{"id":228,"date":"2013-01-17T19:03:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T19:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/?p=228"},"modified":"2013-01-17T19:03:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T19:03:00","slug":"worldbuilding-complexity-in-the-political-landscapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/worldbuilding-complexity-in-the-political-landscapes\/","title":{"rendered":"Worldbuilding: Complexity in the Political Landscapes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As part of <i>Way of the Shield<\/i>, I&#8217;ve been delving deeper into the politics of Druthal.&nbsp; In doing so, I&#8217;m taking into account the same thing I said about <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmaresca.com\/2013\/01\/perils-of-writer-villains-made-of-straw.html\">strawmen villains<\/a>, but taking that to a macro scale.&nbsp; Sure, it would be easy to break the Parliament into two sides, and say, &#8220;This side are the right-thinking heroes, and this side are the villainous morons&#8221;.&nbsp; But then you don&#8217;t have a story, you have a screed.&nbsp; If a screed is what you want to write, go for it.&nbsp; Didn&#8217;t hurt Ayn Rand&#8217;s sales.&nbsp; But that doesn&#8217;t interest me.<\/p>\n<p>Druthal is a Parliamentary Monarchy, in which I&#8217;ve played some mix-and-match with aspects from traditional monarchies, parliamentary systems and healthy dose of US-style democracy.&nbsp; It&#8217;s not a perfect system.&nbsp; It&#8217;s not supposed to be.&nbsp; It&#8217;s a messy, flawed sausage grind, and that&#8217;s what I like about it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Druth Parliament probably has more in common with the US Senate than, say, the British Parliament.* &nbsp; There are 100 members (Chairs) to the august body, 10 from each of the archduchies.&nbsp; Each Chair serves a 5-year term, with no term limits.&nbsp; Elections are staggered, so every year there are two chairs per archduchy up for re-election.&nbsp; Chairs are ranked by seniority, so the 1st Chair of Acora is the longest-serving member from that archduchy, 2nd Chair of Acora is second-longest, and so on to 10th Chair for the newest member.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Elections are not winner-take-all, since two Chairs are available in any given election.&nbsp; Once votes are counted and illegitimate ones are tossed**, the top two candidates receive the Chairs. &nbsp; Since no candidate needs an actual majority to win a Chair, there are more than two political parties holding Chairs in the Parliament.&nbsp; In fact, there are six.***<\/p>\n<p>Now, in designing these six, it was very important to give each party a valid platform that people can believe in.&nbsp; No one is &#8220;wrong&#8221;. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Traditionalists<\/b> (or &#8220;Dishers&#8221;, colloquially) believe in the fundamental necessity of archduchies (and below that, duchies and baronies) understanding their own needs.&nbsp; They want to maintain and strengthen the local authority of minor nobility; a baron knows his own barony better than anyone else, after all.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><b>Loyalists<\/b> (&#8220;Crownies&#8221;) believe that Druthal needs to stand as a united nation, that a strong center, where everyone is given access to the same infrastructure, rights and opportunity raises the whole nation up.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><b>Free Commerce <\/b>(&#8220;Minties&#8221;) believe that Druthal grows by trade and business, and by providing the means for commerce to thrive (including secure, easily traveled roads, well-protected sea-routes and minimal taxes and tariffs), the average Druth has the opportunity to succeed on their own merits.<\/li>\n<li><b>Ecclesials<\/b> (&#8220;Books&#8221;) believe in the fundamentals of community and moral centers, and that the grounding the church gives serves the needs of the people, on a local level, far more than any well-meaning directive from the capitol.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><b>Functionalists <\/b>(&#8220;Frikes&#8221;) do not hold to specific ideologies of &#8220;what is good for Druthal&#8221;&#8211; what&#8217;s good is what works; if it doesn&#8217;t work, you don&#8217;t keep grinding at it.&nbsp; They do tend to believe that simple, small steps work better in the long run than grand, sweeping gestures, and that moderation is the key to functionality.<\/li>\n<li><b>Populists<\/b> (&#8220;Salties&#8221;) believe that the people themselves are the backbone of Druthal, and that the core industries of day-to-day living (farming, ranching, mining, fishing, etc.) are the true center that everything is built off of.&nbsp; By helping the people who do those things, all of Druthal is helped.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, in order to actually get anything done in the Parliament, of course, coalitions must be formed.&nbsp; Loyalists and Free Commerce tend to vote together one way, and Traditionalists and Ecclesials tend to vote together the other way, and Functionalists and Populists tend to be swing votes.&nbsp; In 1215, when <i>Way of the Shield<\/i> takes place, the Ruling Coalition consists of the Loyalists, Free Commerce and the Functionalists&#8211; with the Frikes being the uneasiest of allies&#8211; holding 53 Chairs.&nbsp; Traditionalists and Ecclesials form the Opposition Coalition, with 41 Chairs.&nbsp; The Populists do not belong to either Coalition, but with only 6 Chairs, they have the weakest voice in the Parliament.&nbsp; However, since the Frikes are the least likely to vote with uniformity, the Populists can be a crucial swing vote on any given issue.<\/p>\n<p>All of this, of course, is mostly the under-the-surface part of <i>Way of the Shield<\/i>; I&#8217;ve gotten more infodumpish here than I do in the actual text.&nbsp; The important part, for me, is the shades of grey.&nbsp; There is no these-people-are-right-these-people-are-wrong dichotomies.&nbsp; I have heroes on both sides of the aisle, as it were, and villains as well.<\/p>\n<p>And for me, that makes for a more interesting story.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<br \/>*- This is mostly because I am American, and I&#8217;m far more familiar with our government than anyone else&#8217;s.&nbsp; <br \/>**- Most common form of this tends to be people voting for someone ineligible; namely, someone who is already serving and isn&#8217;t actually up for re-election in that cycle.<br \/>***- At least, six that have members in the Parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As part of Way of the Shield, I&#8217;ve been delving deeper into the politics of Druthal.&nbsp; In doing so, I&#8217;m taking into account the same thing I said about strawmen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,16,77,76,10,74,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druthal","category-fantasy","category-genre","category-politics","category-process-of-writing","category-way-of-the-shield","category-worldbuilding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}