Imperial Utterance

An Imperial Utterance (High Secote: ⰂⰎⰀⰄⰟⰉⰝⰠⰔⰍⰑⰋⰅ ⰔⰎⰑⰂⰑ, Vladyčĭskoje slovo), in Vaestopolitics, is a binding legal assertion expressed prototypically either in spoken or more typically in written form by an Emperor, originally the Emperor of the Vesnites. Strictly speaking it is a declaration that something is so, and is therefore distinct from an Imperial Edict which takes an imperative form ordering an action to be taken as for example in the Edict of Oblition. Utterances are made in a specific formulaic style, and were modelled on existing Secote–Chotarian conventions of lawmaking which typically involved a spoken announcement by the ruler which was then promulgated by town criers and messengers. During the early Neritsovid period, the oral convention began to disappear as the number of Utterances issued by the Emperor rose precipitously in line with the growth of the Scholarly bureaucracy.

The category of Utterance in itself is broad and covers documents with a wide variety of functions. In the pre-Vaestic period its purpose was primarily to create imperial statute, and this use continued to be prominent under the Neritsovids even as Vaestic law developed along its idiosyncratic path away from statutory regulation and towards character analysis; Sobiebor II for example made broad use of Imperial Utterances in defining the required qualifications of the Scholar. Utterances were also the typical means by which specific offices and privileges were granted to individual subjects of the Empire, equivalent to Messenian letters-patent. This included even the lowest-level Scholarly appointments although these were typically made de facto by the Court of the Cloisters on the basis of local recommendations. The frequency of this latter function led to its bureaucratisation over the course of the Neritsovid period and eventually the formal separation of the office-granting Utterance as an Imperial Appointment in the post-Neritsovid period. As the name suggests, Imperial Utterances pertain technically to the imperial domain and not to the Banner. However, from the earliest Neritsovid Prophet-Emperors Imperial Utterances have been used by sovereign rulers in ways touching on questions like character judgement which belong to the hieratic domain and strictly speaking are not part of the imperial jurisdiction.

The legal mechanism of Utterances was adopted by most post-Neritsovid states, and the term continues to be used for legal documents. Specifically Prophetic Utterances continued to be used by the Prysostaia after the 1735 Lethpol Covenant and the election of Zafuvniprourkah in 1756. Prior to the death of the last Universal Prophet Zohyr II in 1926 and the Desecration of the Prophecy, the most conventional use for the Utterance was to settle points of dogma, as in the famous 1897 decree of Yorsephor establishing the modalities of Knowledge. Since 1926 it has been legally impossible for the Prysostaia to issue true Prophetic Utterances, and their function has been partially assumed by joint edicts of the Panarchate.