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Following on from Southwark Babble Post: Part 1. I've been working in this universe for a few months now, and just wanted to write out the developed notes. This will be the first of a few posts of notes on this universe, so pardon my spamming things -_-;
This focuses exclusively on Continuity 2 from the original post, since that's the timeline I've been working in. The original post will give you the basic setting and plot overviews that explain this one.
This focuses exclusively on Continuity 2 from the original post, since that's the timeline I've been working in. The original post will give you the basic setting and plot overviews that explain this one.
Southwark Babble Post: Part the Second
Most of what I've been working on has been charting the Lord Badger's rise to power via the eight years of the Southwark Civil War, the alliances he's brokered and his attempts to forcibly knock his kingdom back on track. To do this, I had to work out to a much more detailed degree the geography and political factions in operation within Southwark and in particular the northern provinces where the bulk of the fighting takes place. I have yet to actually draw the map, though I can see it pretty clearly in my head -_-;
This post will be the Geography and the Political Situation, with People of Interest in the next post, and probably a Timeline of Events in a third. All good? Okay, post the second:
The Geography of Southwark:
As I said in the original post, Southwark is a peninsular kingdom on the southern end of a contintent (think ... Greece, maybe? That sort of position). It's roughly a downward-pointing triangular in shape, though the top edge isn't straight across but rather follows the diagonal line of a range of mountains running northwest-to-southeast across the top of the country, leaving a narrow gap on the northeast end between the mountains and the coast which serves as the only non-natural boundary into Sunland.
In it's original, pre-Civil War state, the semi-autonomous elven province took up the northern section of the country north of a line running nearly straight across from the eastern terminus of the mountains all the way back across to the west coast, with a small extension south along the coast as far as the elven capital at Riverton. (So think of the human part of Southwark as a large, downward-pointing triangle with the elven part as another, right-angled triangle balanced on top between the line and the mountains). In the initial phases of the War, that southern coastal extension was lost outright and handed over to the Black & White, as well as the lands around the southeastern tail of the mountain range which were handed over to the Rose & Gold, while the Line itself has been fluctuating north and south with every push and push back for the past eight years, leading to a relatively wide no-man's land that no-one can use.
In the northern section of the country, there's one more notable geographical feature with massive political influence: The Plateau. One of two southern extensions of the main mountain range (the other being the slightly separated tip at the very end of the range to the east, which was the part that the Rose & Gold severed from the elven province), it lies south of the Line near to the west coast of the country, with a narrow strip of land between it and the coast that used to be the southern extension of the elven province. The Plateau is important for two reasons. Geographically, it serves as the western bastion of the human forces on the Line, with independant food sources on the high slopes and the single strongest military Lord on the Line ruling over it. And politically, it houses the single strongest military force in northern Southwark, the Red & White under Lord Elena, and is largely self-sustaining to both its population and its military to boot, making it one of the single most independant and powerful lordships in the kingdom. It's not unfair to say that the Red & White is, for all intents and purposes, the human manifestation of the Line.
Leaving the northern parts of Southwark for the moment, and moving south. Southern Southwark is divided into three broad areas, with a few smaller areas scattered around and some interchange between them. Along the east coast running south from the border into Sunland, there is an area taking considerable cultural influence from Sunland, focused primarily on fishing and agriculture along the coastal strip. Politically, this area is one of the main power blocks, rising to particular prominence during the Civil War. Then moving westwards we have the central inland plains of Southwark, including two broad river catchments, that serve as the breadbasket of the kindgom. Although they're vital to the functioning of the country, they're too politically neutral to be a strong power block, and tend to be pulled around between the other factions. Then, finally, on the southern and western coasts up as far as the Capital city, there's the main trade & fishing block of lordships, focusing primarily on the coastal, naval and trade of the kingdom. This part of the country has an overseas extension in the form of the Trade Islands to the west, a natural island chain emerging from the southern tip of Southwark and swinging south and west from it. This island chain, under Southwark control, is also the element that prevents Imperial navies from going around Southwark to launch a naval attack on Sunland.
Smaller areas of note: the hinterlands around the Plateau, extending south into the Central Plains, form a small indepedant alliance supporting the autonomy of the Plateau, and have for the past two hundred years. Not aggressively or anything, just a quiet attachment to the Red & White that trumps any other alliances. The area on the west coast between the human Capital and the old elven capital at Riverton (which were always alarmingly close together) has become something of a political dead zone since the War. In theory, it now comes under the Lordship of the Black & White, like Riverton itself, but almost all of the B&W's attention is north, on the Line, so the southern areas have been sort of left to fend for themselves.
The Trade Islands are to some extent not actually considered part of the political landscape of Southwark at all. That is, they're vitally important, yes, and must always remain within Southwark control if the Kingdom is to survive the apathy between Sunland and the Empire, but the lords of the Trade Islands are considered to be a somewhat separate entity to the Lord System of the mainland, and answer to the Trade Consul rather than directly to the Throne. For the past eight years, that Consul has actually been Prince Madadrian, who was semi-exiled from the Capital after the attack that killed his mother and cursed him (not officially, of course, officially the Prince was sent south to gain ruling experience and distance himself from the War, but unofficially it was understood that the sight of the Prince's cursed features made King Adrian's already unstable temper increasingly volatile). Politically, they've strongest attachment to the West Coast Lords.
The Political System:
A lot of it was probably broadly explained in the last section, but okay. Southwark's ruling class is a system of land-owning lords who owe allegiance to the throne. This allegiance entails providing manpower to the military/navy, providing foodstuffs and trade items to the economy, and agreeing to abide by the rule of law enacted by the crown's court and to be subject to the evaluation of the royal civil service. (All of this subject to change as I figure out how the fuck you run a country: governance was never my strong point, yes?) The two blocks that do not fall under this system are a) the Elven Province/The Elven Court, which after a few centuries of on-and-off conflict has become autonomous and self-governing in every aspect save foreign policy and trade, which they agree to route through the Capital and the human royalty of the kingdom, and b) the Trade Islands, which as I said come under the authority of the Trade Consul first, and then through the Consulate back to the Capital.
In return for this allegiance, the Lords get a seat on the Kingdom Council. In theory, this is egalitarian, with every Lord who pays their tithe and obeys the rule of law entitled to a voice. In practice, the Council has been tiered into factions and ranks based on ... well, usually strength or political influence. Any decision above a certain level in the Council of Lords has to go through the Crown for approval, so the factions with most royal favour tend to dominate the Council, leavened only by those Lords with too much brute strength to give a flying fuck (there are a few who could, if pushed, plausibly fight and even win a rebellion on or almost on their own. Obviously you don't mess with those).
Prior to the Civil War, there were four broad factions within the Court, with sub-factions inside them and a few outliers around them. From the above section, you can probably already tell what those were: The Sunland Coast Alliance, the Central Plains, the West Coast Trade Alliance, and the Plateau Alliance. Of those, the Sunland Coast always enjoyed political favour under King Adrian because of their low-level anti-elven stance, but after the Civil War that favour was exaggerated to almost politically ruinous levels, leaving them to dominate the Council for the better part of four years. The West Coast Trade Alliance has always been neutral on the issue of elves and the north, since they have a lot of trade with the Empire but also are the coast most directly threatened should the Empire ever decide to invade. They are also the faction with the strongest attachment to Prince Madadrian, especially since he was appointed as Trade Consul to the Islands, and also the largest source of manpower for the Navy. The Plateau Alliance was always largely just one of those 'fuck you' groups of Lords, not politically very active since they were so self-contained but too big and powerful to mess with. And the Central Plains were, as I said, too tugged around between the other factions to be of any direct political danger, or even to stand unified within themselves.
The Lords/Houses are identified primarily by colour. The precise system has shifted around a bit over the centuries, but generally speaking each house has a combination of two colours, usually worn as a cloth uniform braid for the military/navy of that house, and as a badge/seal for everyone else. There are a few exceptions and remnants of older systems dotted around, but generally most houses follow the two-colour system. Hence all my references to the Red & White, the Rose & Gold, the Black & White, etc. Colours do mean things, generally (most of the Sunland Alliance have Gold as one of their colours, three of the five Border Lordships contain Red, Lordships geographically close to the Capital tend to have Blue, many Central Plains Lordships contain Green, etc), but again that's a bit higgledy-piggledy after a few centuries of changing systems.
For the sake of the actual story, which is focused on the Civil War, there are five main houses of import: the Black & White, the Red & White, the Red & Green, the Red & Gold and the Rose & Gold. These are essentially the five houses that border the Line on the human side, and thus the major houses involved on the human side of the war. Together, over the course of the story, they become a new political power block: the Border Lords or the Border Alliance.
Prior to the War, the Border Lords didn't exist as a unified political faction. As in, they were there, they were treated differently (particularly in military matters) by the Royal Court, but they weren't a unified force in themselves. This is mostly because they're actually the northern extensions of the southern power blocks: The Red & White is the Plateau, with the Black & White as a very complicated ancillary to the Plateau Alliance, the Red & Green is the northern-most Lordship of the Central Plains, and the Red & Gold and the Rose & Gold are the northern-most Sunland Alliance Lordships (and the Rose & Gold is in fact the main Lordship of that Alliance). A significant element of the trajectory of the Civil War is the unification of four of the five Border Lordships into a Northern Alliance focused around the Black & White.
There are two types of Lordship that are neither land based nor linked directly to the colour system, though they bear colours. These are the lords of the Blue & Gold, and the lords of the Blue & Silver. These sound like they should be the same, but they're a completely different entity, and both contain multiple 'lord' titles.
The Blue & Gold is essentially the Royal Civil Service, the civilian portion of the central government focused in the Capital. 'Lord of the Blue & Gold' is essentially an administrative title, used by police, judges, taxmen, etc. (Police of the Blue & Gold, I should mention, are purely for the Capital and other major cities, since most Lordships have a section of their own military that function as 'police').
The Blue & Silver is the non-military active wing of the government. Theoretically, their official roles are messengers and investigators, the people sent out to evaluate Lordships for tax and tithe purposes, the ambassadors of the crown in provincial matters, the main communication arteries of the kingdom, etc. Unofficially, they also function pretty much as crown spies.
For both the Blue & Gold and the Blue & Silver there is an upper echeleon leading up to a single title. The Lord of the Blue & Gold (as opposed to a lord) is the head of the Royal Council, the adminstrative arm of the government that takes decisions from the Council of Lords and puts them into effect. He/she is also the main advisor to the King on which proposals from the Council of Lords should be allowed through. The Lord of the Blue & Silver, by contrast, is only nominally powerful politically speaking, but functions as the Kingdom's Postmaster and Spymaster General, and is considered the second in command to the Lord of the Blue & Gold in the civilian government.
The Lords of the B&G and the B&S are the only official titles to apply across both the mainland and the Trade Islands, and prior to the War also applied in a limited capacity in the Elven Province, at least as far as issues of trade and economy went. They are the two organisations that overlook the entire sphere of Southwark's factions, and are thus the most well-informed of all the factions within Southwark. (In theory the Throne is also, due to their influence. In practice, not so much. The guys in charge don't need to know all the dirty little details, do they?)
Lords of the B&G and the B&S are also one of the few political titles open to commoners. The only other way for a commoner to hold title in Southwark is to perform a great service to the crown and be granted land (which automatically earns you some enemies depending on who the crown took that land from) or, in the last few decades, to be appointed heir of an existing Lord (see below).
A couple of other notes: The title of 'Lord' is actually unisex. It wasn't always, of course, not until around ninety years ago. The old system of inheritance was the usual 'oldest male heir' system, making the 'Lord' title exclusively male, but then ninety-odd years ago the then Lord of the Red & White declared his oldest male heir politically incompetent, and sent a motion through the Council of Lords to adjust the inheritance mechanism to the 'legally appointed heir of the previous Lord'. The motion was pushed through on the grounds that it was one of the few political motions the Plateau had ever directly pushed for, and nobody was going to argue with them. This opened the floor for any legally appointed heir to take a Lordship, regardless of gender or indeed family. For most Lordships this doesn't actually change anything, they just have to go through an extra step and legally appoint the eldest male as heir, but in other cases it has resulted in an increasing number of female and non-house Lords, in the last thirty years in particular. (In the event that the existing Lord doesn't legally declare an heir, for whatever reason, things revert to the 'eldest male heir'. You can guess how many fraud and murder cases that resulted in).
The Civil War has actually accelerated that process, at least among the Border Lords. At the start of the War, the only female Border Lord was Lord Elena of the Red & White. Eight years later, the Red & Gold also has a female Lord, and the Black & White has become very complicated, with a female heir and a non-house General in charge. Mind you, the Black & White was always complicated, having only existed as a Lordship for the past fifty years and originally having been granted land by the Elven Court. So there's that.
The other important note is the structure of the military/navy. There doesn't actually exist a wholly independant Crown Military. Military and Naval personal are supplied by the Lordships, and go into units based on their colours. Well. For the army, they do. The Navy is slightly more complicated, since it draws from both the West Coast Lordships, the Central Plains Lordships and the Trade Island Lordships, not all of whom are exactly seaworthy. Most high military postings are decided in-House, with Crown interference only at the rank of General and higher. The fact is that most of the military heirarchy consists of the Lords themselves, or someone from the families of the Lords. It is possible for a commoner to advance up the ranks on merit, but only in extreme circumstances, and usually that's sidestepped by making particularly good commoners Lords in their own right. The situation where there is both a high-ranking commoner and a Lord wearing the same colours is vanishingly rare (which makes the situation in the Black & White so unusual).
Addendum: Political System of the Elven Court:
This is a much smaller section, mostly because I haven't taken the time to work it out yet, but also because the post-War governance of the Elven Court in Exile has been extremely modified. The slaughter at Riverton in the opening act of the War destroyed the Elven Capital and most of the upper echeleons of the Court, and the attempted wholescale slaughter of the Elven people has resulted in an almost entirely meritocratic arrangement among the remaining Court. Arien is the heir to the throne by virtue of being the most senior member of the original royal family left, and the Court in Exile around him has largely developed according to who has the strongest influence on their survival.
The northernmost elven houses, from inside or directly under the mountains, are housing and feeding most of the remaining civilian population and function as the equivalent of the human Blue & Gold organisation, while the military arm under Arien, which is directly responsible for keeping them alive against Adrian's attempted genocide, is entirely meritocratic based on who's the best at keeping the humans on their side of the Line. Which sort of makes the Elven Court the inverse of the human one, with the Coloured Houses now providing civilian governance (and food/housing), while the military Lords are now meritocratic.
The ranking within Arien's court also has another angle: positions of power based on magical ability. The Southwark Elven ability to wield illusion traditionally created high postings for particularly talented illusionists/mages, with the royal family being traditionally among the strongest. Post-War, though, the ability to wield illusion is directly responsible for a lot of their military victories (and thus survival), so it's been largely subsumed into the meritocratic military arrangement anyway. Illusionists also are traditionally part of the Elven equivalent to the Blue & Silver (as in, communications and spies), which has continued, if in a rather more active and survival-orientated fashion. Most agents sent south of the Line tend to be illusionists, on the grounds that it gives them enough of an advantage that they might survive.
Essentially, the entire Elven Court has been reengineered to provide them with the best chance of surviving the War. How that structure will adapt post-War (that survival provided) is anybody's guess.
Contd in Part Three: People of Note in Southwark
Most of what I've been working on has been charting the Lord Badger's rise to power via the eight years of the Southwark Civil War, the alliances he's brokered and his attempts to forcibly knock his kingdom back on track. To do this, I had to work out to a much more detailed degree the geography and political factions in operation within Southwark and in particular the northern provinces where the bulk of the fighting takes place. I have yet to actually draw the map, though I can see it pretty clearly in my head -_-;
This post will be the Geography and the Political Situation, with People of Interest in the next post, and probably a Timeline of Events in a third. All good? Okay, post the second:
The Geography of Southwark:
As I said in the original post, Southwark is a peninsular kingdom on the southern end of a contintent (think ... Greece, maybe? That sort of position). It's roughly a downward-pointing triangular in shape, though the top edge isn't straight across but rather follows the diagonal line of a range of mountains running northwest-to-southeast across the top of the country, leaving a narrow gap on the northeast end between the mountains and the coast which serves as the only non-natural boundary into Sunland.
In it's original, pre-Civil War state, the semi-autonomous elven province took up the northern section of the country north of a line running nearly straight across from the eastern terminus of the mountains all the way back across to the west coast, with a small extension south along the coast as far as the elven capital at Riverton. (So think of the human part of Southwark as a large, downward-pointing triangle with the elven part as another, right-angled triangle balanced on top between the line and the mountains). In the initial phases of the War, that southern coastal extension was lost outright and handed over to the Black & White, as well as the lands around the southeastern tail of the mountain range which were handed over to the Rose & Gold, while the Line itself has been fluctuating north and south with every push and push back for the past eight years, leading to a relatively wide no-man's land that no-one can use.
In the northern section of the country, there's one more notable geographical feature with massive political influence: The Plateau. One of two southern extensions of the main mountain range (the other being the slightly separated tip at the very end of the range to the east, which was the part that the Rose & Gold severed from the elven province), it lies south of the Line near to the west coast of the country, with a narrow strip of land between it and the coast that used to be the southern extension of the elven province. The Plateau is important for two reasons. Geographically, it serves as the western bastion of the human forces on the Line, with independant food sources on the high slopes and the single strongest military Lord on the Line ruling over it. And politically, it houses the single strongest military force in northern Southwark, the Red & White under Lord Elena, and is largely self-sustaining to both its population and its military to boot, making it one of the single most independant and powerful lordships in the kingdom. It's not unfair to say that the Red & White is, for all intents and purposes, the human manifestation of the Line.
Leaving the northern parts of Southwark for the moment, and moving south. Southern Southwark is divided into three broad areas, with a few smaller areas scattered around and some interchange between them. Along the east coast running south from the border into Sunland, there is an area taking considerable cultural influence from Sunland, focused primarily on fishing and agriculture along the coastal strip. Politically, this area is one of the main power blocks, rising to particular prominence during the Civil War. Then moving westwards we have the central inland plains of Southwark, including two broad river catchments, that serve as the breadbasket of the kindgom. Although they're vital to the functioning of the country, they're too politically neutral to be a strong power block, and tend to be pulled around between the other factions. Then, finally, on the southern and western coasts up as far as the Capital city, there's the main trade & fishing block of lordships, focusing primarily on the coastal, naval and trade of the kingdom. This part of the country has an overseas extension in the form of the Trade Islands to the west, a natural island chain emerging from the southern tip of Southwark and swinging south and west from it. This island chain, under Southwark control, is also the element that prevents Imperial navies from going around Southwark to launch a naval attack on Sunland.
Smaller areas of note: the hinterlands around the Plateau, extending south into the Central Plains, form a small indepedant alliance supporting the autonomy of the Plateau, and have for the past two hundred years. Not aggressively or anything, just a quiet attachment to the Red & White that trumps any other alliances. The area on the west coast between the human Capital and the old elven capital at Riverton (which were always alarmingly close together) has become something of a political dead zone since the War. In theory, it now comes under the Lordship of the Black & White, like Riverton itself, but almost all of the B&W's attention is north, on the Line, so the southern areas have been sort of left to fend for themselves.
The Trade Islands are to some extent not actually considered part of the political landscape of Southwark at all. That is, they're vitally important, yes, and must always remain within Southwark control if the Kingdom is to survive the apathy between Sunland and the Empire, but the lords of the Trade Islands are considered to be a somewhat separate entity to the Lord System of the mainland, and answer to the Trade Consul rather than directly to the Throne. For the past eight years, that Consul has actually been Prince Madadrian, who was semi-exiled from the Capital after the attack that killed his mother and cursed him (not officially, of course, officially the Prince was sent south to gain ruling experience and distance himself from the War, but unofficially it was understood that the sight of the Prince's cursed features made King Adrian's already unstable temper increasingly volatile). Politically, they've strongest attachment to the West Coast Lords.
The Political System:
A lot of it was probably broadly explained in the last section, but okay. Southwark's ruling class is a system of land-owning lords who owe allegiance to the throne. This allegiance entails providing manpower to the military/navy, providing foodstuffs and trade items to the economy, and agreeing to abide by the rule of law enacted by the crown's court and to be subject to the evaluation of the royal civil service. (All of this subject to change as I figure out how the fuck you run a country: governance was never my strong point, yes?) The two blocks that do not fall under this system are a) the Elven Province/The Elven Court, which after a few centuries of on-and-off conflict has become autonomous and self-governing in every aspect save foreign policy and trade, which they agree to route through the Capital and the human royalty of the kingdom, and b) the Trade Islands, which as I said come under the authority of the Trade Consul first, and then through the Consulate back to the Capital.
In return for this allegiance, the Lords get a seat on the Kingdom Council. In theory, this is egalitarian, with every Lord who pays their tithe and obeys the rule of law entitled to a voice. In practice, the Council has been tiered into factions and ranks based on ... well, usually strength or political influence. Any decision above a certain level in the Council of Lords has to go through the Crown for approval, so the factions with most royal favour tend to dominate the Council, leavened only by those Lords with too much brute strength to give a flying fuck (there are a few who could, if pushed, plausibly fight and even win a rebellion on or almost on their own. Obviously you don't mess with those).
Prior to the Civil War, there were four broad factions within the Court, with sub-factions inside them and a few outliers around them. From the above section, you can probably already tell what those were: The Sunland Coast Alliance, the Central Plains, the West Coast Trade Alliance, and the Plateau Alliance. Of those, the Sunland Coast always enjoyed political favour under King Adrian because of their low-level anti-elven stance, but after the Civil War that favour was exaggerated to almost politically ruinous levels, leaving them to dominate the Council for the better part of four years. The West Coast Trade Alliance has always been neutral on the issue of elves and the north, since they have a lot of trade with the Empire but also are the coast most directly threatened should the Empire ever decide to invade. They are also the faction with the strongest attachment to Prince Madadrian, especially since he was appointed as Trade Consul to the Islands, and also the largest source of manpower for the Navy. The Plateau Alliance was always largely just one of those 'fuck you' groups of Lords, not politically very active since they were so self-contained but too big and powerful to mess with. And the Central Plains were, as I said, too tugged around between the other factions to be of any direct political danger, or even to stand unified within themselves.
The Lords/Houses are identified primarily by colour. The precise system has shifted around a bit over the centuries, but generally speaking each house has a combination of two colours, usually worn as a cloth uniform braid for the military/navy of that house, and as a badge/seal for everyone else. There are a few exceptions and remnants of older systems dotted around, but generally most houses follow the two-colour system. Hence all my references to the Red & White, the Rose & Gold, the Black & White, etc. Colours do mean things, generally (most of the Sunland Alliance have Gold as one of their colours, three of the five Border Lordships contain Red, Lordships geographically close to the Capital tend to have Blue, many Central Plains Lordships contain Green, etc), but again that's a bit higgledy-piggledy after a few centuries of changing systems.
For the sake of the actual story, which is focused on the Civil War, there are five main houses of import: the Black & White, the Red & White, the Red & Green, the Red & Gold and the Rose & Gold. These are essentially the five houses that border the Line on the human side, and thus the major houses involved on the human side of the war. Together, over the course of the story, they become a new political power block: the Border Lords or the Border Alliance.
Prior to the War, the Border Lords didn't exist as a unified political faction. As in, they were there, they were treated differently (particularly in military matters) by the Royal Court, but they weren't a unified force in themselves. This is mostly because they're actually the northern extensions of the southern power blocks: The Red & White is the Plateau, with the Black & White as a very complicated ancillary to the Plateau Alliance, the Red & Green is the northern-most Lordship of the Central Plains, and the Red & Gold and the Rose & Gold are the northern-most Sunland Alliance Lordships (and the Rose & Gold is in fact the main Lordship of that Alliance). A significant element of the trajectory of the Civil War is the unification of four of the five Border Lordships into a Northern Alliance focused around the Black & White.
There are two types of Lordship that are neither land based nor linked directly to the colour system, though they bear colours. These are the lords of the Blue & Gold, and the lords of the Blue & Silver. These sound like they should be the same, but they're a completely different entity, and both contain multiple 'lord' titles.
The Blue & Gold is essentially the Royal Civil Service, the civilian portion of the central government focused in the Capital. 'Lord of the Blue & Gold' is essentially an administrative title, used by police, judges, taxmen, etc. (Police of the Blue & Gold, I should mention, are purely for the Capital and other major cities, since most Lordships have a section of their own military that function as 'police').
The Blue & Silver is the non-military active wing of the government. Theoretically, their official roles are messengers and investigators, the people sent out to evaluate Lordships for tax and tithe purposes, the ambassadors of the crown in provincial matters, the main communication arteries of the kingdom, etc. Unofficially, they also function pretty much as crown spies.
For both the Blue & Gold and the Blue & Silver there is an upper echeleon leading up to a single title. The Lord of the Blue & Gold (as opposed to a lord) is the head of the Royal Council, the adminstrative arm of the government that takes decisions from the Council of Lords and puts them into effect. He/she is also the main advisor to the King on which proposals from the Council of Lords should be allowed through. The Lord of the Blue & Silver, by contrast, is only nominally powerful politically speaking, but functions as the Kingdom's Postmaster and Spymaster General, and is considered the second in command to the Lord of the Blue & Gold in the civilian government.
The Lords of the B&G and the B&S are the only official titles to apply across both the mainland and the Trade Islands, and prior to the War also applied in a limited capacity in the Elven Province, at least as far as issues of trade and economy went. They are the two organisations that overlook the entire sphere of Southwark's factions, and are thus the most well-informed of all the factions within Southwark. (In theory the Throne is also, due to their influence. In practice, not so much. The guys in charge don't need to know all the dirty little details, do they?)
Lords of the B&G and the B&S are also one of the few political titles open to commoners. The only other way for a commoner to hold title in Southwark is to perform a great service to the crown and be granted land (which automatically earns you some enemies depending on who the crown took that land from) or, in the last few decades, to be appointed heir of an existing Lord (see below).
A couple of other notes: The title of 'Lord' is actually unisex. It wasn't always, of course, not until around ninety years ago. The old system of inheritance was the usual 'oldest male heir' system, making the 'Lord' title exclusively male, but then ninety-odd years ago the then Lord of the Red & White declared his oldest male heir politically incompetent, and sent a motion through the Council of Lords to adjust the inheritance mechanism to the 'legally appointed heir of the previous Lord'. The motion was pushed through on the grounds that it was one of the few political motions the Plateau had ever directly pushed for, and nobody was going to argue with them. This opened the floor for any legally appointed heir to take a Lordship, regardless of gender or indeed family. For most Lordships this doesn't actually change anything, they just have to go through an extra step and legally appoint the eldest male as heir, but in other cases it has resulted in an increasing number of female and non-house Lords, in the last thirty years in particular. (In the event that the existing Lord doesn't legally declare an heir, for whatever reason, things revert to the 'eldest male heir'. You can guess how many fraud and murder cases that resulted in).
The Civil War has actually accelerated that process, at least among the Border Lords. At the start of the War, the only female Border Lord was Lord Elena of the Red & White. Eight years later, the Red & Gold also has a female Lord, and the Black & White has become very complicated, with a female heir and a non-house General in charge. Mind you, the Black & White was always complicated, having only existed as a Lordship for the past fifty years and originally having been granted land by the Elven Court. So there's that.
The other important note is the structure of the military/navy. There doesn't actually exist a wholly independant Crown Military. Military and Naval personal are supplied by the Lordships, and go into units based on their colours. Well. For the army, they do. The Navy is slightly more complicated, since it draws from both the West Coast Lordships, the Central Plains Lordships and the Trade Island Lordships, not all of whom are exactly seaworthy. Most high military postings are decided in-House, with Crown interference only at the rank of General and higher. The fact is that most of the military heirarchy consists of the Lords themselves, or someone from the families of the Lords. It is possible for a commoner to advance up the ranks on merit, but only in extreme circumstances, and usually that's sidestepped by making particularly good commoners Lords in their own right. The situation where there is both a high-ranking commoner and a Lord wearing the same colours is vanishingly rare (which makes the situation in the Black & White so unusual).
Addendum: Political System of the Elven Court:
This is a much smaller section, mostly because I haven't taken the time to work it out yet, but also because the post-War governance of the Elven Court in Exile has been extremely modified. The slaughter at Riverton in the opening act of the War destroyed the Elven Capital and most of the upper echeleons of the Court, and the attempted wholescale slaughter of the Elven people has resulted in an almost entirely meritocratic arrangement among the remaining Court. Arien is the heir to the throne by virtue of being the most senior member of the original royal family left, and the Court in Exile around him has largely developed according to who has the strongest influence on their survival.
The northernmost elven houses, from inside or directly under the mountains, are housing and feeding most of the remaining civilian population and function as the equivalent of the human Blue & Gold organisation, while the military arm under Arien, which is directly responsible for keeping them alive against Adrian's attempted genocide, is entirely meritocratic based on who's the best at keeping the humans on their side of the Line. Which sort of makes the Elven Court the inverse of the human one, with the Coloured Houses now providing civilian governance (and food/housing), while the military Lords are now meritocratic.
The ranking within Arien's court also has another angle: positions of power based on magical ability. The Southwark Elven ability to wield illusion traditionally created high postings for particularly talented illusionists/mages, with the royal family being traditionally among the strongest. Post-War, though, the ability to wield illusion is directly responsible for a lot of their military victories (and thus survival), so it's been largely subsumed into the meritocratic military arrangement anyway. Illusionists also are traditionally part of the Elven equivalent to the Blue & Silver (as in, communications and spies), which has continued, if in a rather more active and survival-orientated fashion. Most agents sent south of the Line tend to be illusionists, on the grounds that it gives them enough of an advantage that they might survive.
Essentially, the entire Elven Court has been reengineered to provide them with the best chance of surviving the War. How that structure will adapt post-War (that survival provided) is anybody's guess.
Contd in Part Three: People of Note in Southwark
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