Parliament of Elland

The Parliament of Elland (a term arising originally from Middle Sabamic parlement, “discussion”) is the chamber of government of the country of Elland in central Messenia, and is headquartered in the 17th-century Stargazers’ Hall in the central Marjoribank district of the Ellish capital, Etherley. Unusually by modern Messenian standards, the Parliament is a single-chamber body; Elland is, indeed, the largest country in Messenia to be governed in such a manner.

While many Messenian polities – and virtually all of the first- and second-tier powers of the region – have gradually moved over time to an acceptance of a broadly-based political franchise (in name, if not necessarily always in fact), politics in Elland remains substantively the private preserve of the country’s nobility, who have the overwhelming majority in numbers within the chamber, and in particular the so-called “Great Houses”. While a growing number of Members of Parliament (MPs) are of more lowly birth, a member’s presence within the house is still predicated upon inherited status or financial position (and preferably both); the idea of a legislator – much less someone with the status of a Lord Chancellor – being someone as low-born as, say, the former Helmin alráðherra Auðgun Lárviður (the daughter of railway workers) would still be considered wildly unrealistic, if not actually impossible, in Elland even today.

Origins

Although a form of advisory council to the king of Elland existed almost from the founding of the kingdom by William I in 1479, it remained small and informal for much of Elland’s early history, and had no fixed head – or, more precisely, the king himself led the council and petitioned advice directly from its members. The convention of the council being led by the Lord Chancellor began only in 1565 with Roger de Brus, the Earl of Vardham, exercising that role.

The first moves towards something resembling the modern Parliament came about with the convening of the Council of Etherley in 1632, in which the then Lord Chancellor Alban Osterley, Duke of Cottesmore, brought together the most prominent liegemen of the late king Stephen I (who was Cottesmore’s son-in-law) to push through an acceptance of Stephen’s eldest son, also Stephen, as his successor in the absence of a clear candidate according to normal Ellish rules of inheritance. While this was very much an emergency measure, it became the precedent under which a more permanent structure was developed by later monarchs. The first such gathering took place in Floridy 1651, during the reign of Stephen II’s brother Peter II, and the operating protocols of the new Parliament (a name applied to it as early as 1660) took more recognisable shape under the rule of Peter’s half-brother and successor Roger II.

The beginnings of the current two-strand system within the Parliament date from 1779, early in the reign of Charles II. Dissatisfaction with the rule of Charles’ predecessor Henry III had grown substantially since the Blessed Conciliation of 1771 and the end of the Third Reform War, with many parliamentarians scathing in their criticism of Henry’s “blind pursuit of glory” and the sizeable debts run up by the royal house during the war. (Against this, it must be observed that many of Henry’s harshest critics had been firmly in support of the war during its early years.) However, the sheer number of members – at the date of the Conciliation almost 1,800 individuals had membership rights, and parliamentary votes rarely encompassed even a third of that number – was such that the king could, in the eyes of many observers, largely ignore the Parliament if it suited him to do so. The historian Albert Foulsham, himself a later Lord Chancellor (in office 1935-36) described the position thus: “never did so many great and noble men mutter so feebly into their beer.”

The incumbent Lord Chancellor, Henry Osterley de Bain, could not necessarily be regarded as a neutral in the debate – he was the son of Henry II and a cousin to both Henry III and Charles himself – but it has been argued that only someone of such unimpeachable credentials in the eyes of the House of Osterley could have forced through the changes which came about in the Parliament during Charles’ early reign. Using government tax rolls and the patchwork of templelands by which the Argan of Elland was administered, de Bain divided Elland into 500 districts, or hides; after almost two years of persistent effort, he gathered enough support in the chamber to force through the laws by which a member would be elected from each hide, and by which only such elected members would be able to cast a vote on any matter which came before them. No member who had a current right to sit would be expelled – nor his designated heirs – but they would henceforth be confined to observation and participation in debates. The current Parliament, although the number of hides, and thus voting members, has increased, is thus fundamentally still de Bain’s creation; and in the process de Bain established himself as the first Lord Chancellor to explicitly speak for the Parliament and liaise with the king on its behalf – in many respects a reversal of the arrangement begun with de Brus.

Operations

Membership of Parliament is essentially a two-tier system. At the basic level, any person holding an Ellish patent of nobility may attend Parliament and may speak on any matter presented before it; 767 such patents are currently recognised by the Court Atreal, which has final authority over matters of arms in Elland, and their holders are termed observing members (OMPs). By convention, representatives of the Argan of Elland and individual families within it are also accorded the status of OMPs. Attendance by observing members is voluntary and, in many cases, is confined to those nobles with sufficient time, wealth and / or proximity to the capital to be present on a regular basis. However, only members who have been specifically chosen by an electorate pr hide outside the Parliament may vote on its business; these members, currently numbering 596, are referred to as substantive members (SMPs). There is no bar to a nobleman being an OMP and an SMP simultaneously; indeed, over the years many of the country’s most prominent statesmen have been drawn from these senior ranks. However, the majority of SMPs, certainly in the last century, has been drawn from the sons and cadet branches of these noble houses, and from the upper gentry.

Inheritance of patents of nobility – and with them potential membership of the Parliament – has been open to women since 2001 since changes in the law which modified the principles of uterine primogeniture enshrined in Elland's primarily Sabamic-derived legal code. However, in the relatively short time since the revisions, only twenty-three titles of nobility are held by women. The distaff complement among SMPs is somewhat larger, with thirty-nine women among the Parliament’s current complement.