Imperial Edict

An Imperial Edict, in Vaestopolitics, is an executive order issued by a sovereign Emperor, originally the Emperor of the Vesnites. Along with the Imperial Utterance the Imperial Edict is one of the two key instruments of Vaestic governance. Edicts are typically made in a specific formulaic style characterised by use of the third person imperative. Whilst the Imperial Utterance is taken to represent a statement of fact and is used by convention primarily to establish regulatory law, an Edict is a binding instruction to carry out a specific action or series of actions.

The practice of promulgating orders from the Emperor was already well-established under Chotar and the Secotes too had their own traditions surrounding such orders. The Neritsovid emperors adopted the Edict style almost wholesale from the Tirfatsevid Emperors who preceded them. Under Sobiebor II the text was altered by Scholarly recommendation to contain more Vaestic language and to recognise the unification of the positions of Emperor and Prophet, producing the first recognisable example of a Vaestic Imperial Edict. During the early Neritsovid period Edicts were used relatively sparingly, but over the course of the Empire's history and thereafter as state bureaucracies became larger and more complex the Edict became enshrined as the sole means of issuing executive commands.

Although initially governors, Marshals and other office-holders made use of documents whose names and language suited their subordinate status, during the gradual breakup of the universal Empire which took place during the Crown Wars period various polities began to assert their right to issue Imperial Edicts proper. Despite the variety of languages and government structures in modern Outer Joriscia Imperial Edicts show a remarkable consistency across countries. The Sobiebor-era wording and structure is reflected in the phraseology of all contemporary Edicts, even in states like the Lutoborsk which were never directly governed by the Neritsovids.

Today, although all Edicts are still issued in the name of the Emperor of a given Banner-State, many are produced by bureaucratic procedure and will never be seen by the Emperor in question assuming normal conditions hold.

Perhaps the most famous Edict, at least in Messenia, is the Edict of Oblition.