GURPS has several, parallel, rank and status systems.
Downton Abbey gives something of an example.
The Earl of Grantham has Social Status 5.
His valet has Social Status, at most, 2. But the earl's valet will outrank a viscount's, so we need to assign social ranks to the household staff as well!
I think in this particular case, given Mr Bates checkered past, he likely has Social Status 1 or even 0. But he will still outrank a Social Status 2 valet of a Social Status 4 Viscount.
Isn't high society fun?
The level of detail starts adding up fast.
Does Downton Abbey come with the title of Earl of Grantham or is it the property of Robert Crawley? If it belongs to the title, does he need the level of wealth to match owning it, since he does control it?
Then there's political power. Does an earl in 1916 still have powers to mete out justice?
What are his duties. Is fealty still in effect like it was in 900?
Figuring out all the details can get very complex and expensive.
It's conceivable that, because of the need for rank and status, that Mr Bates is a higher point character than his social superior and employer.
I use Downton Abbey as an example because it's accessible. I first started noticing the separation of titles and power when looking at the Germans and how the Junker could have titles, but no wealth or land and how people could have wealth and land without any titles. Some titles that kept wealth and land got political power. Some people of wealth and property had little to now political power. And there was political power without property, title or wealth!
I've never had a player group that seemed interested in navigating it.
I've played a character in a world where I noticed it more than the GM and he was over his head with the nuances of the world he'd created. His girlfriend's character totally missed what he was trying to do and whirled off on her own to do society stuff while the rest of us were being bound by our duties.
This is definitely something the GM needs to decide on and make available to the players before they waste points on things that are included with another advantage; or be made aware that just because you're a baron, it doesn't mean you're rich and you need to take some wealth too.
Blue blood and wealth do not necessarily go together. My man Lucius Cornelius Sulla started out as a very poor person, but he was a Roman patrician from an old family, which did help him rise in the world. And Charlotte Corday (she who killed Marat) was as aristocratic, by ancestry, as anybody you'd have found at Versailles, but she and her family lived no differently from the peasants that surrounded them.
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