Government

[Johnny Cosmo]

For those of you who like to consider the politics of your world, which forms of government do you favour? Do you create hybrid governments? How do you alter governments as to remove restrictions and limitations, adapting them for your story? I am currently in the process of world-building, and this is one area I am hoping to get down properly as soon as I can, since my story will feed off political events.

 

[Codey Amprim]

Well it all depends what works best for your story and for your world. There is no right or wrong answer. You could have your story revolve around an Anarchist Barbarian tribe or a series of Dukedoms overwatched by a monarch. Whichever works for you!

Mine is, since you asked, something similar to the dukedom concept I just mentioned. Every Kingdom of my world serves one throne and is watched over by the Order the throne has created. That is all I shall hint to with my system, don't want to give everything away!

 

[Ravana]

To avoid repeating everything that was said earlier (particularly since I said much of it, and don't feel like retyping it ):

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/world-building/310-forms-government.html

As for what I use, I generally stick to forms that reflect European history–a stratified society with (largely) hereditary heads, though I also have considerable fondness for elective monarchies. I'm rarely interested in exploring "alternative" forms of governance in my fantasy… I save that for SF. Not that I'm unwilling to make some changes, mind you: most of my societies tend to be fairly egalitarian in terms of male and female roles, for instance, and religion is either de-emphasized or totally different from anything the real world has ever seen. But those have far more to do with overall practices than with who's in charge.

 

[Shadoe]

I think the form of government you create is going to depend on what you want to do with the story. In Naphyra, I've created three forms of government - three countries. One country is very religiously-oriented. They have their priests - the doomsayers - declare who is the leader of the tribe or city-state. There, politics is a matter of corrupting the doomsayers. In another country, the form of government is a monarchy with a massively complicated aristocracy with varying levels of power and influence. Their politics consists of everyone jockeying for power and land. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing there. Yet another country consists of 16 independent provinces with an emperor over them. Since they're fairly stable, politics there consists mostly of politics in the US - everybody trying to one-up everybody else.

So my advice would be to figure out what kind of stories you want to tell, then design a government that lets you tell those stories.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

Oh don't get me wrong, I have my own ideas for the form of government - I was just curious as to what other people are doing (perhaps in hope that it would inspire me to alter mine a little).

 

[Chilari]

In the story I'm working on at the moment, the government is a monarchy, but with the succession to the most suitable candidate rather than the eldest son of the king. Several people are eligable - the king's sons and nephews for the main part, but a few other individuals connected to the royal line but not directly part of it, such as generals and advisors who have married royal princesses. The successor is chosen by the King and his advisors before his death. He can change his mind at any time, too, provided he can give suitable justification.

In one of the stories I was working on a while back, which is currently on hold, there were three forms of government competing, following a plague that killed three quarters of the population: the existing monarchy, supported by traditionalists and those connected to it; a meritocracy, supported by elements of the army; and a sort of oligarchy, namely the rule of the major settlements by those with the greatest wealth - merchant princes, if you will, like in 17th century Italy. A sizable portion of that story was about how the main characters saw themselves in terms of which form of government they supported, and how this influenced the group dynamic; and also that each form of governance was supported by people who were unscrupulous and in some cases cruel. None of them were "the good guys", they were all flawed and none were really what would have been best for the main character group. The problem with that story, though, was that I was trying to do too much with it and possibly trying to do it in the wrong medium. Maybe it'd work as a TV show.

 

[Amanita]

In my world, there are mainly various forms of democracies which may or may not include everyone.
That's because my world's magic isn't hereditary and can turn up in anyone with people living under disadvanteged circumstances actually being more likely candidates. For that reason, they're forced to offer those people ways to rise if they don't want to risk severe trouble.
Another option I like to play with are totalitarian dictatorships. They can work quite well under such conditions if the people in power find those people striving to move upwards and put them in powerful situation and I especially like to explore how such systems work, why people accept them or why some do not.
I know that this is probably more common in Science Fiction but my world probably has some influence from there anyway even though it's a fantasy world and not Earth's future.

In spite of this, one of my countries did have an aristocratic government for quite a while (about 900 years). It worked well, because the magic in question was seen as absolutely evil among them and the majority supported the efforts to get rid of such people.
The fall of this system had other reasons as well.

 

[Ravana]

In another country, the form of government is a monarchy with a massively complicated aristocracy with varying levels of power and influence. Their politics consists of everyone jockeying for power and land. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing there. Yet another country consists of 16 independent provinces with an emperor over them. …

Hee hee. You interested in RPGing? Check out the "Machiavel: Ambition" forum if so.…

 

[Shadoe]

Hee hee. You interested in RPGing? Check out the "Machiavel: Ambition" forum if so.…

I'll have to check it out.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

As for what I use, I generally stick to forms that reflect European history—a stratified society with (largely) hereditary heads, though I also have considerable fondness for elective monarchies.

I'm currently going for an elective monarchy/pseudo-democracy hybrid. Alliances and partnerships play a large part in keeping single families in rule for a large amount of time - until the balance of power shifts. The King's council will put forward heads of Major houses from different cities as candidates. Minor houses pass their votes to major houses, who come to a consensus, then pass their vote to the council who do the same. It leaves a lot of room for corruption and tension, I think.

There are other organisations who can affect the struggle for the throne. A covert organisation that answers only to the current King might be bribed to back a house, carrying out propaganda and assassination missions. If the priesthood backs a house, then it is likely that they will get the capital cities vote.

Chilari: The problem I see with having the King and his advisors choose before his death is that they couldn't really know when he was going to die, could they? Surely, he'd want to have been King for a while before making such an important decision - but what if his life is cut short the day before he comes to a decision? Do the advisors just decide in his place?

 

[Chilari]

Basically, yes. Or if the king dies right after making a decision, but before that decision is publicly known, if the advisors don't like his decision or are the pocket of another candidate, then the decision may be, uh, misreported.

 

[Helbrecht]

The story I'm currently writing doesn't have too much of a political focus, but one I'm planning for certainly does. It's set in something not unlike the Holy Roman Empire in terms of political structure, only with eleven fairly large provinces rather than hundreds of little ones. Each province is formally titled a territory (literally just that) and is governed by a "territor" (going down the same linguistic route as "duchy - duke" and "barony - baron", etc.). Exactly how the office of territor works in each territory is different - some have a limited parliamentary assembly or diet drawn from the nobility, whereas others hold absolute control and others still impart significant executive power in the hands of the local priesthood. The title of territor is hereditary in some provinces and elective by the higher nobles in others. Each territor, however, is scrutinised and supervised by the priesthood, whose worship of language and writing makes them well-suited to bureaucracy.

The empire overall is a theocracy in which the aforementioned priesthood, which worships language (the "Word of Omnar"), forms the spine and central power broker of the whole thing. Whatever they write in a given ink is taken as being sacred truth according to this religion, which grants territors and smaller rulers their legitimacy. The man they declare to be an earthly avatar or host body of their god lords over the whole thing as an emperor (the "Herald of Omnar", or "His Voice").

Of course, there's a massive religious and social upheaval when a supposedly divine emperor is revealed to be a leper beneath his garments and armour. It's that sort of story.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

Basically, yes. Or if the king dies right after making a decision, but before that decision is publicly known, if the advisors don't like his decision or are the pocket of another candidate, then the decision may be, uh, misreported.

Like mine, you're story also leaves a lot of space for obvious corruption - which is cool.

 

[Ophiucha]

I never do any one thing twice, really. One of my stories - a political fantasy - is a communist, elective monarchy. One story is anarchy, for the most part, though there are communities aboard large ships (at sea) with various forms of government, though it isn't heavily explored as the setting of the story is not anywhere near the ocean. My current WIP is a monarchy of some sort, but it isn't really touched upon, so besides the fact that it is called the "Kingdom of Vulcamiel", I've got nothing. The story does span about six decades, though, so I might have it change to the "Republic of Vulcamiel", though again with little mention of the new government.

 

[sashamerideth]

I have a couple kingdoms, one democracy, and one group that is either a theocracy or religious anarchists as they are not lawfully controlled by any nation state. Mostly though it is town council or provincial government.

 

[Kevlar]

Where to start?

In my world every country has its own specific government. One might have some things in common with another, but nothing is exactly the same. For instance, in the main setting, Felesia, (mind the -ia ending, its a little cliché) the whole thing is mostly feudal: the king gives land (provinces) to lords (marks), who give land (banneries) to lords (bans), who give land (daneholds) to lords (danes), who give land (baronries) to barons, who give land (estates) to knights or freeholders, all for swearing your fealty to the guy one up from you. Even within this country there are exceptions, in the provinces of the Highlands and Éoma, as well as in the Marches, which are to the south and east. In the Highlands, instead of a mark there is the teyrn, and then the next rank is dane (often, to differentiate from the rest of danes, they are called high-danes; you can make a joke about great danes now if you like.) which is followed by knight, which is a little bit of a bigger deal than in Felesia. It shares these titles with the rest of Felesia because that's where the guy that conquered Felesia came from. In Éoma, they are ruled by a king, who accepts the King of Felesia as his overlord. The next rank is manthar, and then edyr, and then éo, which is like a cavalry captain. Everything revolves around horses in Éoma. Each march has a warden (Warden of the North or Warden of the East) instead of a mark. Also, the position of Warden is assigned by the king, not inherited.

A country in some nearby mountains, Amnar, has a system called the Clave. Their king is elected, but by the lords, not the people. There are 64 houses in the Clave, derived from their 8-based number system. So 64 is like their 100. They also have the High Clave, which is the eight most powerful houses, each owning one of the countries eight cities besides the capital. Its usually one of these guys who ends up being king, and therefore owning the capital until death. No terms of office: death or renouncing claim releases a king. Lordship of a house usually passes to the eldest son of the lord, but the lord can choose his heir ,and often does. If his sons (or daughters) still don't like it, they can bring it up before the rest of the clave, and then commences the pay-offs and threats.

An independent city (state-ish), called Fort Paragon, or simply Paragon in those same mountains allows the people to choose their king or queen. No public elections, simply public favour. The most popular choice leads, no matter of heritage, race (as in black/white, etc.), or sex. They have a bastard king at the moment.

The country to the north, Telmarill, used to have an emperor, but now it's a republic. The magisters are the lords, each ruling over a state. They can also have their vassals, though its rare, most only having knights. Anybody with vassals creates their own system, as there is no standardized one in Telmarill. Anyway, the magisters form a sort of senate, the Magistrate, but it does little and each magister basically makes his own decisions.

In slightly distant Bevaine there is an emperor, who is basically a useless figurehead. Despite the country truly being ruled by all the assassin, mercenary and merchant princes, the crime rate is extremely low, because these guys don't like disorder. Also, with no army this "empire" is the most militarily secure country on the continent. Because the assassins, mercenaries and merchants like their freedom. Bevanirs hired to invade Bevaine would just turn around and kill the man who bought them.

I'll stop now before I regurgitate the whole 40 some countries' governments, or those of the countries outside of Altheä. Plus some are extremely WIP anyway. Hopefully nobody minds too much that I'll take up so much screen space.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

It sounds like you've thought about this a lot. I do wonder though, how come you have thought out over 40+ governments? Do you ever get to writing your stories? If it were my world I'd feel a little worried that I wasn't focusing on getting the most out of just a smaller detailed area, but I guess everybody is different.

 

[Leuco]

This is a great thread! Looks like everyone put a lot of thought into this concept. It's cool checking out what everyone's come up with.

I noticed someone used the term political fantasy. I had no idea it was a real sub genre! I thought I was doing something original. Oops!

In my books, I focus mostly on American politics, but you know, if you break it down to its fundamental conflict, I think you'll find the conservative/liberal argument everywhere. I tried to create an allegory of sorts for the American extremes, but so far, I've only introduced three radical ideologies. They're mostly based on the conflicting stereotypes from cable news networks. The heroes in the story mostly try to stay out of the way, but eventually they get sucked into what builds up to be civil war. If that sounds familiar, that's because Primary elections are just around the corner.

I apologize in advance if this post leads to trolling.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

Leuco - that sound's very interesting. At the moment I'm trying to work in a parallel to the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples by a newly converted collection of co-operating recently-converted theocratic city-states that are rivals to my norse-inspired Kingdom of Men. it's not that similar other than using real world tension to fill out a backstory. Mine being a very old real world tension though, your's seems more striking since it's more relevant.

Care to expand?

 

[Kevlar]

It sounds like you've thought about this a lot. I do wonder though, how come you have thought out over 40+ governments? Do you ever get to writing your stories? If it were my world I'd feel a little worried that I wasn't focusing on getting the most out of just a smaller detailed area, but I guess everybody is different.

I've only thoought of names for most. Beyond that maybe half have a specific 'flavour' that I've thought of. Only about half of those I've actually gone into any farther. Only one has a map, the rest are just roughly plopped on a map of the continent, still subject to change. I find it just adds depth to have so many places to reference. Who's to doubt me when I say that man has the accent of a Hallolander, or that man's golden eyes and dark skin show him as a man of Haman, while a man alike to him but with brown eyes must be from Nebesaf or the Ageos continent? Who's to say any different when I say that sword has a Bevanish crosspiece, or that voulge is carved with the likenesses of the gods most worshipped in Teryl?

When I have things like this to reference to, even if the referenced culture is really just a shell, I feel that my world grows in depth tenfold. Plus all the countries I talked about in my last post will be important to the story sooner or later.