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The Development of Democracy: Part 1—the Ancient World

The Regency era I write about was on the cusp of major changes in democracy, as it was for industrialisation, criminal justice and law enforcement, the class system, global politics, scientific discovery, medicine, transportation, and many other aspects of how people lived. They had not yet achieved anything like a representative democracy in the modern sense of the term—that is, that government comprises people who have been elected by citizens to represent them. Indeed, apart from a lot of talking during the early years of the French revolution (universal male suffrage was proclaimed in France in 1789, but cancelled after one election), few countries adopted the idea till the second half of the nineteenth century. Extending the vote to women took even longer.

I’ve been giving my characters forward-thinking views on political reform, because I can’t quite bear to make a hero or a heroine out of someone who admires the system they had back then. That, in turn, has led me to look at just what that system was and how and why it changed.

At the same time, the British Commonwealth, of which New Zealand is part, has been celebrating the 70th Jubilee of one of the longest reigning monarchs the world has ever had. Some are using the opportunity to ask whether monarchy as an institution has met its use by date. It seems to me the difference between monarchy and republic is not nearly as significant as the question about who makes the decision about who makes and enforces the rules by which a society was governed.

Today, I want to lay a foundation to the discussion by looking back to the ancient world.

Democracy came first

Studies of hunter-gatherer societies today show them to be hierarchical but egalitarian. Despite differences in climate, culture and history, their government structures are similar across the globe. They operate in kinship groups, with wider connections according to exchange information, goods, and non-related mates.

Those with the most skill and experience become the informal leaders of the group, so who was in charge would depend on the task being performed. Every adult member of the band involved in a task has right to express an opinion, so there might be a split across gender lines, with women discussing women’s activities, and men discussing men’s activities.

Co-operation was key for human societies before settled agriculture, and every member of the band mattered to its survival.

Priest-kings and citizens assemblies

With the development of wide-spread agriculture, two forms of government emerged. One was autocratic. The other was at least proto-democratic.

Priest-kings with ultimate authority very likely came with wide-spread agriculture. A central authority needed to organise the large-scale activities that agriculture bought. Secure places to store grain and soldiers to protect it from inside larceny or outside invasion. Irrigation works to take water to the fields and road works to bring the grain to storage. Someone had to be in charge. Religion, military power, and political power combined to concentrate the power in the hands of a single elite.

Such a system ran the risk that an incompetent leader and his cronies might believe their own public relations rather than their advisors. History is cluttered with societal-collapses because of poor decision-making from the top. At best, the priest-king would lose his place through assassination, coup, or revolution. I am still tickled by the pragmatic approach of ancient Chinese political philosophy. The Emperor ruled by the mandate of Heaven. That mandate could be removed. How did the Emperor know the mandate had been removed? Someone succeeded in deposing him.

On the other hand, not all such kings ruled with absolute power. We have evidence of citizens’ assemblies as early as four and a half thousand years ago. In Syria-Mesopotamia at the time, many towns and cities–and even countrysides–had citizens’ assemblies who might rule alone on local issues. On wider state issues, similar groups advised the ruler or even had the right to ratify major decisions taken by the ruler.

We know this because documents include the titles ‘Chief of the Assembly’ and ‘Herald of the Assembly’. The myth of Gilgamesh says that the hero was unable to go to war without the approval of the people.

“… having failed to obtain the approval of the council elders, he then went to the council of young men.”

We have no idea who decided the membership of the citizens assemblies, or how much influence they had. (Certainly, Gilgamesh just moved on to ask someone else in order to get his way.) But it was, at least, a starting point.

Greece and Rome

The city states of Greece borrowed their popular assemblies from Syria-Mesopotamia. In Athens, between 508 and 260 before the common era, male citizens met every 10 days to debate and decide laws. Athenian women, slaves, and resident aliens did not get to vote.

The Greeks called this demokratia—a form rule by the people. Apparently, women were not people, a view shared by the entire Western world until suprisingly recently.

That aside, the Greeks also introduced trial before elected juries, public vetting of officials, freedom to speak in public, voting by lot, and the ability to expel people from the assembly by popular vote. All important elements of later democracies.

The Greek political systems ended as other have, throughout history. By invasion. Repeated invasions made Greece part of the Roman Empire,

Rome followed the same principle of assemblies from 509 BCE until the Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE with the appointment of the first Roman Emperor.

In the Roman Republic, the patricians—the wealthy aristocracy—were initially the only people who could vote and hold offices. The assembly they elected was called the Senate, and it was an advisory body to those assemblies that actually made the rules. However, over 200 years, the plebians gained the right to elect their own kind to the Concilium Plebis, which regulated the plebians.

Several other assemblies made the laws for specific parts of Roman society. All of them were strongly influenced by the Senate.

Under the emperors, power shifted from representative democracy to imperial authority. Even so, the assemblies continued their governing roles, though the Emperor became the final authority.

Throughout that time, to be elected or appointed to one of the assemblies, a person needed to be male, free, and a citizen of Rome.

Next week, the long gestation of Western democracy

Sources

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hunter-Gatherers_and_Play

https://www.google.co.nz/books/edition/Sumer_and_the_Sumerians/eX8y3yW04n4C? pg 30

https://doi.org/10.2307/595104

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/romes-transition-republic-empire

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Flashback in WIP Wednesday

As a reader, how do you feel about flashbacks? Do you use them as an author? Please feel free to share them in the comments. I’m going to make quite heavy use of them in one of my current works in progress, when my hero (a former expeditionary officer and current Thames Police Surveyor) and my heroine (a former freedom fighter and current assassin) look back on their joint past. The first flashback is a dream. Afterwards, Matt realises that, when a fellow officer claimed to have been Ellie’s lover (and not the first) before Matt, he lied.

It was a dream, but it was also a memory, complete with sights, scents, sound, touch and taste.

The wind cut through the camp, howling between the tents, so that canvas flapped and poles creaked. The men on watch were out in it, poor buggers, and would likely still be on duty for the storm it presaged. The horses in their picket line would also have to take whatever nature chose to throw at them. Everyone else was hunkered down.

Except Matt. Matt was using the skills he’d learned in the slums and honed as an exploring officer in the motley group known as Lion’s Zoo because their major’s nickname was Lion. He was ghosting through the camp, silent and stealthy despite the lack of observers. 

There. His destination. A small tent sheltered in the l-shape formed by the major’s two tents—his quarters and his command station. 

Matt’s care increased. He was here by invitation, but didn’t fancy explaining himself to the major. Besides, he needed to be careful of Ellie’s reputation. 

Thanks to Major Ruthford’s influence, backed by his and Bear’s muscle and Chameleon’s lethal reputation, she had been accepted as a warrior and off-limits for dalliance. His pulse kicked up at the notion that she had chosen him to be her lover. No one could know, or even Lion’s Zoo could not keep her safe.

From outside her tent flap, he murmured her name, and then he was inside.

In the way of dreams, it skipped forward—past the conversation, the kissing, the cuddling. Past her shy admission that this was her first time. Past his labours to prepare her, efforts that brought her to her climax and over, and that raised his own arousal to a peak he’d never before known.

In the dream, he was entering her for the first time. She was slick with need, but tight and tense, and his control was held by a thread. “Relax,” he told her, and logic told him to get the pain over. Surge inside. Sheath himself fully in her welcoming warmth. Or was it his own self need that drove him? 

He didn’t know. Couldn’t think. Could only hold her close, kiss her with all the feelings he was afraid to acknowledge, and thrust through the resistance until he was buried balls deep, shuddering with the effort to hold still while she froze in pain and clenched against the invasion.

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FINAL WEEK: Celebrating To Tame the Wild Rake week 6

Sixth and final contest over. Congratulations to Mary, our winner for week six. Grand prize announced tomorrow.

Week six contest

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sixth week prize is:

  • an ecopy of a title from my backlist of books (winner’s choice)
  • a face mask in history themed fabric from RegencyStylebySusana
  • an ecopy of the Bluestocking Belles collection Fire & Frost

Grand prize for the full six weeks

Each entry also gets you a place in the draw for the Grand Prize, to be drawn in six weeks.

  • A $50 gift voucher, provided I can organise for it to be purchased in your country of origin
  • A print copy of To Wed a Proper Lady
  • A personal card signed by me and sent from New Zealand
  • A made to order story — the winner gives me a recipe (one character, a plot trope, and an object). I write the story and the winner gets an ecopy three months before I do anything else with it, and their name in the dedication once I publish.

This week’s discount is 99c for A Raging Madness

Runs from 28th September to 7 October

Available at this price from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07111TCLR/

or from my SELZ bookshop: https://judeknight.selz.com/item/a-raging-madness-book-2-of-the-golden-redepennings

This week’s giveaway at my SELZ bookshop is Lost in the Tale.

Runs from 21st September to 7 October. Pick up from my bookshop: https://judeknight.selz.com/item/lost-in-the-tale

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Tea with her own thoughts

(This excerpt post comes from Paradise Lost, a selection of vignettes from the life of the Duchess of Haverford that I put together for my newsletter subscribers. The assassination attempt mentioned below happened in To Wed a Proper Lady.)

Eleanor had withdrawn to her private sitting room, driven there by His Grace’s shouting. Her son, the Marquis of Aldridge, was as angry as she had ever seen him, his face white and rigid and his eyes blazing, but he kept his voice low; had even warned the duke about shouting.

“Let us not entertain the servants, Your Grace, with evidence of your villainy.”

Unsurprisingly, the duke had taken exception to the cutting words and had shouted even louder.

Could it be true? Had Haverford paid an assassin to kill the sons of the man he insisted as seeing as his rival? An assassin who had been caught before he could carry out his wicked commission.

His Grace’s jealousy made no sense. Yes, James was back in England, but what did that matter to Haverford?

He had been furious when James and his family attended their first ball, and beside himself with rage when Society refused to accept that the prodigal returned was an imposter. She expected him to continue to attack the new Earl of Sutton with words. Even his petition to the House of Lords to have James’s marriage declared invalid and his children base-born was typical of Haverford. But to pay for an assassin?

He had failed. She would hold onto that. And Aldridge was more than capable of holding his own.

As she sat there with her tea tray, sheltering from the anger of her menfolk, she gave thanks that her son had not been ruined by his father’s dictates over how he should be raised. She had been able to mitigate some of the damage, but more than that, his younger brother Jonathan and his older half-brother David had been his salvation, giving him the confidence that he was loved and the awareness that he was not the centre of the entire world.

Aldridge’s fundamentally loving nature helped, too. He was a rake, but not in his father’s mould. Rather, he loved and respected women, even if he did treat them according to the stupid conventions applied to aristocratic males. And he was a good son.

Putting down her tea, she fetched a little box of keepsakes from her hidden cupboard. The fan her long dead brother had given her before her first ball. A small bundle of musical scores, that recalled pleasant evenings in her all too brief Season. Aldridge’s cloth rabbit. She had retrieved it when Haverford had ordered it destroyed, saying his son was a future duke and should not be coddled. Aldridge had been eight months’ old. Anthony George Bartholomew Philip Grenford, his full name was, but he had been born heir to his father, and therefore Marquis of Aldridge, and by Haverford’s decree no one, not even Eleanor, called him by anything but his title.

Even so, the cloth rabbit had not been the first time she secretly defied her husband. She had been sneaking up to the nursery since Aldridge was born, despite the duke’s proclamation that ladies of her rank had their babies presented to them once a day, washed, sweetly smelling and well behaved, and handing the infants back to their attendants if any of those conditions failed or after thirty minutes, whichever came first.

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Spotlight on A Spirited Courtship

A Spirited Courtship

Magic and Mayhem, book 3

By Jane Charles

Released 2/16/21

Miss Diana Vail had thought she’d found love, but James Bryant, the Earl of Somerton, had only been toying with her affections. Had she not overheard the horrible truth, she might have succumbed to his practice seductions and been ruined for life. Thankfully, her reputation had been saved, though it left her wondering if she could ever trust her heart again.

James Bryant had once professed: If Noah could become a father at the age of five hundred, then I can surely wait to begin producing offspring until age forty. Those were words he’d successfully lived by until Miss Diana Vail stepped into a ballroom. With his vow quickly forgotten, James set out to court the most captivating woman he’d ever met. Then, without explanation, she set him aside.

However, three ghosts have different plans for Diana and James, and intend to bring about a love match. Will the stubborn pair be more than a match for their spirited matchmakers and be doomed to suffer from the ancient curse for eternity?

Spirited Courtship previously appeared in Beguiled at the Wedding, a Castle Keyvnor Anthology.

Amazon – BN – Apple Books – Kobo – Goodreads – BookBub

Meet Jane Charles

USA Today Bestselling Author Jane Charles lives in the Midwest with her former marine, police officer husband. As a child she would more likely be found outside with a baseball than a book in her hand, until one day, out of boredom on a long road trip, she borrowed her sister’s romance novel and fell in love. Her life is filled with three amazing children, two dogs, two cats, community theatre, and traveling whenever possible. Jane may have begun her career writing romances set in the Regency era, but blames being a Gemini as to why she’s equally pulled toward writing contemporary novels.

https://janecharlesauthor.com (website and newsletter)

https://twitter.com/JaneAcharles

https://www.facebook.com/JaneCharlesAuthor

https://www.pinterest.com/JaneAcharles/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4879172.Jane_Charles

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Spotlight on To Wed a Proper Lady

I’ve done a cautious prerelease of the first novel in the series The Children of the Mountain King. To Wed a Proper Lady is out on 15 April, and you can preorder now. But you can already buy it at Smashwords or from my SELZ bookshop. The prequel novella about the mountain king and his queen is now free in the same two digital shops, and when the price change filters out to Apple and Barnes & Noble, I hope to convince Amazon to make it free there, too.

Here are some of the early reviews.

A very well written story with wonderful characters. The pace is very good & drew me in from start to finish. I loved both James & Sophia, although they fell hard & fast for each other at first sight it then took some time for them to realise their feelings were reciprocated. The secondary characters also had depth, we met some new & some from other books, there’s one character whose story I’m impatiently waiting for! An engrossing, captivating read, which I didn’t want to end.

This story grabbed me on the first page when James Winderfield accompanies his father who returns home after thirty-five years in the mountains of the east, summoned by his dying father. After decades as The Mountain King, the elder Winderfield faces a step down to the title of English duke, and the challenge of shepherding his children, whose mother is a Persian princess, into the life of the ton with the respect they deserve and their innate dignity intact. The family bond, loyalty, and affection radiate from every page. James, as his father’s oldest accepts—if he doesn’t precisely embrace— a courtesy title as next in line, and can handle English society, but he detests his one large challenge. Both his vile grandfather and his loving father expect him to marry a proper English lady, a prospect distasteful for its implication his blood isn’t blue enough and a sense he’s being set out to stud for family purposes. What he wants is a loving marriage like his parents enjoyed. His journey held my heart from start to finish.

This was such a good read! I loved the characters of Jamie and Sophia. James was handsome, charming and honourable. Sophia was caring, not only for her family but also for various charities that she helped. When James first met Sophia, he felt he had met his soulmate. Although Sophia felt the same, she had her doubts, given that she was always overlooked when compared with her sister. I liked that Jamie saw Sophia for herself. They both had a strong love for their immediate families. There is also an old enmity that causes problems and the mystery as to who is trying to cause Jamie and his family harm. This was a very engaging read and I look forward to reading more in this series. Although this can be read as a standalone, I would say that the previous novella would give the background story to their life abroad. I received a copy via Booksprout and have voluntarily reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own. However, I did preorder my own copy.

I really liked this skillfully crafted story. New to English society, James is confronted by prejudice and mistrust as he looks for a suitable bride with the hope of a love match. Suspense is added by the dealings of the Duke of Haverford, who has taken upon himself to cause trouble for the Winderfield family, not just in encouraging his sycophants to cut the family, but he also raises doubts regarding the Winderfield children’s legitimacy.
As can be expected in this genre there is a happy end. The journey there was very interesting and entertaining. Now to wait for the next installment.

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Attraction on WIP Wednesday

 

If our story includes a romance, it includes attraction. (Sometimes, it includes attraction even without a romance!) This week, I’m sharing another bit from The Gingerbread Caper, and I’d love for you to share an extract of yours in the comments.

She joined him at the table. “It’s our quiet time, and I was about to stop for a cup of tea myself.” She offered him a plate with pieces of gingerbread cookie and a slightly flattened cupcake. “Milk?”

“A little bit, please and no sugar.” Her physical impact wasn’t lessened by her proximity. He’d been imagining a middle-aged, perhaps even an elderly woman. Someone with white curly hair, comfortably rounded, grandmotherly. Someone he could look at without wanting to fall at her feet, his tongue hanging out.

“You’re Patrick Finch, aren’t you?” she asked, and when he assured her that he was indeed, she opened her eyes very wide, her eyebrows shooting up. “I thought you would be much older.” She tossed ahead, clucking her tongue. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Ms Fotheringham–” Patrick began. She interrupted him. “You had better call me Meg.”

He said his own name, managing to manipulate the aforementioned tongue into the familiar syllables. The question he had been about to ask had to drained from his brain, and receded still further when those lovely eyes — brown with flecks of green — stayed focused on him, a question in their depths.

Before he could compose himself sufficiently to continue, she saved him the trouble. “I should explain that I am not my aunt.” She successfully interpreted the rapid blink with which she greeted this mystifying statement. “My Aunt Margaret owns this bakery and the flats upstairs. She was called away quite unexpectedly, and I am looking after the place for her. There wasn’t time to let you know, and I don’t suppose it makes a difference anyway, as far as you are concerned. In a minute I will show you your flat and leave you to get settled. As Aunt Margaret told you, your meals will be served down here in the tea rooms. Your rent includes all three meals, and morning and afternoon tea.”

Patrick sat there nodding, when what he really wanted to do was shake his head. This was a disaster. He had been sent out of town to convalesce — his doctor and his manager both insisting that if he stayed home he would not be able to resist working. Absolutely no stress, the doctor had said. He had been looking forward to a little mothering from the comfortable elderly lady he had expected. Instead, he was confronted by the finest example he had ever seen of that section of humanity that tied his tongue in knots and turned his feet into weapons of self-destruction.

A young woman. A lovely young woman. “I would like to lie down now,” he told her. His errant imagination, functioning with far greater facility than the rest of him, immediately presented a picture of Meg waiting for him in bed. Scarlet sheets set off her lovely complexion.

“Of course.” The real Meg stood immediately. “Aunt said you have been ill, and it is a long trip from Wellington. What do you do there, Patrick?”

“Senior policy analyst,” he said, shortly. She opened her eyes, wide. “Who for? What do you do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t a secret, but his head was both pounding and attempting to drift around the room. She must have sensed his need, because she dropped the questioning.

“Come this way. Here! Let me take one of those.” She picked up the heaviest of his two suitcases and led the way.

Patrick stumbled after her with the second suitcase, hoping his blush would be gone before she looked at him again, or at the very least she did not guess the thoughts that so embarrassed him. Lust is perfectly normal, he assured himself. As long as you don’t dwell on it or insult the young woman, all shall be well. You have several good books. You can go for long walks.

A door at the front of the shop gave on to a small hall and a bank of stairs. Meg led the way up, which put her jeans-clad behind directly at Patrick’s eyelevel.

I wonder if she has a boyfriend? He shook his head. Of course she does. A woman like this? Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help, Patrick.

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Spotlight on The Smuggler’s Escape

Congratulations to Barbara Monajem on the release of The Smuggler’s Escape, a story of spies, smugglers, and second chances.

The Smuggler’s Escape

After escaping the guillotine, Noelle de Vallon takes refuge with her aunt in England. Determined to make her own way, she joins the local smugglers, but when their plans are uncovered, Richard, Lord Boltwood steps out of the shadows to save her. Too bad he’s the last man on earth she ever wanted to see again.

Years ago, Richard Boltwood’s plan to marry Noelle was foiled when his ruthless father shipped him to the Continent to work in espionage. But with the old man at death’s door, Richard returns to England with one final mission: to catch a spy. And Noelle is the prime suspect.

Noelle needs Richard’s help, but how can she ever trust the man who abandoned her? And how can Richard catch the real culprit while protecting the woman who stole his heart and won’t forgive him for breaking hers?

Amazon US
Amazon UK

Amazon Australia
Amazon Canada

Excerpt

Setup: Noelle needs Richard’s help, but she doesn’t want him interfering in the smuggling business. She refuses to marry him, and she can’t afford to let him seduce her, either. Richard has other ideas…

Noelle slid off Snowflake’s back, passed her to a surprised groom, and hastened toward the house. The wind ceased its fitful snatching at her bonnet and tore it off good and proper, dancing with it in the sunlight, tossing it around the side of Boltwood Manor.

Noelle picked up her skirts and ran after the hat. The wind teased it away from her grasping fingers and threw it this way and that across the lawn. Noelle followed, cursing, while the wind tugged her hair out of its pins and flapped it into her face. The bonnet flew through the herb garden, lit briefly on the outstretched hand of a stone nymph, and fluttered toward the terrace.

Richard Boltwood stepped through the French doors to the terrace, reached out a long arm, and rescued Noelle’s hat from the wind.

Sacré tonnerre, but he was beautiful. Most improperly, he wore only shirt and breeches. His sleeves couldn’t hide those powerful shoulders and arms, nor his breeches the muscles of his thighs. The open neck of his shirt revealed his firm throat and a few hairs of the masculine chest she had seen and touched only once.

His face was bright with laughter, his bearing confident. Masterful. Irresistible. In spite of herself, Noelle quivered inside.

No. This was no time for quivering. She hurried forward. “Richard, I must speak with you.”

“With pleasure,” Richard said. “Your bonnet, ma’am.” He held it out but made no attempt to touch her.

Noelle closed her fingers around the ribbons, and immediately Richard put his hands behind his back. She moved closer, and he inched away. “In private!” she whispered. She put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. The hat strained away from her hand, and her hair flapped in her face. “Stay here! It’s urgent. I need your help immediately.”

“Ah,” Richard said, “I am of course at your service, my love, but do consider. Your only legitimate excuse for such a precipitate arrival must be desperate love for me, but if there is to be no touching, it won’t look like love, will it?” He danced away like the bonnet on the wind. “You do look delightfully desperate, my sweet.”

“That was your idea,” Noelle fumed. “I never said I wouldn’t touch you, merely that it would be wiser not.”

“It would have been wiser not to involve yourself in the free trade. As to not touching me, do as you please, as long as you understand that if you touch me, I will consider it a clear invitation to touch you in return.” His lips twitched.

“Nom de Dieu.” She must keep her distance, but he was making that impossible. “Oh, very well. You may kiss my hand.”

“Your Majesty is most gracious.” He took her gloved hand in his and tugged at the tip of one finger.

She tried to draw away, but he wouldn’t let go. “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like. I won’t waste one of my burning kisses on a mere glove.” A few seconds later, the glove was in his breeches pocket. He took her cool hand into his large warm one and brought it within an inch of his lips.

The warmth of his hand, the heat of his breath, traveled all the way to her toes. “Get on with it,” she said, quivering with impatience. Get it over with before it kills me. When he did nothing, she pulled at her hand.

He didn’t let go. “It’s not enough. No woman who gallops to her lover’s door would be content with one little kiss.” He paused. “On her hand.”

Waiting for that kiss was torture, and she had urgent news. She said in French, “Richard, the excisemen are nearby! We don’t have time for playing games.”

“This is no game,” he answered in the same language. “Lives are at stake, and therefore our charade must appear real.”

Charade?

Did that mean he accepted her refusal to marry him? In which case, she should be glad. Or at the very least, relieved.

She didn’t have time for emotions. “Lives are at stake, and therefore we must hurry.”

“But not appear to do so,” he said. “A bargain—both your hands. It’s not dangerous, surely . . . just a little hand kiss or two.”

Before she had a chance to respond, he took the other hand, pried her fingers open, and released the ribbons of her hat.

It fluttered away across the lawn. “My bonnet!”

“What’s a mere bonnet when one is deep in love?” Richard removed the second glove and stowed it in his pocket. He pulled her close and pressed his hot lips to the back of one tingling hand.

Something inside Noelle pulsed in response. Yes.

His lips settled hotly on the other hand.

Oh, yes.

“Enough?” Richard whispered. “We have demonstrated love, but what about passion?”

Noelle couldn’t bring herself to move. Her breathing quickened, and her knees felt abominably weak.

“Only a passionate woman would ride ventre à terre to the man she loves.” He turned her hands over and cupped them in his large ones. “You, my sweet, are the essence of passion.”

He pressed his lips into one palm and then the other. The pulsing inside her deepened to a throb.

She couldn’t help it. She whimpered, staring at his lips and her hand.

His tongue reached out and gently, devastatingly, licked her palm.

Dieu du ciel. His arms surrounded her and his heady aroma overwhelmed her senses. She drank it in through her very pores. I love you. Oh, how I love you. She pressed her face into the hollow at his throat.

No.

She made a small despairing sound, and immediately his arms loosened. He pushed up her chin and deposited a swift kiss on her lips. “You do love me, and you know it.”

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Where viscounts came from

John Lord Beaumont, the first English viscount.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll have realised that land is the fundamental building block of European nobility: particularly the province or county. The pivot point for understanding titles is what England calls an earl, whether they’re called some variation of ‘count’ or ‘jarl’ or ‘graf’ or some other term. Counts (or earls) ruled counties on behalf of the monarch. Marcher lords or marquises or margrafs ruled counties on the kingdom’s borders. Dukes ruled several counties.

When we get to viscount, we’re going the other way. The key part of the word is ‘vis’, from late Latin ‘vice’ meaning a deputy or substitute. Vicar comes from the same root word. In Carolingian times (in the empire of Charlemagne and his descendants), the vicecomites were officials appointed to exercise the powers of the comites (counts) who had delegated them to act. The man was a official who worked for the count (or higher official), just as the count was an official who worked for the king.

Vicecomes wasn’t, initially, a hereditary title, just a job title, as — for that matter — were the higher titles. Just as count became a hereditary title, in time, so did viscount.

France had hereditary viscounts  when it first began to differentiate itself from the Holy Roman Empire. The duchy of Normandy was divided into vicecomtes, ruled by vicecomes as deputies to the duke.

In England, the term vicecomes was applied to those who held the role of sherif, but the first hereditary title wasn’t applied until 1440, when John Lord Beaumont was created the first English viscount.

Other European countries retain equivalent titles. In Portugal and Spain, the rank is visconde, in France, vicomte, in Germany, the rank is burggraf.