I am blaming the late, great Sir pTerry for this train of thought.
In the discworld books it is suggested that the inheritence of Kingship is instantaneous, so discworld philosophers have considered a FTL comms system involving torturing a minor King and observing the level of kingship in the King's heir.
Then I wondered how this might intersect the Ars Magic system.
There are some Virtues and Flaws (eg Special Circumstances, Deleterious Circumstances, and Restriction) that seem to suggest they are sensitive to environmental factors.
For example - being in a storm. during the Season of Winter, whether the mage is carrying silver about their person. Many of these environmental factors are obvious to the mage, but some aren't. For instance, a mage is affected by silver and normally doesn't carry any, but an enemy can slip unseen some silver into the robe's hood, and the Virtue/Flaw takes effect.
Almost as if the essential Nature can be detected,
What happens if a mage has something like Deletorious Circumstances (in the presence of Royalty). It is triggered by any nearby royal that has taken a valid coronation ceremony (and possibly as a separate topic Bee Kings, Lions, Eagles, Basilisks and other natural Kings).
But what happens if the mage is unaware of the presence of the King? eg the King is out in disguise to measure the morale of the people (or a Lion is sleeping on the other side of a bush).
Essential Nature is hard to change via magic, but it does not appear hard to perceive (with a few exceptions such as demons, Bjornaer in Heartbeast form, etc.). As for abusing Virtues/Flaws/magic restricted to specific circumstances so as to indirectly detect stuff see The Purple Pig Problem.
Is "being royal" something that can be identified by Hermetic Intellego magic? Because I think that's the rule for Deleterious Circumstances etc: if magic can't sense it, it can't affect magic.
Unfortunately in this case I have no idea of the answer to my first question.
Deleterious Circumstances and similar is not very useful for detecting someones Essential Nature.
If you have Deleterious Circumstances that apply when you are in the presence of a dog, it will trigger equally for a normal dog as for a human who has used magic to take the shape of a dog.
It is not obvious if it would trigger for a dog that has been shapechanged into a cat.
OTOH under enchanting Shapes and Material bonus, isn't there something about bonuses for kings and/or nobles in a couple of them? I will have to wait till I get ahold of my books, but I have half a memory it is "crown". Or maybe "gold".
This concept has come up before, and it opens up a big can of worms. How well do magic effect know unknown targets? I believe RAW leaves it deliberately vague for the troupe to decide, however, I am happy for someone to point me to a rule page.
An example of the can of worms element.
Demons are meant to be the ultimate liars. If they are disguised, magic can't detect them. Of course one can just cast Demon's Eternal Oblivion on everyone and see who winces. I don't like that. I think a good house rule for spell spamming is if there is no viable target, the die roll is considered zero, and no matter how much botch offset, there is always at least 1 botch die rolled.
Regarding deleterious circumstances, I think a decent house rule is..... what makes the story work. I was trying to be consistent, but I felt it silver was bad, and someone secretly slips silver in the magi's pocket the bad effect happens. I feel if the king is in hiding, the bad effect related to nobility should not kick in, yet they are similar.
If I look at this from another angle, various Supernatural Flaws and Virtues may do stuff that Hermetic magic does poorly, or not at all.
Hermetic Magic is basically "incomplete" - there is more to discover and integrate.
So why shouldn't Hermetic Flaws and Virtues, while they affect standard Hermetic Magic in predictable ways, do so because at their roots is something outside standard Hermetic Magic. (eg a Flaw that only affects a mage when someone steps of their shadow)
Not quite certain how that helps with my original question...
I'm not claiming it's an explicit rule (hence "I think"). I think it's a logical consequence of how Hermetic magic should work, the rules for what constitutes a group etc. Also, better for play balance.
That is a good argument for InVi being able to sense kingship. Similarly, the InCo "can this person heal Scrofula by touch?" could be useful.
The more I think about it, the more I think that in the mediaeval worldview "being a king" is a magically important state that Hermetic magic should be able to detect. But maybe it's a Vim effect? Neither Corpus nor Mentem seem right.
I think it's good to keep in mind that magic has no obligation to be consistent.
Physics is utterly consistent. The real world is unitary: there are no contradictions.
It's certainly possible to have magic behave the same way.* But we don't have to. I would go so far as to argue that magic is most "magical" when there are some inconsistencies ... Or, at least, when there is much that's inexplicable. When magic reflects a world not as it is, but as we tend think it should be: Both responsive to our will, and ultimately like us.
There's no inherent problem with a mage's magic working or not working based on something the mage does or does not sense, or even can or cannot sense, with or without that magic.
*I feel it tends to lead to a comic-book like world. Not necessarily in a bad way ... "The Mistborn Trilogy," for example, is easily one of the best superhero stories I've read.
Just "being king" might not be so easy to detect, since just anyone can call themselves king, and in some places the ruler has another title. And sometimes there are disputes about who is the rightful king, and those are not so easily resolved.
However, a properly crowned christian king or emperor will have a Commanding Aura with accompanying Magic Resistance. (RoP:D p42-43)
The Commanding Aura should definitely be detectable.
I think the medieval paradigm would hold that 'kings' are different in their essential natures; they are divinely appointed. At the very least 'royal lineage' should be an unalterable and distinctive trait, even if it is not instantly detectable.
Once they have been properly crowned, with the appropriate religious personages doing their thing, then they are a divinely appointed king and get the Commanding Aura.
Before that they are just a guy who might become king.
And if they force their way to the throne without even tacit approval from the Church, then they are unlikely to be considered to be divinely appointed.
As for 'royal lineage', if you were able to trace any random person's ancestry far enough back you are very likely to hit a king at some point. (More than one king had lots of illegitimate and unacknowledged offspring.) So just about everyone is of 'royal lineage', however diluted.
I think you are reasoning outside the paradigm; in medieval Europe 'The Divine Right of Kings' was a thing -- God had, before history ever began, written down all the names of all the people destined to rule. Those were folks he chose, and from the moment they are born, crowned or not, they are different as far as the divine is concerned. Illegitimate offspring, and all others, lack this 'divine right' and are unfit -- down to their bones -- to rule. It does not follow Mendellian genetics; it isn't about fractions of this genetic legacy, or that bloodline, or families with a certain name or who someone's great-great-great (to the nth) ancestor was. The Divine Will is that a certain particular person will rule, and mundanes try to muddle through trying to decipher it.
Really? Color me unconvinced that this was the medieval thought.
Most of the "Divine Right of Kings" stuff didn't even come about until 17th century or so, although some of the ideas can be traced back to older times.
On the one hand, IIRC it was a pretty common idea, even if it didn't rise to the status of official, well articulated, doctrine. OTOH, and I'll have to look through every rule book to double check, but I do believe we're not required to play Ars as if everything that anyone believed between the birth of Aristotle and the death of William of Occam was actually true.
(IMO, in the name of psychological realism, if nothing else, we should have as false a few of the things that many people believed. Say ... 70%?)
Kings, or at least anointed kings, have a Might, if I recall correctly. That is not directly inheritable, though. Still, it's should be detectable by a mage with a Sense the Presence of Royal Might spell up an running.
[quote="Michael, post:19, topic:174971, username:Tomaso"]
I don't think they do, they just have divine magic resistance. Otherwise my new spell "King's Eternal Oblivion" would wreak havoc. [/quote]
You're probably right, you'd have kings dropping like flies.
Having magic resistance is just a different route to the same point, though. MR is generally detectable, as in the spell See the Gleaming Magic Armor, a spell that detects MR of all kinds, which ... I do not have, Quaesitor, and only know of through rumor.