Thoughts regarding Alexander's status in the Prussian high society.
QUESTION: Do you got any thoughts on how Alexander managed to become a Baron? I mean, he didn't just appear in the human world, and someone just told him "Here, you can be the have place, and just call yourself by some nobles title!" so there must be something... Also, do you think he was in Prussia from the get go, or did he just end up there? Maybe after travelling the world. Maybe Prussia was the place he just preferred? Or he just returned there because it was the place appeared. -sent by anonymous
I’ve thought a lot about this, and actually talked in more detail about it while writing my most recent multichapter fic, Count the Daylight Hours, so some of you may have heard my though process already. My headcanon is that he’s actually a Freiherr - literally ‘free lord’, a nobleman whose status matches that of a baron, but his property is allodial instead of a fief (meaning he owns his domain fully, without being indebted to a lord of a higher ranking to be allowed to keep his property). The title Freiherr corresponds to the rank of a baron and is translated as such in English, and a nobleman with the title Freiherr was addressed as a baron since it was technically the same thing. Normally, a baron who wasn’t a free lord held his lands in fealty, that is in exchange for some sort of service and loyalty to his lord, which could have been something like providing his lord with soldiers. I can’t see Alexander’s situation working out if he were just a normal baron, because that would make his status extremely fragile and would potentially subject him to much more surveillance. His cover was rather shaky at best, but his notes gave me the impression that he was left relatively alone, which seems unlikely to have been possible for a baron without Freiherr status. But that’s just my headcanon, so don’t take it too seriously.
Anyway, getting back to your original question, I believe he worked himself up to his rank - it was said in one of the notes that Alexander helped found the kingdom of Prussia, which means that he was likely given his rank and his lands as thanks for his services to the crown. Most noble titles were hereditary so the castle, its lands and other property would have remained under the ownership of Alexander’s assumed family, thus securing him a rather firm foothold in Prussia. He must have noticed, living among humans, that European societies were built on rather strict hierarchy at the time, so it can’t have taken him too long to calculate that a higher rank would provide him with better privacy and security, not to mention the money to get the materials he needed, so I’m rather sure he intentionally worked towards a noble rank to make sure he’d have a better chance at getting back home.
It was also said in a note that he was a nobleman from Rhineland, so it’s possible he might have been given his rank even before the kingdom of Prussia was founded in 1701, but my knowledge about the history of Prussia is very limited so I can’t speculate too much about that. :’D In any case, I believe he was rewarded for his services - whatever they were - with the title of a baron. If people believed him to be originally from Rhineland, he must have already spoken fluent German by that time, so that would suggest he’d either landed in the German speaking region when he first arrived on Earth, or that he at least spent a considerable amount of time there since he ended up learning the language fluently enough to fool the locals into believing he was one of them. We don’t know how Alexander’s species communicates and if/how they speak, but I think it’s safe to assume it took him a long time to learn German - he wasn’t just a foreigner, he was an alien, and had to learn a language spoken by an alien race.