Levantine Holy Orders

[Bishop Arundel]

Has anyone else noticed that when the holy orders gain land in the middle east, their members turn Levantine in culture? I had both the Hospitaliers and the knights templar personnel turn Levantine within 10-20 years of gaining a demense the Jerusalem/Syria area.

 

[JonStryker]

They oftentime flip to the culture where their primary holding is located. I once played a Russian Orthodox (Rurikovich) and strangely the head of the Hashshashin was a kinsmen of mine. The county where their primary holding was located had turned Russian at that point.

tl;dr: Yes, this happens a lot

 

[Yenzen]

This is primarily because they are treated like mayors (open elective) and so will elect the leaders at random greatly affected by their local culture.

Suppose the order has existed in Jerusalem for a few decades, has started to be accepted by the local population, where at least the upper levels of society has started to convert caused by missionary activities. These are also maybe starting to fill out the lower noble houses below barons. These lesser nobles once in a while have a few too many heirs and since the holy orders are not so restrictive on who they hire as long as they can buy their own equipment and donate everything else to the order, they end up joining them. It's not entirely far out that some of the new leaders will turn out to be natives.

 

[Bishop Arundel]

I have no problem with if the province turns Levantine, having Levantine staff members if their holdings turn Levantine and the locals convert to Catholicism but I do think having mono-ethnic holy orders isn't the best idea game-play wise, or for realism. Holy orders were often dominated by a single culture, but they did have members from other cultures. The most mono-ethnic culture holy order in the Middle Ages was the Teutonic Knights, but they had members from other countries including on several occasions the future Henry IV of England who took part in the siege of Vilnius

 

[Divi]

I have no problem with if the province turns Levantine, having Levantine staff members if their holdings turn Levantine and the locals convert to Catholicism but I do think having mono-ethnic holy orders isn't the best idea game-play wise, or for realism. Holy orders were often dominated by a single culture, but they did have members from other cultures. The most mono-ethnic culture holy order in the Middle Ages was the Teutonic Knights, but they had members from other countries including on several occasions the future Henry IV of England who took part in the siege of Vilnius

Third order members are not quite the same as full knights of the order, which is what Henry IV was (if even that, as far as I can tell he was merely helping them in a private fashion).

That said; both the templars and the hospitallers should hold castles in Europe; the Templars had 7 provinces while the Hospitallers had 8 at their founding, which I feel could be represented by a castle gained by event in each of these regions.

 

[Kaiser Ludwig]

And their capital being in a culturally-same area too. Unless the player makes them dukes of somewhere and their vassals.

 

[Bishop Arundel]

Interestingly the levantine Knights Templar recently gained a young landless Occitian noble with good stats especially martial and his Frankish wife plus their kids to be a member. The kids are being taught by the levantine grandmaster of the templars so they'll probably end up as cultural levantine as well.

 

[Kaiser Ludwig]

Yes, this happens... for me I made the Templars Dukes of Aragon and made them my vassals when they were frankish, and they became not Castilian or Catalan, but rather, Germans, after some Wittelsbachs came.