Lightice wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2017 2:07 pm
MuonNeutrino wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2017 2:48 am
I still wonder a bit about this whole mansion/duke of edinmire thing. Given what we know of how he came to the academy, etc, it's obvious he wasn't duke before his transformation. So, how did he become duke? Is it a title that comes with being grand templar? Did he bump off the previous duke/duchess and take their spot, and if so, how did he get away with it? (I mean, he took over the templar, but at least until recently the human empire was still governed by a king.) Is it a title that he somehow convinced the king/etc to *create* for him? And if so, under which noble's authority did edinmire fall previously, and how annoyed were they at having it taken from them?
Noble titles and estates are usually granted as gifts for extraordinary services to the crown -- mind you, in certain times and places that "service" could have been a big pile of cash into the royal coffers. If there was a Duke of Edinmire previously, they could have died without leaving an heir, either naturally or with "assistance", but it could also have been a piece of crown lands granted specifically to Trace. I would be inclined towards the latter option, since Duke is a very grandiose title for the relatively small fiefdom that Edinmire appears to be. It could simply be a courtesy title to put Trace on the same level with the high nobility he has to deal with as the Grand Templar, and Edinmire just the bit of land that the holder of a noble title has to have. A bit like the Count of Monte Cristo, whose land was just a rocky, deserted island that he bought so that he could legitimately call himself a Count.
Speaking as a fan of Crusader Kings 2,
Duchies are typically made up of sets of multiple lesser counties, with the Counts of those counties being direct vassals of the Duke and the Duke being the direct vassal of the King. It could be that in this Kingdom, the Duchy title is transferred by various means among those Counts rather than a direct blood inheritance, and the title is named after the county the holder currently rules, so it might have went from being the Duchy of X to the Duchy of Edinmire when Trace became Duke.
If Edinmire is a relatively small fiefdom as you suppose, it might have been manipulated by the King for Trace to get the title as he grew in power in the Templars, to keep him in check by giving him powerful, envious neighbors while his own weak region borders Keidran lands. Heaven knows I've done similar in the above mentioned game.