Aquilonian

Overview
Aquilonia is the most advanced and powerful of the Hyborian kingdoms. Its people are proud and comparatively well-off. In Conan’s time, Aquilonia most closely resembles Medieval France, or The Holy Roman Empire, even Roman in culture and ecology. The political situation is rife with intrigue, murder and horror and could easily be the setting for untold campaigns. Aquilonia’s barons and counts maintain ancient feuds from generation to generation and those along the frontiers fight Picts, Cimmerians, Nemedians, Ophireans and each other.

Aquilonia’s people are varied and interesting. Overall, Aquilonians have long heads and are a tall, rangy race. City dwellers tend to be portly in rich Aquilonia and relatively few suffer from hunger. Their military forces rely mostly on cavalry units commanded by heavily armed knights, although pikemen and spearman from Gunderland and archers from the Bossonian Marches are also prized.

Honor and Allegiance
Honour is a real concept for the Aquilonians, one that impacts their reputations, moral identities and self-perception. This honour extends to family and friends. Impugned honour results in duels or other forms of redress. The aristocracy consider their honour to hold them above the rabble; honour to them is as real as a castle but vastly more important, for a damaged castle can be more easily repaired than damaged honour. Indeed, acts that otherwise would be considered criminal can be excused if they are committed as a matter of honour. Honour is especially important on the borders of Aquilonia where law enforcement is minimal and the people enforce their own laws.

Aquilonia is built upon the concept of allegiance toward others. The entire feudal system depends upon allegiance, the reciprocal ties between individuals and between families. Allegiances are considered more binding than law.

Clothing
Most people in Aquilonia wear woollen outer clothing and undergarments made of linen. Most merely wear simple tunics with hose and soft leather boots. The wealthy all across Aquilonia dress well, preferring brighter colours, better materials and longer lengths than styles worn by the peasants. Elaborate silken jupons, close-fitting jackets, gilt-braided skirts and jagged sleeves are typical outfits worn in the courts of Aquilonia. Hair is usually curled and scented, bound with cloth-of-silver or cloth-of-gold bands. Plumed caps adorn the heads of most of the male aristocrats. Most nobles wear swords, though many of them are merely ceremonial weapons. Aquilonian fashion for men often includes a moustache. Despite these similarities, clothing styles vary from region to region in Aquilonia.

Women and Marriage
In Aquilonia, women, whether noble or peasant, hold a difficult position in society. Often assigned such tasks as cooking, baking bread, sewing, weaving and spinning, Aquilonian women are considered less important than men. Women outnumber men in Aquilonia so it is not unheard of for some Aquilonian women to hold occupations typically reserved for men. Many learn a trade from a father or husband and simply carry on the man’s work when he dies. Women tend to have an easier time in rural settings. Urban Aquilonian women tend to be more pigeonholed, as many guilds will not admit women save via their husbands. As a result, establishing oneself as a professional single woman is difficult and many young women who move to the cities and fail to find domestic situations turn to prostitution.

Women are under the control of their fathers until they marry. Although peasants have more free choice in marriage because their dowries are either small or non-existent, aristocratic women are subject to arranged marriages. Their lands and potential children are too important to noble families to be given away indiscriminately. Unlike women in many of the Hyborian age nations, the aristocratic women of Aquilonia are more than just appendages, more than just objects of exchange or vessels for reproduction. Landholding women have a number of rights and can exercise power rather liberally. A common marital gift to a noble woman is feudal property and such a woman can control and oversee her own property. Wealthy women can inherit property and become fully vested feudal lords. They can settle disputes over vassals, castles and other property. Women can even field armies, leading them into battle.

Young girls in Aquilonia are brought up to expect to be married. Only noble girls of means and wealth can afford to remain single, usually by devoting themselves to Mitra. The need to marry well has promoted an industry of marriage-brokers and match-makers throughout Aquilonia. Romantic love plays very little role in Aquilonian marriages – marriages are far too political and economic to leave such things to mere attraction and choice. Marriages, except among the poor, are almost always arranged by parents to ensure the prosperity of their children. The family of the bride is responsible for providing a dowry, which is usually a portion of land, a fief or a manor (or more). Peasant dowries can also include money or livestock if land is not available. The truly poor marry without dowries and often manage to marry for love. A groom is also expected to provide a dower, which often consists of land as well. Marriage serves as a form of wealth redistribution in Aquilonia, which in turn puts more pressure on wealthy girls to marry well than peasant girls.

Social Standing
There are four distinct social orders in Aquilonia, each with its own unspoken rules and hidden habits. These four orders are the labourers, the townsmen, the aristocracy and the clergy. These orders are social and political in nature, not economic, for status and position are not determined by money. Feudalism is a political structure, not an economic structure.

Labourer: Labourers work the land for their necessities. They work not only to survive but to support those who do not labour, such as the clergy and the aristocracy. There are four categories of labourer in the Hyborian kingdoms: the peasant, the serf, the yeoman and the cottager.

Peasant: A peasant is a free man who lives in a village or more rural setting and owns his own land or, at most, owes rent on his land. Most peasants are farmers, although some are craftsmen. Peasants only owe a lord labour obligations during harvest time.

Serf: A serf is a man who lives in a village or more rural setting but, unlike the peasant, has had his freedom restricted by a feudal lord, owing labour duties. Most serfs are farmers but, like peasants, may also be craftsmen. A serf is not a slave because no one owns him. He is, however, tied to a plot of land owned by someone else. A serf cannot leave the land he is tied to without his feudal lord’s permission.

Yeoman: Yeomen are freeholders who own no land or owe a feudal duty. Many of these people live in a village but are not of the village, considered outsiders or dependents instead of full members of the community. Peasants who lose their lands or come to the village landless are yeomen. Many make their way as hired hands, moving from one village to another; others are permanently employed as manorial labourers. Journeymen (a step above an apprentice craftsman) are in this category.

Cottager: Cottagers are persons who own no land but at least own or rent a residence. Essentially, a cottager is someone who accepts a building to live in, even if it is little more than a shed and moves in with his family. He works on the land owned by the wealthier peasant or the feudal lord in return for being allowed to live in a residence. Cottagers live on the fringes of society and are often looked down upon by peasants and even serfs.

Free Townsfolk and Burghers: Free townsfolk are often considered labourers by the aristocracy even though they do not labour for the aristocracy or the clergy. They labour for themselves. Town life is distinct from country life, despite their interdependency on each other.

Aristocracy: The aristocracy contains a large and fluid social range. The ranks of the aristocracy are extremely dynamic because the fortunes of war and marriage bring families up and cast them down quickly. There are four categories of aristocracy in the Hyborian kingdoms: royalty, the peerage, the gentry and the knights.

Royalty: Hyborian royalty are the ruling families of the Hyborian kingdoms.

Peerage: Hyborian peers are not only political rulers but also hold the military in their hands and have their own social affairs. This social order has an amazing amount of material security and political power; Hyborian peers usually spend their time in efforts to keep their station and improve it.

Gentry: The lowest station of the lesser nobility is the gentry. Members of the gentry are knights who hold land and exercise feudal rights.

Knight: The military arm of Hyborian nations is comprised of those landless knights and soldiers raised by the various feudal lords as part of their obligations to the barons, counts and kings.

Slaves
Far below the status of the nobility and the military, beneath even the station of the commoners, the slaves of Aquilonia toil. The cult of Asura in Aquilonia keep slaves; slaves routinely pilot cult members’ boats of the dead down the Khorotas river. The people of Gunderland, however, keep no slaves and find even the mere idea of slavery distasteful.

Trade and Economy
Most Aquilonian trade is relatively local. As farms and manors expand, more and more villages find they have a relative advantage in the production of a few goods and in trading for other goods. Most Aquilonian merchants and peddlers travel from village to village selling goods. In the large towns and cities, trade is dominated by the craft and merchant guilds. Guildsmen tend to band together for mutual trade protection. They work together to bar or restrict trade in whatever merchandise is protected by the guild, forcing merchants and traders in foreign goods to pay a stipend or fee for the right to sell their goods in the city. The tariff is then split between all the relevant merchants and a portion is given to the feudal lord or city for the right to charge the tariff.

The manor is the economic unit of life in Aquilonia. A manor consists of a manor house and one or more associated villages and acres of land numbering in the thousands. Fully a third of the land is devoted to supporting the noble fief-holder and his retinue. The serfs and peasants who work the land are usually required to spend half their time working the portions set aside for the nobility but have the rest of the time to work their own lands or to work on special projects, such as building bridges or roads, as required by the local lord.

Military
The local lords maintain their own military and can be ordered by the king to fight. These military men, knights and chevaliers, become their own class of citizenry by Conan’s time. Often these fighting men have names for their units; the imperial troops are known as the Black Legion and the king’s personal protective knights are known as the Black Dragons. The soldiers of Aquilonia include both a powerful cavalry and an impressive infantry. Aquilonia appears to be unique in the world in its recognition of the importance of a trained infantry. Most of the infantry are Gundermen, who excel at the spear and poleaxe and Bossonian archers, who are without equal in the Hyborian age for bowmanship. In time of national war, King Conan can command hosts in excess of 50,000 troops.Troops in Aquilonia are often signalled via the oliphant, an ornate ivory instrument that a skilled performer can use to imitate everything from the roar of a lion or elephant to the sound of a gentle breeze.

Religion
The Aquilonians worship Mitra, the ‘universal god of the Hyborians.’ The Aquilonians are fervent in their devotion to Mitra and the Mitran priests completely dominate religious life in Aquilonia despite King Conan’s refusal to persecute foreign religions. Mitra is regarded as the one true god, standing in the universe with no pantheon nor even a consort to support his cosmic reign. He does command a heavenly host, however. The saints also stand with him, as evidenced by the exclamation from a Poitanian when Conan, thought dead, stood revealed in The Hour of the Dragon: ‘Saints of heaven!’ The religion practices religious intolerance in order to better achieve secular power.

The religion of Mitra is one of forgiveness and peace. It is a religion of civilisation and pacification. It is taught that the wonders of the Hyborian world are the direct result of Mitra’s power. Societal problems in Ophir, Corinthia, Brythunia and Koth are depicted as the harvest reaped by those who are neglectful of Mitra’s seeds and who allow other religions to share their land. Priests of Mitra are taught many things in addition to theology and philosophy. Many learn practical aspects of their culture, such as smithy work, carpentry, stonework, mining, smelting, minting, marriage brokering, mercantilism and diplomacy.

(Note: There are small followings of the gods: Bori and Asura).

Government
Aquilonia represents the pinnacle of Hyborian age societies, a realm of enlightenment and prosperity. Even so, its forms of government and its treatment of the various economic classes of people fall back on ancient Hyborian traditions. Aquilonia has a feudal government. It is ruled by a king, who divides the land and the responsibilities of the kingdom among various barons and counts, who then subdivide their properties and responsibilities further. The reigning monarch of Aquilonia is currently King Conan. It was previously ruled by Numedidas, and before him Vilerus.

Aquilonia is an impressively large kingdom and is larger than its king can effectively rule. The king can not prevent local powers from rising except by sending valuable troops to quell them. The king also does not have enough soldiers to enforce his will everywhere. Thus the nations are left with fragmented governments comprised by local counts and barons who perform civil and military functions in the name of the king for an equally fragmented kingdom subdivided into numerous fiefs and sub-fiefs.

The area of each Hyborian kingdom is broken up into smaller territories, or provinces. These in turn are broken up into even smaller pieces. Often the boundaries are not well defined nor do the various lands ruled by a count or baron need to be contiguous. This is extremely evident in the frontiers, where the Westermarck, which considers itself to be part of Aquilonia, is separated from the rest of the nation by Gunderland, which does not consider itself to be part of Aquilonia despite an agreement to the contrary. The divisions tend to undermine the sovereignty of the king and lead to inefficient government by the counts, barons and those subordinate to the upper nobility.

(There is much more on this system, but you get the idea.)

Tarantia, The Capitol
Tarantia is the capital of Aquilonia, the ‘most princely city of the world’s West.’ This great walled city stands regally on a plain not far from the Khorotas River in south-eastern Aquilonia on the Road of Kings. This city is a formidable centre of commerce as well as the home of the King of Aquilonia, Conan. The troops based here are called the Black Legion and the king’s personal bodyguard are known as the Black Dragons. The gates are guarded by great bronze portals. The wealthy travel about town in chariots. Tarantia’s population exceeds 80,000 most of the time.