Social class in Urcea

Social class in Urcea is a group of Urcean individuals who occupy a similar position in the economic system of production. The concept is a controversial issue, having many competing definitions, models, and even disagreements over its very existence in its present form. Many Urceans believe that in the country there are just three classes: the Urcean rich; the Urcean middle class; the Urcean poor. More complex models that have been proposed describe as many as a dozen class levels; while still others deny the very existence, in the Caphirian sense, of social class in Urcean society. Most definitions of class structure group people according to wealth, income, education, type of occupation, and membership in a specific subculture or social network.

Historically, class hierarchy played a major role in the civic and economic life of Urcea. Originating from early examples of both Latinic and Gaelic societies, class distinction was not permanent but rather based on a series of classifications of property ownership. Descending from the Great Levantine tradition of property ownership, the class of nobility, the Optimates, had to meet certain property requirements, and they were thought to have the most interest in the success of the realm. Former optimates and others were the class of Privilegiata, which had some of the markers of citizenship in Great Levantia but was not directly descended from that institution. The remainder of the population were freemen, or, before the Great Confessional War, serfs. The class structure radically simplified after The Anarchy into these three basic units. Social stratification, though reduced, continued on until legal reforms of the 19th century during the Aedanicad mostly did away with any legal benefits of class. During the period around the Red Interregnum, Crown Regent Gréagóir FitzRex lowered the property requirement of the optimates to, effectively, zero talers. This had the practical, but not legal, effect of abolishing the institution. King Patrick III, upon his restoration, abolished the nobility and granted universal privilegiata status, effectively ending the ancient class system. A remnant of the system can be seen in Urcea today as resident aliens and other non-citizen immigrants hold the legal title of freeman. Titles of nobility and peerages were retained for purely honorary purposes, and since the restoration have been open to be granted to all Urceans.

Social class in the High Medieval Period
Social classes in Urcea developed organically but had mostly stabilized by the time of the Golden Bull of 1098 onward. The so-called "1098-1575" model is the one used by a majority of historians to refer to the times, but a minority opinion has suggested it is inadequate because it discounts the substantial role of the clergy in all parts of Urcean civic, economic, and moral life. During this period, women were entirely without class; any inherited class was passed along to one's sons only. The only exception to this was Royals, and Royal women were considered optimates and the equals of all but the high optimates, though their children could not inherit this status.

Besides possessing political power, political rights were vested with the optimates and privilegiata. Only privilegiata and above had the right to vote in the landsmeet of their Estate, and only privilegiata could vote in the Great Landsmeet. Conversely, once the advisory Common Council was created, only privilegiata and freemen could sit on the council. Once the Great Landsmeet had become depreciated, the Concilium Daoni remained comprised only of privilegiata and freemen - albeit ones appointed by the heads of Estates of Urcea, optimates.

High Optimate
The so-called High Optimates were Optimates belonging to the great houses of the Estates of Urcea. Coming from just fifty families, High Optimates were an extremely exclusive clique at the very top of the Urcean social hierarchy, and typically these families controlled much of the political power and land in the country.

Optimate
Optimates ("best ones") were the class of nobility in Urcea and existed through the early 20th century. In order to be enrolled as an Optimate, the head of a family must meet a property requirement for three generations. While the property requirement varied greatly through the era, the methodology for being enrolled remained the same. During an enrollment period, the individuals in question had to retain the minimum property requirement the entire time of the enrollment, although they could go below it once enrolled. The Custóirs of the Estates of Urcea were responsible for inspecting property requirements annually through a series of hired investigators, who often times could be bought off to report back favorably. The Custóirs were also responsible for maintaining the rolls of who was an optimate. Non-members of Estates were not allowed to join the ranks of the optimates.

In order to become an optimate, one's father had to have been at least a vested freeman. Following that, three generations must follow meeting property requirements. The first generation head of household was to have met the property requirement for at least ten years prior to his death, ensuring that so-called "new men" could not easily enter the ranks of high society in Urcea. The second generation head of household had to meet the property requirement for their entire lives from the time of inheritance, and the third generation must have met the requirement from the time of inheritance for ten years. In many cases, this system lead to second generation heads of household faking their own death and remaining on their property as anonymous freemen until their son acquired noble status. Upon being enrolled, only the head of household and his children would be enrolled, and any siblings or surviving parents were excluded. Following enrollment, the new optimate was permitted to go under the property requirement so long as he did not die under the minimum, in which case the optimate status was revoked from his sons. Otherwise, an optimate family could not lose its status unless two successive optimates died without meeting the requirement at the time of death.

In addition to their high social and economic standing, only optimates or Royals were allowed to command field armies in the Royal Army, a law that remained in place until the reform period following Urcea's disastrous loss in the Second Caroline War in the 19th century.

Privilegiata
Below the optimates were the Privilegiata ("privileged"), a class consisting of individuals who had lost their optimate status. Former optimates could never become freemen and thus became this class, which still conferred with it certain social and economic privileges without as many of the obligations. These privileges included a minimum wage, the first of its kind in Levantia. The minimum wage, along with their social station, tended to lead the privilegiata from being unable and unwilling to work the fields, leading most to either move to the city or adopt semi-professional responsibilities on feudal holdings. Privilegiata were typically employed in the legal profession and made up the professional burgher class in the cities, and were also often employed as captains and low-level commanders in the Royal Army. Though there was no prohibition on freemen owning and captaining a chartered ship, the privilegiata made up the vast majority of ship captains during the medieval period. Modern scholars have commented that the privilegiata were, along with the serfs, probably the backbone of the medieval Urcean economy, and privilegiata were given preference in apprenticeships and in academies. Only privilegiata were permitted to be masters of trade guilds. Privilegiata also dominated the ranks of the clergy during the period.

Losing optimate status was not the only way to join the ranks of the privilegiata, although it was the most common. There were four other ways to do so. The first of which was by direct grant of the Apostolic King of Urcea himself, and this was probably the most common method. The King often granted privilegiata status to mercenaries who distinguished themselves in battle on behalf of the King. The second way to gain privilegiata status was by grant of the Custóir of the Estates of Urcea, provided that the Landsmeet of the Estate consented. This was a very rare way to gain the privilegiata status as the members of the Landsmeet would often jealously reject adding new members to voting ranks of their Estate. The third way to gain privilegiata status was by an individual within five degrees of consanguinity excluding cousins - in other words, sons, fathers, brothers, nephews, or uncles - becoming a Bishop, Archbishop, or Cardinal. This was the second most common way to gain privilegiata status given the number of Episcopal sees in Urcea. The final, and rarest, way to gain privilegiata status was by a freeman marrying a woman of the Royal family. Morganatic marriages were permitted in Urcea - except between a Royal woman and a serf man - but the husband and children of such a union would be elevated to the rank of privilegiata rather than of optimate.

Vested Freeman
A vested freeman was a freeman who, though he did not reach the property level of an optimate, owned a lower minimum of property. These were typically smallholders or residents of cities who owned property. The main right afforded to vested freemen was the ability to contract serfs, which non-vested freemen were unable to do. Additionally, one's father must have been at least a vested freeman in order to begin the process of enrolling in the optimate, making the position of vested freeman an important first step.

Freeman
Freemen, besides serf, were the most common type of person in medieval Urcea. Not possessing enough land to be vested or an optimate, freemen nonetheless were under no feudal obligation and worked as a kind of sharecropper or in cities. Possessing no privileges or benefits, the rights of a freeman were nonetheless inviolable and they could not be bought or sold at will, and contracted their labor on their own.

Serf
Serfs were individuals under feudal obligations. Serfs could be bought, sold, or traded (with some limitations as they generally could be sold only together with land) abused with no rights over their own bodies, and could not leave the land they were bound to. Serfs who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the lord of the manor who owned that land. In return they were entitled to protection, justice, and the right to cultivate certain fields within the manor to maintain their own subsistence. Serfs were often required not only to work on the lord's fields, but also in his mines and forests and to labor to maintain roads.

Social class following the Anarchy
Feudalism was critically weakened by the demographic and economic upheavals of the Saint's War but persisted as a limited institution until 1575. The institution of feudalism and serfdom had been critically undermined by the plagues and famines that swept through Levantia as part of The Anarchy, and the further upheavals of the Great Confessional War brought the institution to the end of its viability. Serf wasn't formally abolished as a class until 1575, however, when King Leo II reformed the class structure after the War to reflect only three classes.

This version of the class system persisted from 1575 until 1902. The social class system was a matter of considerable political debate in the 19th century and was a cause for the rise of Gréagóir FitzRex in the 1880s. The Armed Forces of the Apostolic Kingdom of Urcea, which had been politically ascendant after the victory in the Third Caroline War, was lead by an officer corps of privilegiata who pursued a more radical form of bourgeoisie liberalism than that of the Crown Liberalism of the National Pact. FitzRex and the officer corps radically opposed the continued existence of the optimates, and FitzRex lowered the property requirement to virtually nothing, starving the optimate class of any real meaning. In 1902, following the House de Weluta victory in the Red Interregnum, the class system was functionally abolished by King Patrick III after the Red Interregnum. The optimate class was abolished by the king and privilegiata status was extended to the entire population, a status which every citizen of Urcea still formally holds today.

Optimate
The Estates of Urcea had proved to be a major source of opposition and division during the Saint's War and Great Confessional War. As part of a general effort by King Leo II to curb the influence of the Estates, the distinction of High Optimate was abolished. Custóirs and their families, weakened politically and economically, were now on the same level as other optimates. The property requirement for optimates was lowered in 1580 by King Leo in order to refill the depleted noble ranks, as many optimates were killed in the fighting of the 16th century, but the requirement was radically raised in 1680 to make the class somewhat more exclusive so as to imbue it with more meaning. The requirement for one's father to be a vested freeman was abolished in King Leo's reforms as well. As the state centralized on the power of the Apostolic King of Urcea combined with the gradual development of the Constitution of Urcea, the optimates had lost most of their political power by the time of the War of the Caroline Succession. Leo’s initial reforms provided for a key source of Optimate weakness; Urcea’s good fortune in expansion lead to the creation of the Ómestaderoi, or homesteaders, in newly acquired territory. Optimates were not allowed to take part I. The program and were forbidden from purchasing ‘’Ómestads’’, dramatically strengthening agricultural smallholds at the expense of the nobility, whose estates were shrinking and could not compete. Reduced to an urban socialite class, the optimate class nonetheless persisted at the upper crust of society until its abolition in 1902.

Privilegiata
The legal privileges and obligations of the privilegiata were not changed in the 16th century reforms, but by the time of the late 1500s, the privilegiata were now almost entirely an urban class and proto-bourgeoisie rather than only partly city-based. The demographic changes in the rural parts of Urcea during the last few centuries lead to a large supply of freemen and former serfs, making employing privilegiata completely nonviable except for only the most skilled possessions. Privilegiata flooded into the cities looking for work, where they were welcomed by their fellow privilegiata governing the law practices, the guilds, and the Church. This movement began substantial growth in Urcea's urban population by the middle of the 16th century. The privilegiata's migration to the city stemmed not only from economic concerns, but cities were more likely to accept privilegiata refugees than freemen, and a great deal of refugees were created as a result of the frequent sight of armies during the Great Confessional War. This class grew rapidly during the Early Modern Period, but their number was still largely dwarfed by the ranks of the freemen.

Privilegiata were the leading forces behind the gradual development of the Constitution of Urcea and were the leading forces behind Crown Liberalism, and following the reforms after the Second Caroline War, they gained the ability to serve as full generals in the Royal Army, which became an attractive route for privilegiata to pursue. During the Aedanicad, a huge number of privilegiata joined the officer corps, becoming a political force during the 1860s. Becoming radically anti-optimate, the privilegiata supported the efforts of Gréagóir FitzRex, himself a privilegiata, in establishing his Regency dictatorship.

Following the victory of the legitimists in the Red Interregnum, the class of privilegiata was granted to every subject freeman in the Kingdom, creating the designation of citizen and dissolving the formal class structure.

Freeman
In the post-Anarchy era, vested freemen and serfs were folded into a single freeman class. Without the requirement to be for a father to have been a vested freeman to become an optimate, and because of the dissolution of serfdom, the vested freeman position was no longer needed. Freemen who moved to the city as a consequence of the industrial revolution became largely subject politically and socially to privilegiata, but retained the right to vote for representation as well as the right to sit in the Concilium Daoni, where they began to make up a growing number. Class resentment due to poor working conditions and social marginalization by the privilegiata lead to the growth of both socialist and ultraconservative movements. Freemen made up the vast majority of the country up through the Red Interregnum, and they supported House de Weluta and the legitimist faction. Following the legitimist victory, every subject freeman - that is, a naturalized freeman - was made into a privilegiata. The distinction of Freeman still legally exists, and the title is mostly used for non-naturalized immigrants and resident aliens.