### q5 secret ruling cabals have no historical basis <blockquote class="paraphrase">The trope or the trans-national cabal of educated knowledge-havers who manipulate secular rulers in pursuit of some hidden agenda (the Lodge, but also the Maesters of <em>A Song of Ice and Fire</em> seem to qualify, as do the Mages and Templars of the <em>DragonAge</em> setting) has always made me more than a bit uncomfortable, because there are historical analogs, but they have more to do with historical prejudices than actual historical power-structures. <br><br> The fairly obvious starting point for this trope seems to be the medieval Catholic Church which was a trans-national organization of educated people operating in a society with low literacy rates. In Western Europe, the Church really did have possession of a lot of the knowledge available to those societies and it did exist to a degree outside of the scope of secular power (though to what degree changes considerably depending on where and when you look). But treating the church as a single, more-or-less unified actor pursuing a single set of political goals resembles less the actual medieval Catholic Church and more early modern and modern anti-Catholic rhetoric (e.g. fears as late as 1960 that a Catholic president would be ‘under the sway’ of the foreign interests of the Pope, which were significant enough about them that Kennedy was asked about them and issued statements to assuage them that, “the Church does not speak for me.”) </blockquote> - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fn509tjfrjsy6d2m69rgy94k) - [[Hidden String-Pullers, Falling Empires and Tactics Against Horse Archers by Bret Devereaux#q5 secret ruling cabals have no historical basis|View in Vault]]