#Serfdom

[lillylesdom]

Helga's Servant

Helga's carriage clattered to a halt outside the grand gates of her castle. The journey from the distant kingdom had been long, and the weight of her royal duties pressed heavily upon her shoulders. As she stepped out onto the cobblestone courtyard, her eyes scanned the familiar surroundings, searching for the one face that could ease her weariness.

"Princess Helga, your highness!" Amira's eager voice pierced through the air, and Helga's heart quickened in response. She turned to see her servant rushing forward, wide-eyed and breathless. The afternoon sun highlighted the contrast between Helga's pale complexion and Amira's rich, dark skin.

"Amira," Helga murmured with a hint of relief, reaching out to grasp Amira's hand for assistance getting down from her carriage. The warmth of Amira's touch steadied her, a silent promise of comfort. Without another word, Helga tugged on Amira's wrist and led her through the winding corridors of the castle, their footsteps echoing off the cold stone walls.

Arriving at the royal bath, Helga released Amira's hand and began to peel away the layers of her travel-worn outer-attire. Amira moved with practiced grace, setting about her task of drawing the bath. Steam rose from the water as it filled the ornate tub, perfumed oils swirling into delicate patterns on the surface.

"Undress me," Helga commanded softly, her voice carrying an undercurrent of impatience. Amira's fingers worked quickly, unfastening the intricate clasps and laces of Helga's remaining gown. The fabric fell away, revealing the princess's dainty and pallid form. Helga stepped into the bath, sighing as the warm water enveloped her.

Amira stood at the edge, waiting for permission to join her mistress. Helga's blue eyes flickered with a mixture of anticipation and authority. With a nod, she granted Amira access, and the servant undressed quickly, then slipped into the bath, positioning herself at Helga’s feet.

As Amira began washing Helga's soles, Helga kicked the sponge from her hand.

"Relieve me," Helga demanded, placing her milky white legs over Amira's dark shoulders. There was no hesitation in Amira's movements as she leaned forward, her full lips pressing tender kisses against Helga's lower belly and thighs. Each touch was imbued with a deep-seated devotion.

Helga's breath hitched, the sensation of Amira's lips on her sensitive skin sending shivers down her spine. Amira's ministrations were tender, almost worshipful, treating the princess's delicate alabaster flesh as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

Helga closed her eyes, allowing herself to be lost in the sensations that Amira's touch invoked. The tension of the journey melted away, replaced by the mix of desire and fulfillment.

The warm water danced under Helga's porcelain skin as Amira's full, black lips trailed languidly along her inner thigh. Helga reveled in the contrast—the eager tongue serving her and the strong, calloused hands of a working woman caressing her delicate body. Each touch was electric, sending shocks of pleasure through her.

"Keep going," Helga murmured, her voice edged with a mix of command and need.

Amira's body began to ease into the ritual, her movements becoming more fluid, almost relaxed. Helga felt the shift and frowned. Without warning, she lightly kicked Amira's back with her heel.

"Sit up straight," Helga barked, her tone sharp. The servant instantly corrected her posture.

"Forgive me, Mistress," Amira whimpered, her eyes downcast but her hands never faltering in their worshipful task. One hand slid up Helga's torso, pausing just below her chest. The fingers splayed out, feeling the rhythmic thud of Helga's heartbeat beneath the pale flesh.

Able to judge the state of Helga's body, Amira pressed soft and slow kisses on the pink of Helga's vulva.

"Good girl," Helga breathed, her eyes closing again as she surrendered to the sensations. Amira pressed her palm firmly against Helga's chest, attuning herself to the rhythm of the princess's pulse. She moved with precision, bringing Helga to the very brink of ecstasy, then pulling back, hovering at the precipice.

"Come on," Helga finally gasped, her control slipping. "Now."

With her mistress's permission, Amira's lips wrapped around the rosy, pink center of her mistress, her tongue slipping between the folds and pleasing, lapping up the precious gift of this white woman’s arousal. Helga's breath quickened, her body tensing as the waves of release began to crash over her.

"Amira," she whispered one last time, her voice breaking. She squeezed her thighs around the servant's head and grabbed her hair, then succumbed entirely to the overwhelming flood of pleasure that her loyal servant so expertly delivered.

"You've done well," her voice still tinged with desire. "Clean up and attend to my chambers. I'll need you again later tonight."

[racefortheironthrone]

How did people become serfs? Like, birth was probably the answer for some, but were other people made serfs after being born in a different social class? And how did it get started, anyway?

Given that the legal default in medieval society was that you were born into the legal status of your (usually male) parent and could not change it, most serfs post the first generation were born serfs.

But as I was suggesting in my post about the Normans, you could be made into a serf through a change to the underlying land tenure that defined your legal status. So for example, you could start out a free churl (wasn't initially a pejorative, but there is something insidious about the way that words for working people get transformed into insults), and then 1066 rolls around.

All of the sudden some collaborator translator is explaining to you what some French-speaking foreign priest is saying about how the new king's new legal system doesn't recognize "churl" as a valid status, please tick the box for either "knight" or "serf," and if you complain there's this French-speaking illiterate violent maniac on horseback backing him up - and the maniac thinks he owns the land your father's bones are buried in and you and your family come with the land, and he'll kill you if you disagree or if he gets bored.

As to how it got started...arguably it all goes back to Diocletian. As a reforming Roman Emperor in the Crisis of the Third Century, Diocletian was having trouble getting his hands on enough hard cash to pay the troops who guarded the borders (who were increasingly led by men with titles that would be later translated as Duke, Count, and Baron, which is a bad sign), so he started paying them in-kind and extracting taxes from the coloni (tenant farmers) in-kind. In order to ensure that revenue from the coloni remained consistent, Diocletian issued an edict that it was illegal for the child of a coloni to hold any other occupation than coloni, and that it was illegal for coloni to leave the land upon which they farmed.

Pretty soon, once the Emperor goes away and there's only the Duke, the Count, and the Baron running the show, the local warlord just cuts out the middle-man and takes the in-kind taxes directly, calls them rent, and asserts that they own the land (or at least the right to rents and taxes from the land) while menacingly sharpening a sword. And hey presto, you've got serfdom!

[alpaca-clouds]

Hector's "Race"

Okay, you know what? I cannot help myself, I need to talk about this.

Whenever those folks with a hate boner for the Netflix series grasp for straws to critique it on, someone will bring up that "it is totally racist, that Hector, a brown man, gets enslaved by white women!!!!!" To which I will be sitting there like: "... You do get that Hector is Greek and hence white, right?!"

Because, like... two things. First: Race is a completely made up concept. More than that, it was a concept that in the 15th century did not yet exist - though was just around the corner, because it basically came up as soon as settler colonialism became a thing. (Mind you, the show is set about 15 years before Columbus did greatly miscalculate the circumferance of the earth.)

Second: Yes, Mediterranean people (just like the Irish and the Scottish) were not really considered "white" around 1900. Even though their story does not involve the kind of slavery, that folks talk about. However, today Mediterranean people - just like Irish - are considered white. Becuase, again: Race is just a made up thing. It is not real. It is a cultural leftover from colonialism.

Hector is from Rhodes. He is Greek. If you want further proof, other than the series explicitly saying he is from Rhodes: He is voiced by a voice actor from a Greek voice actor. Because Powerhouse does care surprisingly about those things.

Yes, his skintone is a bit darker than that of European people from central and northern Europe. But actually, if you reduce it to that kinda stuff, that shows people just that you have race-essencialist thought patterns.

Now, if someone was to talk about Isaac in this regard, I would still consider the argument kinda stupid - but at least I would get where it comes from. Especially that while the Order of Christ (whose colors his master wears) had started tapping into Africa starting around 1440 to get slaves from there, this was not yet a widespread thing. While I think it is a good move to give Isaac a comprehensible reason for wanting to do a genocide on humanity (and probably one of the few ways in that it would have worked while keeping him as a sympathetic character), I at least understand that it feels a bit reductive to have the Black character be motivated by slavery.

Though personally, I would have rather preferred just that the show would have brought up that about a third if not half of all people in Europe at the time were white slaves. Sure, this sort of slavery (serfdom) was very different from what we later associated with the word (cattle slavery), but yes, most people we see are probably some sort of serf.

But in regards of Hector's story being somehow racist because his skintone is a bit darker than that of other characters? Yeah, that is just race essencialist bs. By any modern definition of this made-up race bullshit, Hector is white.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Nanny McPhee (2005, Kirk Jones)

24/09/2024

[blackthornlegacysims3]

With two toddlers and another baby on the way, Anabel knows she can't continue like this.

It's not ideal, and she wants better than this for her kids (she knows Arthur would too), but she decides that becoming a serf is better than freezing or starving to death.

She explains her situation to the Lord Anselm of Atterbury, who agrees to provide her a suitable cottage in return for her labour, and that her children will provide their labour once they come of age to be helpful.

(I know she wouldn't directly ask him but idk who she would talk to and I didn't make more sims lol)

[warsofasoiaf]

What is the difference between slaves, serfs, and indentured servants?

Obviously, this is oversimplifying because the various rights of slaves and serfs could vary greatly from location to location and time period to time period.

Typically, the big distinguishing mark of chattel slavery is the ability to buy and sell people as property. The slaves are property of their owners to dispense with as they please. Serfdom, meanwhile, has the serfs as part of the land. Serfs typically cannot be bought or sold, and remain with the land holding that they are tied to. Indentured servants typically sell a contract of their unpaid labor for a set duration. These contracts could be sold the same way someone sold a loan, so it was possible (and indeed, very common) for the indentured servant to have their contract sold. The classic example of indentured servitude happened in passage to the New World. The indentured servant sold their indenture to a captain in exchange for passage, and when the captain arrived, he'd typically sell the indenture to large planters for a tidy fee.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[saying-odd-shit]

if i was a serf i would be going through a serfy little breakup with Burchard the serf and cry in my straw serf bed not even knowing i could go visit like Edith the serf and get my serfussy ate or whatever

[themoleperson]

*beckons you to my store* you there, have you ever wanted a tool for sailing with the waves that also has the convenience and affordability of a medieval peasant? well let me introduce you to the Serf Board (tm)

[arabdoll]

“Write about how this young man squeezes the slave out of himself drop by drop and how one fine morning he awakes to find that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer the blood of a slave but that of a real human being.”

Anton Chekhov, letters to a friend

[shuckmaster1365]

how I fele after a long day of tilyng þe feldes

[doonthestair]

woulda fucked it up as a serf lowkey

[racefortheironthrone]

how would a castle like winterfell feed everyone on a day to day basis?

Well, just like any manor house or city-state, there would be agricultural land around Winterfell that was the lord's land held outright and agricultural land around Winterfell that was leased to feudal tenants (who would also work on the lord's land on a paid or unpaid basis, depending on whether they were serfs) either on a cash or in-kind basis.

At harvest time, the castle would take in all of the crops from its own land plus the rent from the leased land (sometimes as a share of the crop and sometime as cash). These staple crops, as well as garden vegetables and meat and livestock byproducts, would be processed by mills, smokehouses, and the like and then stored in granaries, storehouses, cellars, and so forth, and then distributed by the servants according to custom and practice.

[thoughtportal]

Hannah Barker Lecture: The Most Precious Merchandise

teaching medieval slavery in captivity

[grayrazor]

It's kind of refreshing to go back to the blunt honesty of 1800s slumlords and plantation owners, before all the rationalizations and obfuscations of liberal capitalism.

The whole idea of people being inherently lazy comes from them seeing that if people weren't working for them on their mines or farms or factories they were subsistence gardening and hunting.

"How dare those ingrates want to provide for themselves and be left alone instead of producing bulk goods to stimulate the economy! How can they see all these resources out there and not want to exploit them to depletion? Really, we need serfdom/slavery, these brainless animals need to be taught discipline."

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Nanny McPhee (2005, Kirk Jones)

23/07/2024

[blackthornlegacysims3]

Life is tough for Anabel as a single mom, balancing farm work, housework, grieving her husband, and still putting a smile on for her young ones.

But she powers through it, and before she knows it, the baby is coming!

She gives birth to a baby boy, which she names Arthur, to honour her late husband.

Luckily, both mom and baby survive the birth!