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[sythyry]

An Essay On Patronage [7 Thory 4385]

Being a patron is sort being a noble, except that you didn't have the dignity or money or standing or whatever to buy an actual title, and you have no actual authority or power. Briefly, the arrangement is: the patron takes some responsibility for the lives and fortunes of zir clients. In exchange, the clients supply doom when the patron is running short support the patron's pretensions, form the most loyal and active core of zir faction, and generally make some attempt to be helpful, gracious, agreeable, or whatever.

Some patrons in Vheshrame include:

1. A powerful guildmaster (the Couturier's Guild's current master) vis-a-vis the journeymen and younger masters in the guild.
2. A Khtsoyis crime lord vis-a-vis members of their organization.
3. A powerful professor vis-a-vis their senior students.
4. A particular rich master-carpenter vis-a-vis the people who work in her shop, and a collection of other less well-off friends. (She lives not far from Castle Wrong.)
5. Baron Heavigang, vis-a-vis a pretty random collection of friends
6. Me, vis-a-vis the wrongfolk

Clients and Employees and Subjects and Friends

Clients are people who have a patron. Most of the crew of Strayway are my clients. Mostly I pay salaries or allowances to my clients, or provide other things -- serious health-related spellwork for one, temporary or permanant housing for many, loans, whatever is needful. We do not have formal arrangements generally.

Employees are people whom I pay a salary for and with whom I have a contract. On Strayway, this is: Grinwipey, Kantele, Rheng, and Windigar. I have a lot more control over employees than I do over clients. I could, in principle, fire Grinwipey based on whatever the contract says, which I would have to ask Kantele about. (Firing Kantele would be difficult.)

(Phaniet is not an employee, though I pay her more than anybody. The exact duties of a wizard's assistant are not, in all cases, something that one wants to commit to writing. (My translator wants me to explain that bit of innuendo. One duty of a wizard's assistant is to ensure that the wizard has enough cley for zir workings. It is possible that this could involve the assistant donating her own cley -- of course this never happens to me -- or even, should her supply be insufficient, find some elsewhere somehow. And supplying cley to others professionally is somewhat less dignified and respectable than prostitution, on the World Tree.))

Indentured Servants I have described elsewhere. These are the people I could really order around, and whom I am very much obliged to protect. Currently this is Blenny, Este, and Umbers. I could have ordered Este to try to seduce Totalie, though that is not recommended practice and he would not be required to obey.

Subjects are the subordinates of a noble. I don't have any, not exactly being a noble. A nobles' subjects are more likely to be cooperative than a patron's clients, but far less than a typical indentured servant.

Friends: I do hope you know what friendship means. More or less everyone on board, except the stowaways, is a friend. With only a few exceptions, they would not be my clients if they were not friends.

Authority

The actual authority of a noble over zir subjects is only moderate. I've been a family friend of the counts of Gloun for most of my life. Every once in a while they want to do something substantial with their estate -- Levande Gloun wanted to move a village closer to the highway and open an inn and recreational spot. Her villagers refused. The debate went on for over a year, and, ultimately, the villagers won. (Levande, with her own money, opened a smaller version of the inn and recreational spot than she had originally wanted, with mostly hired employees rather than subjects. It did brilliantly, except that it was too small.)

And Levande was a countess; the highest rank short of the ruler of a city-state.

Now, certain orders must be obeyed. Nobles are (in an often-violated principle) the ones who are most responsible for guarding their subjects against monsters. When they say "Everyone get to a safe place," everyone must get to a safe place. Or, when the Duke said "Sythyry, go deal with the nendrai," I went and dealt with the nendrai, even though it meant, eventually, flunking out of Vheshrame Academy, getting killed, and generally getting into the habit of having doom every third day and sometimes more.

The actual authority of a patron is rather less. A patron doesn't have any military authority, since, generally, we're not actually responsible for defending our clients. (It's a bit less clear for me, since I am responsible for defending my clients from Vae, and out here we're all defending each other. They generally obey me about Vae and other immediate dangers.)

Still, if I hint that I want something done, my clients might go and do it.

Note that word "hint". Zi Ri are renowned and/or reviled for our use of indirect or allusive language. I'm fairly straightforward for a Zi Ri, but not always, and I am yet young in any case. So, when my clients are being helpful, they often try to do something that they think I hinted at. Mostly they're right, too -- the arguments about who would do what job on Strayway were fairly endless, but I complained vaguely to Zascalle about it, and she told everyone I was upset, and the next day everything was settled.

Not all hints are intentional. Rheng went and bit off Arfaen's husband's tail, on the grounds that I probably wanted him to. (I didn't.) (Also I couldn't fire him, even though he was an employee: one does not fire one's guards immediately as one heads off into dangerous places.) In such cases where the hint is intended, the patron is expected to deny it afterwards in any case. I suspect that half of my crew thinks I did want Rheng to bite that tail, and three-quarters of the crew approves.

Anyways, explicitly telling everyone "I will never command you to seduce anyone for my purposes" would be taken as a suggestion that my clients should figure on their own who to seduce and why, and, like as not, that they should be doing more of it.

Addendum

If this all sounds very Cani to you -- who do you think designed our social systems?

Apologies and Punishments

I scolded Arfaen ... not exactly in public, but carefully making sure that Phaniet and Mellilot were in earshot, and Quendry wasn't. "It is not my wish that Totalie be made so very happy. The last time I saw him, he did try to strangle me, after all. I want him to understand decent behavior. A theoretical understanding would have sufficed; a detailed practicum in the advanced points was rather beyond my intended course of study. My real concern is for the happiness and well-being of the wrongfolk. Including, in particular, you and your family. As, I hope, is the real concern of everyone on board."

"Yes, Sythyry," she said, and curtsied, and scurried off. I drooped. Phaniet darted after her -- Phaniet is a very good client, and knows exactly what to do without being told. Arfaen reportedly dumped a great deal of misery and self-loathing upon Phaniet, who comforted her suitably and assured her I was not going to evict her and Quendry from Strayway so far from home no matter what.

Which I am very definitely not going to do. She is, after all, a client, and one does not do that sort of thing to one's clients.

Then I slithered over to Mellilot, and apologized a bit incoherently since I don't exactly know what I'm apologizing for, and let her scold me as much as she dared, which isn't all that much. Then I promised to give her marriage-analog as much support as I could, and she thanked me a bit grimly.

I suspect it's too late for any help, unfortunately.

Comments

[rowyn]

Anyways, explicitly telling everyone "I will never command you to seduce anyone for my purposes" would be taken as a suggestion that my clients should figure on their own who to seduce and why, and, like as not, that they should be doing more of it.

I knew it! That's exactly what I figured would happen too. You'd have to, I don't know, hint that you don't want your clients seducing people on your behalf, and then they'd probably misinterpret it as you not wanting them to be promiscuous or something.

There's nothing for it except to transform your entire society into something straightforward, forthright, and honest. You're immortal, so you might live long enough to do that.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

There's nothing for it except to transform your entire society into something straightforward, forthright, and honest. You're immortal, so you might live long enough to do that.

You are such an insane optimist, there aren't any words for it.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I went and dealt with the nendrai, even though it meant, eventually, flunking out of Vheshrame Academy, getting killed, and generally getting into the habit of having doom every third day and sometimes more.

I'm glad to hear you got better! Well, except for the doom. And the nendrai.

[fringe-worthy.livejournal.com]

Why? This is merely considering what sort of Doom could be so bright that Flokim says "I'm blinded!" and Here says, "I'm There. Way way way over There"

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

But the nendrai is wonderful!

[rowyn]

Hey, you've got 43 bound spells just at the moment. It's really hard to kill you now! You might live that long.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

I figured ZiRi were kind of defacto nobility due to rarity and generally old and powerful relatives.

Mind, there's quite a difference between official nobility and that.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I was wearing a Heal the Awful Wound. See my old diary entry for 3 Hivvem 4261, if you can.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Courtesy nobility, which is sort of the opposite of de facto. With a courtesy title, you aren't really noble but people pretend you are for things that don't matter very much. De facto nobility is when you really are acting as a noble but people generally ignore the fact and don't give you the title.

...

I somehow manage to do both of them while still not getting to be an actual noble.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

Best of both!

Oh wait, that's the opposite of what you've got.

[redbird]

On our world, clients and patrons are usually not friends. Am I correct that this can often happen on the World Tree as well, and that it is if not rare at least not expected that most of your clients are also your friends?

One common way it happens here is that someone, either noble or rich but not officially noble, becomes a patron to artists of one sort or another, for the prestige of having the nicely decorated palace, or the good orchestra performing at zir parties, or in zir name. If it's an individual artist, or a master artist working with assitants and apprentices, there may be a friendship there: or there may be arguments and annoyance on both sides, and eventually it may be said that the philosopher left the court because he found it too boring, or the artist was turned out for being too much wasteful.

With groups, there may be no personal connection, just letters and money sent. So a performing group may be "The Duke's Men" or "the Lord Chamberlain's Players" (or, these days, jokingly call itself so with no duke, past or present, and no budget to speak of, just auditions and open-air performances and little badges saying "Da Doox").

Sometimes patronage even for an individual is smaller or less direct: Lord so-and-so gives a stipend to a writer, and in return the Natural History of Way-over-There has a grateful dedication at the front. In the past, writers have put such dedications on books in the hope that Lord So-and-So will give them a stipend for their future work.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard intercepts this one. I'm using the word "patron" in a somewhat different sense than "patron of the arts". An older sense actually: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientela. Similar relationships show up here and there in terrestrial history, under various names that I'd have to do some digging to track down. Sythyry wouldn't ... oh, the lizard can talk for zirself. -bb]

That's quite a common relationship here as well, where someone wealthy sponsors an artist for some extended set of projects, and each benefits from the other's prestige. It's rather different from patronage in general -- though my relationship to Grinwipey partakes somewhat of both. Most of my clients, for all their virtues, aren't the sort of artists who would would get a patron-of-the-arts.

And, in any case, many of my friends are traff or otherwise in socially uncomfortable positions. I am capable of protecting them somewhat, and have made it a habit to do so, for reasons which I hope are obvious to you. Even if the are, once in a while, less than obvious to me.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Does the study of psychology exist on the World Tree? Particularly with regards to the concept of conditioning? Your response to things so often to be bizzarely off, which ends up encouraging the crew to do things you don't want and discouraging from doing things you do want.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Mentador is not well-favored here: neither the magical nor the non-magical aspects thereof.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[Well, that explains all the neuroses]

BTW, am I the only person, due to the similarity of the words, whose mental version of Birkozon is Mentok the Mind-Taker from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Really? I would think that the nonmagical aspects would be, um, a bit more okay to society? Most of our nonmagical studies of the mind, the brain, personality, what causes behavior and such started because we wanted to help and cure the ill (there is absolutely NO magical mind healing in our world, for anyone, so we had to learn how to do it by other ways)... couldn't that get more traction? What is your response as a trained healer who actually has some decent amount of magical mentador skill, if not much of the nonmagical mind healing variety?

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the names of spells on the World Tree? "Heal the Awful Wound" makes my day every time I hear it.

[rowyn]

I think it's that even non-magical study of the mind by Primes is going to lead to other Primes thinking that the scholar plans to use Mentador. Because if you want to learn how the mind works, using Mentador is the obvious way to do it. Using Mentador is wrong, ergo learning how the mind works is also wrong.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[I don't know Harvey Birdman at all, and I'm responsible for Birkozon's name. -bb]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Yay!]

[rowyn]

I could, in principle, fire Grinwipey based on whatever the contract says.

So there's no way to get rid of your clients if you don't want to offer them patronage any more?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

There is. It is akin to disowning a relative, though not quite so severe -- or sometimes quite so severe, depending on the relationship. If there are other debts or obligations involved, they have to be paid or continued or forgiven or dissolved or whatever. And, since the relationship was informal and often not very explicit, it can be quite a trouble if it were to get to court.

But, like disowning a relative, it is rarely if ever done.

The usual approach is to slowly damp down the relationship over a year or so, and make it clear to other clients that the soon-to-be-ex is no longer in favor. I've done that a few times. Usually they get the point and make other arrangements.

Or one can have a fearsome fight, like a lovers' quarrel but without the love. I've done that several times too.

Anyways, when finance and protection and such become parts of a friendship, everything gets more closely attached, and thus harder and more troublesome to sunder. So we generally don't.

[rowyn]

Wow. Your life would've been a lot simpler if your social structures had been designed by Sleeth instead of Cani. ("I claw you on the butt, rrawr! Begone!")

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. The resemblence is striking.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

There is a reasonable chance that some Sleeth might consider this as enticement to take their relationship to, ahem, a new level!

Anyway: "It is not my wish that Totalie be made so very happy...." This is almost certain to be misheard as 'I wish for Totalie to be made very unhappy!'

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

If Totalie being unhappy saves Arfaen's marriage, I will consider it a good trade.