The Eight Virtues: A Practical Guide for Knights
Introduction
Greetings readers,
Throughout my career as a knight and order member, I have had the privilege to meet, serve with, and acquaint myself with people of various social classes and professions throughout the realm. In those dealings, I perceived commonalities within these groups regarding how they each approached the eight virtues in a slightly different manner despite the tendency of the ruling class to enforce rigid codes of conduct. Thus, the topic of this writing will be to identify what the virtues are, their intended purpose, and how our society’s different sub-factions commonly apply them within their lives toward the same ends.
Most individuals know that the virtues became prominent after Lord British consolidated the scattered realms from the previous dark ages. However, their wisdom dates back much further.
Long before spiritual statues or serpents’ iconography guided our thoughts and deeds, simple rules of decency allowed vulnerable societies to avoid devolving into chaos when difficult conditions triggered locals’ worst tendencies. Concepts such as truthfulness, compassion, courage, and justice are all qualities that help people work together. Thus, order, relative safety, and prosperous environs were preserved.
In essence, the codified virtues prescribed by Lord British define universal ethical standards deeply engraved into the foundation of mortal decency- spiritual maintenance for those already on the right path and course correction for those who have not yet reached enlightenment.
Consider how a wealthy magistrate might show justice by impartially analyzing court evidence, as opposed to a shepherd personally halting the predations of a wolf pack that threatens her fields. Ponder the impoverished laborer quietly dividing scraps to feed an infirm widow after being responsible for her husband’s death. All are admirable acts, yet their zones of influence, tactics, and motivations express the same virtue differently.
So, while virtues take different forms depending on the route a soul may pursue, the fundamental moral principles give equitable enlightenment for citizens from all walks of life. Thus, this writing aims to get to the meat of the matter. May it help us understand one another better.
Sir Raylen Avernn
Master of The Green Company
Compassion
Compassion shines as an important virtue by recognizing ties that transcend status when people show care and consideration for one another. Compassion emerges from genuine empathy, driven by insights that only adversity and life experience can provide. As survivors of rampant brutality, compassion blooms when those who were previously in need now help others rather than perpetuating a cycle of cold indifference.
A noble may show compassion by anonymously settling a tenant farmer’s debts after vermin destroy a crop. Although the family lacked personal connections and had nothing to benefit the noble directly, the aristocrat’s wealth saved the family’s livelihood. Meanwhile, a middle-class bard performs in the plaza, soliciting funds to rebuild homes destroyed in a village fire. She declines wealthy patron invitations, possibly motivated by recollections of similar challenges from her youth. A beggar in the back alley of a city street shares his gathered food scraps with an elderly widow, not because they are kin, romantically tied, or even friends, but because they are known to each other, and he feels the need.
In the examples above, they all demonstrate compassion while subtly expressing it in a way that is unique to their situations. The cardinal virtue reveals itself not through identical actions but by tailoring our reaction to each need encountered.
Valor
Valor shines as a cardinal attribute that can be expressed in various ways besides bardic ballads. Though knightly legends celebrate successful missions that fulfill duty in the face of danger, courage manifests itself in various ways, enriching society via personal sacrifice in the face of hardship.
Consider the chivalry surrounding a young knight, heir to manors, titles, and family legacy. Their initial blood-soaked trials instill confidence, directing lances against deadly opponents through storms of steel and blood. Such courage emerges from wartime turmoil despite enormous personal risk. As a result, it is natural to identify them as shining examples of valor.
However, tradehouses that conduct commerce over stormy waters and dangerous roads also demonstrate steadfast courage. There is little doubt that potential wealth motivates the shrewd gentry, yet their dealings are essential to the realm and laden with physical and financial risks. As a result, despite the fear of catastrophic loss, stone-faced bankers courageously support daring city-state leaders and initiatives toward preserving the greater good.
Similarly, stoic peasant conscripts hold the line while terrifying beasts close; magic detonates around them, bodies burn and rupture, yet personify grit. They frequently face harsh challenges that break others. Such actions are excellent instances of valor.
While ballads honor legendary figures, true courage shines in frequently unsung locations, created through individual actions against high-stakes trials. Bravery becomes a shared heritage and is seen wearing many faces.
Justice
Most subjects of a structured and organized nature feel that justice serves as a shield for society, preserving civilization from chaos through equity and fairness and punishing those who violate the social contract. However, applying unbiased principles is challenging to even the most steadfast among us when conflicts of interest arise. Daily judgments across layered social circles are a prime example of how justice is often put into question.
A commanding knight enforcing battlefield discipline cannot apply the rules unevenly by exempting decorated elites from sanctions and punishing commoner soldiers for identical violations. Such biased application mocks justice by undermining consistency and exposing systemic inequalities, which favored aristocrats frequently exploit.
Similarly, can savvy business leaders honestly claim ethical dealings by taking advantage of ordinary people’s gullibility toward deceptive contracts and confusing legal jargon? The individuals who manufacture our goods, farm our food, and manage the infrastructure of our society deserve proper respect and even gratitude, just as the privileged classes merit for protecting them—exploitation beyond the scope of their lawful duties due to a lack of education or station is not justice.
Alternatively, justice may include understanding why commoners sometimes see taking the law into their own hands as vital when hierarchies perverted the courts against plainspoken dignity. Desperate people beyond the reach of the law will find a way to retain their dignity and honor. Understand this; proceed with true justice, and may order prevail over further escalation. There are practical reasons to embrace justice for those lacking common decency; rebellion has a cost in blood, treasure, and resources. Lives and productivity destabilized due to greed and arrogance are preventable losses.
Furthermore, I believe justice ultimately triumphs by embracing a certain level of empathy and standing for the vulnerable while constantly questioning whether using power and laws alone results in rightful outcomes. It is easy for a disciplined, noble mind to embrace and enforce the letter of the law, for it requires far less nuance and thought behind the conclusion. Assess the situation in question. Enforce punishment as appropriate for the crime, in accordance with the law, and only if it is within the limits of your authority.
Sacrifice
Many a pious chaplain or impassioned paladin will preach that selfless sacrifice is the pinnacle of virtue, giving up resources, desires, and worldly advantages to serve the greater good—an excellent ideal. However, my reflections revealed insights regarding the unconscious architecture behind outward sacrifice and the distinction between self-serving nature.
As a young knight, I spent years campaigning to protect the realm from both internal and external threats. From age seven, I started down a path to take my entire being into persecuting and eliminating dangers for Britannia. All the proper words were said to the right people, and I learned what we fought for. However, all of that was secondary. As someone raised for war and command, leadership skills and combat proficiency were paramount, and each assignment tested my honor and abilities. All that mattered to me was achieving the objective and dominating my opponents. When the blood and screams stopped, the smiles, cheers, and kind words of those who saw me as a brave liberator were heartwarming, but they were insignificant compared to rising in the eyes of my peers due to my glorious victory. I saw my brethren as a part of my essence and everyone else as pieces of a great game being played.
As I grew older, I assumed command of my cadre of younger knights and lances, and I was assigned ever-increasing civil service support missions for regular citizens. Soldiers were no longer the sole company that was kept. My interactions with the gentry, commoners, and peasants taught me to appreciate who they were and what we all contributed to making our society run efficiently. It became less and less about personal glory and more about feelings of commitment, responsibility, and admiration, all of which were motivators for true sacrifice.
Similarly, the merchant who funds an orphanage may benefit from charitable posturing rather than a genuine desire to help impoverished children who now reside on comfortable estates. Realigning economic priorities to empower individuals to break free from generational poverty would be worthy of true sacrifice, but not without being the primary reason for the act.
Even commoner or peasant families who adopt war orphans frequently fill voids caused by empty nests and a lack of extra labor when their children have grown up, either beginning their own families or being conscripted into military service. However, sacrifice worthy of virtue welcomes the stranger with no strings attached. Therefore, looking into whether personal gain is the primary driving force behind sacrifice before recognizing its nobility makes sense.
Self-interest taints supposedly altruistic sacrifice, feeding psychological demands that manifest secondarily as generosity. Discerning those complicated foundations allows impulses to shift toward unconditional compassion rather than glorified gestures, eventually helping the individual down a righteous path of true sacrifice.
Honor
Honor is defined as one’s sense of ethics, integrity, and the ability to demonstrate trustworthiness and reliability in purpose and deed to others. While knightly standards frequently praise honor and uphold qualities against lower instincts, patient observation and analysis should determine whether it is authentic or hollow grandstanding. Beyond projecting a public image and idealized identity, think about how truth and obligation materialize behind closed doors.
Some lords taking the field in glory would rapidly and loudly cite honor as the essential virtue while inwardly mocking the concept, believing that high birth allows for indiscretions and violations of codes as long as duties are completed. However, virtue is concentrated outwards while interior disposition rots, creating a fertile foundation for moral decay.
Financiers promote enterprising innovation as a clever vision while deliberately ignoring how vast riches were made by dishonest and manipulative techniques that skewed laws in their favor. Are inventions honorable if the systems that enable them inadvertently and unethically prevent others from prospering?
The freeman commoners who crowd the city’s busy streets are equally problematic. Caught between rural poverty and earning enough coin from their professions to live in frequently dangerous urban environments, the commoner tends to pursue selfish goals. Many are obsessed with their survival, oblivious to the worries of others, while the desperate resort to crime and take what they need. Some people live a hard and short life, with honor viewed as a weakness to be abused. Still, there may be pockets of like-minded people, often forming groups of like-minded folks for their survival, who follow a rule of civil cooperation that does not involve exploiting others.
Perhaps the uneducated peasant, lacking in sophisticated customs and cosmopolitan surroundings, retains honor more simply by giving goodwill to strangers within their modest domains and recognizing a common connection beneath all faces rather than just a few. They are hardworking, dutiful, and generally kind out of necessity; at least, many are not yet jaded. On the other hand, some have experienced the sting of injustice at the hands of haughty lords and are wary of anyone they do not know well. Nonetheless, the common peasant demonstrates hospitality and quiet dignity, often embarrassing the selective generosity that public pomp and courtly manners routinely pass off as true virtue.
So, what foundations should honor stand upon internal creeds based on significant behavioral constraints or exterior projections proclaiming virtue through deeds? Both. However, rather than simply putting on an appearance, one should seek substantive links that enrich the character. Faking honor will undoubtedly be exposed.
Spirituality
Scholarly writings define spirituality as equal parts inner truth, love, and courage—the private conscience cultivating public virtue. Beyond external obedience, the silent recognition of sacred bonds of common worth connects the humble and the privileged. However, observing subjects and their actions often reveals where inner priorities are most clearly manifested.
Knights may invoke the divine when ordained, as their shoulder is tapped with consecrated steel. However, decades of combating evil can harden hearts previously affected by sorrow after having to slay an adversary, reducing spirituality to a repetitious ritual devoid of sympathetic grace. The fire of spirituality is often reignited by rediscovering the beauty in the world rather than perpetual militancy and eluding to violence as a resolution to every problem.
Merchants support temples and priests, ensuring that services go smoothly, but they rarely stop counting coins to absorb insightful teachings that encourage the renunciation of overt materialism. Their offerings, too, bear worldly taints incompatible with charity, as they are often concerned with gaining leverage over the clergy. However, exercising secret kindness without regard for material gain indicates embracing spirituality.
Other examples include the lowly rural mystics who live in scarcity, perceiving the vital force passing through the low and forgotten, and who give up autonomy to care for the needy and infirm whom polite society abandons to squalor. Serving these folks with unending compassion provides a transcending vision of sacred worth that supersedes status and wealth.
Humility
Arrogance and confidence are cousins, and what separates them is the level of humility in one’s mind. Humility entails being modest in your acts rather than boasting and remaining grounded by avoiding arrogance and conceit. Beyond rank, character is most important. Deeds above demonstrate genuine humility among all people.
A soldier’s training aims to harden the mind and body against the horrors of combat, where the opponents are unconcerned about feelings or self-esteem. Strict drill instructors, mentors, and weapon masters try to harden trainees from dread and pain through harsh words and conditioning. This steeling process should not be confused with sadism, brutality, or arrogance, even if some instructors take their duty too seriously.
Once trainees transition to battle-ready troops, discipline must be maintained, lest skills and manners deteriorate. Leaders, however, must govern with nuance, controlling with mutual respect rather than as arrogant tyrants. Officers who lack empathy or praise will engender resentment and rebellion. Troops fail or abandon cruel commanders when confronted with odds that make them question whether they are willing to die for such a wretch.
Therefore, leaders must seek balance. Demanding excellence maintains rigor, yet appreciating soldiers’ humanity and little triumphs preserves morale and trust. The best leaders balance required toughness with wisdom, pushing boundaries while instilling loyalty via humility. They comprehend their people’s thinking before providing strategy, having been through the same hardships and now directing troops to march into battle’s harsh and cruel realities.
Similarly, a merchant who inherits his family’s books but claims to make no errors because he denies shortcomings will eventually fail when such faults inevitably materialize. Success, on the other hand, comes to those who take counsel, empower others, and temper their pride with a willingness to engage in course correction when needed.
Peasant villagers often show hospitality and forgive offenses by acknowledging their own flawed natures. Minor transgressions or mistakes are forgotten with time and temperance. Thus, humility blossoms as the nobility of spirit undefined by station or birthright.
In conclusion, humility emerges from self-awareness, empowering people above ego, and seeking wisdom—activities that transcend socioeconomic class through timeless ideals.
Honesty
Honesty is integrity demonstrated through straightforward action and speech while avoiding misleading appearances. Beyond creeds, honesty manifests itself in purpose and actions as we traverse life and interact with others.
For example, martial codes encourage oaths of truth unto death, yet reality frequently reveals selective interpretations when the ramifications are inconvenient. Do officers consistently reveal battlefield blunders caused by their directives instead of glorifying personal victory? No, that was a rhetorical question. The true test of honesty is when personal interests conflict with sword duty; then, we see what is what.
Similarly, rival shopkeepers commonly use financial information to obtain an advantage over competitors through imaginative book figures or subtle product exaggerations. However, the profits often obtained by deception can result in more considerable losses when the truth is ultimately revealed. Context defines where savvy business becomes dishonesty. Alternatively, simple businesses founded on fair quality and pricing typically thrive by acquiring long-term clientele through hard-earned trust and consistent profit over time, as opposed to the fast coin grab.
Consider modest country folk who survive through communal cooperation on shared pieces of land. They model morality by teaching children never to lie or cheat their neighbors because deception erodes the basic relationships that hold their lives together through shifting seasons of hardship and abundance. More than the other social classes, their survival depends on compassionate unity, a lesson we may all learn from.
In conclusion, real honesty constantly implements values beyond high boasts and moral posturing, even at personal expense. It supports a functional society by favoring truthful action that benefits everyone rather than just the self or a privileged few.
Closing Remarks
Through this work, I aimed to emphasize the legitimacy of cardinal virtues as manifested through context, individual conscience, and various social levels rather than requiring universal expression.
While enshrined conventions and exalted speech intellectually extol virtue, those embodied in small areas outside nobility frequently appear equally sincere regarding the spirit of the virtues. As previously said, courage, compassion, and wisdom take many legitimate forms depending on personality, profession, and status.
So, rather than universal application, I advise interpreting virtues based on the actual impact people have from their positions of influence—the fortitude to change what we can while accepting limitations with grace when we cannot. Without such complexity, accepting absolutist tendencies risks severing shared ties to higher principles. We will fail and fall short because we are mortal and flawed beings. Most important is learning from failure and supporting the ideas that enable our community to grow in cooperative harmony.
In conclusion, I pray you will discover more profound compassion, connect important concepts to other realities, and see the righteousness within fellow subjects beyond your circumstances. Therein lies the hopeful legacy for future generations: to choose connections over divisions as a shared history that binds all under the enduring majesty of the Eight Virtues.
Sir Raylen Avernn
Master of The Green Company