Im working on worldbuilding right now and am currently fleshing out the states of one of the continents.

I have been working on the governments and one I thought would be interesting would be a house organized government, much like the one in morrowind.

My idea is to have the house, family based, govern over a city or cities, a small region, or a larger region. These houses then fall under the guidance of a powerful religious leader (think the pope.)

Thats just a real basic idea. I wanted to see if anyone could give me some real life examples of the house system in morrowind so I can get some more examples to pull ideas from.

Sorry for any typos, posted using my Nook.

I don't think there are any examples, presently. Maybe in smaller towns powerful families hold influence, but it stops at influence, they don't govern.

Well, the ur-example which I'm certain Morrowind draws influence from is Renaissance Italy, specifically Florence and Venice. Florence was ostensibly a republic made up by a various guilds who appointed their representatives. Then Cosimo de Medici basically took over and established his family's dominance over Tuscany, ruling through, afaik, the guild system. Venice at its height was dominated by the wealthiest merchant kings who had representatives on a city council that appointed all officials and senators and the council was headed by a ceremonial Doge.

Essentially, the lesson from these two examples to learn is that if you spread local political power among small clusters of individuals, especially commercially-minded individuals, the more power they have, the more they'll resist religion's influence. Florence didn't escape Savonarola, but that was because of a momentary weakness in the Medici's power. You're setting things up for a fragmented power structure where if one family has a disagreement with another, there'll be war. This religious leader won't have much political power unless they control the military or some other means of political control. Because our history has shown that politics and money will trump religious ties.

Alright thank you. I actually thought of italy as i reopened this post lol.

As for the religious leader, ill definitely rethink that part. Im really just trying to find a political structure outside of the basic, emperor king, or king baron structure two of thelarge kingdoms run under.

As for the morrowind houses, whos rule do they fall under, the emperors? What power do they have within the cities or regions?

The Houses are connected through the temple, or, in times of war, a Hortator will unite them. In addition to the temple, there is an established nobility with a king at its helm, who rules in tandem with Almalexia. The kingship had no real authority until the Tribunal began their seclusion. Even at the time of Morrowind the king is seen as pushing the bounds of his station, despite not having done much direct ruling. After the fall of the tribunal, we see a civil war, with Hlaalu and Dres on one side (supporting the king) and Indoril and Redoran on the other (supporting the temple), demonstrating the different fealties sworn.