From rhagen@dingo.saar.de Sat Sep 20 11:44:32 1997 Date: 11 Jun 1997 02:16:00 +0200 From: "V.Ralf Hagen" To: renleg@bellona.wg.Saar.DE Subject: [renleg] Patria Potestas in TOG Hi! In Legionnaire, TOG is described in 3 pages - few for a galaxy-spanning empire. The Patria Potestas is only mentioned, but not discussed in great length. So, what is it? First, women are deprived of all citizenship rights. Not a very big deal, for plebeians and slaves also are no citizens. But women are also put under tutelage - meaning, unmarried women are forever under guardianship of their fathers, married women's husbands also become their guardians. Free women may buy and sell goods up to a certain amount; they may buy their common household items or work as vendors on markets or shops for cheap goods. Slave women may not spend anything, so the slave that does the shopping for rich families is male. Rich citizen's wifes later have achieved that slave women may also, when given authority, make small purchases of hygienical, intimate and textile goods for themselves and their mistresses, for those did neither want to bother to go shopping themselves nor to trust those purchases to the shopping slave. In the bureaucratical process of this law, some very rich citizen's wifes took male slaves and turned them into castrates; some slave traders even specialized in buying young (adolescent) male slaves and raising them as personal slaves for women. On some decadent worlds, castrates are even now fashionable. Under the bondage of Patria Potestas, women live, according to their class, in different ways. Female Citizens have the best fate (big surprise). Although sometimes married to a rich Plebeian they do not like, they normally not only live in conditions so they do not notice PP, but they also are _bred_ not to notice. A woman can rely on a man in all(most all) situations of life. They got slaves that do everything for them, have their friends (often also the wifes of the friends of their husbands, often those friends themselves), and if they are known among the local shops and traders, they don't even need authorities to buy more expensive goods like cars and jewelry. Most are well-known for their moodyness. It may well be that they buy a good-looking slave, lose interest in him (eg, for lack of performance in bed) and resell him like a trinket, if they were not content most often to the mines. This is an extreme case, there are also many women who are interested in the property and work of their husbands, who are often traders or officers, but also civil servants. Should their husbands die, they are assigned a guardian. That one often is a friend of their deceased husband or a finance expert. If those women are discontend with his abilities, they can make recommendations. Should the guardian not listen to them, they can use their influence (eg, their friendship with the friends of their husbands and their wifes) to disciplinate the guardian and/or get a new one. Plebeian women are another matter. Rich plebeian women get the same treatment as citizens, see above. But the mass of the poor ones do have their problems. First, they have less or no spending money. As their husbands can cancel business acts done by them, the shopkeepers will not allow them any credits: You want to buy something - you got an authority. Only the cheapest household items are excluded. If their husbands die, their guardian (who treats their small property for provisions until their remarriage) is an advocate who normally has 10-40 other guardianships and uses their property for his own financial plans. If they do not have any male children and are so old that a remarriage is not probable, he may even speculate with and lose their trust-money without the ward ever having hope to bring their guardian to justice. Some unlucky plebeians were even sold, with their daughters, into slavery. As some of these cases went public in the army, the situation there went critical: the soldiers feared for the fate of their women. They had prepared to face death to provide their families with a pension for their old days, and now discovered that, by doing that, they possibly sealed the fates of their families. As enlistees of some units prepared to revolt, TOG stepped in, executed some guardians and built a legion's guardian organization, funded especially by some charitable officers. Sold families of deceased soldiers were freed. Needless to say, plebeian women are one of the main sources of the Renegade underground. Slave women have the worst fate of all. Totally deprived of even the scarce rights of a slave, they have to accept whichever fate awaits them. The worst are the mine slaves (naturally) and the sex slaves of lustrous unimportant personnel. (The ones of important ones often get some social security by joining the lictors.) One of the worst fates of many female slaves is the threat to be sold in one of the above fields. So, that about Patria Potestas. (Did I mention I'm a sociology student? Yes? OK.) Should anybody worked out other aspects of Commonwealth, Renegade, Alien or TOG life, please feel free to post it here. I am planning to gather/write something like a TOG and a CW/RL ,house book' (to talk Battletech) for Legionnaire. Have Fun V.Ralf -- Diese Nachricht wurde per EDV erstellt und waere somit auch mit Unterschrift ungueltig. ## CrossPoint v3.11 ##