Can you have knights in a republic?

>Can a Republic have Knights
>The Roman Republic had an entire class referred to as Knights (Equites)

It becomes a property thing vs a title thing. "Knights" in a Republic are those wealthy enough to own property and enough horses to act as a cavalry officer. Basically your landed gentry.

The same thing went on in the US during the antebellum era.

Only if it's old

>Maybe not in the strictest feudal sense
Why not? It can easily be done. The realm is divided into various fiefs except for the capital. All nobles can throw their hat in the ring for a bid of consulship and rule the republic until the next elections. Perhaps even commoners could 'technically' participate but given that running for consulship costs a lot of money as well as the fact that the consul only directly governs the capital and all land he owns already would mean that commoner consuls are incredibly rare and, when they occur, incredibly weak. Most of the time consulship would be swapped between the most powerful feudal families, probably dukes and maybe some count whose land grew out of proportions.

Yes. Titles of nobility are compatible with republican government.

Bear in mind that republic does not necessarily imply democracy, and neither of their definitions require trappings of modern democratic states such as equality under the law, universal suffrage, or the abolition of noble titles. You could even have a republic where participation in government is restricted to nobles or landowners, and that was the case at times historically.

If by knight you mean "soldier in plate armor, regardless of title", then what you're referring to is a man-at-arms and can easily coexist with any form of government, including republics and even modern-style democratic republics.

Man that pic is aesthetic as fuck.

Post dope knights.

Why not? A conservative republic would like having knights around and a neoliberal republic would complain a bit but let it slide

KoTOR?

Poland-Lithuania?

Wasn't a republic m8, elective monarchy.

This.
Post more knights!

Also, why is steel armor always the most aesthetically pleasing armor, no matter what setting or piece of medium?

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>why is steel armor always the most aesthetically pleasing armor
It's smooth, shiny, has nice subtle curves that follow the general shape of the human body and generally have a very minimalistic look to it. Just look at the "face" of a full face helmet, it very minimalstically gets across the idea of a human face (more by necessity than for aesthetic reasons). I think that's why it always looks so cool, and why overdesigning armor with gigantic pauldrons and spikes ruins the minimalistic charm.

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Thread seems to say that you can, but I say you don't have to.

Only in the US have we seen it outright said that we don't want a nobility.

And yet we have a nobility anyway, they just don't provide knights anymore.

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Depends on how big and how "REPUBLIC" your republic is. The nobility would be in place still, but their role, authority and control would be diminished a bit.
You can have knights if it is sanctioned that noblemen are required to serve as heavy cavalry in the Army.

an aristocracy can easily exist in a republic

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Or you could have "knight" that are technically open to anyone able to pass whatever "meritocratic" selection, though it would still be almost exclusively old nobility since who the fuck is going to learn how to ride a horse in battle beside them.

At the very least it would be
>own a good warhorse or 2
>buy own armor
>must be dapper and shiny

But are Jedi Knights really Knights?
I guess they kinda were originally, as Jedi powers seemed to be hereditary, but the prequels kinda undermined that with the whole midichlorian-thing.

Is her left eye fucked?

Nobody is stopping you...
Meritocracy!

Equite class.

Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (which isn't an argument against nobility, it's an argument against the limited franchise. GIVEN TIME, the laws completely optimized to the voter base.)

You're not ignorant anons, people at the very least 100 years dead made a point of lying to you.

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I'm pretty sure most modern republics do have knights, so apparently so.

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Privatized knights?

Lol ever heard of star wars knights of the old republic.

Yes, by having them be a religious order that works under the church, rather than the state

They could be a cultural hold over from before the republic

Well that's what the KKK considered themselves. The Brits still knight people as well.

>Or you could have "knight" that are technically open to anyone able to pass whatever "meritocratic" selection
I like that. It could be made into a big spectacle where warriors from all over the land (and some from abroad) fight in a tournament with the top 8 or so becoming knights every year (in times of war the number would be higher and the selection less strict). Eventually the whole thing would become so popular (because for brigands with no marketable skills other than fighting it's the fast route to the soft and easy life), that there'd be a physical pre-selection.

Warriors that pass get a title and are granted a suit of armor, a horse and weaponry from the king's treasury.

They would probably have some intellectual requirements though.

And it's starting to sounds like a shonen.

>spoiler
You say that like it's a bad thing. A lot of shonen settings would work great as an RPG setting. Part of me thinks it's intentional, so the kiddies can easily self-insert into the setting without breaking its lore.

Only if it's an old republic

Well, picture is a bad thing.

Sure you can.
>knights are effectively the lowest tier of "local government"
>equivalent to a small-town mayor
>are duly elected by their people
Leads to a world where knights have significant reasons to be gallant and do Great Deeds: it makes sure they keep being knights. Because if you aren't either gallant enough or scary enough, they'll elect someone else.

Definitely a different flavor of knight, but mixing things up is almost always a good thing.

Reminds me of a western sheriff.

Oh yeah, that would have been a better analogy.

Sword sheriffs, then.

ITT: People confusing "guy who wears plate armor" with "knight." You could have a democracy where the military resources of the society go towards equipping a small pool of soldiers with the best equipment possible, but they wouldn't be "knights" in the traditional sense.

>Can you have knights in a republic?

It depends on how you define a "citizen."

> Will the enthusiastic but ingenuous son of a retired war veteran be able to become republican knight?
> He will first have to beat the other aspiring knights:
> the sinister bandit trying to escape his crimes,
> the haughty nobleborn irritated that knighthood have been opened to commoners
> the religious aspirant formed by a military order
> the down to earth professional who don't believe in knighthood
> But they end up earning each other trust and fight together against the enemies of the Republic.

>Animated by MadHouse
>OP by Myth & Roid Generation

>Midichlorians
They just gather to individuals with greater Force potential, they don't create the Force.

And the Force is not inherently hereditary. Two Force users can have non-Force-sensitive children.

That said, Jedi are really more monks than they are knights, despite the name. But it also kinda depends on the era.

Fuck anyone who says no

>Be small Democratic Federation
>Many small cities all banding together
>Path to citizenship required oath to your City
>Oath requires upkeep of your arms and readiness to fight as footsoldier if young, support if old, and officer if experienced.
>Rich easily become citizens, but because of requirement to fight, develop ideal of chivalry
>Poor can join army as enlistees for cheap armor, and gradually save up to buy their own.

Done

Yeah that's how it became scarred.

This. Hell, you could have a republic that sprung up after the king died and nobody was able to replace him (Either for legal reasons or because nobody had enough support to make a successful bid) and so the nobles just started running things by council and vote amongst themselves. A few years of that and they decide to make it official. Bam, republic.

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Yes, it's what Equites were, after all.

>nobles and republics are mutually exclusive
Fucking pleb

I would unironically love to watch this.

I don't see why not. A feudal system and a republic are not incompatible, the feudal system simply needs to stop at a certain level, where perhaps once you go higher you lose Knighthood but become a politician/patrician.

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The type of visor on that helmet shows up a few times on real examples but rarely gets any love in fantasy armour.

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Yes, in fact the lower ranks of the Equestrian class in the Roman republic were the equivalent of knights.

The distinction between a monarchy and a republic is not whether or not is has an aristocracy. The distinction is that sovereignty is held by an individual in a monarchy and by a social class in a republic.

Bellows visor is best visor.

>Jedi are really more monks than they are knights

Several knightly orders in history were warrior monks. The Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights were both examples of this in their heyday.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Honour#Membership

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>Yes, in fact the lower ranks of the Equestrian class in the Roman republic were the equivalent of knights.
Well no, they didn't have people below them swearing loyalty in return for military protection.

Except yeah they did. All of Roman society was based on client-patron relations. No Equite worth his horse wouldn't have a lengthy list of subordinate clients.

The defining quality of a knight is not that he has people subordinated to him in exchange for military protection. It's that HE is sworn to military service under another authority (a feudal lord or military order).

Based Napoopan. 10/10, would burn Berlin to the ground in his name even if he did not ask it of me.

Knights are awesome. SJWs don’t know what they’re missing when they say wh*tes have no culture

The Jedi order's existence literally undermined democracy though.

Fiefdoms and republics simply cannot exist together.

If I own a fief, everyone who works there is basically my bitch. Come election time I tell them all to vote for me/my candidate. Anyone who doesn't vote for me will get killed or at least banished from my fief.

And considering people are attached to fiefs, I will seek to conquer other people's fiefs to have more votes. The noble with the more populated fiefs will always win elections.

That's how elections worked in Georgian Britain though.

>Fiefdoms and republics simply cannot exist together.
You're assuming citizenship and voting rights for all residents, which isn't an automatic feature of a democracy.

Not every Jedi is a Knight. The Jedi is a religion that does the Force's will. That's why they need to let go of their egos, family and emotions, because they need a "blank" mind to "hear" the Force better. Some of them do the Foce's will trough teaching, other trough violence.
>The Jedi order's existence literally undermined democracy though.
They can undermine everything, if it is the will of the Force. That's why they go spearhead against Palpatine, to them it's not about rules or goverments but fightin anything that oppose the Force. The Sith are a cancer that consume it, so they need to purge them at any cost.

>as Jedi powers seemed to be hereditary
That's a cool as fuck idea. I might run with it. Psychic knights whose psychic powers come from their bloodlines.

you forgot that the noble is a reverse trap that falls for the MC

>RS3
My man. I'm more of an OSRS guy but nice to see runescape content posted.

Damn, that looks good.

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It works if only freemen can vote. Nobles would quickly realize that with universal suffrage, it would just become a contest of who has the most serfs so they'd abolish it.

At first I thought that image was kind of cool because the scars do make him look battle hardened, but then I wondered... all those pretty girls we see posted in armor with exactly zero blemishes on their faces and bodies... are they the strongest warriors out there? Are they devoid of scarring because nobody ever manages to land a hit on them? Are the most handsome knights and the prettiest ladyknights also the best in their field? That would explain the good = beautiful evil = ugly thing.

>That's a cool as fuck idea. I might run with it. Psychic knights whose psychic powers come from their bloodlines.
sorceror's draconic bloodline, tieflings, aasimar, et cetera.
Fate Stay Night has a unique take on bloodlines, where their magician's mark contains all the spells and research knowledge of everyone else in the family that has held that mark.
>great granddad learns burning hands
>granddad learned fireball
>dad learned delayed blast fireball
>you know all those spells and when you learn new ones you engrave them into your magic mark to eventually pass along to your progeny

Most D&D PCs would be pretty scarred barring magical healing that completely removes the wounds. I mean, how many times has your character been slashed with a sword?

Is the mark of a warrior the ability to take a blow and survive, or is it to never allow the blow to land in the first place?

That ultimately depends on whether or not healing magic leaves scarring or not. Maybe the caster can choose to leave it or not.

>Are they devoid of scarring because nobody ever manages to land a hit on them?
they're most likely devoid of scarring because scars are difficult to draw well

it's also why most fantasy warriors don't have gnarled, calloused hands

Not every wound gets healed magically in the first place, though.