Banner
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In modern Vaestism a Banner (High Secote: ⰔⰕⰤⰃⰀ, Stęga) is the physical symbol of a sovereign Emperor, known in his religious capacity as a Standard-Bearer. By extension, the term commonly refers to the Standard-Bearer's jurisdiction, the highest organisational division of Vaestdom. Although the equivalence of Banner and State is strictly speaking inaccurate, it is common in Messenian parlance and law to treat Banners as territorial entities approximating states, or else as similar to Messenian super-state entities such as the Savamese Customs Union or the Embute Council. In this understanding, a Banner consists of a Banner-State whose head of state and head of government is the Standard-Bearer and, optionally, one or more Marshalates, whose head of state is the Standard-Bearer but whose head of government is an autonomous ruler referred to as a Marshal.
Banner vs state
In the political sense, the Banner shares much with the exclusivist and sovereign idea of the state found in other cultures, such as in Messenia. It comprises a single hierarchy of individuals and Schools all subject ultimately to the holder of the physical Banner (and thus, symbolically, Prophetic authority), the Standard-Bearer. Some subjects of the Banner may be indirectly subject to the Standard-Bearer via an autonomous intermediary known as a Marshal, who acts as a kind of junior Standard-Bearer with the right to display certain Colours alongside the Banner. As may be expected, the subjects of a Banner have various duties vis-a-vis their Standard-Bearer and the Banner as a whole, and are subject to its legal provisions including ideas of Vaestic orthopraxy. In the absence of a formal legal change, the Banner is assumed to represent the first loyalty and first association of any given Vesnite after their general hieratic loyalty to Vaestdom as a whole.
However, there are two important differences between a Banner and a state. The first difference is that Banners are not primarily territorial entities. Although Schools, which typically have territorial jurisdictions, and Empires, which are by their nature exclusively territorial, both belong to Banners, Banners are above all a personal structure - specifically, they are an expression of the hierarchy connecting the lowliest Vesnite to the Universal Prophet, the ultimate source of religious authority. Despite colloquial expressions to the contrary, Banners only implicitly have territory through their Standard-Bearer's functions as Emperor. This premise produces perhaps the most significant distinction between citizenship and Banner-subjecthood, which is the degree of extraterritoriality enjoyed by Vesnites abroad in other Vesnite countries. Since the Purity Council (1855), the right of a Vesnite to participation of a compatriot Scholar in his character trial has been established in interordinate practice, with the trials of foreigners becoming an extensive and complex legal field of its own within Outer Joriscia. Particularly in the Seranias, many areas under the territorial control of one power remain populated largely or almost exclusively by subjects of another Banner.
The second major difference, which logically follows from the first, is the exclusivity of Joriscian notions of 'citizenship'. It is impossible to enjoy full legal recognition from an Outer Joriscian polity without becoming a subject of its Banner, and impossible to be a member of two Banners at once; contrast this with the possibility of dual citizenship in, for example, Cairan countries. The absence of any territorial element to the conception of Banner means that the question of 'citizenship' is largely one of being registered and raised as a Vesnite at the Schools of that Banner. This simple notion, however, is complicated by various measures that serve as controls, especially on joining a Banner as an adult; these include requirements for entry on the side of the receiving Banner and the notion of the implicit claim of parents' Banners on their children. Likewise, the benefits conveyed by membership of a Banner are more limited than those granted by citizenship. Becoming a member of the Azophine Banner as a resident of Agamar, for example - assuming the representatives of Azophin at the embassy in Sakari were willing to accept the application - would not automatically grant the convert the right to travel to the Azophine metropole. It would provide him with an element of extraterritoriality which could be (and has been) exploited in cases where Azophin had gentler traditions of character judgement, but would not exempt him from regulatory law with an imperial character. It would also likely trigger a diplomatic incident, and would deprive him of some of the rights he enjoyed within Agamar.
These two differences derive primarily from the fact that the Banner is in itself only one side of the Joriscian state entity, with the other side being the territorial Empire, headed by an Emperor. This latter concept derives largely from the Secote-Chotarian medieval tradition of politics, in which the Emperor is primarily a distributor of land and a military leader, and carries most of the territorial meaning of statehood. In modern Outer Joriscian political thought the offices of Emperor and Standard-Bearer are inextricably linked to one another (in a manner derived from the similar unification of the offices of Universal Prophet and Emperor of the Vesnites in the Neritsovid Prophet-Emperor) and in common usage the two terms are more or less synonymous. Likewise, on the lower level, Scholars are both agents of the Emperor in distributing land and servants of the Banner in their broader religious duties. Marshals, too, are both generals and governors on behalf of the Emperor and junior Standard-Bearers, given the privilege of their own Colours. However, this link notwithstanding, the Banner remains legally a separate entity from the Empire, and only by considering both is it possible to achieve an accurate understanding of the Vaestic state.
Prophetic Banner
The Prophetic Banner is the overarching umbrella Banner of all Vesnites, which differentiates it sharply from other Banners. All orthodox Vesnites are legal subjects of the Prophetic Banner, albeit mostly through the mediation of other Banners. According to the principle of First Prostration all non-Vesnites may also be considered to be automatically subject thereunto although this is a symbolic rather than a meaningful legal claim except in cases of unmediated conversion. Other than such converts, who have a special status, the only unmediated subjects of the Banner are Standard-Bearers - whose enjoyment of this status allows them to participate in the Prysostaic Debates - and the majority of the native inhabitants of Prysostea. For the latter group what is in theory a privileged status actually brings with it many political complications, however, and many Prysosteans have sought to mediate their allegiance to the Prophetic Banner by becoming subjects of other foreign Banners. The Universal Prophet, although occupying an equivalent position to the Standard-Bearers in other Banners, is not referred to with this term as he cannot be symbolically entrusted with the carrying of a Banner by himself; an official known as the Left Bannerman is responsible for the actual holding of the Banner.
History
Early Vaestdom
The granting of physical Banners to superior agents of the Universal Prophet dates back to the earliest period of Vaestic history, when standards modelled on the Prophetic Banner were carried by generals of the early Vesnite armies. In keeping with the general military aesthetic of early Vaestism, when more peaceable missionary delegations began to be dispatched across Outer Joriscia during the Marshalate, they too carried Banners; the oldest physical Banners still in use today date from this period. Not every region was chosen for a formal Banner-level mission, and some regions - such as Lacre - never had a Banner at this time. Of those that did, only the Greater West had any sort of strong internal discipline and hierarchy. Nonetheless, Standard-Bearers enjoyed the reflected Prophetic prestige and influence provided by their control over the physical symbol of the Vesnite missions. Some continued to be dispatched by the Prophets themselves from the Prysostaia, although in most places local Scholars soon replaced those sent from the centre.
Neritsovid period
By the early Neritsovid period the dispatch of new Banners had already ground to a halt, partially as a result of the Wars of Heresy; one of the repercussions of the internal strife experienced by the Prysostaia was the gradual shift of responsibility for new missionary efforts to existing communities outside Argotea, whose Standard-Bearers had no authority to create new Banners and were typically in any case concerned to extend their own authority. The general trend within the Neritsovid territories was towards the increasing coalescence of imperial state, represented by the government in Pestul, and local scholarchate. In practical terms this involved the establishment of a strictly regulated hierarchy of Schools and their Vocation Scholars, creating a chain of command notionally stretching from the lowliest of village Scholars all the way to the Emperor himself via the Scholars of larger provincial establishments. This in turn meant a reduction in the importance of Standard-Bearers as Standard-Bearers and the reduction of Banners themselves to objects of veneration with no particular political significance typically associated with the vocati of specific large Schools. Although the creation of Banners was revived by Prophet-Emperor Ostrobor the Pious (r. 1554-1572) for occasional significant military endeavours, this was a matter of piety and not of the granting of any specific authority to their bearers.
There were, however, two important exceptions to this general trend. The first, the Banner of the Islands, was a pre-existing Banner that was symbolically ceded to the Neritsovids in the Investiture of Karilinna and then re-granted by the Emperor to Godemir I as the newly-created Polcovode of Mirokrai. The second, the Banner of the Wide North, was one of the few remaining missionary banners active outside Vaestdom itself when the High King of the Lutoborsk Bronimir the Young converted to Vaestism in 1636, and was subsequently granted to him from afar by the Emperor in a similar gesture to that made in Agamar some seventy-six years previously. Both were intended to symbolise the Prophet's recognition of these local rulers' worthiness to take over responsibility for the affairs of local Vesnites from the Scholars that preceded them, as well as providing a physical symbol of his approval. Neither had, per se, any broader political meaning in the understanding of the day. But both, by being associated with autonomous Polcovodates of the Empire, acquired a certain implied meaning that would facilitate their appropriation following the collapse of the universal order.
Early post-Neritsovid developments
The sustained and painful collapse of the Neritsovid order over the course of the 18th century and the emergence of various de facto independent states from the wreckage necessitated a radical rethinking of Vaestopolitics. New polities needed above all to give theoretical and legal grounding to their independence. One way of doing this, at least for those states whose borders happened to coincide with those of an ancient Banner organisation, was to centre the claims to autonomous rule invested in those Banners, an approach which was often (but not invariably) combined with a claim to separate imperial authority. The Great Imperial Restoration of 1701 paved the way by resurrecting the pre-Neritsovid Banner of the Greater West and placing it (alongside a Tirfatsevid imperial title) at the heart of Spytihnev Rozoevsky's claim to the imperial dignity, an example which paved the way for the consolidation of several medieval Lacrean banners into the Banner of Lacre Undivided in 1769 (followed a few years later by the Chotarian Restoration) and the creation of the entirely novel Banner of Great Pestul in 1792 (the Troborine Restoration). At the same time, other states which had retained a relatively strong association with banner entities throughout the Neritsovid period – in particular Mirokrai and Lutoborsk – came inexorably to place far greater emphasis on their own Banners alongside their more 'imperial' characteristics. And with the final decisive separation of the imperial and prophetic offices under the Majestic Peace and the subsequent election of Zavufniprourkah as the first independent Prophet, the idea of the 'Banner' as mediating the Cathedralist powers of the Prophecy (as opposed to the specifically imperial hierarchy of the territorial states) became a more or less unquestioned tenet of Vaestic interordinate law.
Emergence of the modern order
The close association clearly established within Vaestic political thought between sovereign political powers independent from the Emperor and sovereign banners independent from all other forces except the Universal Prophet was solidified further over the course of the 19th century. The ideal of universal empire, still popular but crumbling in the face of political realities, was dealt the coup de grâce with the failure of Spytihnev the Arbitrator's Cathedralist project in the Great Peninsular War (1837–1845) and the subsequent recognition of three separate Emperors and a Sovereign Marshalate in Lefdim at the Treaty of Tharamann; a secondary effect of Tharamann was the clear delineation of the hieratic responsibilities of the Offices of the Prysostaia, implicitly leaving the field open to states to act at their own discretion in other fields.
Over the course of the late 18th and 19th centuries, in tandem with the regularisation of the Vaestic hierarchy under the pressure of the Radiance, Banners became increasingly the central objects of cultic devotion, commanding the mass loyalty of the politically engaged public, itself a category that was rapidly expanding during this period. The extravagantly pious respect that is paid today to the physical Banners themselves and their countless honoured replicas to a large extent originates in this period, and was to some extent derived from a mimicking of the pre-existing cult of the Prophetic Banner, whose octadic form had always been held to be of supernatural origins. By the mid-19th century, minor Banner shrines had become a standard feature of residences in Outer Joriscia, even among the working classes, and any form of defacement or improper usage of the Banner was treated increasingly as tantamount to lèse-majesté. In this religiously charged setting the Banners became somewhat distinct from the courts of the Emperors that bore them, and in the 1888 Monsoon Revolution an ultimately unsuccessful attempt was made to invoke the Banner of the Greater West against its own Standard-Bearer, the Terophatic Emperor. The full consequences of the popular Banner cult would perhaps only be realised in the Outer Joriscian theatre of the Long War (1932–1958), during which the opaque policymaking and continuous territorial adjustments of the Vaestic courts strained and in many cases collapsed in the face of contradictions with the entrenched mass politics of Banner loyalty.
In the field of high politics the close association of Banners with sovereignty was meanwhile finally given formal legal expression at the Purity Council (1855). By the time of the Council there had already been more than a century's worth of gradual creep towards the bureaucratic and symbolic redefinition of Schools as belonging to this or the other Banner, including legal measures to regulate minor matters of practice or ordering the reproduction of the Banner on School premises. With the parallel idea of Empire restricted almost entirely to questions of land distribution and an idea of citizenship or subjecthood inherited from universal Vaestdom, Schools (and thus Banners) had also taken on much of the legal burden of categorising people as the responsibility and jurisdiction of one or the other state, resulting in several diplomatic incidents over foreigners' rights and obligations within the territory of another Empire. Standard-Bearers' ultimate authority in this regard was explicitly endorsed in a Prophetic Utterance by Zohyr I given at the Council. This Utterance also established the first standardised framework for resolving crimes and issues of orthopraxy committed by Vesnite foreigners.
The Purity Council also laid the foundations for the final form of the Banner system by standardising the electorate of the Prysostaic Debates, restricting it for the first time to Standard-Bearers. It is notable that only four Universal Prophets have been elected since the Purity Council, two with great difficulty, and that since 1926 (the Desecration of the Prophecy) the Debates have failed to elect a new Prophet entirely. Though the Prophetic Banner of the Universal Prophet continues in principle to maintain its universal precedence over all other Banners, without a personal holder of the office this pre-eminence now attaches only to the historically established laws and abstract 'living' form of the Sacred Prophecy, leaving the imperial Banners effectively sovereign over their various territories – though in many cases this sovereignty is now mediated through Marshalates that are often relatively autonomous countries in their own right.
See also
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