{"id":64210,"date":"2023-10-16T01:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T05:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=64210"},"modified":"2023-10-15T09:42:02","modified_gmt":"2023-10-15T13:42:02","slug":"qotd-differentials-of-information-velocity-in-a-feudal-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/10\/16\/qotd-differentials-of-information-velocity-in-a-feudal-society\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Differentials of &#8220;information velocity&#8221; in a feudal society"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>[News of the wider world travels very slowly from the Royal court to the outskirts, but] information velocity <em>within<\/em> the sticks [&#8230;] is very high. Nobody cares much who this &#8220;Richard II&#8221; cat was, or knows anything about ol&#8217; Whatzisface \u2013 Henry Something-or-other \u2013 who might&#8217;ve replaced him, but everyone knows when the local knight of the shire dies, and everything about his successor, because that <em>matters<\/em>. So, too, is information velocity high at court \u2013 the lords who backed Henry Bolingbroke over Richard II did so because Richard&#8217;s incompetence had their asses in a sling. <em>They<\/em> were the ones who had to depose a king for incompetence, <em>without<\/em> admitting, even for a second, that<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>a) competence is a criterion of legitimacy, and<br \/>\nb) someone other than the king is qualified to judge a king&#8217;s competence.<\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because admitting either, of course, opens the door to deposing the new guy on the same grounds, so unless you want civil war every time a king annoys one of his powerful magnates, you&#8217;d best find a way to square that circle &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; which they did, but not completely successfully, because within two generations they were back to deposing kings for incompetence. Turns out that&#8217;s a hard habit to break, especially when said kings are as incompetent as Henry VI always was, and Edward IV became. Only the fact that the eventual winner of the Wars of the Roses, Henry VII, was as competent as he was as ruthless kept the whole cycle from repeating.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"https:\/\/foundingquestions.wordpress.com\/2020\/12\/25\/inertia-and-incompetence\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Inertia and Incompetence&#8221;, <em>Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2020-12-25.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[News of the wider world travels very slowly from the Royal court to the outskirts, but] information velocity within the sticks [&#8230;] is very high. Nobody cares much who this &#8220;Richard II&#8221; cat was, or knows anything about ol&#8217; Whatzisface \u2013 Henry Something-or-other \u2013 who might&#8217;ve replaced him, but everyone knows when the local knight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,84,7,41],"tags":[570,703,396,1462,929],"class_list":["post-64210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-history","category-quotations","tag-england","tag-middleages","tag-monarchy","tag-severian","tag-waroftheroses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-gHE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64210"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85215,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64210\/revisions\/85215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}