Post by The Divine Empire of Vessia on Jun 28, 2019 12:39:39 GMT -8
The Empire of Vessia is an ancient government, and as such has institutions so old few have a genealogy long enough for them to be able to name an ancestor that saw their conception. As one would imagine, the Empire is ruled by an Emperor. But this is not a hereditary monarchy, quite the opposite. Upon the death of an Emperor a council of various people will be convened, and votes called until more than half vote for a single candidate who will become the Emperor. The main electors are nobles who own particularly massive tracts of land, the combined sum of which makes up the majority of the Empire. Beyond that, votes are given to the heads of important organizations like the Church, provincial Statthalters, the Witch Hunters, the as well as the very most wealthy merchants and bankers. Furthermore, there is an attempt to give a vote to the common man and in typical Imperial fashion this means a random commoner quite literally kidnapped off of the street and made to vote. But once an Emperor is elected, they do not suddenly gain infallibility. They must still appease the many people under them, delegate tasks to trusted people, and so on and so forth. The Emperor will have Statthalters (known to some as Protospatharii) being the overseers of the three provinces, residing in their respective capitals. These Statthalters in addition to doing bureaucracy and tax collecting will use the Imperial Army to defend their provinces from external threats, while using the Imperial Police systems to defend them from internal threats. Beyond that, they manage the small amount of Crown territories of the Empire, parts of Vessia that do not belong to anyone but the Emperor or his representatives.
The College of Magi and Thaumaturgy is another key part of what the Crown is responsible for, a place from which all Lords and Ladies of the Empire may find magical talent. Side by side with that, the Church is officially separated from the state, but this is ultimately a fiction. The Angelist Faith controls much bureaucracy in Vessia, officiating marriages and calling forth holy wars. In addition, it has the Inquisition which gets a vote of its own in Electoral Councils and acts as a part of the Policing of Vessia responsible primarily for criminals of faith: heretics and daemons, things of that sort. The other three main branches are the Imperial Guard, the Witch Hunters and the Rikskomissars. The Imperial Guard are a paramilitary force that serves to Guard officials as well as taking care of petty crime like thieving and murdering. Witch Hunters are the ones guarding the Empire from witches, werewolves, vampires, faefolk incursions and all sorts of other matters of evil not involving the faith. Finally, Rikskommissars look for political crimes; they look for Lords not paying their taxes, or men inciting masses to rebellion.
The laws they protect are the wider Imperial ones. One shall not blaspheme, one shall pay their taxes and not secede, one shall not harbour inhuman filth, one shall not kill unjustly. They are strict, insuring there is minimal room for an obedient populace to rebel, while the coffers saved for war are well stocked and the chance of famine is reduced even if at expense of present wealth and freedom. While Crown territories of the Empire have much of these draconian laws to adhere too, only the ones necessary for fundamental function of the Empire are rigorously enforced in Imperial sub-states. The various governors of all the smaller states within the Empire have much autonomy to create their own laws. Furthermore, they will collect their own additional taxes, have their own institutions, and generally form an entirely unique government that may have its own hereditary systems or its own electoral systems all under the auspice of the crown. They will raise their own armies, create their own courts, and build their own education systems... all within reason, of course. One is not allowed to fund their own College of Magi, at most they are allowed to construct their own campuses. Furthermore, the word of the Policing systems is final whenever it is in conflict with local law, and someone who stands against them is putting themselves in tremendous political peril.