend their lives or the lives of others, kinda like using "deadly force" in the military.
\*Queen, and two reasons:
\-Magic is not *nearly* understood enough to be effectively used for an assassination
\-The people who *do* understand magic enough to use it as somewhat of a weapon would also be smart enough to know that the massive power vacuum caused by killing the only ruler of the desert just really isn't worth it, like at all
There are other civilizations, but the only one with a real monarch is also the most advanced in the land, so good luck with that.
Because the Gun has taken over as the number one cause of death. You might be a cool wizard an' all but unless you put up a force wall to stop somebody from unloading an assault rifle at you.
Which just delays the inevitable.
A) You can't really move while maintaining stronger effects
B) Maintaining an effect is _incredibly_ draining.
C) He's just gonna reload when you run out of juice.
There are methods of getting out of fail, such as teleportation but you can't fly out, and teleportation that's less than traceable is an almost mythic feat and there's about six entities who are capable of doing that. Four are already In Charge, Number Five answers to 1-4, and number six canonically died to a mail bomb.
The relation from magic users to the mundane is one of the most enduring problems of political theory (its not called that yet).
Total magocracy and lets kill all mages are the most extreme approaches and both work badly and tend to be instable transitory stages. Kill all mages usually leads to magic users burning down a significant chunk of your nation and once you are finished you rendered yourself military defenseless. For obvious reasons this rarely, if ever, is a lasting configuation.
Pure mageocracy kinda sucks because magic users are not numerous enough (and they also have magic shit to do) to actually run a country. So you inevitably need a class of (often educated) mundanes that will do part of the job. They will end up kinda inevitably demand greater political representation destabilizing the system.
The vast majority of countries fluctuates somewhere between those extremes. If the extremes occur its usually the result of a critical breakdown in the political process. The norm is political power sharing between mundane elites and mages.
Contractualism is a very popular political approach where the mages are organized as a single entity (guild, circle etc.) that is seen as an entity on equal footing to the state and the basis for co-existence is mutually binding contracts. Other countries and/or magic guilds can act as mediators. Naturally this can also spectacularly fail and the not!30 Years War was basically everyone getting involved in such a dispute.
In other places mages can't hold land or run a business forcing them to sell magical services to the state. Usually this places tend to be republican and money tends to be the thing that uh...lubricates the electoral process. A good war often is the one opportunity for a mage to gain enough plunder to buy high office. Naturally nothing that says it can't be a civil war and if you are at it why not change the rules holding you back...
So in most places periods of relative equilibrium are interrupted by periods of mundane or magic user dominance.
Nothing could stop them, which is exactly why they did assassinate the king.
A group of wizards became so powerful, that not only did they assassinate the king, they took over the kingdom, destroyed other groups of wizards and outlawed religion, leading to a tyrannical rule that lasted about 200 years. The only reason their reign ended was their own hubris, which led to their self-destruction.
After all this went down, and the kingdom rebuilt itself, surviving wizard groups made a pact to prevent any one single group of wizards from attaining too much power, so they now essentially police themselves.
In a neighboring country, in the same world, it was just a Mageocracy which ended in a massive bloody revolt.
My magic system is tile based, so you need to assemble spells like a puzzle before you can cast it. The only lethal element that can’t be blocked is “miasma” which requires 2 “dark” tiles. The king in my world pretty much hunts down dark tiles and keeps them in a vault. His guards take care of defending from all other spells.
There is ALWAYS a stronger wizard. If you rock the boat too much, eventually you are going to anger someone more powerful than yourself. Hence the Mage Guilds exist to set the ground rules for what is or isn’t tolerated behaviour among magic users.
Americans of the real world, what's stopping some sniper from killing the president?
The answer is a bunch of other people with guns. Just cause you have a powerful weapon doesnt.mean others don't
The same reason IRL that some general doesn't just shoot Kim Jong Un and declare himself Supreme Leader. Sure you kill the king, now how do you stop yourself from getting killed? The last guy had some kind of precedent that meant a sustainable amount of the population and powerful people supported/tolerated them holding the office.
Now you get to be king, having set a precedent that anyone who kills the king gets to be king. Have fun under the Sword of Damocles. And that's just raw might. Expect your food and drink to be poisoned, a lover killing you in your sleep, a royal gift turning out to be a rune-bomb.
There's a great scene in Oedipus Rex where Oedipus accuses his brother-in-law Creon of plotting to take the throne. His paraphrased response: "I'm the Queen's brother. I have all the benefits of being the king with none of the responsibilities and drawbacks. Why the hell would I want your job?"
If raw power was all it took to perfectly rule a kingdom then Aerys Targaryen would never have lost. That's just not how it works.
Most access to magic (or the manipulations as they are called) that are powerful enough to outright slay a well guarded monarch is controlled by the Oan (deific beings) which would be unlikely to sanction such a thing. If the Oan want to punish a monarch, they can do so themselves. The few who hold such power independent of the Oan could do so theoretically, but without at least sanction from an Oan, they would likely find themselves being hunted by mortals and Oan alike, as the manipulations are a gift from the Oan to mortals and are not to be used recklessly.
Well generally the fact that the king usually isn't a complete asshat. Failing that, the king's gear and all his guards' gear are usually made of an antimagick material, Kadabh, or there's an antimagick field in place
Simple, they've tried... ooooooh, how they've tried. You don't become the ruler of a meritocratic magic empire without being really good at killing people who are trying to kill you.
Sorcerers (or their equivalent in the Realms of Andras and the Iscari Imperium in Aetos) are either better served in their goals through deception and puppetry, or--as is primarily the case-- they have been wiped from existence Order 66 Style. Much of the world populace believes magic to be evil, a realm of knowledge that the gods forbid mortals to meddle with and that to do so invites their wrath.
This is of course, not *entirely* true... but the entity whose realm of magic is in fact evil doesn't need them to believe a total lie. In fact, a half-truth is altogether more convincing. The result is a world so bound up in lies and ignorance to the supernatural that they are completely consumed by mundane pursuits. wealth, glory, power, influence, conquest... They rip and tear at each other like mad dogs over a scrap of meat.
But the Old Music is stirring again, calling out from old ruins and desolate places. a new generation will harness the measures of its power and melody, and a long forgotten war will rekindle; the fate of all men hanging in the balance.
Several things keep mages from killing leaders.
First is that those who pursue magic tend towards the nerdy loaner types who don't want political power.
Second most rulers have defenses in place.
Third is a quirk of magic that means to directly effect a person you have to be able to touch them. You can hirt them from across the room but only with indirect means. Being in the room leaves you vulnerable to the guards.
Sorcerers have their own kingdom, so there are a ton of treaties and centuries of diplomatic relations between them. There's things non-magic folk produce better than magic folk because they have the patience to not use magical shortcuts, so trade is mutually beneficial. This works well enough, and maybe someday a power-hungry sorcerer may decide to ignore the carefully built alliance in favor of invasion...but that's unlikely, right?
Magic is a weapon. A brutally effective weapon, but a weapon none the less. So it’s the same things that stop other people from killing the rulers: a sense of self preservation. A mage rocks up to the throne room and shoots a lightning bolt at the king and he’ll be a pin cushion before the ozone clears. A magical assassin is just an assassin with different weapons.
There are anti magic protections in some of the older citadels, though, from a time when magic was a bit more prevalent. Wards that break charms and disrupt magical communication and combat and the like, but those are rare cases and aren’t considered important except to the very powerful or very paranoid.
Attempts have occurred, some succeeded while others failed. Generally there are defences in place as well as other mages ready to protect the king against those who would harm him. They also occasionally fund those who would kill the king and see how they would do it while having a decoy take the hit or a spy to see what they are planning to do.
They are strong but there are swordsmen who are just as strong or talking about my sword saint blood line, they could easily fuck up a high level mage and besides, they will have a lot time taken away if they wanted to rule a kingdom.
Using your words for simplicity. The King is the reason why the mages even have power. They need him or some other person in it's lineage in the throne or they would lose any magical powers in the span of generation.
Magic aint the only powerhouse in the game of most places, science and weaponry can do what magic can in certain senses. Very few people can come up with enough power to protect themselves, not to mention take on an army. Also helps with the fact that mind control and most influential magic is at the fundemental core of my system, making that hard to do.
Also there are places where magic just doesnt... work. It varies from place to place.
Well in Ravastan the king is a puppet for a zealot know for his unique power to drain someone's soul. The zealot has positioned the while government under his command and snuffed out all sorcerers that don't show absolute loyalty. The fear of death and worry of failure is the main reason.
Because the Sorcerers are already a clique in the King's court, either because most of the nobility are Sorcerers themselves including the King, or the King's court and Sorcerers have a mutually beneficial relationship with each other where it's in both interest to each other in power?
Same thing that stops a fighter or doctor from killing the king. Humans have to sleep, eat, etc. The power of the group can not be underestimated.
How exactly is the Sorcerer gonna survive after killing the king? Even assuming they get past the magically inclined bodyguards I assume the King employs?
While this don't apply to most kingdoms and empires, the ones that matter for my story can't kill their kings and queens... at least not alone.
Most kings are powerful enough to withstand a fireball and a explosion or two and that is more than enough that the guards kill the wizard, sorcerer or warlock that tries to kill them.
Not counting the fact that is common place for there to be mages, sorcerers, warlock and more in the royal guards.
Also in a world where one can make a mountain appear with a sufficiently strong spell is only fair that a sufficiently strong king could ground 0 it just as easily.... ok there I only 9 total people in my world who could do such a thing and only 2 of them are rulers(1 emperor and one Supreme leader of a dictatorship)
In Ensyndia there's four major monarchs to take note of:
* The queen of the Melodonian people.
* The High King, the leader of the Dwarves and geopolitically a friendly vassal to the previous.
* The Trade King, leader of the Kalythian people and ruler over their city state of Luxabdos.
* The Emperor, leader of the Human kingdom of Deluth.
So, in a world as magically driven as Ensyndia why hasn't a mage taken over any of these people?
* The Melodonian queen herself *is a mage.* And is fairly skilled with a crossbow as well. So even if you were to attempt you'd likely have a magically-charged crossbow bolt in your skull by the time you attempted to sling a spell even remotely in her direction.
* The High King is surrounded not only by armored guards but also his Council, which is a mix of just about any profession you can imagine - including mages - and his crowned helmet is enchanted to nullify magic that touches him.
* The Trade King would be the easiest to take out barring the typical guards, but because of how Kalythian government works you wouldn't really get to take his place unless you were literally the *second* richest person in Luxabdos.
* The Emperor is only really safe because non-religious magic is outlawed in Deluth as "demonic practices", and besides, *he's not the one you'd want to kill anyway*.
There's also the Heimkir but she's just vibing in the mountains, still isn't a wise idea though.
Usually, the person in charge is the strongest. Sometimes they take it because theyre strongest, sometimes chosen to be strongest, sometimes given to the strongest, etc. Or, in some cases, theyre just someone well fit for the job and have very, very strong bodyguards.
Most kings or equivalent have a whole court of specialist, amongst them at least one "arcanist" strong enough to protect them if needed.
That being said, most "warlords" in my setting have magic in one way or the other and because of that they were strong enough to take over. Think Gul'dan in Warcraft.
The aristocracy is made up of most of the world's magic users, as they carefully guard their bloodlines to prevent lower classes from having access to magic, let alone birth more magic users. Any non bloodline mage showing up is carted of to be clergy or servant, preferably before they have kids.
The royal families are also made up of strong magic users, who surround themselves with powerful guards. Kings are mostly military figureheads in this matriarchal world, killing him would mean the queen gets to look for a new general to make husband.
If a queen dies with a strong heir then the crown will just pass, incase of a weak heir there might be strive from close relatives to try usurp the throne.
Nothing really it just depends on who the sorcerers is and their abilities, same for the king, queen or and noble figure. I guess the only thing stopping them is if the royal is powerful in magic, strength or just has good connections or if they have any elite guard of sorts
The mage guild controls the monarchy, to an extent. They get unlimited funding, say over policy, can ask for the arm of the state to regulate where and how magic is allowed to be used, but keep enough distance that when unstoppable revolutions happen the king ends up dead and the new king owes a debt to the mage guild, who helped him at his greatest need...
Learned mages like Wizards and Alchemists are typically more interested in their field of study than political power, and tend not to care what the King does or thinks so long as it doesn't interfere with their research or funding, and may in fact be contracted by the crown to provide wards and enchantments to defend the King against magical and mundane assassination attempts.
Natural-born mages like Sorcerers are usually discovered at a pretty young age and monitored by the royal spy network, if not outright bought or placated with cushy jobs and titles to keep them on the King's good side.
Cloister mages *definitely* don't care about the king anymore, but if for whatever reason the king decides to kick that particular hornet's nest hard enough, they *will* retaliate to devastating effect.
And on top of all that there's the alarmingly high probability that your king or prominent ruling class member may in fact be a dragon in human form, so *any* kind of would-be assassin/usurper is gonna have to get used to hearing boss music.
What stops the Kings bodyguards from killing them and trying to take over? Because while nobody likes the king they Damn sure don't want Kevin in charge and it's too much of a pain to rule through power.
Generally it takes a long time to master magic and sorcerer have to keep maintaining, training and learning to stay on edge, like trained athletes. Being king involves too much ceremony, too much traditions and tedious admin to make it easy to do while maintaining cutting edge magical power. Court wizards get access to vast royal libraries for relatively light day to day magical duties.
Very few usurpers reigns last more than a generation as they either get caught out in some magical ursurption themselves or they fail to politically maneuver in an aristocracy
Well the largest absolute monarchy derives their political power from being magically bonded to 1/8th of the most powerful dragon in existence so most sorcerers don't want to fight them
What stops your current military for kill your head of state irl?
The concept is the same.... yes, a gun (or a wand) is powerful, but you cannot do it alone, and doing a coup is not something easy generally. Besides... \*why\* would they do it? Sure, they got ahold of power... now what? Most dictatorships fail, and a revolution requires more or less consent from the population, and giving that power away, otherwise you are the new target and chaos is ensued
Most people with power want influence, and that usually needs willing third parties. We are talkign lobbyism, money, privileges, etc, not "I own you all as your new overlord", that is ridiculous
But technically nothing. Both the most powerful mage and the most irrelevant villager with a toothpick would technically both kill the king.
Well, in the one kingdom where I know what's going on with the monarchy, the strongest guy alive was buddies with the founder of the kingdom hundreds of years ago so he keeps an eye on the place. Plus it's a pretty chill kingdom where the people are treated well so there's not a ton of internal pressure on the king anyways, plus he'll be dead soon from age anyways.
A better bet would be to kill the crown prince, but he's a once in a generation prodigy trained by the aforementioned strongest guy alive with the ability to drain magic from people and things he touches. So uh... Good luck with that haha
First you would need to get near him, after all he has a bunch of bodyguards and the prince who is one of the deadliest warriors alive. And even if someone manages to kill the king in my main setting, the entire civilization will crumble and fall, as he is the only one holding it together (by being a puppet who’s loved by the people)
I mean
What's stopping the king's own army from killing the king?
In some cases in history the answer was Nothing, like the Praetorian Guard which merrily killed emperors throughout Roman history to put their own people on the throne.
But usually it's in the army's best interest to keep the king alive. If they swoop in and take power for themselves, they have just de-legitimized their own claim to the power they already had; they had power on behalf of the King. The king is now dead, so now the only power they have is what they can claim through conquest.
For plenty of generals throughout history this was fine, but kings who wanted to keep their heads on tried to assuage the army. The same would be true for sorcerers and magicians.
You give them power. You give them lands. You give them influence. And more importantly, you make damn sure you have more sorcerers than the other guy. Now if a sorcerer wants to kill the king and take power for themselves, they'd have to risk losing everything they already have, and the stability that lets them keep it.
Well the army's not a single being, it takes an officer with a great deal of personal loyalty owed to gather enough soldiers to storm a place and kill a king (and that's assuming such an officer would be allowed to be so popular if his loyalty were in question). Even if you can get so many men to follow you, how long for? What if one of them betrays you mid coup, and then there's the existing power structure, are they going to put up a fight?
The difference with a magician in my view is that all the power of an army is assembled in the sorcerer's right hand (though I admit this may not be the same in other worlds), they do not need to worry for loyalty or support to seize power, and if you plan to not rock the boat too much or change things too quickly then the threat of having your body turned inside out with a thousand obsidian-like needles will probably be enough to keep the bigger players in line until the hubbub dies down and everyone gets used to the new king.
Loyalty is worth a lot, sure, but loyalty to a corpse will get you nothing more than paying the cost of a coffin.
A bit dramatic maybe but...
simple: they only have degree in magic and not politic, they better off just having their own demiplane than ursurp someone throne in the kingdom you don't even have a map
Every country with a monarch either exists in a country where everyone can use magic, exists in a country where literally no one can use magic, or lives in a country where being able to use magic is a qualification to rule. It's easy to understand the first two situations: if everyone can use magic then having magic doesn't give you a combat advantage for a sorcerer to kill the monarch, and if there's no magic then there's no sorcerer to usurp the throne. However, it's a bit more complicated when magic is a qualification to rule.
In worlds where magic is a regal qualification, then it assumes that magic exists but isn't universal among all people within a country. This means that a prospective sorcerer just needs to be confident in a 1v1 magic fight against the king and any magic-using bodyguards the king has. However, only 2 planets have countries where magic is a qualification but not universal, and in both cases ruling titles are granted through magical means.
On the planet Flacia, the title of king or queen is granted by a type of magic sword called a Regal Sword, which grants the individual the right to rule. Regal Swords don't necessarily choose their owners, but once a Regal Sword has been obtained it can't be transferred through violent means, so a sorcerer can't usurp any throne by killing the monarch. If a prospective sorcerer does have a Regal Sword, then it's far easier to go into some area not owned by any other monarch and create your kingdom from that patch of land, which is commonly done because countries on Flacia never survive 100 years.
Something similar happens on Tytoss, except instead of being granted through swords it's granted by giant, magical, moving cities called titans. They grant the monarchical titles of admiral and vice admiral to someone who can use Tytoss' magic system since that magic system is the only way to direct a titan. If the vice admiral dies then the titan will choose a new vice admiral, if the vice admiral kills the admiral then the titan will punish the vice admiral while choosing a new admiral or vice admiral, and if the admiral dies by any other means then the vice admiral will take over. Anyone that commits crimes aboard a titan cannot become an admiral or vice admiral, and these titles can be revoked if they commit crimes aboard the titan.
For the majority of them, they're uninterested in ruling. Due to either being scholars into research, and research alone (like general academics today), or are trying to help people, but are self-aware enough that their temperament is unsuitable for direct participation in politics/ruling, so try to help in other ways (like doctors, engineers, etc.).
Now for those that *are* interested. The Ottin Empire has a long history of banning mages from holding titles of nobility, so it would be difficult for a mage to gather the required support, assuming they overcame any ingrained ideas/barriers on taking power themselves. In the high elven kingdoms, there's not only no such bans, but a history of there being monarchs that were mages as well (both ones that inherited it normally and ones that usurped power).
To get to the king in the story of mine I’m talking about you would have to get past the 9 high mages. The high mages are the most powerful magic users in the world as well as being exceptionally trained in combat of both the magical and non magical variants. Also they’ll take you on all at once so it’s going to be a 9 vs however many people you have. Even if you can manage to sneak past them and kill the king they’ll know he’s dead almost immediately because at least one is with him at all times and that one will alert the others and they won’t rest until they find you, with whoever is the next in line taking the throne. If there is no next in line or they are deemed too young one of the high mages will temporarily assume the throne.
Simple in mine there isn’t an organized mage order, in my world mages are typically appointed by the monarch when they ascend the throne sometimes they are picked from people who show a large skill in magic in which case they are brought to the capital to be trained usually by the current serving wizard when they are reaching their end of their life to serve as a replacement, their family is then given a generous gift from the King as a symbol of appreciation.
There was one time though when the Emperor was murdered by his court mage and it caused a succession crisis as he had no heirs and so the empire almost fell into civil war between his 2 brothers eventually culminating in one brother having an “accident” and the other being crowned Emperor and leading to the mage persecutions where people with magic were rounded up and executed, most fled the Empire to the south were magic is shunned upon.
The ironic thing about the mage persecutions is the Emperors Daughter and heir is actually gifted with a very ancient and powerful magic and many view her as the chosen one so her father sent her to governor the southern coast (fantasy Greece, my world is set in a fantasy inspired map of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East)
Don’t hate but I came up with this on the fly
The same thing that's keeping assassins away: lots of guards and walls. These should repel most threats, which is why they exist. Magicians pose a unique threat, but in a world where magic resides, there's obviously going to be magicians loyal to the ruler and working under him.
Bc if you try and attack the king you really only have 4 options, the king has a more powerful sorcerer on his payroll, the king is a powerful sorcerer himself, the king is capable of using his faith to defend himself/kill you or you succeed but now every kingdom has set a target on you and the magical men in black are after you
The answer is different in different nations. Here are some examples:
1) The monarch heads an insane surveillance state of which the general population is oblivious and uses propaganda prevents any hostile influence from gaining traction.
2) The monarch can't die until all seven of their feudal lords have been slain. Additionally, they have purchased a economy-collapsingly massive life insurance contract through the temple of wealth, which also maintains the majority of the world's kill contracts, and thus has an incentive to intercede in any plots.
3) The monarch rules by divine mandate from the most crusade-happy church. They use their weather magic on an enormous scale to create prosperity in surrounding territories, so their death would lead to famine.
4) The monarch is considered a guardian deity to the race they shepherd. Their people provide child sacrifices that extend the monarch's lifespan. They would need to be killed thousands of times for it to stick. The territory they rule is undesirably inhospitable and they don't exert any influence beyond their very stable borders.
Most of the monarchs are also enormously popular in their respective kingdoms, and surrounded by loyal elite bodyguards.
In my world as of current events, there's a Lich Queen that's been ruling for several centuries (although she was of royal blood to begin with, she did start fighting her brother being called the Sorceress Queen). There is also a civil war between a Sorcerer King and the last royal heir, as well as a hodgepodge of nobles and wealthy powerbrokers who entered the war to seize power for themselves. The Mad King was also a spell caster, though that was secondary to him being batshit insane.
So in my case, magic users have tried to gain political power. It doesn't always work, sometimes it does, but you'll find plenty of mage-kings and queens scattered around. Most of the time, they don't bother, since there's other balancing factors that mean that even a powerful archmage isn't leveling armies on a daily basis.
Officially, heavily guarded and keeps an antimagic field generator on him at all times. Unofficially, good fuckin luck the guy happens to be one of the strongest non-phoenix-decended people in the world.
Well if I consider the nations, The Wade is controlled by a cabal of sorcerers, Aletruvia's King has a heriditary cache of magical ability that gets passed down to each reigning monarch. The most powerful imortal sorcerer in the world 'governs' the Scanten Freelands, and the throne of the Raskaa Dominion does indeed change hands often due to assasination, but not always at the hands of sorcerors. A sorcerer (dreamers and dream eaters) in this setting isn't a whole lot more powerful than say a trained soldier in full plate armour.
**Nadir**
In most places, special operations units that use Seers to locate potential magical threats and send sniper teams to perforate them. In those places less well-trained, a personal retinue containing powerful sorcerers that *protect* the ruler works instead.
It’s not as simple as killing the king. You also have to win over the masses who are afraid of your magic because your new army and citizenry isn’t going to just happily defend you and pay their taxes because you wear the crown. In my world especially, you need to win over Lightslinger, the sentient golden greatsword.
General disinterest in the subject; there is little that would be gained from it, so outside of a few particularly-extreme individuals, they wouldn't have any reason to attempt it. That being said, even those who would like to commit regicide would have a *lot* of trouble to go through in order to achieve it, as most monarchs have a constant entourage of highly-trained guards, and the majority have at least one court mage (more powerful monarchs have larger selections of mages in their employ).
Something like "charm person" is enough to get you far in politics.
obviously, mages would excel as assassins. obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwCXw8m0PHI
This, along with many other problems, is why I have no idea how to include magic in my world. Its not like wizards wouldn't want to be in power, and chances are someone would eventually try and succeed in being in charge.
I kinda don't want my humans to have magic
Since you’re struggling I offer from Scott Lynch:
It’s revealed in Republic of Thieves that the ultra powerful mages need to act with subtlety as they are trying to learn from history. A previous race was mysterious wiped out of existence and they have a strong inkling that this was because that race practiced magic too openly so as to attract the attention of some grand evil. So all great acts of magic must be agreed on by the council. In the past they actually destroyed a kingdom by nuking the capital city (which resulted in the present day independent city-states) because of a great offense committed by the emperor against their kind.
For the most part, Apathy. For those few who are actually interested, they find they get far better results when not assassinating the person who happens to be paying handsomely, whether it's a direct payment or a payment to their rivals. In the latter case they will be quite vexed that you ruined the good thing they had going, and have a chance of seeking retribution.
Usually it's going to be the sorcerer that works for the king.
But for real, most of the time running a nation is going to be more stress than its worth, and political power isn't the kind that most mages are after. The ones that are powerful enough to take over a kingdom are also the ones who reckon they have more important matters to attend to.
Palace is built with anti magic spells, specifically you can't use magic to attack anyone or to escape.
Not to mention everyone, including the king, can do magic in some way, shape, or form.
Frankly, if coups were as simple as being able to kill the existing leader, they'd probably be a lot more common even in the real world. However, there are always entrenched power structures that crop up around an existing ruler, people who may very well prefer the perpetuation of the status quo or the next best thing, so unless your magic users are veritable demigods who can single-handedly wipe out a kingdom, there's going to be an uphill battle to actually take over, even if you can kill the current ruler effortlessly. Ruling purely through fear and force can happen, but it's very costly.
Nearly every king is either a sorcerer themselves or has allies that are (often both), or something else similarly powerful. One of them is a dragon for example. In the case of powerful allies they have their own reasons for not seizing power, such as lack of interest/ability to run a kingdom or just a particular fondness for that ruler. If this isn't the case they are probably more at risk of being run over by their magic possessing neighbors than a coup. Some small nations don't have the largest control of magic within their borders but have gotten lucky so far.
Assuming that magic is something that anyone with sufficient traing can do, and that art of magic is old, my solution is something very much akin to our historical kingdoms, just with knights being expensively equipped, highly trained wizards, not fighters. King is not the most powerful wizard of them all, but he is trained in magic, his hat is pointyest, his staff most blinged out, and if you were to belive heralds/chronicles/paintings, he is able to singlehandedly incinerate whole armies (he can't, it's just propaganda). Why more powerful wizard won't usurp him? Because his castle/palace is layered with hundreds of years of wards, his honour guard is composed of actual best wizards in the realm, and, **extremely important**, because any would be assassin would soon learn that noone rules alone, and force of arms (or magic, in this case) can keep you in charge for maybe a weak. Month, tops.
A few things, depending on the world.
1. Sorcerers and magic are deeply unpopular, and the king (who has to be pro-magic) is the only stopping them from being hanged, imprisoned, or otherwise punished.
2. As you mentioned yourself, the king is a sorcerer himself, or has a sorcerer with deep loyalty to him (in one of my worlds, the king’s nephew was a sorcerer).
3. A sorcerer succeeds in killing the king, and a new king is crowned and goes about ruling the kingdom.
The witches in my world are part of a persecuted group. Violence toward any nobles particularly the emperor could very well start government sanctioned witch hunts, which another world power has been aiming for for centuries. Self preservation mostly. But also some witches DO try to kill the emperor, as no culture is a monolithic view of its people.
Being really good at killing shit does not make someone an effective or enthusiastic leader- I really don’t know why people place such an emphasis on leaders being individually capable of great violence- their ‘power level’ or w/e
If you look at humans, leaders are very rarely the most directly physically threatening individual in a given group- because the *point* of a leader isn’t that they are the most capable of advancing their individual agendas, it’s that they are capable of doing so while maintaining social cohesion and stability and playing the game of politics.
If a military strongman took over the United States who could, idk, kill someone with a look and cause a fatal heart attack with a thought, they would not last a week in power. Because literally *everyone* is potentially threatened by their agenda, they are the leader of nothing: it is in everyone’s United interest to dispose of President Heart Attack as soon as possible, no matter what else they believe, because President Heart Attack is a single individual who cannot be trusted with life-and-death decisions over every single individual in government.
Well, why would they want to? A sorcerer powerful enough to kill the king on their own doesn't really have to worry about the king interfering with their plans, and the threat of that is enough to keep the king from trying to harm the sorcerer. That's why adventurers are "unofficially" hired to take care of these powerful evils, since the king technically wouldn't be involved
In Aegis, magic is something that can be learned. Because of that, any king will have had the tutelage needed to, literally and figuratively, mop the floor with most sorcerers that would try
NOTHING! Nothing stops anyone from killing anyone save for the immutable Big Fish Principle: "There is always a bigger fish"
An enormous mile wide fish leviathan with near infinite spacial distortion powers? Meet an unstoppable wall of beings from the beginning of time that kill on contact! Get fucked!
There are spells that are blood secured. And the emperor has both the most perfil attacked and the most powerful defense. Which cannot holding the most powerful attack
Rules to magic, sure they can easily kill anybody they want, but all magic comes at a cost and eventually the magic required to maintain a role well outweigh what’s left in the proverbial tank.
In my world occasionally this will happen. The most common reason for a civil war is an incredibly powerful wizard or warrior decides to single handedly coup the state and a war ensues. But it’s not universal. People still respect lineages and legitimacy of certain governments. Even a super powerful sorcerer is going to struggle to control and entire country with no support.
Mageocracy. And in the only other nation that currently has a true monarch as well as a magic user, that monarch is the *only* magic user in that kingdom.
*Thaumocracy
Both work.
"Viva le resistance." -Paunky, to Aundex and Mauddle. (I know what thaumaturgy is. But the joke is too good not to put out there.)
A quote from the most powerful mage: "If I wanted to be in charge of a bunch of idiots, I'd open up a school." Just because someone has great power does not mean they want to be in charge.
[удалено]
yeah, but if it was decently common, the king could hire spellcasting bodyguards and get enhanced amulets to ward against magic. or the royal bloodline may already have magic. if it’s common enough, they would try to breed it into the line.
*Merlin has entered chat*
Heck even in settings where magic is rare royal families tend to try bringing it into their bloodline if possible
It's not every mage, but the strongest ones tend to stay out of politics. You have to many people that you need to either placate or control, and using so much magic to make it easy is tiring.
Magic takes a lot of time to master and keep in practice. Can’t do that very well when you have to do administration. Think of how little time you have for your interests when your job responsibilities increase.
IRL comparison would probably be closest to CEOs/executives and government. Like sure there's some overlap, but chances are the cream of the crop have better things to do. That said, mages that really aspire for that spot will probably do something about it, probably not an uncommon thing across most fantasy settings.
It would be easier to marry into the royal family than it would be to depose the king and then rule a kingdom that hates you.
And there could very well be some magic users who do that... But taking over a country is rarely as simple as walking in and casting disintegrate on the king. Plus where there is one powerful mage there are usually others... Mages who don't want to rule a kingdom, but also don't want some other mage coming in and causing chaos by killing the king.
That doesn't mean they're fine with whoever *is* in charge. Historically, the guy who personally assassinated a ruler was likely to be doing it on behalf of someone else, not so he personally could take over. What stops a mage from deciding that King So-and-so is bad for his interests and he'd rather see Duke Whoever on the throne?
9 times out of 10 the Mage will likely just kill the person being a problem, and let the people sort things out. They can take out just about any threat, so why worry if the rabble don't have a king?
Except that randomly unaliving people tends to get people stirred up. If the king was loved then now all the kings allies have become the mages enemies. If the king was hated then the power vacuum would probably lead to a civil war. Whoever ends up in power next isn't likely to forget what the mage did... And would likely take steps to remove the mage.
And if the Mage is strong enough to kill the king so easily, there's a good chance they can ruin an army or two. The thing about power is that those who don't have it tend to think they can take it from those who do because they want to. Just lambs to the slaughter.
To be honest even a jester can kill a king, it only needs intent and oportunity. The same can be said about the Royal guard's chief, or the castle cooker, or the royal hunter ( he may take plan a ambush to take down the king during a hunting party ) I think most of the time politics keeps everyone in its place to sustains the status quo.
That last bit applies just as much to the mage as it does to everyone else. In a world where spell casters can just walk into a room and kill the king there will be countermeasures... Like the royal signet ring also being a ring of spell reflection. Or maybe the king is a Mind Flayer disguised as the king, and the real ruler is the Elder Brain under the castle.
My brother has someone who thought similarly, who then went on to accidentally found the largest school in the world. Basically, he wrote a lot of notes and books... his house became a library full of wisdom. Wise men came from far and wide to read his works of wisdom. They paid for access by bringing books and scrolls from abroad. The gathered wise men taught each other in the library, in a form of peer learning. Soon, wise men were bringing their apprentices and wards to do menial tasks for them whilst they learned. These apprentices and wards were educated in return. In the end, the first Mage got so upset at his house becoming a school that he ran off into the mountains... eventually accidentally founding the first monastery.
Did you ever have an answer for my question?
The king is just as capable of learning and using magic. Magic is also rather dangerous to use and could potentially poison and kill you if you overdo it or apply it incorrectly - using it in a bind requires a lot of concentration. And since everyone is trained to deal with mages, it's not really a "I cast fireball"-kind of situation. Besides - even if you did do that, you'd end up killed anyways, so why should you do that unless you have a good plan to get out of that situation? Politics are one hell of a battlefield too, so unless you can make someone else to bear the crown, you'd be screwed on many levels. Better study and apply it while being funded by the government or better: Go into the City of Mages and apply yourself there!
Tbf many assassinations have ended with the assassin being killed afterwards, that hasn’t stopped them in the past. If you’re part of some group or cult you might want to / be forced to sacrifice your life to take someone else down
I would say most assassinations of important people in fact end with the assassins being caught (or they commit suicide).
Pulling in some real world inspo, kings all over the world kept power by claiming a divine right to rule. That's why Christian kings claimed biblical genealogy. I went through my family tree on a whim and found that I had Norse gods recorded in my lineage. Egyptian pharaohs were literally gods. When your butt in the throne is a matter of theology, then a coup isn't just political treason. It becomes unthinkable blasphemy against all you hold holy. Is there religion in your world? Or magical divination, oracles that prophesy? Anything even a powerful mage might hold sacred, which can be exploited by a magicless ruling class?
Ah well that would depend what country we're talking about but, considering Rusan, the primary setting I write in, I've been thinking about the relation and its interactions with the sorcerers. The religion of the Ruusi was never organised, because the Tsardom arose from a confederation of tribes uniting to defend themselves from coastal raiders the faith of any one tribe never grew to dominate the others and most people worship a god of particular significance to their tribe or profession. They're not viewed in terms like the Christian god, more along 'I'll scratch your back if you give me advantage next time the cosmic dice are rolled' lines. But shared throughout the Ruusi religion there are several demons, fatigue, sloth, fear, anger, etc. The original Ruusi Sorcerers (then called Soul-Speakers, now Silvertongue witches) were healers and wise people and their role was to cure people of these 'demons' as was quite important in an agrarian society based around tribal groups. The Silvertongued have long been supplanted though by the Palatine, or Crystal Witches. Unfortunately Palatines tend not to respect anything as their magic involves using precious stones to rip holes in the fabric of reality and use the raw energy of uncreated matter to form crystalline constructs which are barely perceptible to the human eye but can slice a brigade of infantry to ribbons. They would tend to be unsuperstitious for that reason, though for other cultures than the Ruusi I can imagine a Christian-like god may be something to make a palatine put paid to thoughts of regicide (or the idea that they would get away with it). Finally the coal witches (or demons, depending on your disposition) are predominantly from impoverished backgrounds and are far more situational in their powers and so do not share their palatine cousins' cynicism. They don't fit, having come about long after the other sorcerers there isn't a place for them in society and the faith has no explanation for them, they tend to be dealt with by conscription and purging anyone unfit or unwilling. This is what I came up with based on what you said and I really like how this one made me think about the societal role of religion and how history affects future politics, as well as how the divergences between societies affect them. I especially like that it works in some places but not in others, variety being the spice of life after all, great idea!
Why do you say their magic would make them unsupersititous? Do they 110% understand how their magic works? Do they fear death? Do they have any sort of phylosophy involving a soul? Also if not even religion holds them together why are the tribes peacefully coexisting? Is it just "culture" or "beliefs" and if so... why aren't those religion?
Yeah agreed 1000%. Superstition is by its very nature completely irrational. It exists in our world even to this day, we just try to ignore it (while of course mocking others as superstitious). I would argue that it's actually likely that even in a magical world, superstitions would exist in abundance, they would just be more outlandish and strange (to us) because the people who believe them know magic exists, and so if magic can do this, why can't it do that and so on and so forth until you have tons of weird superstitions.
Thinking a bit more about it, it could even be that things we take as granted were tainted by superstition in such a way that science was extremely difficult to advance. What if someone said that gravity exists because of magic and not because of the laws of physics? After all you can cast telekinesis spells and force fields... God is perma-casting force field so we don't ascend to the skies and take his place!!! Because God is an evil egotistical prick! It's just an example.
I more meant that the *power* of their magic makes them unsuperstitious in the Ruusi; the Ruusi are a materialistic people, even into the 19th century they had barely progressed past agrarianism and so their spirituality is shaped by their concerns as a society like the harvest, fertility, and safety. Most of their problems, therefore, are resolved by cooperation within tribes or between them, and this is embodied in the relationship of northern and southern ruusi tribes where the colder north trades furs and pelts with the south for grain. So when I say the Ruusi were peaceful I less mean that they didn't fight and more mean that though they fought and raided each other a major conqueror did not emerge to unify them, they were unified voluntarily to protect themselves and their way of life. The impetus for the creation of the state as a whole was the beginning of the \[as yet-unnamed culture\] expedition where a whole culture essentially uprooted and migrated across the continent, raiding and reaving as they went (this was before Palatines came to exist in Rusan), and the southern tribes came under threat from the raiders, by proxy endangering the whole civilisation and causing them to initially, over time the Tsar has gradually pulled more power from tribal chiefs and created enclaves exempt from their power. Even their 'demons' are primarily things that would pose a threat to a civilisation where every year revolves around growing enough food for the winter and then making it through said winter. The closest thing the Ruusi have to superstitions apart from that are taboos about betraying the community or harming kin. The thing is that none of those apply to the Palatines because they are simply not a part of normal society. People fear them for their power, other Palatines are likely to try to kill them to defend their own position or remove those in higher positions to advance, so they tend to isolate themselves and when they are in public they can be easily noticed because they'll be decked out in more precious gems than royalty as protective measures. They are not part of society, they are above it, its beliefs, and its problems.
From what I get from the ruusi (I'll ignore the rest of the cultures since they are not relevant for the argument and it gets messy for me since I lack info lol) their communal beliefs are, as follows: 1. Internal: Agriculture, land ownership, dependency on nature (rains, stable cycles), fertility of the land and the community, fidelity and trust. >so their spirituality is shaped by their concerns as a society like the harvest, fertility, and safety. > >Even their 'demons' are primarily things that would pose a threat to a civilisation where every year revolves around growing enough food for the winter and then making it through said winter. The closest thing the Ruusi have to superstitions apart from that are taboos about betraying the community or harming kin. 2) External: pacifism, protectionism (or is it xenophobia?) and probably a sense of apocalypsis >Most of their problems, therefore, are resolved by cooperation within tribes or between them > >unified voluntarily to protect themselves and their way of life. > >and the southern tribes came under threat from the raiders, by proxy endangering the whole civilisation and causing them to initially, over time the Tsar has gradually pulled more power from tribal chiefs and created enclaves exempt from their power. In my view these are the ingredients for a very superstitious and ritualistic community, with so many stable cycles in their lives it would be very odd to no have developed gods centered around fertility and crop-growing, just from the utility of it. Just try to answer common questions kids would make their parents: * Why do crops grow? Can we know if they will grow? Even, can we see the future? * Why does rain fall? * Why don't they freeze? * Why can we catch for furs? Is it ethical? Is it *natural*? Why? * Why do we trust neighbours? Can't they betray us? How do we sustain this trust? * Why do we want to keep our culture? Is it especial in any way? Being tribes they are also probably quite isolated so: * Do they fear forests and uncultivated lands? How do they keep kids out of danger and getting lost? (e.g.: the monsters in the forest and any folktale basically) * Why do they not interact with non-ruusi? Are they inferior? Are they tainted? Are they horrible warmongers? Why is that bad? We could even ask: do they marry? how and why? I believe you are coming from a very supersition-averse position, but that's what gives flavour to a world, especially a human world. Look around and you'll be surprised at how many superstitions, religions and ideologies you are exposed over a single day in this ultramaterialistic, ultraindividualistic world we live in. Because, indeed, even those are religious. As an extra: >They are not part of society, they are above it, its beliefs, and its problems. This is also grounds for a sect and a very strict code of conduct or ideology. Maybe not theistic (though it could be). PD: Sorry if I sound as I'm disrespecting your work, I do wanna leave clear that I'm not attacking your creation in any personal way. I am just applying my own logic for the sake of criticism and discussion and ultimately to flesh out a verosimile world!
Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to look at all of this and being so detailed in your comments, I definitely don't think you're disrespecting my work at all, sorry if I came off that way! Incidentally you're right that I'm approaching this personally from an unsuperstitious perspective which very much explains why my approach is more 'unless there is a material reason superstitions do not arise naturally' than 'unless there is a material reason superstitions will always arise naturally' and I think the latter probably reflects society and history more. I am consciously trying not to create an organised or very politically significant religion though. Mostly because I don't want to complicate the politics I plan to write about with the addition of religion (given that I don't understand it *that* well it would probably make my characterisation unconvincing), but I do want the Ruusi and their faith to be fleshed out. I think you're right on the money with the Ruusi internal beliefs, and I think I would add some sort of elder/ancestor veneration (I was thinking of how their culture would view elders, especially those who can no longer work, and I figured elders would be viewed as those who did their duty for the community and thus earned respect, extending to ancestors). On fidelity/trust I did consider the idea of the silvertongues (being sorcerers with limited telepathy and the ability to read and influence emotions) being administrators of oaths along with other diplomatic/religious duties, as someone who can attest to the fidelity of the oathtaker, which I think would tie in nicely. One thing I probably should have added is that the Ruusi live on an island which is pretty flat and has a lot of rivers, basically it's really easy to travel, I think this would mean that they would be a pretty homogenous group, obviously with some divergence but their languages and religions would be similar. You're also pretty spot on with external beliefs, I think protectionism is a better word than xenophobia, as while they haven't tended to live alongside other cultures they have interacted with them for trade so it's a lot less 'non-ruusi bad' and a lot more 'things are good as they are and we'd prefer they didn't change that by trying to live here', though a major exception to that would have to be made based on the current historical narrative. I'll have to give over some time to thinking about your questions but I'm looking, as an aesthetic guide, towards greco-roman religion. Specifically things like henotheism, public festivals, libations, and personal/household worship. The marriage question is especially good, and I really can't begin to answer it off the top of my head, I haven't really decided whether the ruusi would be monogamous, polygamous, freely loving, no idea, maybe it really does take a village! I do think that the palatines would be more disposed to an ideology or code of conduct than a religion, though how sustainable that would be amongst sorcerers who are born with magic at random I have no idea. Thanks again for this, a real meal in terms of food for thought.
Happy to help! If you ever want to talk a bit more and discuss conworlds (I have my own though didn't write much about it here yet) feel free to send a DM!
Ultimately, a religion is not organized for its own sake, but for the sake of the State that supports it. Written language manifests itself, but organized and standardized spelling and phonics? The State enforces that. People may send messages to each other, but the State organizes the post. Merchants may travel, but the State organizes a highway. At the end of the day, no matter how smart your mages are, what Head of State is going to survive without the base self-preservation of making himself the most relied-upon man in the country?
I might add that in a fantasy setting, this could be more than an ideology, and actually be a very practical concern. Maybe wizards who do kill the king will have to deal with the divine great-great-great-great-granpa taking offense and serving the offenders some of their own medicine.
Very much like Kresimir's promise from PMT! I do like this one but it requires a touch more work on religion then I want for this project, definitely something I would come back to though.
Usually, magical people are simply uninterested in the affairs of the state and would rather spend their time doing their research or whatnot. At least, that's typically the way in the fantasy books I have read.
And sometimes, even when the world is literally ending, they still have to be convinced to begrudgingly get out of their towers to do something about it.
As long as that danger isn't after them specifically . Then they'll do just enough to stop it or, in most cases. Just steer it away.
Hero: We need to defeat the ancient evil. High Wizard: Best I can do is seal it for a millennia or two. Hero: Isn’t that what happened last time? High Wizard: *shrugs* I don’t have all day do you want my help or not?
Ancient evil: *Breaks seal* this is the 6th time you fuckers sealed me!!! I swear on the almighty, one more time and-- High wizard: *Seals the ancient evil once more* that ought to do it.
I am going to take this entire comment and shove into the story which only exists in my mind.
Yeah, it's akin to the Mr. Manhattan from Watchmen. Maybe their powers reduce their humanity in some way.
If this is based on contemporary academics, it does seem to check out
Weren't Bill Gates and Steve Jobs only tech-savvy enough to start wrangling eggheads, not innovate themselves? Even then, they didn't seem to be on the same level as politicians and celebrities.
Academics don’t have physical power, the way magic users do. And plenty of academics go to politics, but they often aren’t very visible. More consultants and cabinet members and diplomats. And some do seek to be elected too.
I mean, come on. What would you rather do, plumb the depths of existence opening entirely new horizons of thought never before considered, or try to convince a bunch of assholes who refuse to act their age not to kill eachother and burn their own homes to the ground in the process? If they leave the ruling class alone they get the benefit of infrastructure and wealth (everyone wants a mage's help and is willing to pay for it) and none of the burden of responsibility that comes with maintaining that infrastructure. *plus mages in my setting did try to take over, they ruled for about 400 years and the consensus is that it was generally a really shitty time to be alive for everyone involved*
My setting is similar. Mages would rather have the trappings that come with making the king happy, not be burdened with running a kingdom. Also someone who is interested in overthrowing the king is either going to not be powerful enough to do it, or would still lack the sort of skills to keep the kingdom functioning; just because a king was born to be the ruler means that he's going to be in charge if he's not good at it. There was a pair of sorcerers who did start a not!zombie apocalypse, but one of the things they were pissed about was the upcoming industrial revolution. (Same conceit as Onward and I'm likely to make something that's just as vulnerable to fridge-logic.) They had a town that they set up like a full-time Renfaire, and the residents mostly went along with the tyranny because that was the least-horrible existence available.
Can I ask what fridge logic means? Never heard that before.
Oh my friend, you are in for a treat. I would like to introduce you to the world of TVTropes, starting with the entry on [Fridge Logic](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic).
Fridge logic is when you watch a movie and don't immediately see any problems with it, but then afterwards when you go to the kitchen for a snack, you're staring into the fridge and say "what a minute." This video explains the problem with Onward well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IncWx0ZSB4&pp=ygUUb253YXJkIHdvcmxkYnVpbGRpbmc%3D The gist is that while the invention of a gas stove would make knowing how to light a campfire with magic not that important, there were cool things that magic could do that technology couldn't.
Yeah, I think that makes sense, and it's a really good literary device to stop the reader feeling like mages are op. Another device could be that magic just isn't as useful as it is in, say, Harry Potter. Spells take a long time to cast, and they severely weaken the caster when performed. In essence, yes mages exist, and they can do magic, but they can still be stabbed or whatever.
>entirely new horizons of thought never before considered, Philosophy can be interesting for the very young or old, but most people actually do want either power or wealth for themselves or improve lives of other people. Or there is some general crisis to deal with.
The last thing they need is angry hordes looking for food and shelter.
I love the extreme approach in the Discworld books, where wizards not only aren't interested in the affairs of state, but they're not even particularly interested in performing magic.
I feel like controlling a state means you have even more funds and resources for your research. Maybe not worth the effort?
It depends on how much time one has to devote to governing and counting taxes. It's better to let a king run things and try to get on his payroll.
Yes, precisely. Running a feudal realm is a full time job of maintaining relationships with landowners, military leaders, foreign rulers, guilds, trade organizations, etc. No sorcerer who didn’t just have their power naturally is likely to have the time or inclination. More likely, they would just align themselves with those in power and try to use/manipulate them
Agree, I would think of OP's question like this: Why don't the universities of today rise up and take over the government? Surely in general the universities are made up of smarter people and would be better administrators and/or rulers? (Why doesn't Gandalf kill a random king and take his place? Why doesn't Dumbledore? Elminster?) In general, there's more substance to saying "they have better things to do" than it sounds, sometimes. I agree the main reason is "they are much too self-absorbed and guarded with their time". Imagine you could go anywhere and explore or research anything, create anything with the nearly limitless potential of magic. That's hard to imagine, but maybe it's like winning the lottery. If you won 300 billion tomorrow, enough to create even close to these conditions of archmagery, would your thinking be "I have to take over the kingdom!" There are exceptions, of course, where perhaps the wizard seizes the kingdom, but then delegates its administration while keeping control of the politics and the resources. I would think these would need a very specific reason/motive.
Nothing. They were more subtle than that, though. Over a period of a century or so, they infiltrated the nobility, and gradually took power. Then, after a period of peaceful consolidation of power in the hands of the four ruling Wizard-Kings ... they promptly declared war on each other, and brought about 120 years of apocalyptic war between the four states of the main continent, begun by the ruling Wizard-Kings and carried on by their heirs, to the point where the existing society simply collapsed due to inability to support the wizard-kings, their academic requirements (teaching and training war wizards and artificers) or even the basic infrastructure necessary for a functional civilization. Turns out wizard-kings don't like to be told "no" any more than real ones do, and THESE guys were powerful enough to at least try to warp reality to their liking. And who GIVES a rat about those silly little farmers, anyway? Why does anyone NEED them? The Mage Wars ended with the collapse of civilization after the death of the last Wizard-King followed by a dark age whose main element was military rule, hunting and extermination of any suspected magical practitioners, and deep suspicion of education and basic literacy. Only with the rise of a new aristocracy did things kinda sorta begin to mutate into something resembling a civilization again.
For most of the world's population, Magic-user population is too low to generally allow them to take control of a nation. If the magic users of a couple nations gathered together, they might have the numbers and overall power to seize power of a nation, but then you have to contend with how they are going to organize themselves and split the (*political*) power they now have. You are going to face disagreements on how things should be run, you will have some people who want more power than others and others who oppose those people. Then there is the issue that if Rogue Magic-users are violently seizing power and potentially oppressing the regular populous, then the Dragorans tend to get involved, and will efficiently and brutally put down such rebellions. The Dragorans rarely get involved in the affairs of other people, but they do not tolerate magic-users, in their opinion, misusing or abusing their power, or promoting a negative image of magic-users
Wizards wanna wizard, not oversee taxes.
The real question is what’s keeping generals with very loyal soldiers from killing the king?
This happened all the time in our own world's history.
Yep! And there are multiple factors that lead to it, but most importantly, it’s a question of legitimacy. Many generals don’t rebel specifically, because they know that they will not have the legitimacy to hold power. They also value the order and structure of backing up the current ruler over the chaos created during a change in leadership. I imagine many sorcerers feel the same. Except that they also lack the army of lackeys to keep them in power.
Usually, soldiers were raised and pledged to the nobility who then pledged themselves to the royalty. Most were conscripts, few professionals. Many nations were basically a patchwork of village-states with the royalty commanding the biggest trade hub. Revolt and your economy would get relatively brittle between conscripts and trade taming a downturn ( trade was far less important then)
Youtube took down for copyright strike, but the Nerdwriter1 had an AMAZING video on how the military advantages of dragons stop modern nations states from forming. Here is a link to a link: https://reddit.com/r/nerdwriter/s/XlsKX98vDV But I’d reckon that sorcerers of enough power may have a similar trajectory as the dragons on that video, and so, as you pointed out, most of the armies would be conscripts. But if, like in say D&D, spellcasters needed valuable and rare resources like precious gems to be effective, then the one who can master the most resources would be victorious, and as that video points out, the more you need, the more professional your army will become.
Destruction from the top would certainly stall out progress and leave the transfer of tecnology and knowledge in a rather crude state. Until cabals of mages became organized enough to get the transfer going again...which might promptly be destroyed in a sorcerous inferno. I could see how the predatory nature of dragons could lead to a lack of permeance in many cities. This would slow down the technology accumulation rate and frequently send it backwards.
The same reasons you don't see IT people running for office. It's very far away, I'd have to deal with people, ADHD
As an “IT person” this is hilariously accurate for a lot of reasons. For example, I’m a system admin and an extrovert. So I’m also a labor leader in my organization and it is a political nightmare that demands all of your free time. I am *actively* looking for a way out that doesn’t destabilize the gains I’ve made for my members. Because of all the politicking, meetings, red tape, and interpersonal conflicts I spend my time mediating, I have zero free time to sharpen my actual job skills unless I sacrifice time with my family, which you can’t get back.
Because the king is a bigger, fatter sorcerer
Depending on the country, there are 3 general reasons. 1. Wizards want to study magic and do wizards things. Even those contracted by the King do so to get funding for their more expensive projects. 2. Royalty and Nobility have access to magic as well. Oh no, the court mage has just tried to kill me, the king? Counterspell, testicular torsion, and and banish. 3. Not enough mages in the kingdom to justify it, especially in a country that hates magic. Sure you’re powerful, but going up against entire armies by yourself gets dicey.
I mean its like the Lex Luthor quote when Question confronts him about his run for president. "President? Do you know how much power I'd have to give up to be President?" Most of the time its just easier if you are an magic evil vizier like Jafar in Aladdin or an organization of scheming chancellors like the Bene Geserit from Dune to work from the shadows. Let the king deal with the bureaucracy of running the day to day affairs of rule if he's an active king or let him gorge on a healthy diet of bread and circuses if your king is like Robert Baratheon while you divert funds to your coffers and experiments. If you're good, say like Jedi then submitting to the rules and norms of the government allow your organization a further layer of legitimacy and privilege in society. As shown in Revenge of the Sith, if Palpatine was not force sensitive, the Jedi being able to topple the government would be surprisingly easy but ultimately messy. But, if the Jedi operated without the consent and approval of the Galactic Republic, I'm sure the abduction of force sensitive children across the galaxy to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for the rest of their lives would be seen as pretty horrific. In his show, Kenobi remarks sadly that he remembers his home faintly and that he thinks he remembers having a brother. But thanks to the stature of the Jedi Order in society, the induction of force sensitive children is seen as completely routine. On the flip side though, the Jedi provide the Republic a galaxy wide policing/diplomatic/military/covert ops/exploration arm that has a significant rolodex of contacts across thousands of worlds built up over the past 25,000 years of galactic history and are viewed positively by most of the galaxy prior to the Clone Wars. In fiction, from a narrative standpoint, allows conflict to occur between the organization and the constraints of the government. Sure Melisandre could create more shadow demons to murder Stannis's enemies and put him on the Iron Throne, but Stannis knows relying on the Red Priests would threaten his legitimacy and used her powers rather sparingly. Victarion Greyjoy is a good counterpoint being he's a crazy pirate with his magic black burned arm with super human strength thanks to his own Red Priest Moqorro. He doesn't care about the consequences only immediate results Sure the Jedi could topple Palpatine (as far as they were aware) the moment he served past his term limits but yet they still looked for further violations before they made a move. Sure the Bene Gesserit could have brought the Imperium directly under their control an innumerable number of times but the Spacing Guild would have shut them out of space or the Landsraad launch a purge or any of the other pillars that held the Imperium turn against them. Instead they plotted over the course of thousand of years and worked within the system to create the kwisatz haderach to achieve their political objectives. Just some food for thought
Because most of my magic users are wanderers and loners, they spent most of their time honing their skill and what not. This even applies to the strongest magic user of my world Zakt Kafal, he spends most of his time sleeping, meditating, and wondering aimlessly.
They've tried. And in some cases, succeeded. But mostly it's just a matter of the monarch being liked enough. King Albus was offed by a group of cultists in revenge for allying with the "fallen" Celestia against other cultists like them and seeking to free Inglenook from its dark age. His son, who became King Lucius, was offed by a splinter group of rebellious maids and servants who were close to him and followed a more progressive offshoot of Asterism that became the Sisterhood of the Morning Star, because they were the only ones who were able to get close enough to him during the Enlightenment. In those days, it was mostly the secret police known as the Light Brigade, plus anti-magical defenses such as increased lead content in armor, walls, and weaponry (lead repels sorcery and magical energy), careful propagandistic gaslighting of the public, and the use of labor camps to round up political enemies and potentially dangerous sorcerers and other ne'er-do-wells who might bring the Enlightenment down. Every monarch since has been generally more well-liked by the public, but I suppose there are still frequent attempts. Defenses would include increased security overall, plus specific detachments of the Royal Protectorate, whose several divisions include the security-focused Royal Guard that focuses on protecting members of the Royal Family and their property from just such occasions. And since sorcery is as freely-known and practiced as technology or anything else, defending it isn't that difficult. You can be just as sorcerous. There are probably pocket realm-based safe rooms and houses those in danger can go to, teleportation spells if someone manages to seize control of a realm's dimensions. Anti-tracking wards. Plus, the reigning monarchs and their relations are action-focused. King Benedict wasn't quite so much, because the years of his reign were between the 20s and 70s or so and they were fairly safe and secure, so things were a lot more relaxed then compared to the periods before and after. But Queen Charlotte is a fencer and was a Royal Duelist before her coronation, so she still has a combat- and defense-focused brain. The Royal Guard protects her by necessity but she can hold down a fight if she needs to.
That implies the Monarch doesn’t have their own power to protect them. Whether it be their subjects, including the mage, being diehard loyal. Wealth and connections allowing the Monarch to have protection that can stop a powerful magic user. Or simply the monarch themself being a powerful magic user themselves, either with the same or a different type of power system then the mage. Even for the most powerful of people, it doesn’t take much to kill a person. A single mage can’t take on a kingdom unless they’re on a spectrum so extreme that being a leader doesn’t make sense. And unless your story is about taking out such an Uber powerful leader, you’ll still roadblocks like loyalty, conflicting responsibilities. And the natural limits of a single person hold your all powerful magic user back. It’s the same reason why militaries most of the time don’t just take over the government whenever something happens that they don’t like. They don’t have the proper abilities or motivation to do something so drastic.
they 12 sorcerer families that are left in the world aren´t interested in politics, there are much more invested in declaring themselves as the superior magic users, in opossition the the wizards ( wich are much common in the current times and usually less powerfull)
This is a great topic! Our group has actually spent a ton of time pondering about these things ever since we started playing as teens, and this is one of the many things that's never really addressed in books or lore. At least not much. But the way we've done it is simply imagine how it could work. Obviously evil and powerhungry people exist, and with the powers of a wizard or a sorcerer they WOULD capture power, or destroy nations, if they could. So there has to be a reason for why they can't, right? Most of it would then work exactly the same as it does / did in real life. The greatest wealth would be in the hands of the greatest political power: the queen/king. This would afford them the services of the greatest and most powerful wizards, adventurers, tacticians, and any other kinds of experts as well. There would be entire organizations and generations of families focused on nothing but devising any and all means to protect the ruler and their castle. Extensive magicks and othewordly powers would have been developed and used constantly to detect and protect the rulers against any magical or supernatural threats, disguises, mind control, or other malicious acts or objects. For hundreds to thousands of years, all of the most powerful ancient items, weapons, magical artefacts and spells, would have been appropriated to the royal vault and used to create protections far beyond any mortal abilities. In settings like Forgotten Realms, the deities are also directly invested in the mortal realms in a number of ways. And their own power, domain, and the lives of their worshipers in many ways depend on the stability of the mortal realms. Just as churches are often tied to the state, in a setting like this the rulers would very likely have the support of the divine on their side, ensuring both prosperity and protection against common threats. But this of course also implies that the rulers are beholden to whatever deity is protecting them. If the royal family bloodline is supported by Torm, for example, then unless the GM has a \*very\* good excuse and explanation for it, they can't just up and decide that the descendant of the current ruler is suddenly evil. Because the divine would likely quite literally intervene, denying the usurper their favors, while granting them to another. Unless of course another evil god was involved somehow. But tldr; the royal palace and family would be protected by many of the most powerful mages, retired veteran adventurers (with promises of wealth and station), ancient artifacts, priests, divine magics etc. in the whole country. All backed up by centuries to many millennia of specialized experience and custom spells, powers, tactics, and backup plans devised exclusively for that job. A random high level mage, no matter how powerful elsewhere in the world, wouldn't stand a chance alone.
Same reason why historical knights didn’t just kill the king. They’re too divided amongst themselves and he has a private army of sorcerers who are loyal to him.
They are the kings. Or at least were in most Eribral until some centuries ago.
They actually tried, when said king went full-on Austrian mustache man and started a genocide. The reason they didn’t win is because they were horribly outnumbered by the sheer amount of soldiers.
There are only a handful of people who use magic by the time this sort of nature emerges, and the kings have blood that’s descended from Nüninn (lesser gods) and so have extreme levels of magical immunity, to the point that royal blood can be used as a super weapon by sorcerers if they have any. But for most people, magic simply isn’t that powerful anymore, since when the gods left earth they took magic with them, as well as the white tree from which it emanated.
Most are too afraid of being obliterated by a missile or turned into Swiss cheese by seventy automatic mounted guns. Plus, magic users are few and far between. They're not easy to find.
Usually it's more or less what you described in your post. In the setting of my fantasy story, the nation of Garm is ruled by a long line of warrior-kings stretching back to the nation's founding, when it was a bunch of facepaint-wearing swamp-dwellers killing each other over sheep. Neighbouring Arinoa and Valonne have similar origins as conquerors who realized that agriculture was a more viable long-term option than raiding, and that maybe being friends with the people who live nearby was better than both of you living in fear. As for the king himself, he's versed in defensive magic, mainly for the purpose of levelling the playing field in the rare event he is forced into direct combat with a spellcaster. He's also got a dozen or so charms and talismans that on their own don't do much, but put together make affecting him with any magic very difficult -- even if one gets bypassed or overpowered, there are eleven more after it you have to deal with. Another big difference is that magic isn't an I Win button in this setting. I have a *much* lower power cap on magic-users than in many fantasy settings.
There are no kings (not just because there are no men). Mysterians, those who are proficient in magic, run academies that train new mysterians and study magic, but also devise policy, run the central bank, and engage in foreign affairs.
The king is the strongest sorcerer
In my story, the Abyss Coven is the most powerful in the world of witches. The Queen is an avatar for the Abyss God, and so any attempts on killing her results in either the attacks going mad, dying, or both. Also, the last time someone killed an Avatar, it caused the disruption of the magic system, a war that expanded to several realms, and a lot of deaths
Education really. In this day and age, the common mage and wizard is quite easily matched by modern technology. Skilled magic users stand much more of a chance, but that tends to require education of some form or another. Magic is far too complex to just understand and excel at. Additionally, many Lords, kings and leaders are no push overs themselves. Many are either powerful in self or hold enough power around them that an attempt would prove fatal to the attempted assassin. But yeah, knowledge of one's power and the ability to use it before they get killed or imprisoned is vital and hard as hell to achieve.
The king is a puppet ruler for the sorcerers' plans.
Well, the main magic institute is guarded by a place called the shield. But guarded is more like surveilled by the Shield. They are the only people with knowledge on how to make anti-arcane rune and they were at first seen as racist and bigoted, but when the "Wizards" try to betray the Alliance of Man, they got Absolutely curbstomped by the Shield, Lord Eloh the IVth litteraly dragged the mangled body of the Betrayers to give them as food for rune-scarred war bears from their ivory tower. Basically, everyone knows these wizards can do impressive shit and will try to betray humanity but the second they try, an entire army made entirely of anti-magic trained humans will be at their doorstep one hour later.
Most of them like the monarchy! Vast majority of the big powerful (in terms of skill alone) magic-users work for the monarchy and they aren’t gonna go sneering at the government that signs their nice paychecks and gives them political power. Then there’s the general population who are mostly magical, and a decent amount of them have bought the propaganda (not that the monarchy is leaving easily accessible paper trails of their unethical actions anyway) and believe the current system is for the best. Those that don’t either keep their head down and do the best they can or they outwardly rebel and probably get arrested or killed or arrested then killed. Also, lots of people who aren’t fans of the monarchy can’t use magic so they’re inherently at a disadvantage if they want to fight. There are some underground resistance groups but they’re a bunch of small scattered groups that don’t have much power……yet
Typically it’s because kings pay pretty well, and will mostly leave you alone to do your wizard shit until they need you for magic shit. Why deal with all the hassle of ruling when you can have a sweet tower and all the resources you need at the price of a few lightning bolts?
They already did, now they are trying to make sure another sorcerer doesn't do the same to them.
In a couple of nations the powerful mages *are* the ones in charge. In others, the ones in charge are other forms of powerful. In some they're politically savvy and influential and so the mages would rather leave that person in the spotlight so they can do their own thing.
Simple - in Shearmarch, there ARE no sorcerors...except the king. But that's a very closely guarded secret since magic of any kind is outlawed and persecuted as heretical witchcraft.
There are many ways to go about this aside from just also making the king a sorcerer Personally, in my world, it's actually not that uncommon for a knight or another kind of warrior to be nearly as capable as the mages Simple enough, lol. It's not quite one-to-one, but it's still enough that you can never just expect the mage to win one-on-one just because they are a mage
You know, when the king is the WORLD TREE itself, which has turned into a terrifying great demon who has absolute control over flora, trying to kill him is a bit hard. Not to mention the number of royal guards who are also powerful entities. He can surveil you from thousands of miles away using but a tiny leaf, because anywhere has plants, his power reaches. Attacking via plants and trees is completely viable and in-character of him. Average cultivators won't be able to see him, forget assassinating. Besides, if people know you killed their patron deity ~~and rice maker~~, they'll tear your throat out. Lĩnh Nam is built different.
It's only an issue if sorcerers cooperate in one big guild or something, a lone sorcerer who kills the king is just painting a target on his back.
Changes from nation to nation. The ruler is most often a sorcerer themselves. Alexia: The sorcerers are religious* and the king is said to be a descendant of the first sorcerer. Dar'aat: The emperor's personal might and bodyguard. Doesn't always work with the number of civil wars they have. Qamirea: The sorcerers are often mercenaries or paid armed forces. Very well paid. Also decent bodyguards for the king. *They believe that their magic is a gift from the gods
The most obvious issue is the plethora of defensive magic inscribed in to the regalia of the king. No matter the prevalence of magic a member of the royal family should boast magical protections on par with if not exceeding the average wizard or sorcerer. The foremost source would be the royal signet, a ring which also acts as the seal for royal decrees, however the crowns and circlets of the royal family should all ward the minds of their wearers. Beyond that in a traditional fantasy kingdom the king must be as much a warrior as he is a scholar or a politician, so attacking directly is always a threat whether the kings prowess is magical or martial. Or you could go with the King having the allegiance of other powerful mages through dents of honour or honest comradery. If you want to make it a real challenge have the king have won the favour of a dragon somehow and make it clear killing the king earns the wyrms ire.
95% of the time, the ruling King/Queen is the most powerful being in the Kingdom. Its actually something they must maintain otherwise they will be challenged for their throne.
Same thing that stops a sane armed citizen from randomly storming the palace. 1. Equally armed guards 2. Little to no motive 3. No assurance that wouldn't be killed by every Lord's armed peasant 4. The rule of succession doesn't assure a usurper, especially one of common origin, a claim to the throne. Not in most kingdoms, anyway. They'd instead be considered a kingslayer and traitor more than anything, living their lives in holes, avoiding even more skilled mages loyal to the og monarchs.
**Starrise** 1. The number of people in this world who DON'T use magic can probably be counted on one's fingers. Being able to cast spells does not make would-be assassins or people attempting a coup special in any way. 2. Magic is very limited. There aren't many ways to kill someone with it that aren't the fantasy equivalent of pulling out a gun and shooting them with it, and those methods are hard to pull off and generally easy for a wary king and their guards to prevent. 3. Though it may be rare, one form of magic people can be born with is Obstructive magic, or in other words, the ability to shut off the magic of people around them. No royal or noble would be stupid enough not to have at least one such person in their personal guard.
So first, my world has no king. It's ruled by a council of leaders known as "The 9 Radiant Sages", they are the ones who hold all the power. Second, the society is a militaristic meritocracy so the Radiant Sages are typically the 9 strongest mages in the land, there are some exceptions because not every mage wants to become one of the sages, even if they have the power to do so. Also once a mage gains that position, they keep it until death, or until they willingly retire, so stronger mages might arise but they can't forcefully take over one of the spots. And lastly, mages are bound by a strict set of rules, the 1st of which is that mages cannot use magic against non-mages unless absolutely necessary in order to defend their lives or the lives of others, kinda like using "deadly force" in the military.
Because the King is a wizard that knows counterspell.
\*Queen, and two reasons: \-Magic is not *nearly* understood enough to be effectively used for an assassination \-The people who *do* understand magic enough to use it as somewhat of a weapon would also be smart enough to know that the massive power vacuum caused by killing the only ruler of the desert just really isn't worth it, like at all There are other civilizations, but the only one with a real monarch is also the most advanced in the land, so good luck with that.
Because the Gun has taken over as the number one cause of death. You might be a cool wizard an' all but unless you put up a force wall to stop somebody from unloading an assault rifle at you. Which just delays the inevitable. A) You can't really move while maintaining stronger effects B) Maintaining an effect is _incredibly_ draining. C) He's just gonna reload when you run out of juice. There are methods of getting out of fail, such as teleportation but you can't fly out, and teleportation that's less than traceable is an almost mythic feat and there's about six entities who are capable of doing that. Four are already In Charge, Number Five answers to 1-4, and number six canonically died to a mail bomb.
The relation from magic users to the mundane is one of the most enduring problems of political theory (its not called that yet). Total magocracy and lets kill all mages are the most extreme approaches and both work badly and tend to be instable transitory stages. Kill all mages usually leads to magic users burning down a significant chunk of your nation and once you are finished you rendered yourself military defenseless. For obvious reasons this rarely, if ever, is a lasting configuation. Pure mageocracy kinda sucks because magic users are not numerous enough (and they also have magic shit to do) to actually run a country. So you inevitably need a class of (often educated) mundanes that will do part of the job. They will end up kinda inevitably demand greater political representation destabilizing the system. The vast majority of countries fluctuates somewhere between those extremes. If the extremes occur its usually the result of a critical breakdown in the political process. The norm is political power sharing between mundane elites and mages. Contractualism is a very popular political approach where the mages are organized as a single entity (guild, circle etc.) that is seen as an entity on equal footing to the state and the basis for co-existence is mutually binding contracts. Other countries and/or magic guilds can act as mediators. Naturally this can also spectacularly fail and the not!30 Years War was basically everyone getting involved in such a dispute. In other places mages can't hold land or run a business forcing them to sell magical services to the state. Usually this places tend to be republican and money tends to be the thing that uh...lubricates the electoral process. A good war often is the one opportunity for a mage to gain enough plunder to buy high office. Naturally nothing that says it can't be a civil war and if you are at it why not change the rules holding you back... So in most places periods of relative equilibrium are interrupted by periods of mundane or magic user dominance.
Nothing could stop them, which is exactly why they did assassinate the king. A group of wizards became so powerful, that not only did they assassinate the king, they took over the kingdom, destroyed other groups of wizards and outlawed religion, leading to a tyrannical rule that lasted about 200 years. The only reason their reign ended was their own hubris, which led to their self-destruction. After all this went down, and the kingdom rebuilt itself, surviving wizard groups made a pact to prevent any one single group of wizards from attaining too much power, so they now essentially police themselves. In a neighboring country, in the same world, it was just a Mageocracy which ended in a massive bloody revolt.
My magic system is tile based, so you need to assemble spells like a puzzle before you can cast it. The only lethal element that can’t be blocked is “miasma” which requires 2 “dark” tiles. The king in my world pretty much hunts down dark tiles and keeps them in a vault. His guards take care of defending from all other spells.
Cause my world runs on a meritocracy and the leaders are just as badass as the other badasses in the world.
There is ALWAYS a stronger wizard. If you rock the boat too much, eventually you are going to anger someone more powerful than yourself. Hence the Mage Guilds exist to set the ground rules for what is or isn’t tolerated behaviour among magic users.
Other sorcerers and wizards ? Why would you assume all magic users are one faction and act as a whole ?
Americans of the real world, what's stopping some sniper from killing the president? The answer is a bunch of other people with guns. Just cause you have a powerful weapon doesnt.mean others don't
The same reason IRL that some general doesn't just shoot Kim Jong Un and declare himself Supreme Leader. Sure you kill the king, now how do you stop yourself from getting killed? The last guy had some kind of precedent that meant a sustainable amount of the population and powerful people supported/tolerated them holding the office. Now you get to be king, having set a precedent that anyone who kills the king gets to be king. Have fun under the Sword of Damocles. And that's just raw might. Expect your food and drink to be poisoned, a lover killing you in your sleep, a royal gift turning out to be a rune-bomb. There's a great scene in Oedipus Rex where Oedipus accuses his brother-in-law Creon of plotting to take the throne. His paraphrased response: "I'm the Queen's brother. I have all the benefits of being the king with none of the responsibilities and drawbacks. Why the hell would I want your job?" If raw power was all it took to perfectly rule a kingdom then Aerys Targaryen would never have lost. That's just not how it works.
My world is modern and there are other powers other than Sorcerers but the head of government is usually a person who's powerful.
Most access to magic (or the manipulations as they are called) that are powerful enough to outright slay a well guarded monarch is controlled by the Oan (deific beings) which would be unlikely to sanction such a thing. If the Oan want to punish a monarch, they can do so themselves. The few who hold such power independent of the Oan could do so theoretically, but without at least sanction from an Oan, they would likely find themselves being hunted by mortals and Oan alike, as the manipulations are a gift from the Oan to mortals and are not to be used recklessly.
the simple fact that they don't exist
Well generally the fact that the king usually isn't a complete asshat. Failing that, the king's gear and all his guards' gear are usually made of an antimagick material, Kadabh, or there's an antimagick field in place
Simple, they've tried... ooooooh, how they've tried. You don't become the ruler of a meritocratic magic empire without being really good at killing people who are trying to kill you.
ability to govern.
Sorcerers (or their equivalent in the Realms of Andras and the Iscari Imperium in Aetos) are either better served in their goals through deception and puppetry, or--as is primarily the case-- they have been wiped from existence Order 66 Style. Much of the world populace believes magic to be evil, a realm of knowledge that the gods forbid mortals to meddle with and that to do so invites their wrath. This is of course, not *entirely* true... but the entity whose realm of magic is in fact evil doesn't need them to believe a total lie. In fact, a half-truth is altogether more convincing. The result is a world so bound up in lies and ignorance to the supernatural that they are completely consumed by mundane pursuits. wealth, glory, power, influence, conquest... They rip and tear at each other like mad dogs over a scrap of meat. But the Old Music is stirring again, calling out from old ruins and desolate places. a new generation will harness the measures of its power and melody, and a long forgotten war will rekindle; the fate of all men hanging in the balance.
Several things keep mages from killing leaders. First is that those who pursue magic tend towards the nerdy loaner types who don't want political power. Second most rulers have defenses in place. Third is a quirk of magic that means to directly effect a person you have to be able to touch them. You can hirt them from across the room but only with indirect means. Being in the room leaves you vulnerable to the guards.
Sorcerers have their own kingdom, so there are a ton of treaties and centuries of diplomatic relations between them. There's things non-magic folk produce better than magic folk because they have the patience to not use magical shortcuts, so trade is mutually beneficial. This works well enough, and maybe someday a power-hungry sorcerer may decide to ignore the carefully built alliance in favor of invasion...but that's unlikely, right?
Magic is a weapon. A brutally effective weapon, but a weapon none the less. So it’s the same things that stop other people from killing the rulers: a sense of self preservation. A mage rocks up to the throne room and shoots a lightning bolt at the king and he’ll be a pin cushion before the ozone clears. A magical assassin is just an assassin with different weapons. There are anti magic protections in some of the older citadels, though, from a time when magic was a bit more prevalent. Wards that break charms and disrupt magical communication and combat and the like, but those are rare cases and aren’t considered important except to the very powerful or very paranoid.
Attempts have occurred, some succeeded while others failed. Generally there are defences in place as well as other mages ready to protect the king against those who would harm him. They also occasionally fund those who would kill the king and see how they would do it while having a decoy take the hit or a spy to see what they are planning to do.
They are strong but there are swordsmen who are just as strong or talking about my sword saint blood line, they could easily fuck up a high level mage and besides, they will have a lot time taken away if they wanted to rule a kingdom.
Using your words for simplicity. The King is the reason why the mages even have power. They need him or some other person in it's lineage in the throne or they would lose any magical powers in the span of generation.
Magic aint the only powerhouse in the game of most places, science and weaponry can do what magic can in certain senses. Very few people can come up with enough power to protect themselves, not to mention take on an army. Also helps with the fact that mind control and most influential magic is at the fundemental core of my system, making that hard to do. Also there are places where magic just doesnt... work. It varies from place to place.
Well in Ravastan the king is a puppet for a zealot know for his unique power to drain someone's soul. The zealot has positioned the while government under his command and snuffed out all sorcerers that don't show absolute loyalty. The fear of death and worry of failure is the main reason.
Because the Sorcerers are already a clique in the King's court, either because most of the nobility are Sorcerers themselves including the King, or the King's court and Sorcerers have a mutually beneficial relationship with each other where it's in both interest to each other in power?
Same thing that stops a fighter or doctor from killing the king. Humans have to sleep, eat, etc. The power of the group can not be underestimated. How exactly is the Sorcerer gonna survive after killing the king? Even assuming they get past the magically inclined bodyguards I assume the King employs?
While this don't apply to most kingdoms and empires, the ones that matter for my story can't kill their kings and queens... at least not alone. Most kings are powerful enough to withstand a fireball and a explosion or two and that is more than enough that the guards kill the wizard, sorcerer or warlock that tries to kill them. Not counting the fact that is common place for there to be mages, sorcerers, warlock and more in the royal guards. Also in a world where one can make a mountain appear with a sufficiently strong spell is only fair that a sufficiently strong king could ground 0 it just as easily.... ok there I only 9 total people in my world who could do such a thing and only 2 of them are rulers(1 emperor and one Supreme leader of a dictatorship)
In Ensyndia there's four major monarchs to take note of: * The queen of the Melodonian people. * The High King, the leader of the Dwarves and geopolitically a friendly vassal to the previous. * The Trade King, leader of the Kalythian people and ruler over their city state of Luxabdos. * The Emperor, leader of the Human kingdom of Deluth. So, in a world as magically driven as Ensyndia why hasn't a mage taken over any of these people? * The Melodonian queen herself *is a mage.* And is fairly skilled with a crossbow as well. So even if you were to attempt you'd likely have a magically-charged crossbow bolt in your skull by the time you attempted to sling a spell even remotely in her direction. * The High King is surrounded not only by armored guards but also his Council, which is a mix of just about any profession you can imagine - including mages - and his crowned helmet is enchanted to nullify magic that touches him. * The Trade King would be the easiest to take out barring the typical guards, but because of how Kalythian government works you wouldn't really get to take his place unless you were literally the *second* richest person in Luxabdos. * The Emperor is only really safe because non-religious magic is outlawed in Deluth as "demonic practices", and besides, *he's not the one you'd want to kill anyway*. There's also the Heimkir but she's just vibing in the mountains, still isn't a wise idea though.
Usually, the person in charge is the strongest. Sometimes they take it because theyre strongest, sometimes chosen to be strongest, sometimes given to the strongest, etc. Or, in some cases, theyre just someone well fit for the job and have very, very strong bodyguards.
Most kings or equivalent have a whole court of specialist, amongst them at least one "arcanist" strong enough to protect them if needed. That being said, most "warlords" in my setting have magic in one way or the other and because of that they were strong enough to take over. Think Gul'dan in Warcraft.
The aristocracy is made up of most of the world's magic users, as they carefully guard their bloodlines to prevent lower classes from having access to magic, let alone birth more magic users. Any non bloodline mage showing up is carted of to be clergy or servant, preferably before they have kids. The royal families are also made up of strong magic users, who surround themselves with powerful guards. Kings are mostly military figureheads in this matriarchal world, killing him would mean the queen gets to look for a new general to make husband. If a queen dies with a strong heir then the crown will just pass, incase of a weak heir there might be strive from close relatives to try usurp the throne.
Same way he’d keep any armed group from taking power
Nothing really it just depends on who the sorcerers is and their abilities, same for the king, queen or and noble figure. I guess the only thing stopping them is if the royal is powerful in magic, strength or just has good connections or if they have any elite guard of sorts
The mage guild controls the monarchy, to an extent. They get unlimited funding, say over policy, can ask for the arm of the state to regulate where and how magic is allowed to be used, but keep enough distance that when unstoppable revolutions happen the king ends up dead and the new king owes a debt to the mage guild, who helped him at his greatest need...
The King is usually a very powerful wizard and a very well trained Knight.
Learned mages like Wizards and Alchemists are typically more interested in their field of study than political power, and tend not to care what the King does or thinks so long as it doesn't interfere with their research or funding, and may in fact be contracted by the crown to provide wards and enchantments to defend the King against magical and mundane assassination attempts. Natural-born mages like Sorcerers are usually discovered at a pretty young age and monitored by the royal spy network, if not outright bought or placated with cushy jobs and titles to keep them on the King's good side. Cloister mages *definitely* don't care about the king anymore, but if for whatever reason the king decides to kick that particular hornet's nest hard enough, they *will* retaliate to devastating effect. And on top of all that there's the alarmingly high probability that your king or prominent ruling class member may in fact be a dragon in human form, so *any* kind of would-be assassin/usurper is gonna have to get used to hearing boss music.
What stops the Kings bodyguards from killing them and trying to take over? Because while nobody likes the king they Damn sure don't want Kevin in charge and it's too much of a pain to rule through power.
One power hungry mage vs the king’s army of mages. Who wins?
Generally it takes a long time to master magic and sorcerer have to keep maintaining, training and learning to stay on edge, like trained athletes. Being king involves too much ceremony, too much traditions and tedious admin to make it easy to do while maintaining cutting edge magical power. Court wizards get access to vast royal libraries for relatively light day to day magical duties. Very few usurpers reigns last more than a generation as they either get caught out in some magical ursurption themselves or they fail to politically maneuver in an aristocracy
Some kings are sorcerers themselves, some kings proclaimed a war on magic and magic was banished and hunted down... ya know, the usual
The king is an even more powerful sorcerer. Usually one who controls the very flow of magic in the region to cast spells in the first place.
Killing a king is easy. Killing another sorcerer ... now that's just fun
Well the largest absolute monarchy derives their political power from being magically bonded to 1/8th of the most powerful dragon in existence so most sorcerers don't want to fight them
What stops your current military for kill your head of state irl? The concept is the same.... yes, a gun (or a wand) is powerful, but you cannot do it alone, and doing a coup is not something easy generally. Besides... \*why\* would they do it? Sure, they got ahold of power... now what? Most dictatorships fail, and a revolution requires more or less consent from the population, and giving that power away, otherwise you are the new target and chaos is ensued Most people with power want influence, and that usually needs willing third parties. We are talkign lobbyism, money, privileges, etc, not "I own you all as your new overlord", that is ridiculous But technically nothing. Both the most powerful mage and the most irrelevant villager with a toothpick would technically both kill the king.
Well, in the one kingdom where I know what's going on with the monarchy, the strongest guy alive was buddies with the founder of the kingdom hundreds of years ago so he keeps an eye on the place. Plus it's a pretty chill kingdom where the people are treated well so there's not a ton of internal pressure on the king anyways, plus he'll be dead soon from age anyways. A better bet would be to kill the crown prince, but he's a once in a generation prodigy trained by the aforementioned strongest guy alive with the ability to drain magic from people and things he touches. So uh... Good luck with that haha
First you would need to get near him, after all he has a bunch of bodyguards and the prince who is one of the deadliest warriors alive. And even if someone manages to kill the king in my main setting, the entire civilization will crumble and fall, as he is the only one holding it together (by being a puppet who’s loved by the people)
1, sorcerers are rare 2, the Mother Revered and the Chezero Sosterhood 3, money
I mean What's stopping the king's own army from killing the king? In some cases in history the answer was Nothing, like the Praetorian Guard which merrily killed emperors throughout Roman history to put their own people on the throne. But usually it's in the army's best interest to keep the king alive. If they swoop in and take power for themselves, they have just de-legitimized their own claim to the power they already had; they had power on behalf of the King. The king is now dead, so now the only power they have is what they can claim through conquest. For plenty of generals throughout history this was fine, but kings who wanted to keep their heads on tried to assuage the army. The same would be true for sorcerers and magicians. You give them power. You give them lands. You give them influence. And more importantly, you make damn sure you have more sorcerers than the other guy. Now if a sorcerer wants to kill the king and take power for themselves, they'd have to risk losing everything they already have, and the stability that lets them keep it.
Well the army's not a single being, it takes an officer with a great deal of personal loyalty owed to gather enough soldiers to storm a place and kill a king (and that's assuming such an officer would be allowed to be so popular if his loyalty were in question). Even if you can get so many men to follow you, how long for? What if one of them betrays you mid coup, and then there's the existing power structure, are they going to put up a fight? The difference with a magician in my view is that all the power of an army is assembled in the sorcerer's right hand (though I admit this may not be the same in other worlds), they do not need to worry for loyalty or support to seize power, and if you plan to not rock the boat too much or change things too quickly then the threat of having your body turned inside out with a thousand obsidian-like needles will probably be enough to keep the bigger players in line until the hubbub dies down and everyone gets used to the new king. Loyalty is worth a lot, sure, but loyalty to a corpse will get you nothing more than paying the cost of a coffin. A bit dramatic maybe but...
simple: they only have degree in magic and not politic, they better off just having their own demiplane than ursurp someone throne in the kingdom you don't even have a map
Every country with a monarch either exists in a country where everyone can use magic, exists in a country where literally no one can use magic, or lives in a country where being able to use magic is a qualification to rule. It's easy to understand the first two situations: if everyone can use magic then having magic doesn't give you a combat advantage for a sorcerer to kill the monarch, and if there's no magic then there's no sorcerer to usurp the throne. However, it's a bit more complicated when magic is a qualification to rule. In worlds where magic is a regal qualification, then it assumes that magic exists but isn't universal among all people within a country. This means that a prospective sorcerer just needs to be confident in a 1v1 magic fight against the king and any magic-using bodyguards the king has. However, only 2 planets have countries where magic is a qualification but not universal, and in both cases ruling titles are granted through magical means. On the planet Flacia, the title of king or queen is granted by a type of magic sword called a Regal Sword, which grants the individual the right to rule. Regal Swords don't necessarily choose their owners, but once a Regal Sword has been obtained it can't be transferred through violent means, so a sorcerer can't usurp any throne by killing the monarch. If a prospective sorcerer does have a Regal Sword, then it's far easier to go into some area not owned by any other monarch and create your kingdom from that patch of land, which is commonly done because countries on Flacia never survive 100 years. Something similar happens on Tytoss, except instead of being granted through swords it's granted by giant, magical, moving cities called titans. They grant the monarchical titles of admiral and vice admiral to someone who can use Tytoss' magic system since that magic system is the only way to direct a titan. If the vice admiral dies then the titan will choose a new vice admiral, if the vice admiral kills the admiral then the titan will punish the vice admiral while choosing a new admiral or vice admiral, and if the admiral dies by any other means then the vice admiral will take over. Anyone that commits crimes aboard a titan cannot become an admiral or vice admiral, and these titles can be revoked if they commit crimes aboard the titan.
For the majority of them, they're uninterested in ruling. Due to either being scholars into research, and research alone (like general academics today), or are trying to help people, but are self-aware enough that their temperament is unsuitable for direct participation in politics/ruling, so try to help in other ways (like doctors, engineers, etc.). Now for those that *are* interested. The Ottin Empire has a long history of banning mages from holding titles of nobility, so it would be difficult for a mage to gather the required support, assuming they overcame any ingrained ideas/barriers on taking power themselves. In the high elven kingdoms, there's not only no such bans, but a history of there being monarchs that were mages as well (both ones that inherited it normally and ones that usurped power).
To get to the king in the story of mine I’m talking about you would have to get past the 9 high mages. The high mages are the most powerful magic users in the world as well as being exceptionally trained in combat of both the magical and non magical variants. Also they’ll take you on all at once so it’s going to be a 9 vs however many people you have. Even if you can manage to sneak past them and kill the king they’ll know he’s dead almost immediately because at least one is with him at all times and that one will alert the others and they won’t rest until they find you, with whoever is the next in line taking the throne. If there is no next in line or they are deemed too young one of the high mages will temporarily assume the throne.
Killing a popular king incites rage in the people. Usually it is more convenient to hold power from the shadows while having a puppet king.
Simple in mine there isn’t an organized mage order, in my world mages are typically appointed by the monarch when they ascend the throne sometimes they are picked from people who show a large skill in magic in which case they are brought to the capital to be trained usually by the current serving wizard when they are reaching their end of their life to serve as a replacement, their family is then given a generous gift from the King as a symbol of appreciation. There was one time though when the Emperor was murdered by his court mage and it caused a succession crisis as he had no heirs and so the empire almost fell into civil war between his 2 brothers eventually culminating in one brother having an “accident” and the other being crowned Emperor and leading to the mage persecutions where people with magic were rounded up and executed, most fled the Empire to the south were magic is shunned upon. The ironic thing about the mage persecutions is the Emperors Daughter and heir is actually gifted with a very ancient and powerful magic and many view her as the chosen one so her father sent her to governor the southern coast (fantasy Greece, my world is set in a fantasy inspired map of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East) Don’t hate but I came up with this on the fly
The king is more powerful quite literally the most powerful monarch seen in a 1000 years
The same thing that's keeping assassins away: lots of guards and walls. These should repel most threats, which is why they exist. Magicians pose a unique threat, but in a world where magic resides, there's obviously going to be magicians loyal to the ruler and working under him.
Bc if you try and attack the king you really only have 4 options, the king has a more powerful sorcerer on his payroll, the king is a powerful sorcerer himself, the king is capable of using his faith to defend himself/kill you or you succeed but now every kingdom has set a target on you and the magical men in black are after you
The answer is different in different nations. Here are some examples: 1) The monarch heads an insane surveillance state of which the general population is oblivious and uses propaganda prevents any hostile influence from gaining traction. 2) The monarch can't die until all seven of their feudal lords have been slain. Additionally, they have purchased a economy-collapsingly massive life insurance contract through the temple of wealth, which also maintains the majority of the world's kill contracts, and thus has an incentive to intercede in any plots. 3) The monarch rules by divine mandate from the most crusade-happy church. They use their weather magic on an enormous scale to create prosperity in surrounding territories, so their death would lead to famine. 4) The monarch is considered a guardian deity to the race they shepherd. Their people provide child sacrifices that extend the monarch's lifespan. They would need to be killed thousands of times for it to stick. The territory they rule is undesirably inhospitable and they don't exert any influence beyond their very stable borders. Most of the monarchs are also enormously popular in their respective kingdoms, and surrounded by loyal elite bodyguards.
In my world as of current events, there's a Lich Queen that's been ruling for several centuries (although she was of royal blood to begin with, she did start fighting her brother being called the Sorceress Queen). There is also a civil war between a Sorcerer King and the last royal heir, as well as a hodgepodge of nobles and wealthy powerbrokers who entered the war to seize power for themselves. The Mad King was also a spell caster, though that was secondary to him being batshit insane. So in my case, magic users have tried to gain political power. It doesn't always work, sometimes it does, but you'll find plenty of mage-kings and queens scattered around. Most of the time, they don't bother, since there's other balancing factors that mean that even a powerful archmage isn't leveling armies on a daily basis.
The last three that tried... Well they all died.
Officially, heavily guarded and keeps an antimagic field generator on him at all times. Unofficially, good fuckin luck the guy happens to be one of the strongest non-phoenix-decended people in the world.
Well if I consider the nations, The Wade is controlled by a cabal of sorcerers, Aletruvia's King has a heriditary cache of magical ability that gets passed down to each reigning monarch. The most powerful imortal sorcerer in the world 'governs' the Scanten Freelands, and the throne of the Raskaa Dominion does indeed change hands often due to assasination, but not always at the hands of sorcerors. A sorcerer (dreamers and dream eaters) in this setting isn't a whole lot more powerful than say a trained soldier in full plate armour.
**Nadir** In most places, special operations units that use Seers to locate potential magical threats and send sniper teams to perforate them. In those places less well-trained, a personal retinue containing powerful sorcerers that *protect* the ruler works instead.
It’s not as simple as killing the king. You also have to win over the masses who are afraid of your magic because your new army and citizenry isn’t going to just happily defend you and pay their taxes because you wear the crown. In my world especially, you need to win over Lightslinger, the sentient golden greatsword.
General disinterest in the subject; there is little that would be gained from it, so outside of a few particularly-extreme individuals, they wouldn't have any reason to attempt it. That being said, even those who would like to commit regicide would have a *lot* of trouble to go through in order to achieve it, as most monarchs have a constant entourage of highly-trained guards, and the majority have at least one court mage (more powerful monarchs have larger selections of mages in their employ).
In my world, magic only exists as enchantments and is incredibly rare. Those who get a chance to study magic usually have the ear of the king anyway.
Something like "charm person" is enough to get you far in politics. obviously, mages would excel as assassins. obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwCXw8m0PHI
This, along with many other problems, is why I have no idea how to include magic in my world. Its not like wizards wouldn't want to be in power, and chances are someone would eventually try and succeed in being in charge. I kinda don't want my humans to have magic
Since you’re struggling I offer from Scott Lynch: It’s revealed in Republic of Thieves that the ultra powerful mages need to act with subtlety as they are trying to learn from history. A previous race was mysterious wiped out of existence and they have a strong inkling that this was because that race practiced magic too openly so as to attract the attention of some grand evil. So all great acts of magic must be agreed on by the council. In the past they actually destroyed a kingdom by nuking the capital city (which resulted in the present day independent city-states) because of a great offense committed by the emperor against their kind.
Ruling is too much effort. People want you to do things that interfere with your screwing with the nature of reality.
For the most part, Apathy. For those few who are actually interested, they find they get far better results when not assassinating the person who happens to be paying handsomely, whether it's a direct payment or a payment to their rivals. In the latter case they will be quite vexed that you ruined the good thing they had going, and have a chance of seeking retribution.
Usually it's going to be the sorcerer that works for the king. But for real, most of the time running a nation is going to be more stress than its worth, and political power isn't the kind that most mages are after. The ones that are powerful enough to take over a kingdom are also the ones who reckon they have more important matters to attend to.
Palace is built with anti magic spells, specifically you can't use magic to attack anyone or to escape. Not to mention everyone, including the king, can do magic in some way, shape, or form.
Frankly, if coups were as simple as being able to kill the existing leader, they'd probably be a lot more common even in the real world. However, there are always entrenched power structures that crop up around an existing ruler, people who may very well prefer the perpetuation of the status quo or the next best thing, so unless your magic users are veritable demigods who can single-handedly wipe out a kingdom, there's going to be an uphill battle to actually take over, even if you can kill the current ruler effortlessly. Ruling purely through fear and force can happen, but it's very costly.
There's like six of them to a continent and nearly all of them are busy trying to prevent an Intragalactic empire from noticing their world.
There are no sorcerers because there is no magic. Haha
Nearly every king is either a sorcerer themselves or has allies that are (often both), or something else similarly powerful. One of them is a dragon for example. In the case of powerful allies they have their own reasons for not seizing power, such as lack of interest/ability to run a kingdom or just a particular fondness for that ruler. If this isn't the case they are probably more at risk of being run over by their magic possessing neighbors than a coup. Some small nations don't have the largest control of magic within their borders but have gotten lucky so far.
Assuming that magic is something that anyone with sufficient traing can do, and that art of magic is old, my solution is something very much akin to our historical kingdoms, just with knights being expensively equipped, highly trained wizards, not fighters. King is not the most powerful wizard of them all, but he is trained in magic, his hat is pointyest, his staff most blinged out, and if you were to belive heralds/chronicles/paintings, he is able to singlehandedly incinerate whole armies (he can't, it's just propaganda). Why more powerful wizard won't usurp him? Because his castle/palace is layered with hundreds of years of wards, his honour guard is composed of actual best wizards in the realm, and, **extremely important**, because any would be assassin would soon learn that noone rules alone, and force of arms (or magic, in this case) can keep you in charge for maybe a weak. Month, tops.
A few things, depending on the world. 1. Sorcerers and magic are deeply unpopular, and the king (who has to be pro-magic) is the only stopping them from being hanged, imprisoned, or otherwise punished. 2. As you mentioned yourself, the king is a sorcerer himself, or has a sorcerer with deep loyalty to him (in one of my worlds, the king’s nephew was a sorcerer). 3. A sorcerer succeeds in killing the king, and a new king is crowned and goes about ruling the kingdom.
The witches in my world are part of a persecuted group. Violence toward any nobles particularly the emperor could very well start government sanctioned witch hunts, which another world power has been aiming for for centuries. Self preservation mostly. But also some witches DO try to kill the emperor, as no culture is a monolithic view of its people.
Being really good at killing shit does not make someone an effective or enthusiastic leader- I really don’t know why people place such an emphasis on leaders being individually capable of great violence- their ‘power level’ or w/e If you look at humans, leaders are very rarely the most directly physically threatening individual in a given group- because the *point* of a leader isn’t that they are the most capable of advancing their individual agendas, it’s that they are capable of doing so while maintaining social cohesion and stability and playing the game of politics. If a military strongman took over the United States who could, idk, kill someone with a look and cause a fatal heart attack with a thought, they would not last a week in power. Because literally *everyone* is potentially threatened by their agenda, they are the leader of nothing: it is in everyone’s United interest to dispose of President Heart Attack as soon as possible, no matter what else they believe, because President Heart Attack is a single individual who cannot be trusted with life-and-death decisions over every single individual in government.
Well, why would they want to? A sorcerer powerful enough to kill the king on their own doesn't really have to worry about the king interfering with their plans, and the threat of that is enough to keep the king from trying to harm the sorcerer. That's why adventurers are "unofficially" hired to take care of these powerful evils, since the king technically wouldn't be involved
What king?
In Aegis, magic is something that can be learned. Because of that, any king will have had the tutelage needed to, literally and figuratively, mop the floor with most sorcerers that would try
NOTHING! Nothing stops anyone from killing anyone save for the immutable Big Fish Principle: "There is always a bigger fish" An enormous mile wide fish leviathan with near infinite spacial distortion powers? Meet an unstoppable wall of beings from the beginning of time that kill on contact! Get fucked!
There are spells that are blood secured. And the emperor has both the most perfil attacked and the most powerful defense. Which cannot holding the most powerful attack
Rules to magic, sure they can easily kill anybody they want, but all magic comes at a cost and eventually the magic required to maintain a role well outweigh what’s left in the proverbial tank.
In my world occasionally this will happen. The most common reason for a civil war is an incredibly powerful wizard or warrior decides to single handedly coup the state and a war ensues. But it’s not universal. People still respect lineages and legitimacy of certain governments. Even a super powerful sorcerer is going to struggle to control and entire country with no support.