Empire (Vaestism)

In contemporary Vaestism, an Empire (High Secote: ⰂⰎⰀⰄⰟⰉⰝⰠⰔⰕⰂⰑ vladyčĭstvo) is a sovereign state. Its sovereign leader is known as an Emperor (ⰂⰎⰀⰄⰟⰋⰍⰀ vladyka).

Usage

The term Empire is today more or less synonymous with Banner-State in that all Emperors are Standard-Bearers and all Empires have a Banner. However, the two titles imply different aspects of a sovereign ruler's powers and duties: Emperor connotes military leadership and the distribution of land under imperial usufruct, while Standard-Bearer connotes the sovereign's role as viceregent of the Universal Prophet and responsibility for the collective Knowledge of the Banner.

Formally, an Empire is the sum total of the Emperor's inalienable property, i.e. the land under his exclusive ultimate possession whose distribution he is responsible for. This includes Marshalates, which the degree of de facto or customarily accepted autonomy enjoyed by the Marshal notwithstanding are formally a constituent part of the Empire. 'Empire' in this sense has a primarily territorial meaning, and questions of borders, passports and regulatory statute fall largely within the imperial sphere rather than that of the Banner. Inasmuch as they represent the property of Estates rather than autonomous human subjects, labouring slaves (Jobadniks) are also the jurisdiction of the imperial structure. In contemporary Vaestdom, however, almost all imperial institutions overlap exactly with those belonging to the Banner: Schools and their Vocation Scholars are simultaneously lower-level distributors of land in the imperial system and subjects of the Standard-Bearer in the Banner system; Marshals are both military-distributory deputies of the Emperor and junior Standard-Bearers. Likewise, in most countries Imperial Utterances and Edicts, despite formally pertaining specifically to imperial functions, are the typical mechanism for regulation of orthopraxy and the conduct of Banner processes such as character judgement.

All formally sovereign Vesnite rulers are considered to be both Emperors and Standard-Bearers, with the exception of the Universal Prophet, who stands above both in his temporal domain, Prysostea. Although the Prophet (or in his place the Prysostaic Council) functionally exercises the role of an Emperor within Prysostea, the region as a whole is considered to have the special status of 'reserved' land, i.e. land that stands within the defined borders of Vaestdom but outside any of the imperial subdivisions thereof. This status was first established by the Treaty of Tharamann.

History

The modern idea of Empire derives ultimately from a fusion of the Secote political and land tenure system of Kunentsydom on the one hand and the imperial ideology and consecrated land system of Fifth Chotar on the other. After the Secote conquest of Outer Joriscia in 1047–70, Chotarian ideas of the transcendent universal Emperor on the one hand and the distribution of agrarian resources by the state on the other were easily integrated with the Secote system of primitive tributary tax-farming (Ožidomy). The fundamental Outer Joriscian understanding of 'inalienable' property – i.e. that owned ultimately by the Emperor – can be traced directly to Chotarian practice, and was maintained albeit mostly as a legal fiction throughout the medieval period in spite of the political impotence of the Emperor of the Eastrons. The Emperor was conceived of as a universal ruler and superior at the centre of a system of hierarchical relations, regardless of the political reality.

The Emperor ideal was largely repudiated by early Vaestism, although much of its symbolic content was inevitably transferred to the Universal Prophet as leader of all Vesnites. However, as the horizons of Vaestdom expanded, the political realities of Vesnites living in hostile regions far from the welcoming bosom of Argotea sometimes meant accommodation with the imperial conceptions of their local masters. Attempts to incorporate the role of the Tirfatsevid Emperor into a Vesnite system were made in particular by Scholars active under the Banner of the Greater West. The weakness of the Universal Prophets during the Wars of Heresy also allowed the development of separate and largely autonomous centres of power within Vaestdom. The spread of Vaestism to the post-Secote Pseudolacrean nobility, meanwhile, made it almost inevitable that a bid for universal Empire would be made on the basis of a Vaestic claim. This bid was ultimately made by Nerits (r. 1490–1499), a Pseudolacrean petty prince who after much prevarication from Universal Prophet Siluve III (r. 1484–1498) secured the title of Emperor of the Vesnites in 1490, thus beginning the Neritsovid era.

The tension that existed between the Prophet on the one hand and the Emperor on the other was resolved by the third Emperor, Sobiebor II (r. 1516–1541), who united the two positions in one person for the first time. His son Spytistan I (r. 1541-1554)'s successful continuation of this anomaly secured the role of the Prophet-Emperor at the centre of the imperial system. In many ways the dual responsibilities of the Prophet-Emperor established the foundations of the modern duality of Empire and Banner, with the latter taking over many elements of Prophetic jurisdiction under the Empire. The trend during the Neritsovid period, however, was for the legal infrastructure of imperium – which arrogated to itself ever more fields of jurisdiction as the modern state grew – to be used to regulate matters pertaining to the Prophetic office. The Schools, too – which were an entirely alien element to the Secote–Chotarian concept of Empire as inherited by the Neritsovids - had in one fell swoop been brought firmly into the imperial structure with Nerits' dissolution of Kunentsydom in the former Tirfatsevid territories.

The Great Imperial Restoration of 1701 spelled the end for the Neritsovid order, with the subsequent Crown Wars leading to the entrenchment of two claimants to the imperial title; the coup de grace was delivered in 1778 with the Chotarian Restoration and the creation of an explicitly separate imperial order in Lacre. This was followed by the Ostroborovid Restoration of 1793, which created a third imperial jurisdiction implicitly recognising the general withdrawal from pretensions of universality. Various other de facto independent political powers had also emerged during this period, casting off the symbolic and institutional shackles of domination from Pestul (or indeed Axopol). The three-way division of the imperial office was formally enshrined in the interordinate system at the Treaty of Tharamann (1845). Tharamann's various articles recognised the division of the imperial-territorial jurisdictions of the Emperor of the Vesnites into three separate spheres, leaving the question of areas outside the actual control of the three Emperors largely unresolved but opening up new possibilities.

The legal argument that sovereign exercise of imperial power in itself constituted implicit imperial status – which had been developing for decades by this point – now came to the forefront. A claim to imperial status was first advanced by Agamar, Lutoborsk and Zemay after Tharamann. Following the Circuit War, the Purity Council of 1855 recognised all three of these claims, as well as giving imperial (sovereign) status to Lefdim. This enshrined the growing connection between imperium on the one hand and the Banner on the other. With the short-lived Empire of Kiy established under Daeena shelKevnu (r. 1872–1881) and the Savants and the creation of the Empire of Ascesia in 1897, by the end of the 19th century the term Empire had become paradigmatic for any state asserting its sovereignty.