Worldbuilder Tips and Guides

Civ. Culture Guide: Family Houses

            With the rise of Game of Thrones over the past many years, I have been seeing a lot of questions across Reddit and other platforms asking about how to make a noble house for their stories and lore. A noble house tends to consist of a large family of relatives who hold many positions of influential power.  This can be political such as being an adviser to the King or a member of the kings court. Alternately they could also hold a monopoly over the production/trade of goods. So the question to be asked then is how does one make them? Well, let's begin shall we?

What makes your this house Noble/Powerful?: 
            Possibly the hardest question to be asked but also the most important. What makes the house powerful? If your going to use a feudal setting, (Medieval), then your going to want to start by looking at your kingdoms/civilizations political needs. Positions like ministers of the army and navy, treasury, justice, and other different local government positions. As an example of a local government, take an example from Game of Thrones. Appointing "Warden's" or other lords to manage territory outside of your central domain in your name. 

            In a more active economy, you can have the family form it's influence and power over the possession and control of trade goods such as cotton/silk/all various cloths, gold, silver, and blacksmithing, brickmaking, shipbuilding, porcelain, and so on. Holding a monopoly over these can easily make a family rich, allowing them to buy favors and get recognized by people of hire position. You could even take a lesson from our own history with Rome during the Republic and latter, Empire. In this case, men with military careers often struggled and battled politically to gain favor and be appointed hire positions of power and influence through success. 

Naming your House: 

            This is all up to you really. You can take George RR Martin's method of using symbolism to represent houses, in which case everything about them could be based on an ideal that started their rise to power or even be based on what does make them powerful to begin with. Or you could just give them a cool name and call it a day. Historically, last names or family names admits the mid and lower classes were always related to one's profession. 

            I am not sure myself what the common trend was for upper or hire class citizens of our history. Outside of our own history, most tend to keep it so the name somehow represents something regarding the family. Be that major or minor, it is up to you. 

Famous People:
            Like any other society or group of people, even houses are going to have famous family members who did one thing or another. Weather it be someone who saved the family from collapse, almost destroyed the family, or what well known for one thing or another, they form the backbone of the family history. Depending on how devoted you want to be to creating your family, having a list of the Heads of the House through a timeline with their great or not-do-great deeds goes a long way to having reference material for causal conversations that could add to a story's immersion.

            Overall, with all three of these notes, your houses are set up to be integrated into your lore and novels. The only other note I could suggest tracking past all the above is a list of your the house's assets. Troops, trade lines, owned buildings, political offices, military offices, ect. Anything the house uses to exercise its power and influence. Having that list will equally allow you to determine how important each asset is and if there is a conflict around that house that threatens to bring it to kneel, then you will also know what it's enemies need/must target. 

A/N: As always, please remember to give this a vote if it helped you. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments or PM me. Feel free to discuss the topic. I strongly advise you keep several copies of your work, at least three. As an example, I keep one on Google Drive, a Flash Drive, and Printed once completed. Name and date your work for a little extra security and as always, have fun!