I need a little assistance with some numbers. I need to set the monetary amount for a prince's ransom, and I want the amount to be realistic, should someone actually do the research and check my numbers.
This is for Peter's Angel. Peter is being held for ransom (and later Nathan gets held on the same amount), and I need the price to be something his country, Reval, can't pay easily.
Here's the set up. Reval is a somewhat poor rural fief. I'm estimating that you can ride across it on horseback in about 6 hours if you're in a rush. It's mostly farmland, forests, and medium-sized towns. It's relatively poor compared to Alaidia, the massive, extravagant, and very wealthy motherland. It doesn't help that Alaidia taxes the fief very heavily - like 17% or something crazy... While Reval is autonomous, it's little more than a revenue-generating farm for Alaidia. Mostly self-sustaining, very little industry or trading outside of that with Alaidia, etc.
When Peter is kidnapped by a revengeful noblewoman, she sets an extreme and ridiculous amount for his ransom. The amount is high enough that Peter's father can't pay it easily. There isn't that kind of money in the treasury, so if they were to scrounge it up, they'd have to tax the people (who aren't rich either) or, worse, borrow money from Alaidia. It's doable, but it would cripple the country and worsen their relative poverty.
I haven't decided for sure on the noblewoman's motives, but I think it will be something like this. The previous Revalian king had a system of landlords working for him (of whom the noblewoman was one), who taxed the people for use of the land. In this way, the previous king made himself relatively rich and was able to pay Alaidia's tax with other people's money.
But when Peter's father took the throne, he dismissed the landlords and reorganized the way the land was taxed. While it's much fairer, it also means Peter's father has significantly less revenue than his predecessor. So Peter's father doesn't make an excruciating amount as king and therefore doesn't have much to spend. Also, Alaidia's tax has been gradually increasing... etc. and so forth.
But here's the catch. I want the amount to be such that Alaidia could pay it easily. Ideally, the amount will strike a fine balance so that it's just enough to be excruciating (but not utterly impossible) for Reval, while it's low enough that Alaidia's king would be willing to toss it around for something very important to him like a prince's ransom.
So my question is - what kind of amount should I set? I'll decide an amount in modern USD and convert it to the historical currency I need.
So... what do you think? 1 million? 500k? What would you, as the reader, buy as an excruciating amount?
Keep in mind that this is fantasy-historical... roughly the colonial era. So if you picked a small American colony, taxed it heavily, and then picked an amount that the governor couldn't pay easily, you'd be in the right ballpark.
Thanks, everyone!
So having some real historical numbers gives me something to go off of.
