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Old 11-24-2020, 09:46 AM   #651
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

Here is one for a society deliberately intended to be gerontocratic and aristocratic. It is not intended to fit modern notions of fairness, but it is an interesting idea to arrange things.

Everyone on there majority has a vote unless disqualified by criminal behavior.

Every household head has an extra vote according to the number of issue (a family with three children has three notational votes as well as the individual votes of it's members).

Every head of an extended family similarly has notational votes for every one of two generations.

And so on. With every normal (more about that latter) death the notational vote disappears as does the individual.

Adoptions and illegitimate issue does not count in a household's notational vote. The reason is to prevent a paterfamilias bribing all his clients to accept nominal adoption. Exception are by special dispensation.

A notational vote may continue after death as a special award for service to the state. This is to prevent aristocrats from shying away from battle for political gain.

The implications of this are obvious; such a society may well develop distasteful customs like female cloistering and polygamy. Not to mention rather creepy attempts to throw the genetics into doubt by-you get the idea. And vendettas associated with such. Some of those things can be the focus of political intrigue. Romeo and Juliet plots are also an idea.
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Old 12-05-2020, 06:51 PM   #652
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#1
The homesteaders who inhabit the planet Hatfield fear demagoguery and populism. They distrust promises, because there really is no way to hold someone to what they have said; trust is stupid, because trustworthiness is only proven when it is proven wrong. As individualistic they may be in the insistence that each Hatfieldling has their own vast expanse of planetary surface to do with as they will, they long to see themselves in others and feel connected to a community. They have a representative democracy, but they choose those representatives by means of a year-long tournament of a game show remarkably like Family Feud. The repeated need to guess and predict how the majority of the populace would respond to questions both banal and profound, both inane and political, selects only the representatives who have internalized everyone's desires and thoughtways. Much easier to predict those will actually, y'know, represent the people.

Plus: universal entertainment.

#2
Primogeniture, it can be argued, privileges straight people and de-privileges other types who rarely do things that produce children, if you catch my drift. I tend to be in the latter group, and I have often considered what medieval models of kingship would look like if they were founded more on my kind of love and ancestorship than on other people's.

Primogeniture traces ancestorship by tracing birth to birth to birth to birth, but my people trace ancestorship often by tracing lover to lover to lover to lover. So what if the Divine Right of Kings (I'm significantly more familiar with European culture than East Asian, sadly, but I guess the Mandate of Heaven would be sufficiently equivalent) . . . was a sexually transmitted disease?

It still leaves out ace people, obvi, but it's interesting to consider. Hook up with the king, and become a king. I can imagine the Empire operating much like, say, L5R's Rokugan but without an actual emperor to petition. Just a varying number of semi-sovereign sub-polities that must diplomatize among themselves in order to do anything.
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Old 12-06-2020, 05:53 AM   #653
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

Government by drinking contest! The candidate who can outdrink all the rest is clearly the best candidate.
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Old 12-09-2020, 10:50 AM   #654
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Originally Posted by Pope Uncommon the Dainty View Post
It still leaves out ace people, obvi, but it's interesting to consider. Hook up with the king, and become a king. I can imagine the Empire operating much like, say, L5R's Rokugan but without an actual emperor to petition. Just a varying number of semi-sovereign sub-polities that must diplomatize among themselves in order to do anything.
I'm confused as to how this would work. Is it that anyone who hooks up with the sovereign becomes an equal co-ruler? The sovereign loses sovereignty to his/her paramour as soon as the deed is done? When the sovereign hooks up with someone they become part of the royal line, in chronological order? Something similar to the first, except the land is divided up between them?
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Old 12-22-2020, 04:09 PM   #655
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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I'm confused as to how this would work. Is it that anyone who hooks up with the sovereign becomes an equal co-ruler? The sovereign loses sovereignty to his/her paramour as soon as the deed is done? When the sovereign hooks up with someone they become part of the royal line, in chronological order? Something similar to the first, except the land is divided up between them?
The mates of the sovereign can be founders of local noble dynasties. Or drawn from such.
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Old 12-23-2020, 12:20 AM   #656
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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I'm confused as to how this would work. Is it that anyone who hooks up with the sovereign becomes an equal co-ruler?
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The mates of the sovereign can be founders of local noble dynasties. Or drawn from such.
So check out the very real position of Governor General Consort in Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicere...%20their%20own.

His Excellency John Ralston Saul, husband of then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, spent New-Years in 2003 in a trench in Afghanistan with Canadian troops.
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Old 12-23-2020, 11:16 AM   #657
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So check out the very real position of Governor General Consort in Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicere...%20their%20own.

His Excellency John Ralston Saul, husband of then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, spent New-Years in 2003 in a trench in Afghanistan with Canadian troops.
I was thinking more of a polygamous society where all the mates of the sovereign are ennobled and have a fief over a section of the country.
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Old 12-23-2020, 12:01 PM   #658
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Government by drinking contest! The candidate who can outdrink all the rest is clearly the best candidate.
With the government actually secretly run by the elusive Inebriati?

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I was thinking more of a polygamous society where all the mates of the sovereign are ennobled and have a fief over a section of the country.
Ah, yeah, I could see that. Call them Bedded Barons/Baronesses, if you'd like. Honestly, it seems likely a polygamous sovereign would grant titles to his/her paramours anyway, so this just a polygamous monarchy. A variant would be where the paramours are all somewhere in the line of inheritance of the crown, and are the only ones - offspring need not apply.
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Old 12-23-2020, 12:38 PM   #659
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With the government actually secretly run by the elusive Inebriati?



Ah, yeah, I could see that. Call them Bedded Barons/Baronesses, if you'd like. Honestly, it seems likely a polygamous sovereign would grant titles to his/her paramours anyway, so this just a polygamous monarchy. A variant would be where the paramours are all somewhere in the line of inheritance of the crown, and are the only ones - offspring need not apply.
Ibn Saud did the reverse. He made sure that every tribe in his realm was related to some way. As he only had four spaces at a time he made some of his wives temp work and usually reserved a place in case he had some reason for a rush job (like one time when he drummed up a local girl to prove he was still capable of producing princes).

In any case he did manage by skillful networking to get a connection to most of the chiefs in his country.
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Old 12-25-2020, 09:10 AM   #660
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A hierarchy and/or social network of interlacing magical geas.

A magical spell that mind controls you to the terms of an (hopefully consensual) oath, which upholds societial norms and laws. "Don't murder", for instance.
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