Swilling cheap beer with criminals: a prelude to Bills of Lading

A question posed by Mark Lawford over on the Atlas Forum:

Is there any evidence/historical precedent or story that can support a storyguide wanting to tell more mundane stories of the aristocracy using the city's low-life for their own ends? Within cities, what distinguished the young, wealthy and ruthless from those they used or associated with?

The division between the rich and ruthless, and the poor and ruthless, is based in most areas on pre-existing patterns of patronage. That is, the rich are often found with the poor and ruthless because the poor are their retainers. Now, the poor may or may not be the friends of their rich patrons, but the poor certainly have their uses.

Rich people in the three heavily urbanised bits of Mythic Europe are peers and socialise because it's a way of making money. As a group, they grab hold of as much power as they can, and pervert the state into a money making mechanism. The fullest extent of this is Venice, which has a a huge navy that safeguards the Great Convoys which are a source of the city's wealth. You pay for your cargo to be on the Great Convoy, sure, but you also have the might of Venice ready to slap down anyone who tries to attack your cargo, and you have a primitive form of insurance in case one ship gets lost at sea, or held up by pirates. If something disrupts trade, the Venetians are perfectly willing to go to war, or have a client state go to war, to make the annoyance go away. The keep the profits personally, but socialise the costs.

It goes further than this, though. The Convoys are as close as you can get to being guaranteed money. You get the right to buy from Venice's colonial production, and sell back home at going rate. To be allowed to have cargo on the Convoy, you need permission from the committee who runs it. They apportion space based on your prominence in the merchant, ruling class. That is, Venice has a government which all but gives you free money, provided you are the right kind of guy. It doesn't matter if you and the other guys in this class hate each other: you don't call in outsiders. Some try to get nobles involved, and then every other player bands together to smash them to paste for breaking the basic rule, which is that no-one gets to flip the board over.

Hanging with poor, nasty, people doesn't help you with this part of your life. You need to work this bit out yourself. Poor people help you when you feel that your life would be deeply enriched if another wealthy, ruthless guy was wash up headless in Murano. Criminals are handy as a way o giving your legitimate dealings an edge - and your competitors are likely using them anyway.

Poor people help you when you are dealing with others, particularly in those cultures who believe that nobles should never be involved in trade. The lowest of the English aristocracy, particularly, have good reason to hang with criminals. Primogeniture means that you have a lot of younger guys who have the right to inherit wealth, but not land. These guys need to find something to do with this money. Crime is a really good way to make money. In Paris, you tend to find younger sons of noblemen hanging out with criminals, just because that's a fun thing to do when you are going to University in Paris.

This highlights an additional difference between the rich and the poor: people that are slumming take fewer chances. They are less desperate, and their skills in urban survival are less finely honed. There's a fundamental difference between a highwayman who needs the money for bread and a highwayman who is doing it for kicks. This is one of the reasons the rich need to hire the poor: because other people's poor can sense if they are slumming. This social division works really well for party formation.

As to if there is any historical precedent for this mixing of the rich and poor: sure, but not quite in the way you are envisaging. They don't really mix as equals, because they aren't "equal" in Mythic Europe. In Mythic Europe, your status is closely linked to your power, and power is not shared around. The rich and poor mix because the poor have skills and the rich have capital. That being said, there's nothing wrong with a nobleman being sentimental about his retainers, or a retainer feeling strong bond with his employer.

Friendship between the classes is possible: it's just unexpected. Robin Hood, for example, is a friend of Little John's even though they are of different clasees. Tristran and his squire (an adult man of the peasant class) have a close friendship.