Broad Overview of Medieval Social Mobility
There
was some social mobility in the medieval era of Earth and much of it was arguably adventure-driven.
Lords and knights were often given lands and titles as reward for loyal service either on the literal battlefield or on the figurative battlefield of diplomacy and it may or may not be sealed with a diplomatic marriage.
While not exactly the same thing, many places and eras of history (including the 21st century) has old noble lines that retain fancy names and status despite having lost most of their old wealth and that have
Nouveau Riche marry into impoverished but respectable old money families that are lacking money.
Some people would try to seduce their way up the social ladder such as the events protrayed in historically "accurate" docudrama
The Other Boleyn Girl.
Social mobility occurred downward with exiles and demotions for grand failures (or simply because of coups) though in medieval history (and every era before and after the medieval era) there is an issue that exiled or demoted people often come back for revenge, so executions or assassinations often accompany demotions.
In any event, social mobility was super rare in historical times, that is why its the subject of stories and legends.
Back to Scarterra
Scarterra has a metaphysical law known as
"the Dragons' Path" that means that mortals grow stronger through overcoming and surviving conflict, in other words by adventuring.
Most Scarterrans who choose to "walk the Dragon's Path" die fairly quickly or else decide to jump off the Dragon's Path early but those who survive the path for a fairly long period of time often become extremely formidable individuals.
Scarterran noble families want to recruit extremely formidable individuals. Spell-casters are especially valued. Trade guilds, and priesthoods, and knightly orders also like to recruit formidable individuals. Basically any powerful institution of any kind would like to bring in new members to make the organization stronger within reason.
Noble families do not have to marry their children off to powerful adventurers in order to recruit them or bestowing noble titles. Knights can be created on the spot pretty easily and knights only need relatively small pieces of land, and plenty of Scarterran knights don't have land. Landless knights are often better suited to go on long-range excursions and campaigns which is an adventurer's bread and butter.
Not all elite servants of princes and potentates have to be knights. Positions like Court Wizard, Master at Arms, are juicy titles that have a lot of status. If a lord is powerful enough, he can make up new titles on the spot and people have to respect it just because. Maybe the king appointed a royal investigator on a temporary basis but after the investigator did very well promotes from "royal investigator" to "Royal Investigator" and gives him a badge and title to do the same job he was already doing.
Guilds can give away "Honorary Master" status to those who are useful to them. More commonly, priesthoods create honorary priests and priestesses out of adventurers that embody their ideals and have useful skills.
Noble families will marry low-born individuals into their ranks if the individual in question is useful enough. Powerful warriors are always useful whether or not they are also spell-casters but most noble families like to control spell-casters. If they can't recruit a powerful spell-caster with a flashy title, they might have to marry one.
There are some skilled adventurers who have frequent money problems (think of the crew of
Serenity on the show
Firefly), but it is hardly unusual for Scarterran adventurers to become wealthy, either with coins and
reagents or with powerful magical items. Adventurers that have lots of money are more likely to receive marriage proposals.
Adventurers that are good looking are more likely to receive marriage proposals. Adventurers who can keep up with courtly etiquette are more likely to receive marriage proposals.
It's not an routine occurance, but Scarterra has more stories about commoners advancing themselves and marrying into the nobility or being granted new titles whole cloth than medieval Earth history did.
This happens enough that it is not COMPLETEY crazy for Scarterran commoners to dream about becoming a great hero and marrying a princess.
Adventuring based advancement is not just for starry eyed commoners. Due to reduced
child mortality in Scarterra, non-inherting nobles are fairly common. And a lot of these "spare heirs" will take to the Dragon's Path to try to win through blood and sweat what they were denied by birth order. Sometimes the established heir is encourage to dabble in the Dragon's Path at least a little bit, so they can keep up with their contemporaries.
The
Elven Empire has a
unique system of succession where imperial titles do not pass to the eldest son or daughter but to the strongest and most capable son or daughter determined by their parents. But this arrangement has a lot of downsides (unreasonable risk taking, fratricide, competance replaced by brownnosing), so human knings and queens have generally opted not to adopt a similar system.
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