That's not right, Fleet Action actually refers to the others as Barons. "Qar'ka Baron of the Qarg clan," "Baron Ka'ta of the Kurutak clan" and so on. The Wing Commander 3 novel also refers to clan leaders as Barons as a general term.
Ok, didn't notice that somehow - all I could remember is Fleet Action always talking about Baron Jukaga and never any other barons.
In all cases I know of the Baron is either a noble with very little land (just a few villages or even just one village in many cases) or it is a title that is given to somebody that hasn't any land at all by the ruler, just to get him into nobility.
Again, you have to take into account evolution over time. Gradually, a kind of ranking system did evolve, but it's actually something unnatural to the feudal system. I make this point again, because it's important - our knowledge of noble ranks is stained by everything that happened after the feudal system lapsed, whereas the Kilrathi live in a functioning feudal system... which, just to make things extra-interesting, is likely to be vastly different to what we know, since the Kilrathi are, at the end of the day, an alien species.
My quick five minutes of research showed that the term "baron" was originally used differently. For example, if you do some research about the Magna Carta, you will find that generally, it is said "the barons" forced King John to sign the charter. King John's conflict was with "the barons". Does this means the earls, dukes and whatever stayed on his side, while all the low-rankers revolted and won? No, it means that the titled nobility as a whole was being collectively referred to as "the barons".
Remember, what to us is merely an antiquated title, to them was an actual word. Duke, for example, is actually nothing more than the Latin word "leader" (so, the correct translation into German would be... ahem... err... "fuhrer"?). Emperor, similarly, meant someone with the power to command. With "baron", it's a little less clear, apparently, but one of the theories is that it comes from the old Germanic (Frankish) word meaning "warrior" or "nobleman". The only trouble is that even if that were the case, by the time King William I started using the term in England, its origins would have been forgotten: he took the word from the French.
Anyway - the upshot of this is that originally, titles were very diverse, not only due to linguistic differences, but also due to local peculiarities. Take "dauphin" for example - it means exactly what it sounds like, a dolphin. It is also the customary title of the heir apparent of the Kingdom of France. Where did it come from? Originally, one of the counts of Viennois, who had a dolphin in his coat of arms, was nicknamed "the dolphin". His successors decided to change their title, referring to themselves as "le dauphin de Viennois". In 1349, one of them sold his domain to the King of France, and one of the conditions of the sale was that the French heir apparent... you get the picture. Or how about the Irish? Before the English conquest, "king" (or rather, its Gaelic equivalent - ri) was the title used by independent rulers. Not rulers of Ireland, but rulers within Ireland. Every once in a while, one of these rulers would become powerful enough to force the others to recognise his authority, and he would be referred to as the "high king" - "ard ri". In terms of power, however, an Irish king was comparable to an English earl, and only the high king was actually comparable to an English king. Then again, could the King of Ireland, whether we call him a high king or king, compare in any way to the King of England? No, of course not - the difference in power was so great that the King of Ireland was no more powerful than the Duke of Norfolk or the Prince of Wales. Finally, you have a third factor - feudalism was personal. You may have one paltry village beholden to you... and be titled an earl. Maybe you saved the king's life during a battle, maybe one of your ancestors did - or maybe your earldom once included all the surrounding areas, but you fell upon hard times and had to sell parts of it. It's not like there was a bureaucratic committee that would send you a letter "dear Earl of Whatever, we have noticed that your domain fails to meet the requirements of an Earldom. You have until the end of the year to correct this, otherwise your title of Earl will be revoked and you shall henceforth be referred to as a mere Esquire".
Feudal ranks and titles escape all systematisation - you absolutely cannot look at any feudal titles and assume that they mean what they mean. This is very, very important when looking at the Kilrathi. Kilrathi honorifics were a pretty simple thing back in the days of WC2. Everyone was Whatever nar Whatever. The books treated this pretty gently too... and then, False Colors happened. Suddenly, there's like a bajillion different honorifics, lak, dai, whatever. We don't know what they mean, they're pretty crazy and overwhelming, the writer probably didn't devote much thought to them either... but rather than ruining a simple and logical system, it adds a great new layer of feudal craziness to it all. I would take this as the most important lesson - don't try to systematise the Kilrathi, because it goes against the spirit of what they should be
.
What? I'm pretty happy this isn't the case actually.
That's ok, most people think so... but then, most people don't understand what feudalism actually was
. I guess I won't get into it here, though.
He made a grave mistake and ...wait for it.... he wasn't killed. He didn't even commit suicide. This is interesting since when you look at WC1 the Emperor killed his own son when he lost the Sivar. In my opinion Jukaga's mistake was much bigger but he was only exiled.
This tells me that heads of clans are in fact treated differently.
I think this was discussed in one of the books, at least a little bit. Or maybe it was just implied... or maybe I just thought it was
. Hard to tell, with my useless memory. Anyway... I think someone at some point did suggest that Jukaga should have committed suicide, and the fact that he chose not to was a stain on his honour.
), they really weren't gods, and they certainly weren't returning because they'd never been there before. What does this mean? It means simply that the fact that the Nephilim resemble the Kilrathi Star God myth does not automatically mean the Nephilim actually were the Star Gods, nor does it mean that they necessarily had planted the myth in the first place. Yes, of course this is what the creators of WCP had intended, but we don't need to care about their intentions, only about what they actually got across.