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Court Mages

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
We find mages in most fantasy courts. They certainly appear in Altearth, where my own stories take place. So I've been putting some thought to this, which mainly means I have questions.

The fundamental question is this: what powers would court mages need in order to justify the cost of keeping them? The cost might be a stiped or might be some grant of income from land or office; in any case, it represents a cost to the lord who might otherwise grant it to someone more useful.

To answer that question I needed to get a sense of the range of magics that might exist. For this discussion, let's let that be pretty much anything (and let's keep this prior to steam and electricity). While any sort of magic would be useful in some way at some time, I quickly saw that a great many needs could be met by simply hiring an mage as an independent contractor (or through a guild). That mage would not need to be resident, not a "court mage."

So, a poisoner or indeed anyone concocting a potion or powder, only needs to be hired for the occasion. There might be consideration of trust worthiness, but even a court mage can be bought.

A battlemage seems the likely candidate. A great lord might even have a whole contingent of these, something akin to a palace guard. Most lesser lords would probably have but one or two. I leave aside how battlemages get used on the battlefield, except to note that such a mage would be an obvious target for the other side. If your battle plan depends on the battlemage and they are killed at the outset, then your plan depends on a slender reed. And sending in an assassin to kill the mage before the battle even begins also makes sense.

IOW, a court battlemage is not without complications and implications, especially for a minor noble.

In general, it appears a court mage is *most* useful when used regularly. What would be some of those regular uses? A court astrologer starts to make sense, especially when we see there's historical precedence for that. I can also see roles for anything that increases income or cuts expenses. Very mundane magic, like increasing crop yield, easing transport of goods, aiding in construction, that sort of thing. Not very exciting for story-telling, alas.

That's about as far as I've got. I'm interested to hear the thoughts of others on the topic of the court mage. And please don't forget the lesser nobility. Might there be a dividing point between those nobles who had a court mage and those would did not? Then there would certainly be those who retained one despite it being foolish.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
As I recollect from Tolkien, wizards were primarily learned advisors (at least that was the rational for Gandalf.) My possibly not reliable AD&D historical source books reinforce this image, 'philosopher mage' is one of the sub classes listed, with spells focused on 'abjuration' (protection) and divination. They sort of bounced between noble households. working minor spells but mostly dispensing knowledge. As to specific court wizards in other major fantasy works...

Feist has a couple court wizards in his 'Magician' series. Mostly learned advisor types with fairly trivial spell ranges.

Wizards abound in Elliot's 'Crown of Stars,' and there are even some at court - but they mostly belong to one or another priestly order.

Spellcasters abound in Norton's 'Witch World,' and some temporal lords do have magically talented women (most casters are female) on their staffs. Mostly their abilities revolve around healing and 'protection from evil' for want of a better term. There is also an entire nation ruled outright by witches.

LeGuin's 'EarthSea' revolves around wizardly exploits. Some of them do serve one or another lord, others are lords. Most appear to be magical shopkeeper types.

Spellcasters are also common in Lackey's 'Valdemar' series. Most noteworthy of these are the 'Heralds,' spellcasters bound to magical steeds. As the name implies, they are agents of the ruling monarch.

The court wizards in my stories tend to be roughly patterned after the 'philosopher mage' model.
 
On the continent in my primary world, magic works differently in different places. Consequently, mages have different relationships to the ruling classes, depending on the nation in question.

I have one nation in which there are precisely 5 mages, each attached to a separate ruler. The nation is divided among these 5 clans, so to speak who are mostly at war with one another or at least confrontational. Anyway, the story set there is very dark fantasy, and these mages are the sort of dark warlock or dark witch you might imagine who are able to cast powerful curses against enemies, able to far-see, able to delve into the future (about as clearly as the real, ahem, oracles of Greece), create charms, and so forth. They can use powerful attack magic, but nothing like fireballs or blizzards. Mostly carnivorous plants, insect swarms, plague-like effects, destroy farming and native beasts, etc., although some efforts are much simpler than others would be. They are loosely modeled on Merlin or Morgana. Because they are so powerful, I needed a way to protect the ruling head of the clan, and this is arranged through a magical unbreakable bond: if the ruler dies, his mage dies also. (I would note that these mages are not battlefield mages, per se, because they'd never need to be in the thick of battle. They'd operate from a great distance, or at closest behind the battle lines with the rulers who give the orders to troops but don't themselves fight.)

But there are other potential reasons for keeping a court mage.

  • General prestige.
  • Religious "prestige" or practice.
  • To keep the mage from being employed by enemies (state and non-state)
  • Superstition.
  • Healing (real or fake, a la Rasputin.)
  • Divination.
  • Navigating particular magical realities/conditions. For instance, areas of the land that are magically protected, cursed, etc., or perhaps ruins, mines, and the like suffering magical conditions.
  • For the erudite nature: advisor, negotiator or emissary, dream-interpreter, whatever. The wisdom.

There are other reasons, surely. Odd plot- and world-based reasons might exist. For instance, if every heir is born as a twin, perhaps his twin is always a mage and becomes court mage. That'd be quite particular, heh.

Incidentally, I don't know that the cost of keeping a court mage would be all that great. Depending on the world.
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
The only character in any of my fictions who pretty much fits the court mage role is Lord Radal, the Main Antagonist (if one doesn't count a certain dark god) of my Donzalo's Destiny epic. But he has a long history as friend and protege of the king and is quite devoted to him, serving in many roles besides the practicing of magic. He is, in fact, a official councilor and close advisor. But his real importance, as a wielder of magic, is as a spy master. Being able to 'speak from afar,' a fairly common ability of the magically-inclined, lends itself to this sort of thing, receiving reports from all over the realm. Radal also serves frequently as diplomat and envoy where his abilities are also of service (and which involve the occasional assassination).

Now Hurasu, the Wizard Lord of my Molu novels, is himself an extremely potent sorcerer, but he does have lesser mages who serve him in something like this capacity. There is always a 'Number One' (Thun in the Zikem language) who helps coordinate matters magical, as Hurasu has to pay attention to ruling. And in the city-state of Tesra (of the Wizardry series) there is always a Chief Wizard, who does not exactly serve as a court mage but, again, coordinates the magical side of things within the nation—but in service of the ruling Prince.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
To me it feels like you've got the question backwards. A king would easily have hundreds or more of people in his employ, including people who do something as simple as lighting candles everywhere, or as trivial as a court jester. So finding space for a court mage seems simple to me, even if only for the novelty of whatever magic that person has.

The question to me is, what kind of powers does a court mage have that the king can actually afford? Consultants often have other clients because nobody can afford to hire them full time, and it's easy to see how magic would fall into that group. If a wizard has too much power, even a king may not have much to offer.

As for what kind of magic a court mage might offer, the range of options is endless. More than anything a king has to make decisions, so any kind of divination, lie detection, or intelligence gathering would be too valuable to pass up. Anything that would help them make an impression, such a magic painting or fountain, a spelled doorway, setting up a menagerie, might fall squarely in the consultant, too-luxurious-to-keep full time category. A battle mage might be valuable, but someone enchanting weapons or soldiers would be better, except not every country is that invested in weapons.... so one nation selling those weapons to allies might be a fast way to both wealth and security. But weapons aren't the only trade good you can enchant, and getting a court mage to run a trade empire would be epic.
 
A court mage could also be the court astrologer. No reason mages wouldn't use astrology, both for magical purposes (making an amulet to channel Jupiter when the planet is well placed, or timing a spell just right, for example) and fairly mundane purposes (timing the royal wedding, advising the king if the deal he's about to make with the other kingdom is a good one). Those examples are actual uses of astrology, btw. Including the magical ones.

The mage could also be a general advisor and consultant. All your examples work. And, how does magic work in your world? If it's at all land based, the mage's advice might be needed for, say, any kind of building project: perhaps building in certain places would impede magic or stir up undesirable magic (similar to how, in some countries to this day, roads and developments are routed away from fairy mounds).

I'm also writing about mages, and in my world, they serve as consultants to every level of government. There are court mages, although my stories are set far away from the capital, so the court mages aren't really seen. The mages I do portray include advisors to the provincial governor, and village mages, whose many duties include advising the mayor and town council.

The consulting work they do is mostly pretty boring, from a storytelling standpoint--it's just regular workaday stuff--but it's not the plot of the story, just the backdrop. Stories aren't about the day to day stuff. They're about the less ordinary things that happen, usually interrupting the regular work day. So, the court mage can just be consulting as usual when along comes a mysterious stranger, and then the story begins. The mage being present can certainly add something, but the story doesn't have to be about what the mage does, really.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Good comments all down the line. I expected that, which is a big reason why I post here!

The matter of cost interests me. It's true that a great lord might have scores or even hundreds in their "employ." A lesser lord, otoh, might have little more than a personal servant. We can go further down to the poor, landless knight. There might be people who couldn't really afford a mage and impoverished themselves doing so (part of a larger pattern of living above their means). There might be those who have to decide between a court mage and some other official. In early stages, those initial offices were just the lord's buddies or relatives who got some sort of compensation for service. A court mage could develop the same way. Once associated with landed income, the office could become hereditary (assuming magic worked that way).

On the other side, though, a court mage would not be on a par with a smith or chief chandler. Prestige counts. Magic might be something socially disreputable, of course. A lord keeping a *secret* mage is sort of interesting. Anyway, in the usual run of things, I'd argue that a court mage would be more like a marshal or chancellor--someone who was important and had to be compensated accordingly. Another possibility with mages could be that noble status was required. That would limit the available pool.

Related to cost, I'm starting to think most magical "needs" would be met by hiring a specialist. Another problem with the court mage is not merely getting a certain competence and range, but retaining that over the span of a life or across generations. Seems like it would be as variable as having a competent military commander, for example. In fact, magery might be much like that--since there'd be no way to ensure consistency, there might develop an ethic of accomplishment, much the way warriors would have to prove themselves.

Anyway, I definitely see a reasonable setting in which wizards were more or less independent. Formed into schools or guilds or some other organization. Lords would hire them for the job. Not sellswords but sellspells. <g> Certain guilds (let's stick with the traditional) might be strongly associated with a realm or even a city. They might even be tied by treaty. But there would always be occasion to raid someone else's team, suborn or bribe or blackmail. Plenty of room, iow, for stories there. This still leaves room for court mages, but those might turn out to be more general purpose, as suggested by Devor or FifthView. There would certainly be a place for such.

Finally, I agree with Rosemary Tea (and with others) that frequency of need has to be a factor. If a mage is needed only for some particular occasion, then that's hardly a court mage. But astrology would be a more or less constant need. Same with other abilities that were suggested. Along those lines, it might behoove a great lord to found a monastery or university--some place of learning that could provide the lord with a steady supply of at least baseline competence. Which is what universities were from the 13thc onward--a source of supply of literate and learned on whom the lords could call.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I'll add a postscript to my own post <g>.

Not every people use magic or mages in the same way. Or, at least there's room in any fantasy world for that sort of variation. Elves might not have court mages at all. Dwarves might all be able to do magic, but only of certain types. Orcs have shamans whose prayers to the gods can be effective, especially in battle, but the shamans hold station by virtue of priestly status more than by their magical powers. And so on.

Which raises the question: if you aren't a court mage, how do you make a living? How does that lone mage afford that tower on a mountaintop? Yeah, sure, he gets hired, but by whom? How are prices set? Magical economy might work differently.

Not really looking for answers to a particular question; more that the matter of magic economics is more interesting than I thought it would be. As always, I'm very much interested to hear from others, whether ideas or examples.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
There's several ways of answering your question. But I'd tend to look at it from the point of view of the King. Why would he want a court mage? As a real world parallel, consider the British post of Astronomer Royal. King Charles II created the post in order to get more accurate star charts and so help solve the problem of determining longitude accurately, with the aim of improving navigation of ships. If the King in your setting apppointed a court mage, what might they be tasked to investigate and solve? Obviously this can only be paid for by someone wealthy, so lesser lords wouldn't have their own court mage. So there would be a lot of prestige in gaining the appointment - and a lot of pressure to deliver results.

Going on from there, could the mage resign from the post of Court Mage? If so, the reputation gained whilst in the post might be such that the mage would have a steady income from commissions for the rest of their lives. Enough perhaps to buld that tower they'd always dreamed of. A real life example would be a composer like Händel or Haydn.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
Which raises the question: if you aren't a court mage, how do you make a living? How does that lone mage afford that tower on a mountaintop? Yeah, sure, he gets hired, but by whom? How are prices set? Magical economy might work differently.

I wrestled with this question while writing the 'Empire' and 'Labyrinth' series, amongst others.

Historically most ancient magic centered on divinations, charms ('love spells'), curses (curse tablets in particular), protection (in mundane battle, against curses and demons/spirts), healing magic, spirit summoning, speaking with the dead, fertility (people and farmland) and...well call it 'entertainment' type magic. Popular in stories were shape changing spells, invisibility, levitation, and whatnot.

For the Solarian Empire, I went with five centers of magic. If your hunting for a wizard, well, those are the places to go. Elsewhere, yes, there's wizards...but,,,

The Church claims authority over all mortal magicians within the Empire. Ideally, they'd prefer all spellcasters to be part of the church, but generously allow 'independent' mages provided they submit to frequent interrogations about what they've been up to. Church mages are trained and based in Athnor on Sancti island, arranged by saintly order and talent. There is a order of literally magical singers, another order of 'Godborn' (healers and experts in protective magic) and others. Basically, if a priest somewhere else in the Empire decides they need a wizard, they petition Athnor.

The University at Solace to the north and west of Sancti is Solaria's greatest institution of higher learning, with an entire section dedicated to training wizards. The catch is this institution is oriented towards the more 'refined' types, without special patronage or outstanding abilities...well your magical education isn't going to progress very far, Most are 'Philosopher Mages,' who wander about for protracted periods of time seeking short term service with this or that aristocrat or wealthy lord. Solaria's wizards are versed in most of the magics listed earlier, though summoning spells are forbidden on pain of death, and curses are frowned upon.

Mystic Mountain is due east of Athnor. It is, quite literally a mountain dotted with small halls and cottages. Two principle types of wizards are trained here: war wizards, who get inducted into the legions Arcane cohorts, and Bards, who received instruction on those slopes since before the Empire claimed the region. Most 'battle magic' centers on protection against demons and spells, along with scrying out enemy positions. Bardic magic influences minds and sometimes deceives the senses (charms and illusions).

Ancient Kheff, a vaguely Egyptian type realm long since conquered and absorbed into Solaria, is due south of Athnor. Magic here is very much a family affair, with each clan jealously guarding arcane secrets that are often thousands of years old. Learning magic here means being inducted into one or another of the clans, usually by marriage, sometimes by adoption. On occasion they will offer limited training to outsiders as part of one plot or another. These clans range from learned arcane advisors (mostly bound to the Maximus clan) to magical shopkeeper types to supernatural extortionists.

Corber Port, due east of Athnor, is a major port and the Empires largest city. It also boast more magicians than any two of the other locations combined - but they are almost all mediocre sorts. Corber Port is where the second stringers and washouts from the other magical centers land. Most of these practitioners know a mere handful of spells. They are hedge wizards, fortune tellers, illusionists, charm makers and potion brewers and arcane dabblers.

Wizards in isolated towers? Yes, they exist. However, the reason for said isolation usually has to do with temporal trouble of one stripe or another. And they still have bills to contend with.
 
Which raises the question: if you aren't a court mage, how do you make a living? How does that lone mage afford that tower on a mountaintop? Yeah, sure, he gets hired, but by whom? How are prices set? Magical economy might work differently.
If mages are valuable to the community--say, if they provide necessary protection--they might be supported by the community, in a system similar to tithing or taxation. That may or may not be with money. Perhaps people simply give the mage whatever goods and services he needs, in exchange for his protection.

Or perhaps the mages' guild manages all magery resources collectively. Any income a mage has beyond what will meet his needs goes to the guild for redistribution. If he isn't making enough income to meet his own needs, the guild makes up the difference.

Perhaps all the towers on mountaintops belong to the mages' guild, and they assign a mage to each one. Kind of like the Catholic Church and all its resources, and they send a priest wherever one is needed.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I think you can boil it down to the simple idea of supply and demand. How common are say battle mages vs say lamp lighter mages. Sure battle mages may be able sway the tide of battle, but if there are tons of them, and everyone has access to them, how much can they actually demand in payment, especially when war doesn't happen every day? And what if a lamp lighter mage is super rare? They might be able to charge an exorbitant amount because their powers are are useful day in and day out.

If mages are super common, then don't they just become like any other work force in the real world? You can have trade unions, official certifications, and endorsements by institutions that will affect what a mage can demand. And then you can have nonunion, uncertified, mages who take what they can get, usually undercutting those with official designations.

I think it also depends on what types of mages you want to have and what powers and power levels you want each type to have. Maybe all mages have a base set of skills that are common to all of them, but then have a specialty. In which case, you can have one around to do mundane things, and call on their specialty when needed.

So much of this depends on the world building, in addition to the tone you want to convey. Imagine mages are rare and can pretty much do anything, then they could demand what ever they want, and it doesn't always have to be money. Heck, why do they even need money if they can create what ever they want? And, if they're really that powerful, why would then even hire themselves out instead of just taking over and being on the top of the food chain instead?

But let's say they do hire themselves out, why keep them around if they're only useful in a narrow field? Maybe nuclear deterrent. If all your neighbors have mages, and you're not necessarily on great terms with all of them, then it's prudent to have your own.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
It surely does come down to the specifics of the particular world. Sometimes I just like to nudge Aunt Hillary to see what ideas come scurrying out. Round here, there's nearly always good ones.

Magic in Altearth is poorly understood. Or, alternatively, is thoroughly misunderstood. Eventually, in very modern times, magic is understood in scientific terms and is relatively reliable. During the time when most of my stories are set, though, there are many varying interpretations, not unlike how pre-modern people understood "scientific" phenomena. Because it's poorly understood, magic is of wildly varying reliability. And magic isn't so much a single thing that is acquired (or to which one is born)--though it is to a degree that--as it is a whole range of abilities and phenomena.

It's also understood to be different things by different peoples. With orcs, for example, there is divine power, which is summoned and wielded by shamans. If something is done beyond what ordinary folk can do, it's magic. Which is sinful and dark and must be rejected and expunged. The line is really clear in that society.

The dwarves, to take another example, can make and build things with extraordinary attributes--we would call it enchanting something--but to them that's not magical. To them, it's a semi-sacred ability inherited from ancestors and curated and kept secret by a combination of family, clan, and guild. There are stories about secrets lost, or about outsiders who wielded a dwarvish secret. Such stories are hortatory or admonitory; they never end well. They may or may not have basis in a real event.

So, the court mage as a type is only one type of several. I am fishing ... er, ... exploring ideas of how mages would make a living, afford those rare elements, or even just set the evening table. One way is to be on retainer to someone else, which in turn raised the question of why that someone else would go to the expense. There've been several good ideas offered.

I might even swipe one. <g>
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
Admittedly my work in progress is set in a non-hereditary Empire with the level of technology and medical science equivalent to that of the 1930s. However, the Empire is made up of over thirty-five thousand islands, many which don't have industries, motorised vehicles, doctors or electricity so mages, including court mages, are still a major feature of daily life on such islands.

Mages are people gifted with magic by the gods when they turn sixteen. At any given time only about half a percent of the population have the gift of magic. All mages learn the basics but many mages will later specialise in either combat, healing or spiritual magic. Those who don't specialise are called GPM or General Practitioners of Magic.

Court mages are paid according to what the aristocratic household can afford but they have to be paid at least ten percent more than a conscripted unranked mage working in an enchanted rock quarry. Court mages usually reside in the harem of the same gender as the court mage and is provided with their own cottage, along with a greenhouse, a large garden and an alchemy lab. (A harem is a gender segregated area of an aristocratic household.)

Court mages are expected to help all members of an aristocratic household, not just the aristocrat and their immediate family. As all mages are rendered sterile when they are gifted with magic they can't have children nor can they marry so they will serve as long as they are needed by the aristocratic household.

Court mages can become rich if the aristocrat they serve is generous but court mages sometimes do jobs on the side which can also earn them extra money. Court mages are often paid by the dreaded Branch IX of the Ministry of Internal Security to spy on aristocrats and their households.

Court mages are chosen from the ranks of the clergy because their primary function is that of a priest or priestess. However, there are other functions they may perform including:

Advisor - Court mages are very useful advisors. As they get older and their ability to do magic diminishes they will often be made part of the council that advises the aristocrat on a variety of matters.
Bodyguard/Battlemage - Mages who cast spells leave a unique mage mark which only they and other mages can see. This allows them to see not only what spell has been cast but who cast it. In aristocratic households this is very useful if those households have rivals who use magic for nefarious purposes. In combat the court mage will use both defensive and offensive combat magic to protect the people around them. However, as all mage magic depends upon the energy it can obtain from the body, combat magic is only of short duration and used as a last resort.
Court Astrologer - Star gazing to predict things, make decisions and to determine characteristics of various members of the aristocratic household is seen as a very useful skill.
Entertainer - Who said magic has to be taken seriously all the time? Magic is also used to entertain and impress guests who come to visit.
Healer - A court mage may take twelve hours or more to heal a person with a serious injury and need a week of rest to recover but they're a lot cheaper than a doctor - and more reliable.
Negotiator - Court mages are used to mediate disputes within an aristocratic household or between the commoners and the household.
Spy/Informer - Court mages are sometimes used by aristocrats to spy on their own households or sent to spy on rival aristocratic households.
 
Also, the general economic realities of your world, or its various societies, would make a difference.

I'm having flashes of the television show Merlin. Why did Merlin's mentor, Gaius, stay on with the king as Court Physician? Sure, although he could use some magic, it wasn't a lot—and obviously, magic was not an openly wielded talent in Uthur's court, heh. But Gaius had room and board, much freedom to do the things he liked to do; and, many alternatives would have been far worse for him. He had some history with Uthur and in many ways admired the king, so there's also that. But he was in no way made rich by being Court Physician. Room and board and more freedom than working in the fields would allow. Merlin, in a more precarious position, remained Gaius' ward in that circumstance.

If the living isn't easy, then room and board and a bit of personal freedom are very good draws.

On the other side of things, the exact magical abilities make a difference also. If you can raise a whole castle from the earth via magic, well, your services are probably going to cost a lot more than room and board. OTOH, then we tip into the other problem, magic. And power creep. And economics when magic power is great and/or abundant.

Edit: Concerning power creep, a new paradigm for a fantasy tale, in which mages actually hire kings to take care of practical matters in the mages' realms, heh.
 
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I think there's two factors for court mages; frequency of use and prestige / deterrent.

Hiring a court mage makes sense if you can make frequent use of him. If he can heal then that's a good enough reason to keep one, since even in a village there's always someone who needs to have their foot reattached, and having a mage on hand to do so can help you be accepted as a rightful ruler. Same if he helps increase production, or tell the future.

From this perspective a battle mage only makes sense if you fight frequently. So a frontier lord might have one to keep whatever is in the wild at bay, whether it's wolves, orcs, dragons or just other humans. And a king fighting frequent wars will have a bunch of them.

The other option is to make sure you don't have to fight or to impress others. If you have 10 battle mages on staff, then other nations or lords might not want to engage you in open combat in the same way as having nuclear weapons does. But also just having a bunch of them nearby can impress visitors. I remember reading about the Byzantine Empire that they would purposefully guide foreign envoys past all the magnificent sites of the city just to impress them. This can be the same thing. If you have a mage trivially lighting candles during a banquet then you must be a very wealthy (and thus to be respected and dealth with) lord or king.

There's two interesting things to keep in mind, which actually offer a lot of room for conflict.

Firstly, if mages can be kept on staff, then that suggests they can be bought. And while getting a monthly salary is nice, getting a 2 year salary in one go just to turn on your employer for a single battle can be very tempting. Research has shown that in the modern day employees are in general willing to sell company secrets for relatively little money (as in a few months salary usually does it). No reason why this would be any different. And then not having the cost of a mage on staff but just banking up that money to pay at once can make sense.

The other is, why would the mage decide to settle for just being on staff instead of being the boss? Yes, power isn't everything, and politics plays a big factor here and all that. But at the end of the day, if you can fireball half an army into oblivion then there's a big chance you will want to be the head boss. It's a bit similar to the western roman empire, where powerful generals would become emperor (usually after the previous emperor died, though they might have helped with the dying part...). If you're powerful enough, then other people are willing to follow. So, what limits the mage in just assuming power?
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>mages actually hire kings
This is a central theme in Altearth, though it rarely surfaces in any of the stories. In a world beset by monsters, who is better suited to rule: mages or kings? There's a lively discussion on the topic, over the centuries. This tension wasn't so bad in the Heroic Age when wizards operated more or less on their own, sometimes having a friend or ally or even a cousin as a lay lord. Once there developed colleges and guilds, however, there was a very real possibility of some sort of league of wizards developing who might set their power over against that wielded by kings. It's all backstory at this point, but were the mages to win out, then the positions would indeed be reversed.

At least for Altearth, I picture court mages being supported exactly the same way as other court officials--not by a regular salary but by granting them land and privilege (e.g., right to collect a tax, or levy a toll). Such an arrangement doesn't guarantee wealth. A foolish wizard might well squander or neglect a property. But it does diminish the royal power, since that income would otherwise go into the royal coffers. They had coffers back then. Now I want a coffer. For my coffee.

Sorry. Got distracted.

Ennywhey, the other danger there is for those lands and that office to become hereditary. Ever notice how few fantasy mages are married with children? I think there ought to be some, at least in my world. Getting land has a particular attraction for Altearth wizards because, at least for many, the exact place of magic matters. Lots of theories why, but by the time mages are getting such grants, they're often wanting some particular piece of real estate. That's why wizard towers get built--it's prime magical real estate. So, once such a thing is received and the tower is built, the wizard is going to be extremely reluctant to let go of it. Wizard leagues play a role there as well.

To PrinceofSpires particular point, what keeps mages from seizing royal power is the weight of custom and family, which is powerful stuff. A mage might kill a king and seize a throne, but that doesn't mean they're going to rule. Not if the landed barons and the educated elite and the common folk all refuse to cooperate. A successful usurper would have to win over each of those groups, would need to learn to dispense justice, make law, engage in politics (which means family maneuvering) and so on. At which point, is he not just another king? That arc does sound interesting, though. Like Conan's arc, except for a wizard rather than a barbarian.

But history is not all about kings nor even mostly about them. I can definitely see a mage usurping a minor noble, or even becoming a podesta or other dictator-type in a city, throwing out the city council and leading the townsfolk to victory over their neighbors. A Francesco Sforza type. Fun!
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
So, the court mage as a type is only one type of several. I am fishing ... er, ... exploring ideas of how mages would make a living, afford those rare elements, or even just set the evening table. One way is to be on retainer to someone else, which in turn raised the question of why that someone else would go to the expense.

If we think about the wealthy and the powerful in our world, they have personal chefs, personal doctors, personal everything, just for convenience and because they can afford it. And securing a position like this has its benefits too. The mages will have the time to pursue their own interests all on the boss's dime. All they have to do is be ready when they're called for.

I was once thinking about what would be a great job for a writer, other than writing or something writing adjacent. One option I came up with was something like reception to a place that had super low traffic. That way I could write all day and get paid to do it, and all I'd have to do is greet a handful of people and answer a phone once or twice a day.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
Ennywhey, the other danger there is for those lands and that office to become hereditary. Ever notice how few fantasy mages are married with children? I think there ought to be some, at least in my world. Getting land has a particular attraction for Altearth wizards because, at least for many, the exact place of magic matters. Lots of theories why, but by the time mages are getting such grants, they're often wanting some particular piece of real estate. That's why wizard towers get built--it's prime magical real estate. So, once such a thing is received and the tower is built, the wizard is going to be extremely reluctant to let go of it. Wizard leagues play a role there as well.

Hmmm....married wizards. In the fictional epics I cited - Magician, EarthSea, even Witch World - most of the wizards and witches were single. Same is true for Crown of Stars where mages tend to be members of monastic orders, though there were a couple married magicians. Even in Kerr's outstanding 'Devery' series, there is not much in the way of married mages. However, liaison's with the opposite sex are not unknown in most of those series.

That said, my worlds...

Doctor Isabella Menendez has been married three times, with multiple children. (Her husbands kept getting themselves killed or ran off).

Lysander had an intense affair or two in his younger days, then went and married an elf. Two children. She left him and took to dark practices that eventually resulted in her demise.

Getting married was a priority for Kyle, but it took a while, one prospective bride was killed, another wasn't really compatible. He finally does get hitched to a herbalist in the last book of the series. Not happily ever after, but they stick together and have kids.

Antigonus, a friend/rival of Lysanders was married twice. His first spouse died, the second was a minor member of the DuPaul family (they wanted a magician in the family).

Carina, Isabella's grand daughter was married for a time...until her husband got himself killed.

It's likely at least some of the other spellcasters are married (and there are quite a few), but it never really entered into the stories.
 
✧・゚: *✧・゚:*A court mage would be most useful in my opinion for intelligence. It's like asking, "What knowledge can this mage provide that will give us an advantage against our enemies?". I'd want my mages to do reconnaissance.*:・゚✧*:・゚✧
 
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