a more in-depth intro

[Lacquer]

can be found here: roleplay/lorder-du-bouclier/post/1514194/#roleplay1514194

[Lacquer]

Terms:

Nobility, Aristocrat, Courtier, Gentilhomme

Rights:

- The right to hunt
- The right to wear a sword
- The right to have a coat of arms
- The right to possess property
- The right to claim a percentage of any produce farmed by others, from their property
- The right to charge commoners for using their mills, ovens, or wine presses (banalités)
- The right to not pay tax (taille)
- Certain ecclesiastic, civic, and military positions were reserved for nobles

Duties:

- Nobles were required to honor, serve, and counsel their king.
- They were often required to render military service (for example, the impôt du sang or "blood tax").
- The title of "noble" was not indelible: certain activities could cause dérogeance, loss of nobility. Most commercial and manual activities were strictly prohibited, although nobles could profit from their lands by operating mines and forges.

Forms:

- Titles of nobility were generally passed down the family line, but many were awarded by the French monarchy for loyal service and many opportunities, both legal and illegal, were available for wealthy individuals to eventually gain titles of nobility for themselves or their descendants.
- The children of a French nobleman were considered untitled nobles.
- Inheritance was recognized only in the male line.
- Families could acquire nobility by possessing certain important official or military charges, generally after two generations.
- Many titles of nobility were usurped by non-nobles in the Renaissance and early 17th century by purchasing fiefs and by "living nobly", i.e. by avoiding commercial and manual activity and by finding some way to be exempted from the official taille lists. In this way, the family would slowly come to be seen as noble.

Ranks (Different from Titles, which are Dukes, Counts, etc.):

o Fils de France: son of a king.
o Petit-fils de France: grandson of a king.
o Prince du Sang ('prince of the blood'): any legitimate male-line descendant of a king of France.
o Prince étranger ('foreign prince'): members of foreign royal or princely families naturalized at the French court, such as the Clèves, Rohan, La Tour d'Auvergne, and Lorraine.
o Chevalier: rank assumed only by the most noble families and the possessors of certain high dignities in the court. Member of the orders of chivalry had a title of chevalier, but not a rank of chevalier, which can be confusing.
o Écuyer: rank of the vast majority of the nobles. Also called valet or noble homme in certain regions.

The term gentilhomme ('gentleman') was used for any noble, from the king to the last untitled écuyer.

Aristocratic Codes (How to act like Nobility):

Through contact with the Italian Renaissance and their concept of the perfect courtier (Baldassare Castiglione), the rude warrior class was remodeled into what the 17th century would come to call l'honnête homme ('the honest or upright man'), among whose chief virtues were:

- Eloquent speech
- Skill at dance
- Refinement of manners
- Appreciation of the arts
- Intellectual curiosity
- Wit and Humour
- A spiritual or platonic attitude in love
- The ability to write poetry
- Attention to Fashion
- An aristocratic obsession with "glory" (la gloire) and majesty (la grandeur) and the spectacle of power, prestige, and luxury.
- Performing generous deeds while acting in a disinterested manner and expecting no financial or political gain (noblesse oblige)
- A master of emotions, able to hide all traces of fear, jealousy, and revenge
- Build prestigious urban mansions (hôtels particuliers) and to buy clothes, paintings, silverware, dishes, and other furnishings befitting their rank
- Showing their liberality by hosting large parties
- Funding the Arts (commissioning artists)

Versailles:

The château of Versailles, court ballets, noble portraits, triumphal arches were all representations of glory and prestige. The notion of glory (military, artistic, etc.) was seen as moral to the aristocratic classes. Versailles became a gilded cage: to leave spelled disaster for a noble, for all official charges and appointments were made there. Provincial nobles who refused to join the Versailles system were locked out of important positions in the military or state offices, and lacking royal subsides (and unable to keep up a noble lifestyle on seigneural taxes), these rural nobles (hobereaux) often went into debt. A strict etiquette was imposed: a word or glance from the king could make or destroy a career.