The Aristocracy

Since the first days when humans spread across the stars, there has been an elite class of people whose lives are lived above the concerns of planetary society. The first Emperors formalized the role of this group in ruling human society, creating the Aristocracy as a clan entitled to a place at the heart of power. Some deride them as a group hungry for power and privilege without responsibility, while others see them as the backbone of the Empire. The political problems of the Empire are mirrored and magnified within the clan, often leading to divisions and strife. Since the Disappearance they have become more splintered than ever.

There are different aristocracies at all levels of human society - invididual planets, cities, even space stations - and within different factions. All of these are inter-related to various degrees, with many of the same factions convolved at different times and places in bewilderingly complex ways. Thus, confusion between them is probably unavoidable. Here we are referring to the Great Clan of the Aristocracy, meaning the otherwise-unaligned members of the Imperial Peerage; the group of people who are entitled to present themselves at the Imperial court.

History

The history of the Aristocracy is the political and military history of the Empire. Indeed, its ultimate origins may go as far back in time as the human race. Certainly,some of the more prominent peers claim lineage extending to prehistoric Terra, such as the Baburs of Great Delhi. Although few scholars take them seriously, and their claims translate to no real power, their genealogies are undeniably ancient. All who make this claim are family dynasties with hereditary titles. Their power base originally lay in industry; their ancestors were the businessmen who ran the first interstellar corporations, leading or financing the expansion of the Terran Sphere. Their influence expanded through the Great War, as they spread across the Human Federation. Indeed, many of these families are the de facto owners and rulers of entire planets, with which their names have become synonymous. For example, as well as the Baburs there are also the Pendragons of Avalon and the Valois of Sacre Coeur. The actual titles of these peers cover a very broad spectrum: Raja, Duke, Mswani, Count, Sultan and more, but are all ultimately local titles with no official meaning within the peerage.

After these first aristocrats came another group, consisting of those who led the Great War. While the Human Federation itself had no overall leaders, there was a War Council composed of representatives from those worlds. Because of the conditions of relativistic travel, over time this war leaderhip became a class to itself with real power. When the Willemsens built the Empire, part of the diplomatic price they paid was to enshrine them in the structure of the new government. The former power-brokers of the War Council carried over their titles - Legate, Ambassador, Speaker and similar things. All such titles are permanent, passed on from holders to nominees upon their death or retirement. When the old navy became the Imperial Navy, its leaders were also rewarded by being made members of the aristocracy for life. These titles are loosely tied to rank, held by officers ranking Admiral or higher. Although such peers hold their positions for life, emperors generally maintain a limit on the number of them. The effect of this is that usually a naval officer can only be promoted to Admiral when a retired officer vacates his peerage.

From the same age as the war council came a third group of "grandfathered" peers, representing the factions behind the council. To accommodate the Spartans and Spacers (formally known then as the Spartan League and the Guild of Spacers), the Founder enshrined the Clan system in the Human Heritage Covenant, part of the fundamental law of the Empire. This rewarded these factions with a number of permanent offices and titles, holders of which would be nominated according to their own internal procedures. Traditionally, they have also been granted many lifetime peerages, varying in number according to the current power of each group at court and favour with the emperor. This became the defining difference between a Clan and a Great Clan: the first had representatives at court, while the second had permanent representatives. Titles held by these peers vary according to their internal customs, although many of the permanent peerages held by the Great Clans are entailed with specific offices and responsibilities. Some of these internal titles are inherited: for example the Grand Dukes of New Kiev, held by aristocrats from the Gleb-Suzdal family, and the Chairman of the Board of Blue Tasman, held by the Fielding-Fuchuns family. Others are elected by various means, such as the Governor of the Space Station Campostella (an office held by a Spacer peer).

With time, the ranks of the aristocracy expanded further by different means. One large factor was the degree of intermarriage between the different factions at court, creating an entire population of people who felt entitled to be peers without any official basis. To accommodate them, Emperor Marius made the Aristocracy itself an official Great Clan, entitled to a number of lifetime and permanent peerages. The first Aristocrats were named directly by the Emperor, who nominated a very long list of petitioners. Clan membership since then (aside from the occasional direct nomination by the Emperor) is limited to children of two parents, one male and one female, who were both Aristocrats or both held peerages. (Note that clones and genetic hybrids are thus excluded). Contrary to popular impression, being a member of the Aristocracy does not automatically entitle one to be a peer. Aristocrats elect members of the Clan Council from among themselves and nominate a quota of peers (which, admittedly, has grown much with time). Lifetime peers from the Aristocracy carry the simple title "Peer," although those holding the permanent positions bear other titles according to their office.

The last group within the aristocracy are those nominated to the peerage by the Emperor as a reward for special service. Usually these peerages are given in times of war, often to powerful local figures. However, their ranks also include successful diplomats, tycoons, artists and scientists. It is also common for retired (and sometimes exiled) planetary leaders to be nominated to the peerage. Such peers usually carry the titles of Knight, or simply Peer. A notable exception are the descendants of the Marquis Calixus of Second Mycenae, whose deep space siege of a remote system of Crucians at Syrinx lasted ten years and resulted in three new Barons and sixteen new Knights. The Marquis and Barons were local aristocrats before being named to the Imperial Peerage, and as a special reward were allowed to carry over their old titles.

Not all peers have been upstanding citizens worthy of veneration. There have been many cases throughout history where appointments seemed to be based on no particular achievement, leaving a suspicion of bribery. Some other appointments have been blatant partisan power plays. Perhaps the most notorious such case came when the Emperor Basileus III (IY1928-1933) created 328 new Aristocrats to carry a vote in the Clan Council. Multiple sources have confirmed that the same (thankfully short-tenured) emperor also made 37 of his pet cats Dukes and Earls — although one feline Duchess was reportedly demoted to Baroness when she scratched him.

No matter what the origin of a title, all members of the Aristocracy have always held their positions directly from the Emperor. Even hereditary titles must be confirmed by the Emperor, causing a few constitutional crises when past Emperors have refused to create entitled peers. Unsurprisingly, this dependency has generally chafed with the Aristocracy, and revolts have been frequent. In a few cases, these revolts even resulted in a change of dynasty, and there have been several interregna where no emperor reigned.

The Aristocracy Today

No other clan was harder hit by the Disappearance than the Aristocracy. For one thing, they tend to live on the most developed and populous worlds — exactly the ones hardest hit by the event. They also were quick to adopt the first results of psi technology, seeing in it the latest development which they could use to gain more status and power. Many believe rumours that the Disappearance was an Aristocratic coup d'etat that went wrong. Whatever the truth, the result is that more than half of them are now gone, along with the Emperor himself.

Previously, the clan's quota of peerages was filled according to a complex set of rules and traditions administered by the Keepers of the Lists (a small group of permanent peers). However, the Disappearance not only vacated the Keepers but also many who could claim to replace them — as well as large numbers of the peerages they oversaw. This has shattered established succession patterns and left no undisputed arbiter of titles and offices. Greater social mobility has led not only to escalated competition for the quota peerages (as one might expect) but also to vicious infighting over the permanent titles. Moreover, just to make matters worse, pretenders from outside the clan are joining in the competition using faked credentials which can now be quite hard to disprove. As well, there are increasingly autonomous powers in different fragments of the Empire such as the Ghost Rim and Ancient Space, who have been known to back rival claimants for a particular title in the hopes of expanding their own influence.

In some parts of the empire Clan members have turned inward, spending their days in political maneuvers and displays of status in order to justify their claims to privilege. The older a title or office is, the longer that a particular family has held it, or the more power it has had historically, the greater the competition tends to be. Those with claims to the oldest titles often say that the Emperor's disappearance does not affect their title, since it pre-dated the Empire, but if there ever was a time when titles were not awarded directly by the Emperor, it has long passed and so these claims have a hint of desperation about them.

Aristocratic spectacle

The obsession with fighting over rival claims has weakened the Aristocracy as much as the Disappearance itself. Many members now use their considerable political skills to lobby clan leaders for support. Others, hoping to gain influence by social standing, spend their days organizing elaborate and costly spectacles ranging from masked balls and pieces of performance art to such ostentatious excesses as creating artificial meteor showers or seeding the local sun to create a solar flare or even engulf a small planet.

Perversely, where the competition is fiercest, some members of the Aristocracy have taken to staking their claims by elaborate destruction of their own wealth, such as destroying their mansions in a hail of ice or distributing family heirlooms on street corners to the first passerby. The rationale for such behaviour seems to be to show of disdain for the contested peerages, or to prove that the contender does not require them in order to maintain his or her lifestyle.

However, as the extravagances escalate, these displays have become part of the competition. Their net effect has been to further reduce the ranks of the Aristocracy, since several particularly energetic events have resulted in the deaths of their sponsors and even their families. On some planets, too, other citizens have become convinced by these shows that the Clan has outlived its usefulness. Lynchings of lone aristocrats have occurred on more than one planet, and, on HyBreasil, members of the Aristocracy have been outlawed along with Clones.

At the same time, these displays have given the Aristocracy new influence by creating many new forms of employment. To accommodate the Aristocracy's demands for greater displays of excess, master chefs have created whole new culinary schools. Masters of artificial intelligence have created amusing and useless robots or, in one case on WeGotHere, created a network of sentience that covers an entire continent. Genealogists and historians have gained new importance, as the need to prove — or falsify — hereditary claims gains a new urgency. In some systems, matchmakers have emerged to find ways of strengthening claims through inter-marriage.

Perhaps most importantly, the need for retinues to create a grand entrance and make a contender seem important has resulted in many poor or homeless citizens suddenly finding themselves in a job where they need to do little except look good and cheer on cue. In economies that are still recovering from the Disappearance, this client system has provided some important stability, although many observers worry that it is allowing some Aristocrats to establish new power bases, and leads to factional fighting in the streets.

Other Aristocrats have reacted to this chaos by becoming hermits. Self-impoverished Aristocrats awaiting a favourable settlement of their claims have been known to spend their days in small houses or apartments on planets like Safe Harbour, never venturing out except at night, and kept alive by the charity of their neighbors or former servants. Still-rich Clan members have sealed off their estates and hired gaming masters to create the illusion that the old court still exists by writing news and arranging for well-coached visitors. That is presumably what has happened on a larger scale in the Carrick Fergus system, where Count Romanos of House Biensoir has somehow managed to close off the local spacefold, although no one knows for sure. Other stories tell of isolated systems, some cut off from any spacefold, where self-proclaimed Aristocrats continue to go their own ways. The most famous of these legendary systems is Banyan Tree, where the descendants of the Mad Duke M'tana rules. Tales also persist of Circuit Board, an apocryphal planet where peers are ruled by an artificial intelligence that calls itself Prince of the Gateway.

One unique reaction to the chaos created by the Disappearance is the emergence of the Great Cham. Once Marquisa Zoe of GraceAdieu, the Great Cham reacted to the crumbling of the empire by selling all her estates and purchasing every space ship she could get her hands on, and becoming a nomad. Fabulously old, she is said to wander the spacefold routes with her decaying but still deadly fleet, sometimes engaging in piracy, other times in trade or legitimate warfare as a mercenary, but always moving on.

Some members of the Aristocracy, of course, resist such extremes. Yet even those who avoid the competitions for status tend to be obsessed with the past and perpetually dress as if for a funeral. Those who find themselves impoverished due to the social disruption caused by the Disappearance, have turned to their skills at diplomacy and negotiation to find ways to make a living in business. However, those members of the Aristocracy who are forced to earn their living in this way generally prefer not to admit that they are working for a living. If pressed, they will say that they are helping friends, and that their salaries are a gift. More than one duel has been fought because listeners appeared skeptical of these claims.

At the highest level of the Aristocracy, various descendants of the last Imperial family, as well as one or two relatives of previous dynasties, have declared themselves Emperors over small parts of the Empire. Unlike the traditional emperors, these newcomers are not shy about claiming the title of Emperor — and, perversely, have been known to compete and war over the right to use this technically non-existent title. When they are successful in establishing their claims, they are often courted by those competing for peerages as part of the battle for legitimacy.

Relations to Other Clans and Intelligent Species

The Aristocracy is in a unique position among Great Clans, being constitutionally tied to all of them; any suitable child of two peers can join the Aristocracy, and all Great Clans have many peers. Thus, a prominent Drylander and a peer from the Taurans might have a child who could be an Aristocrat — and might also be considered a Drylander or Tauran. Which Clan they claim as their own often depends on the political prospects within each, with the result that the Aristocracy tends to collect "second daughters and sons"; children who are pre-empted from hereditary titles in their birth factions by older siblings. Naturally, relations between the Aristocracy and other clans are very complex and often filled with intrigue.

Nevertheless, some generalizations can be safely made regarding Aristocrat-Clan relations. The Aristocracy has always tended to have closest ties with the Clans who dominated it at creation: the Founders, Spacers, and Spartans. Those ties continue to be strong, although increasingly the second daughters have chosen not to join the Aristocracy, denouncing its excesses and considering it a Clan whose time has gone. At the other extreme, the Aristocracy are often disdainful of those who have been modified, sharing the Founders' pride in the purity of their origins. They especially dislike the Clones, many of whose bloodlines are said to have an Aristocrat as their founder, and react poorly to the widespread rumour that Commander Walker, the infamous coward of the Great War, was an Aristocrat. Aristocrats make an exception to this disdain of modified Clans for the Drylanders, some of whose families have been servants to the same aristocratic lineage for generations Some Aristocrats also continue the old custom of hiring Inlookers for their entourages. More recently, some elements of the Aristocracy have developed close connections with the Masons and Pilgrims as they seek to make sense of the upheavals in their lives.

Because of their diplomatic and political acumen, the Aristocracy has always had close ties with aliens friendly to humanity, such as the Ferrets and the Bappakana. Knowledge of the Crucians is also preserved by some Aristocrats. The rumour that the Disappearance was caused by Aristocrats who either angered the Demons or helped them with a psi experiment can be neither confirmed nor debunked, but Aristocrats are also said to have had the most contact with that alien species.

Names, titles, and offices

The range of names held by the Aristocracy is as wide as possible for a human organization. Many Aristocrats, like other Great Clans, cultivate old strains of names in ancient and unrecognizable languages, some dating all the way back to ancient Earth. Others deliberately choose to follow modern trends, and even to invent entirely new names. Moreover, both extremes have been practicing for thousands of years, resulting in an extreme spectrum of nomenclature. Any attempt to ascribe patterns to their names is generally considered futile by heraldry enthusiasts.

The issue of titles is similarly complex. It is not even strictly a Clan matter; the rules and traditions here are decided by the Emperor and a few officials at court. There are actually relatively few official titles beyond "Knight" or "Peer", and those that are in use go with specific offices. This could be said to be true even of those titles held over from the old Great War Council: Representative, Legate, Speaker and Tribune. However, the range of unofficial titles is overwhelming. Many Aristocrats hold particular titles on their home world, or within Clans or Corporations — and many people hold all of these simultaneously. By custom, peers are addressed by these "courtesy titles" at court although they confer no extra power. Occasionally the Emperor will even formally recognize local titles in an Imperial Patent. On some planets, business titles like CEO have become noble titles, while titles such as Minister often become confused with offices of the same name. A wide variety of ethnic groups are also suggested by titles such as Rajah, Jarl, Margrave and Baron. Even Senator is treated as an aristocratic title socially, although senators by definition are separate from the Aristocracy.

Most peers are considered equivalent in official status, although specific office-holders are usually recognized to have extra rank. Since there is no official venue for upwards mobility, peers regard social status very highly, and are deadly serious about the ways in which this status is manifested, especially at court social events. The Empress Wilhelmina (IY290-347), attempted to accommodate and regulate this behaviour by organizing the Aristocracy into ranks soon after its official creation, but she quickly gave up in the face of mass opposition and intrigue and no emperor since has ventured into this quagmire.

Instead, to determine social precedence at court, elaborate lists are kept by the Chair of Equivalences, a major title within the Imperial Household. The rules governing these lists are so complex that study of them has become a recognized field of academia, parallel to heraldry. As well, they are full of exceptions and constantly revised, with some Chairs of Equivalences suspected of having grown wealthy on bribes. While the Chair of Equivalences cannot actually deny any title, it has been observed that peers with uncomfortable titles tend to come last in precedence at social events (all according to the rules, naturally). Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon was the maverick peer Klaisha from Red Gorge, who insisted on using the local family title "Laird of the Decrepit Anthill"... and for her entire life was the last person presented at every social event at court, rarely managing to speak to or influence anybody. Thus the Chair, which in theory has nothing to do with titles, in fact has significant power to regulate them.

A few titles are explicitly disallowed. King, Queen, and similar titles which imply overall rulership are reserved for rulers of planets. There is a parallel list of courtesy titles such as Duke and Duchess, representing retired planetary rulers who have joined the Imperial peerage. The title "Emperor" itself is more a job description than a title; although some dynasties and some rulers have used "Emperor" as a title, just as many have not. It is, however, definitely forbidden for anybody but the emperor to claim the title Emperor.

The question of royal titles is sometimes confused by a number of family members of emperors who have used the titles Duke, Duchess, Prince, Princess and similar. None of these relate to the emperor's office in any way; it is just a simple fact that about half of all Emperors have come from families that included planetary rulers, so they naturally are related to people with those titles. A current example is Grand Duke Constantine, a nephew of the last Emperor who lives on Niflheim, where he runs a small research station dedicated to the study of non-sentient alien life forms, and resolutely refuses all non-scientific contact.

Title-bearing offices are all assigned by the emperor, although many have become hereditary and others are bound by treaty. In some cases, these titles carry specific duties; for instance, the title of Warden of the Prime Spacefold on Safe Harbour, which is held by the Doyenne of Singularity, is in charge of collecting customs duties on ships coming to the planet. Some confer significant power, such as the Lord of the Archives (the title held by the administrator of the Imperial Library). Other titles, however, are purely ceremonial. It is doubtful, for example, whether the Emperor's Master of the Wardrobe has helped to dress an Emperor for millennia.