Drassir

The Drassir are a legally privileged   in the Zusian Imperium, inherited from the traditional aristocracy of the Vordic Empire, particularly the Vordic Golden Age. Though the term originally simply meant “patrician” (with the plural form as Draßen), the modern concept is more often translated as “scholar-prince,” or in its plural form, “scholar-gentry.” Today, the Drassir include roughly one-third of the Zusian population, comprising landed and bourgeois elites, academic and technical professionals, and free farmers. Most Drassir acquired their privileges by achieving a position on the Konspectus, the imperial table of educational rankings, while a small minority (known as the “free farmers”) acquired them through ownership of land. The Drassir are thereby closely intertwined with Zusea’s system of Klausurexamen, often shortened to Klausur, an array of imperial civil service exams which award successful scholars with positions in the Konspectus, which in turn bestows the privileges of the scholar-gentry.

Many historical systems and factors contributed to the rise of the modern Drassir. Traditionally, the class first arose in the Vordic Republic, as a privileged patriciate which attributed their power to their semi-mythological forefathers – the 100 so-called “first families” who founded the city of Vordin. In contrast to the military aristocracy of the Kyrossic Empire, the rising Vordic Empire established centralized  and professional bureaucracies, staffed by an ever-increasing number of wealthy nobles. To regulate entry into the bureaucracy and imperial politics, the Klausur system was established by 202 under the Sigmarling dynasty, which created the Konspectus and outlawed private militias. For the rest of the Vordic Golden Age, lasting until roughly the 11th century, the Drassir provided trained officers for the imperial armies, as well as trained scholars for the bureaucracy, and the most powerful Drassir accumulated lands to secure their wealth. Great families competed for influence at the imperial courts, and, during periods of civil strife, used their positions as governors or generals to assemble armies and fight for the throne.

The Drassir gained their most notable privileges during the Grand Reforms of 992, after the devastating Fifty Years’ War. The Grand Reforms abolished the hereditary monarchy and established Zusea’s “Velvet Liberty,” as well as fragmenting the empire into semi-autonomous provinces and city-states. The Drassir won the right to elect the Basilikar, to form political organizations to promote candidates, and to religious freedoms. The provinces gradually accumulated more power, and by the 15th century, Zusea had been fractured into dozens of competing kingdoms. However, these new states required standing armies of their own, and so the Drassir themselves persisted despite the political divisions, as the new regimes modelled themselves on imperial traditions.

Following Zusian reunification in the 19th century, the Drassir became an integral part of the new nation-state, and their numbers expanded massively as and  became available to most Zusians. The modern elective “velvet” monarchy of Zusea relies on many of the privileges established in the 992 Reforms, as well as various other Vordic legal and institutional traditions. Additionally, modern Zusian families are empowered to form “sippengesellschaften” or “clan companies” (a legal innovation from the early 19th century): distinct corporate entities with various powers and rights, formalizing previously informal social and cultural structures. The clan companies enable average Zusians and lesser Drassir to accumulate common resources and protect common interests, and they allow the most powerful Drassir families to organize complex political machines, which run royal election campaigns and operate aspects of national politics. While all Zusians can form clan companies, the Drassir almost always title theirs as “houses” rather than “clans,” and non-reigning Drassir families are often categorized as either “lesser” or “greater” houses. Zusea’s reigning families meanwhile are called princely houses, since their thrones afford them princely titles unavailable to normal Drassir. Nonetheless, nearly all modern princely houses originated in the Drassir and continue to follow their scholarly traditions, including the imperial House of Scharbach, whose ancestors first entered the Konspectus during the early Gaußling period.