Peasant+Girl

You have chosen to be a Peasant Girl: You have grown up working the fields and helping your mother out. You are very poor and live in a one room house with your entire extended family (and some) of grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, and cousins. You have now turned 14 and as such are ready to be married. You meet three young men you have a chance to marry, one is an apprentice blacksmith, another an aspiring merchant, and the last is a low farmer/serf like yourself. Read the following descriptions and choose your next course in life.


 * [[image:medievaljourney/blacksmith.jpg width="245" height="222" align="center" caption="Blacksmiths" link="medievaljourney/Apprentice Blacksmith"]] || [[image:medievaljourney/merchant.jpg width="269" height="204" align="center" caption="Merchants" link="medievaljourney/Merchant"]] || [[image:medievaljourney/f_serf.jpg width="188" height="247" align="center" caption="Serf" link="medievaljourney/Serf"]] ||
 * Apprentice Blacksmith || Merchant || Farmer/Serf ||
 * A skilled worker was one of the better ways to get ahead in life, although the path there was difficult. In order to learn the trade, one first had to find someone who was a “Master” and then you had to pledge to serve them for several years in an “Apprenticeship”. Once you had become proficient enough, if you were lucky you could take over your “Master’s” business, however in most cases you would have to travel the world and look for a place where those services were needed. Most small villages only had one skilled worker at a trade, if any at all. The skill workers will be the foundations of the middle class to come. || This was the quickest way to great riches, but also very dangerous. In order to be successful you had to have things people wanted and would pay money for. While Currency is growing in Europe, not a lot of people have it, so in many places there is still a barter/trade system heavily in place. As such this requires you to travel from place to place. Since there is no governing body but “Lords” and their manors to protect their lands, in between there is a lot of danger. A bad “lord” could steal or over tax you or bandits could raid and kill you. You could hire protection but they could turn against you as well. You can travel by sea to avoid the dangers of land, and possibly make more money, but sea travel is still relatively dangerous and ships sank or disappeared much more frequently than today. The Loss of one ship could bankrupt you. So while the rewards were great, the risks were greater. || Farmer/Serf: This position in society was one of the lowest. You were tied to the land, and therefore could not leave. You were at the mercy of your “Lord”, and if he left you were at the mercy of your new “lord”. You were a vassal or servant as someone in your family’s history had pledged to serve the lord of the land in exchange for Protection from other “lords” or bandits. You had meager (poor) living conditions; you worked a small strip of land of which you gave a large percentage to the lord as a tax, and you had absolutely no say in whatever happened. While running away was not really an option as you would just end up in another Manor serving someone else, it was possible for a farmer to run away and seek work in one of the few growing cities. However there were not many job opportunities in the cities so many ended up in extreme poverty. ||

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