Igelfeld Family/Von Igelfeld family Memoirs/The Wisdom of Moritz/Reputation
"It seems we have been talking a great deal about how to manage units and proper conduct, but we have barely touched on what it truly means to be a noble and how you build your reputation. If you have any aspirations of becoming more than a simple pawn in the game of life what I have to tell you now is of the utmost importance."
Leaning forward and showing great respect for the topic I replied, "You have my attention cousin."
"There are three aspects of reputation that one must consider. Two of them, honour and prestige are easily understood and actually quantifiable so we shall begin there. Honour and prestige are the quantifiable aspects of your reputation, and for the most part represent how well you are known by the lesser nobles and peasants of the land. From simply being in battles you will gain honour, for in truth it represents how courageous people believe you to be, and It determines how many troops you are able to lead. Honour is relatively easy to raise but prestige on the other hand can be a very slow process. Prestige is a representation of how well you are known, therefore it is slightly harder to get. It can be raised more quickly by by participating in more significant battles. In some realms a noble must have a certain level of prestige and honour in order to run for the higher level offices such as judge and ruler."
"You mentioned a third aspect as well?" I asked.
Moritz leans close and continues quietly, "Yes, you shall hardly hear mention of it but it is the single most important principle I have to teach you. We touched on it earlier when discussing etiquette and also during our talk on realm hierarchy. What I speak of is your social reputation and if you hear not another word I have said hear this: build your reputation and live a pleasant life, ignore it and you shall disappear into obscurity." He paused for a few moments to allow me to ponder this. "Your reputation amongst other nobles should be guarded and always protected, for once it is lost all is lost. It is of the utmost importance to appear loyal, reliable, and to whatever degree possible brilliant and articulate. The art of accomplishing this lies only with the proper use of letters, for we all know it is impossible to always be perfect, but one must call attention to your perfection whenever possible. A simple rule to follow if you desire to achieve greatness is to try and write something at least once every two days and more often when items of interest enter into the realms correspondence."
