Slaves turned Dukes: the Formation and Consolidation of Alessian Nobility (1E 242 – 1E 361).

By Marcienne Blosh.

Introduction

The Alessian Slave Revolt was a unique event in human history, where an entire Empire was created from scratch through a slave revolt. This origin carries important sociological implications, as the new Empire lacked an inherited hierarchic structure and all its founders hailed from the same social class. Compare that to the First Empire of Men in Skyrim, where there was a social hierarchy already inherited from Atmora. How did the Alessian nobility manage to distinguish itself from the other slaves and consolidate themselves as the holders of land and power? The objective of this book will be to provide an answer to said question.

Part 1: From slaves to governors: the formation of Alessian nobility.

In order to understand the origin of Alessian nobility it is necessary to delve into the Alessian Slave Revolt. The traditional image of the human slave under Ayleid dominion is that of an “indentured human labourer” in the immortal words of ancient historian Pluribel of Dusk. This fact is certainly true in most of rural slaves, but it is not all-encompassing. Ayleids used slaves for more than agricultural production, having domestic slaves to serve them, both in agricultural villas as in the cities. These slaves got at the very least to sleep under a roof, get dressed, bathed and fed. Tasks that they may have developed include cooking, helping bathe the owners, cleaning and entertaining. There is thus a certain pyramidal hierarchical system within the slaves, with agricultural slaves being the wide bottom and domestic slaves occupying the middle step. One type of slave was at the top of the slave hierarchy and would be the main executors of the Revolt: the secretaries.

Recently scholars at the Imperial Library unearthed a collection of Ayleid personal letters. Most of them are trivial in subject but contain important insight in Ayleid society and have been terribly overlooked. The letter that interests us is one from an Ayleid landowner to a distant peer announcing the pregnancy of his wife. The beginning of the letter is of extreme importance to our investigation:

I hope your slave reads to you this letter with the same joy and happiness that I am dictating it to mine.

Ayleids employed slaves as secretaries, who probably helped them administer their properties and wealth, and for sure handled the correspondence, writing letters and reading them to their masters. These slaves would on the one hand be able to write and read, and have insider knowledge in the political situation in the Ayleid dominion. This knowledge will make secretaries the vanguard and organizers of the Rebellion.

Secretaries communicated with each other through coded letters. They would forge a letter from their master, hiding a coded message within it, send it to the property were they wanted the message to reach and then the receiving secretary would be able to intercept the letter, decode it and if necessary share its contents secretly with their co-slaves. If the letter was intercepted by third parties through its voyage, it would seem a normal letter, but hidden within it were secret sermons and orders. An example of such letter can be found in a missive of the aforementioned collection of Ayleid letters, where allegedly an Ayleid lord asks his peer to help him composing a poem:

The poem begins with “first is first, second is second and third is third” Since the theme is the passage of time I thought of framing it as a prayer for eternal youth. I ask you, can I get to express such subject? How can I do it? Is it really possible for me to write down such a concept? I am reeling with anticipation but also with fear. Help me this time and I will be eternally grateful to you. I have a long sitting dream of being a glorious poet and I feel now is my chance. I want a lord crying and a dame fainting after hearing my poem at the very least. [For the message after the first sentence read the first letter of the second sentence and after every punctuation mark add one (first letter of the second sentence, second letter of the third sentence, etc.)]

From this class of slave administrators and secretaries would emerge both Alessia and the nobility of her Empire. Able to organize their co-slaves and send letters to rebel Ayleid lords and the High King of Skyrim seeking support, their role as secretaries proved fundamental in the triumph of the Rebellion.

When the Rebellion succeeded Alessia felt the necessity to establish a territorial structure, in order to make sure that her laws were obeyed and to manage tax recollection. She organized the territory not controlled by vassal Ayleids into governorships and created the posts of Governors to rule them in her name. She entrusted the governorships in the same people that before the Rebellion were helping her coordinate with the slaves and preached her word, the ex-secretaries of the Ayleid. Attached to their position they were assigned a small retinue of the semi-professional slave army, so they could enforce the law.

Problems didn’t take long to arise. Comforted in their position, the Governors started to become complacent and too comfortable in their positions. Their retinue started to be more loyal to them personally than to the rest of the Army, and some taxes never arrived to the Gold-White Tower. The power that the Governors were able to exercise informally started growing larger and larger. The Governors had one big worry: their dependency from the throne. By the last years of the reign of Alessia tensions had started to arise between her and the Governors. While controlling their small armies, the authority of Governors depended directly from the Empress, as she could force the replacement of a Governor at her will and hereditary succession of the governorship was not guaranteed. They found themselves needing to somehow root themselves and their family in the command of their jurisdiction. To achieve it Governors used two tools: tax and Order.

Part 2: Tax and Order: the consolidation of Alessian nobility.

The death of Alessia and the progressive rise of the second generation of Governors marked the breaking point between monarchy and nobility. Imperial succession was guaranteed by the Covenant of Akatosh (which, as the Oblivion Crisis kindly remembered us, was actually real and not a mere ideological ploy to assure the inheritance) but the succession of Governors was up to the new Emperor’s discretion. In the last years of Alessia and the first of Belharza there was an imperial policy of appeasement towards the Governors, avoiding their substitution unless necessary and recognizing their sons as the new Governors in case of death. But the new generation of Governors didn’t feel that they were owed their position and army from the new Emperor, which speeded up the process of nobilization of the governorship.

Knowing that the new Emperor didn’t have the religious aura and respect of his predecessor and was politically weaker, the Governors started instituting their own personal taxes. Even when Belharza reacted and legislated that Governors couldn’t impose their own taxation, the Governors were already so powerful in their own jurisdictions and the political influence of the Emperor so weak that they could afford to obviate the imperial mandates. The taxation, imposed mainly on property, was brutal. At the time, and as a direct result of the Rebellion, most agrarian estates were owned by communities emerged from the bulk of ex-slaves that worked on that estate. The intentionally brutal impositions forced those communities to either sell the property to the Governor or be expelled from it, as they were unable to pay the taxes. As a result the Governors not only had a small army but now were the main landowners in their jurisdiction. More and more the title of Governor was replaced by the old titles of the Ayleid, no more would they accept to be called Governors, preferring to be referred as Counts, Dukes or Barons.

A precise factor was key in allowing the Governors to illegally amass land, money and authority: the newly-formed Alessian Order. Based on the teachings of prophet Maruhk, the Order managed to fill the gap of religious authority that Belharza had lost in the death of her predecessor. The Governors quickly promoted and financed the Order, promoting it as the true spiritual successors to Alessia instead of Belharza. The Order was able through the support of the Governors to win the minds and hearts of many Nedes, and truly wrestle power and influence away from the Emperor. In return for their political and economic support, the Order gave religious legitimacy to the ambitions of the Governors against Imperial authority, by glorifying the “sons of Alessia’s chosen”. Furthermore their anti-Ayleid positions and open hostility towards the Ayleid rulers under the yoke of the Empire, thwarted the imperial policy of, where possible, substituting human Governors for Ayleid ones, in order to divide them.

The coup d’etat of the Order on the Throne in 1E 361 was also the culmination of the struggle between monarchy and nobility, winning the latter. With the Order in control, all the privileges of the nobility were formally recognized and their succession made hereditary. The new policy of Ayleid eradication allowed the Dukes to increase their lands, jurisdiction and power. The tyranny of noble Ayleid landowners that the Alessian slaves had fought so hard to destroy was reinstated, merely changing Ayleids to Nedes and slaves to peasants. With the coup d’etat of the Order, the concept of “Empire of Cyrodiil” as we know it today was born.