>Call it empire >It is actually an confederation of dukes.

>>55169855
This surely warrants a whole thread

>>55169855
so a HRE expy?

So?

Calling countries something they aren't is a time honored tradition.

Empire has more prestive, so even if it isn't really an empire, the people in charge'll call it an empire. Image is everything.

>>55169855
BBEG (ugh)

>>55169855
Yeah and they call the United States of America a democratic republic.

>>55169855
>confederation
>of dukes
Or of duchys? Because if it was actually a confederation of dukes, that would be weird

>>55169855
>>55169901
And Democratic People's Republic of Korea is also democratic.

>>55169901
Well, avtually that is accurate. The people are governed by representatives, making it a republic. But the process of choosing the most important representatives is democratic, so while the US has its problems, the label "Democratic Republic" is still fitting for it.

>>55169877
>call it an empire
>actually an electorate

>>55171069
A Republic is the form of government. The Democracy is where the source of authority comes from.

>>55169855
China kind of worked like that during the Chin and Han. As did the HRE. And the later Roman empire

>>55169941
Nope, title is more important than territory in this theoretical 'empire'.
Not sure where to go from there, though.

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>an empire that spans a galaxy
>it's called The Galactic Empire
>they're the bad guys

>>55173132
>Duchy
>territory
A duchy is primarily the estate, as in title and power belonging to the title, of a duke. It's a political entity, not merely a piece of land.

>>55169855
That's how my empire works.
>Electoral monarchy
>Collection of unrelated petty princes

I mean while this thread is up can someone explain how an empire differs from a kingdom or other forms of government? Or is it just a title and name thing?

>>55173851
One has an emperor and one has a king.

>>55173305
You sould've called it an Impirium instead

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>>55169855
>call it empire
>it is actually just a single castle and town

>>55173878
That's what I figured, thanks.

>>55173851
Empires tttadiotinally hold sovereignty over cultures and nations (not nation-states)that are different from the core imperial culture.

Also, emperors aren't necesarily hereditary.

>>55173907
>Call it a empire
>Its a City state at best
>With no extra soil or trade

>>55169889
Big Bad Empire Guy?

>>55171069
>oligarchy

>call it a People's Republic
>actually an authoritarian dictatorship

This kind of thing happens a lot, generally for 2 reasons:
1. They are not the kind of nation they claim they are, but are trying to convince other nation states (or themselves) that they are.
2. They started off as one kind of nation but slowly changed over time.

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>setting has an emperor
>not a sexy empress instead

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>call it an empire
>it's actually a Queendom

>>55173983
Also the definition of an empire isn't really clear cut, and doesn't really boil down to being ruled by an emperor. Akkadian Empire wasn't primarily differentiated by any previously existing city-states or larger realms by the title of its ruler, for instance.

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>>55173929
>It is called a Big Bad Evil Guy, when it is neither big, bad, evil or a guy

>>55174070
If it's a queendom then it's different from a kingdom ruled by a queen. A queendom implies a matriarchal structure, which would mean Enatic succession (females before males), which (aside from very small and obscure examples or tribal societies) has never been done in history.

>>55174079
British Empire was ruled by kings and queens until Victoria titled herself Empress of India.

>>55174189
What if the Queen is a vainglorious immortal demigoddess and hasn't needed to establish succession? She probably gets a thrill out of being so singularly important enough to insist on a unique government.

>>55169855
LANDSRAD GET OUT

REEEEEEEEEE

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>>55169855
>
>
>

>>55169855

Look at history. The Holy Roman Empire.

>>55174189
Weren't a significant number of North American tribes something like that? Kids living with the mom and her siblings?

Pretty sure I've also read about individual matrilineal households in generally patrilineal cultures. Happened in the south of France now and again iirc.

>>55174221
Autocracy?

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>>55169855
>call a thing what it is
>ignorant confused peasant face dot jpeg
>mfw

>>55173851
There isn't a solid definition. On a universal level, a "king" is just the monastic ruler of a state. An "emperor", on the other hand, originated in an extremely Western/Latin context. Originally, an "emperor", as we know it today, was just the Emperor of Rome, and no other person in the world was described like that. As Rome spread and fell, the definition of what classifies an "emperor" began to mold within different regions. Over time in Europe and the Middle East, the concept of an "emperor" shifted from being a title with a specific meaning to really just a king who is considerably powerful. Of course the term gained even more ambiguity later on as Westerners began to describe people far from Europe as being emperors, like the Aztecs, Inca, Chinese, Japanese, and others, even though they were really just kings or their own versions of "exceptionally powerful king"s.

You might hear from some that an empire is a state (usually monastic) that encompasses several different regions and/or cultures, but that's a very modern idea that was just made up to try and give a very vague term an actual meaning, though it doesn't work because it's hardly applicable to states we generally refer to as empires.

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>>55169855
>Call it democracy
>It is actually a communist dictatorship

>>55173132
Then why would call themselves dukes and not kings?

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>>55173851
>>55173878
I always tought the main difference was that an empire was colonolialist and traded with conquered and generally intracted with different cultures and ethnictities and so on, over large distances, possibly intercontinentally (or at an interplanetary or interstellar scale, depending on how soft your scifi is.) The the gist of it is>>55173916.

Also,
>Also, emperors aren't necesarily hereditary.
is a very good point, nearly all medieval ( so the HRE) and early modern empires have been elective monarchies, except the Habuburg monarchy, after the Thirty years´war
That one in fact started after we Czechs choose not to elect a Habsburg to the throne, instead selecting one of the other electors, an influential count, as Emperor, and our local King (in title subordinate to the Emperor, also pic related), triggering the first phase of one of the largest religious and political wars of the early modern period. After the war ended and the Habsburgs destroyed our cultural elite or forced it into exile, and also recatholicised us after close to 300 years of being deligtfully heretical, nearly-Protestants, they also transitioned to a herediatary succession in the whole empire, ending the longest-lasting exmple of elective monarchy.

>>55175127
Adding on to this, in the middle ages there was an important christian element to this. The idea of 'Empire' was defined as being both the successor to Rome and the leader of universal Christendom. This was one of the reasons for the split between each and west - by that logic, there could only be one Emperor and one Empire, so the HRE and Byzantium saw each other as illegitimate. This problem was only really solved in 1453, when Ottomans conquered Constantinople, but it reappeared when Russia tried to take Constantinople's mantle. The Renaissance gave rise to the idea that Christendom was composed of separate, sovereign states, making the idea of a 'universal christian empire' less important, and making the term 'emperor' just another status symbol.

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>>55174300
>holy
>roman
>empire

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>>55169855
>Call it empire
>It's actually an ancien regime kingdom going full WE WUZ and not a more autocratic continuation of a republic

>>55175223
Possibly because their definitions are strict enough that you actually have to own a recognized kingdom to be a king, and none of them do because all the potential kingdoms are broken up into duchies.

>>55169901
>United States of America
>only 23% of America is in it

>Call it an empire
>Its led by a king

>>55177801
>Implying America is one continent
>implying there were any other actual countries on either continent at the time of the US founding

>>55177976
>United States of Mexico
>United States of Brazil
I wish they would've gone with United States of Columbia. That would give Colombia problems but meh, that's up to them to solve. But then again, Americans are pretty retarded when it comes to naming conventions.

>We need a new capital, because for some reason the old one isn't good enough
>Let's name it after our first president
>Let's ALSO name this state all the way in the west after our first president
>Oops, that's confusing
>What should we do to avoid confusion? Change the capital to Distruct of Columbia?
>Nah, we'll call it Washington - District of Columbia
>Because that's not confusing at all

>>55177801
49/50ths of global superpowers are in it tho.

>>55178021
>implying mexico or brazil were countries at the time of the us founding
We're not changing it just because some other colonies got their freedom 100 years too late. Snooze you lose, Mexico.

>>55169889
>not-[SETTING]

>>55174046
That is one of the most ridiculous outfits I've ever seen

>>55173305
>New Planet
>It's all one Biome
>All life on the planet is Omnipresent. Gaardvarks can be found both at the equator and the poles. Mazziki Brahmin can be found on all three major continents


>Want to play a sci-fi game
>Every game jumps from "Jupiter is really far away and takes weeks to get there" to "I just came in from across the Galaxy, and I forgot to bring my lunchable with me, where's the grub?"
>No storytelling in our local grouping of stars where interstellar travel even between neighbors is a large undertaking
>Always one race or sixty bajillion with unique hats, no inbetween

>>55173898
It's still be the bad guys

>>55173851
There was only ever really one empire, that of Rome.

Rome had killed their kings and loathed the idea of kingship, so when Augustus "saved" the republic by establishing a de facto kingship, he called himself imperator rather than king, because he was good at propaganda like that, and Rome became an empire.

Now when Rome fell in the West, the Pope crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor, and of course there was still a Roman emperor in Constantinople, and once that falls to the Turks, the Russians claim the mantle of true Rome, and so the Zar (from Caesar), becomes The One True Emperor (tm).

Now of course, no one wants to be outdone by the Russians, so France and Britain quickly find something their rulers can become emperors (like India). And then people just kind of start using it randomly, for the rulers of China and Japan, say.

>>55178021
Neither of those were sovereign nations at the time of American Revolution, however. At that point in time, all of the settled (besides the places that the natives were still sovereign) lands in the New World were subject to some European crown or another. Don't think of the various American states as provinces, at the time they were a collection of independent nations. As they were the only sovereign, independent states in America at the time, and they were entering into a political union with each other, it's perfectly logical for the union to be named the "United States of America"

As for why they needed a new capital, the idea was that if you have the capital in a particular state, it creates a "first among equals" situation. Having the seat of government in an independent Federal district outside of the control of any one state instead of any particular state prevents this.

>>55178304
A king rules over his people, and Emperor rules over many peoples, that's the gist of it.

I wrote a paper on this in college, I can go on but I won't bore you with the details.

>>55178304
To be fair, France was the only country that actually had an Augustus-like emperor since the fall of Constantinople. Napoopan read his classics.

>>55169855
>it's actually confederacy of dunces

>call it an democracy
>it's a monarchy

fuck you britain

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>>55174147
>>55176766

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>>55178575
>Call it a democracy
When and by whom? Britain has never been a democracy and isn't one today either (as Peter Hitchens freely admits). It's the only country in modern day Europe (except maybe Belarus) that rejects popular sovereignity in favor of parliamentary sovereignity.
>Inb4 semantics
That would be a good point if the upper house of parliament wasn't full of clergymen and nobility of birth. Britain is still very much an aristocracy, just one that panders to the masses more because they can't just ignore what everyone else in Europe is doing. This is also why prior to Brexit all EU legislation had to be "reaffirmed" in parliament (even though it was impossible to reject this as it would be a violation of EU treaties) and why technically the Brexit referendum was meaningless (but ignoring it would be political suicide, at least for the lower house).

>>55178659
It isn't exactly full of clergy, they all got thrown out a few years back, and although there are still a lot of hereditary peers, there are less than there were and to be perfectly honest even they are better than the dickheads that the political parties nominate for peerage just to have some more of their own in the house of lords.

>>55178715
>and to be perfectly honest even they are better than the dickheads that the political parties nominate for peerage just to have some more of their own in the house of lords.
Just because you point out the flaws of modern democracy doesn't mean Britain is suddenly a democracy. It isn't, never has been and has fought bloody wars to prevent other countries from becoming democracies.

>>55169855
So OP how do you use sign language in your settings?

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>>55173305
>an empire that spans a galaxy
>it's called The Galactic Empire
>they're the good guys

>>55169877
Came here to say this. Literally the Holy Roman Empire

>>55169855
why cant it be called the "empire of confederate kingdoms"

>>55179468
they were pretty much Nazi's before he took over though

>>55179686
>Nazis
>bad guys

>>55179646
Because Confederates are bad anon, it has a negative connotation because of that one war that happened that one time in one countries history

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>>55169855
>Call it a Duchy
>Actually a conclave of Barons

>>55179689
but no, really. The Emperor was a lunatic who killed people just for being different or political oppnents

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>>55179686
Yeah, but this is after.

>>55171069
Once the senate, and still the Supreme Court, were appointed directly, that's a significant chunk of the federal government.

>>55173898
Imperium refers to authority and is not any type of actual government.

Is this the historical form of polity thread? Cool

I need help assembling a loosely confederated system of planets that degenerated over centuries of isolation, war, and disaster from a corporate conglomerate meant to establish human colonies (and exploit the planets for resources and money) into a series of medieval-esque fiefdoms whose technological level is juxtaposed against (but sometimes justifying of) the anachronistic system of their governments.

In these colonies, originally, everyone was an employee, and employee's received genemodding to make them better at their jobs and as a form of IP protection for equipment. In return for the new lands to settle, the equipment, the infrastructure, and the protection the colonist "Employee's" paid out a portion of the resources they produced to the company, who used it to justify the expense and to pay their own taxes back home. Their role as totally just "employee's" and not serf was ostensibly to be enforced by government regulators who were intended to enforce a charter agreed upon by the corporation and the earth nations who allowed and helped to finance the endeavor.

However, THING happened, where THING is some sort of yet to be determined disaster that completely cut the colonies off from Earth, leaving them stranded, and they couldn't just go on with business as usual and pretend forever. Though by god they tried. Eventually, they all started to be in it for themselves, and the human rights of the "Employees" took a dramatic skew as treatment became less to be hinged on some nebulous concept of human dignity and the inalienable rights of their home world (from whom they were generations separated now anyway with many having never seen it) to their value to the "Company", which had long since fragmented down to the planetary or even continental level. The Government Regulators and their descendants who were left were completely cut off from earth and thus the source of any of their authority and disregarded.

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>>55179693
Hello George Lucas.

>>55179850
cont

As it happens, humans being humans, people began to fight over this or that. Since they were colonial in nature and the local wild-life only varied from earth-like to Australia level of danger, military equipment was minimal. Of course they quickly began to manufacture their own, and found load lifters and things made from their template to be a valuable form of walking tank.

Yes, it's a Mecha setting, deal with it.

Load Lifter Operators retained a bit of social and political authority thanks to the organization of labor unions and the fact they were all keyed to various gene-mods they used - they were taller and more robust than most humans, and their equipment could only be used by them and their like because of registered gene-keys.

Eventually this would become a new social class of knights over a series of wars, who over time would become the military leaders and, eventually realizing their authority and the lack of unity the executives had, would then become rulers themselves in a coup, assisted by the descendants of government regulators (who had the gene-coding and access to what little actual military hardware there was, which still outstripped what the colonies could produce at the time), with the promise that a return to the Earth Charter was in store. A promise that was quickly broken and the remaining government regulators and their descendants rounded up and killed, their caches of hardware stripped apart for study or re-purpose

It is now even further down the line, society has regressed(?) to a feudal state, albeit one in which the nobility (or, Executives as they are called) are actually-factually superior to the common man in body and mind thanks to in-vitro genetic modification and grooming, and the fact they are the only ones who can use the big guns, the mecha Curiasses which are descendant from the old load lifters. Worlds which were once colonies or collections of manufacturing are now fiefdoms ruled by Executive Boards. TBC

>>55174205
>until Victoria titled herself Empress of India.

Wrong, Anon. Victoria didn't create the title or demand parliament create it. The dumpy little fishwife didn't have the imagination for that.

Disreali made Victoria an empress to flatter her, gain her favor, and prevent her fussing about certain current & proposed legislation, government appointments, and the like. Disreali often said that when in come to royalty you lay flattery on with a trowel.

>>55174516
>Weren't a significant number of North American tribes something like that? Kids living with the mom and her siblings?

I know the Navajo did and still do in large part. The population is divided into clans, although gens is a better description. As a child, you have a "born to" clan (maternal) and a "born for" clan (paternal). A father moved from his family unit to his wife's family unit and stayed there for the duration of the kid(s) childhood.

>>55179986
>TBC

Don't bother and take your "questions" to /m/

>>55179689
Yes, shockingly extreme evil genocidal ideologies like nazism and communism are indeed bad guys.

>>55179693
So call it a league, like the ancient Greek confederations.

>>55179468
But both sides are the good guys. That's literally the point.

>>55179704
Rudolf had been dead for 500 years. Josef was just an old man who knew his dynasty was coming to an end soon enough.

>>55179852
but that was a federation

>>55169855
As long as a state has politiical or military power multi-ethnic society, it can be defined as an Empire.

>>55178021
If you aren't American I'll tell you we just say Washington D.C. or Washington state

Very rarely is it confusing to us

>>55178751
That's because The magna carta has made aristocracy a burden not a luxury for centuries

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>>55174070
>have a Queendom
>fail to call it a Queensryche

>>55179634
But they elected an emperor who had a great deal of power

Was literally crowned as emperor by pope

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>>55183236
It was still called a confederacy.

>>55169901
F*CK DRUMPF

TWO SCOOOOOOOPS

AMIRITE

>>55186116
He sometimes had a great deal of power. Some of the emperors were able to beat the other princes and dukes into line and turn the HRE into a true empire, however briefly. Most of the time, however, they were all too indebted to the people they had to bribe into voting for them to actually do much.

>>55184382
Meanwhile the democratically elected parties have destroyed English Law which served to protect people from the state. I'd rather live in an autocratic aristocracy if I got more rights and freedoms than the current ever shrinking freedom under a democratic system.

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>>55186137
/tv/ pls

>>55186183
Source please.
not because I don't believe you but because I am intrigued and would like to find out more

>>55186137
DAS RIIIIITE