There are three types of divine patronage in Avalon: personal patronage, guild patronage and city patronage. Personal patronage is detailed in HELP FOLLOWER and a list of deities is shown in HELP PATRONS. Guild patronage is discussed in HELP GUILDPATRON and patronage of a city - the most competitive of the deity-mortal declarations - is detailed below although you may wish to look over HELP REPRESENTATION for specifics on the interplay of the various Divine Orders represented in a city's diverse citizenry; and HELP CARDINAL to learn more about the highest ranked mortal in a city alongside the Prince: the Cardinal, mouthpiece and symbol of Divine Will.
The patron of a city is chosen by the Prince or Princess, as the mortal of highest noble rank and representative of the Crown: chosen by the baronial council to lead and bear the burden of such historical declarations. Nobody else has privilege of city patron choice; no-one can gainsay the choice once made save the deity chosen or by uprising and overthrow of the Prince to install a replacement whose selection is a different immortal from the Avalon pantheon. Prince: see CITY HELP PATRON for command and usage details.
The deity chosen for patron of a city gains numerous privileges in free-use of divine powers otherwise restricted (by precedent, by divine law, or by the pantheon as a whole) such as the overall command of elections, appointment arbitration and justice twixt the city and the Gods. Example: deities sometimes become angered and might act against a city - exerting no mortal can defence; or a God whose patronage of a foreign city extends to such pro-active support it crosses the line, blasting aside mortal resistance and requiring the city to call its own God and patron to stand firm and ensure the contest is a matter of mortals versus mortals, unfettered by divine despotism!
All cities hope for consensus over the choice of patron and this consensus leads naturally to the God selecting a mortal whose stature and sense of responsibility can be entrusted with the influence and power of Cardinal appointment. The Cardinal is in many ways the co-equal of the Prince: representatives of the Crown and the Church, jointly steering the unfolding history of the City and its cargo of souls. See HELP CARDINAL for more info on the role and powers of the Cardinal, supreme arbiter of a city's religious and moral direction. The Cardinal is a rank inviolate save by city patron dismissal just as Prince cannot be usurped save by baronial revolution.
The appointment of Cardinal, while historically a privilege of the city patron, can also be attained by a God whose Order representation reputation reaches a level of dominance across enough of the citizens that it is able to bestow the potentially over-ruling power of placing a Cardinal in power against the will or not as chosen by the city's patron. This does not limit the powers inherited by the Cardinal but can signal a division within the city; a schism of such magnitude its consequence may eventually become civil war...
See HELP REPRESENTATIONS for details on the concept of Order representation reputation within a city; the four "criteria" by which an Order is judged (through its citizens, within a particular city) and the info available to priesthood and High Priestly ranked mortals to keep an eye on any possible rivalries; to know the religious make-up of the city and whether expectations of future 'trouble' have merit or not. In nine cases out of ten the city patron is either the dominant Order deity in a city or the four criteria of Order representation reputation are scattered across multiple Gods so no threat to the primacy of the Prince's chosen city patron exists (i..e. leading, most importantly, to a Cardinal appointment with a contradictory holy mission).
