The political system of
Rodinia is a careful balance of power between the eight historical Great Houses of the Rodinian Aristocracy versus the Imperial Government of the Rodinian People.
The system was setup to achieve three goals:
- Ensure Rodinian unity.
- Ensure the sovereignty of the Rodinian people.
- Ensure the safety, rights and freedoms of the Rodinian people.
It’s generally accepted that direct rule by the Great House aristocracy led to division, internal conflict, instability, indecisiveness, and loss of freedoms and rights of the people. Therefore, the system is designed to constrain the power of the Great Houses and thereby achieve the three stated goals above.
Starting at the bottom of the power structure and working upwards, we first begin with the Great Houses themselves.
The Great Houses of Rodinia
These represent the institutions of the old aristocracy that ruled Rodinia for eons, until the Chicxulub Incident 66 million years ago fundamentally altered the collective psyche of the
Rodinians.
The Great House system is a product of the Kellvass – the first Rodinians - being a hierarchical, class-based society headed by queens, and the Visians being ruled by a constitutional monarchy. When the Visians joined with their cousin Kellvass, they created a system with two equal dynasts who ruled Kellvass and Visians together. Both dynasts needed to agree with each other for any order given by them to be considered valid.
As time passed and more species arose from Earth to join the collective, they were each offered a place in this ruling Dynastium – an opportunity to appoint their own dynast, through whatever means they wished. Some began as democratic appointments acting similar to presidents or prime ministers at first, but slowly became more authoritarian and militarized over time in the shadow of the other aristocratic and militarized dynastic rulers. The Great Houses tended to descend upon a new species in search of, and to create, authoritarian allies they could build up. Democratic systems didn’t tend to endure this interference, as Great Houses sought out long term allies who valued loyalty to them over anything else. If this meant undermining democracy or other systems of governance in the new species, then they were happy to do so if it meant getting the upper hand in building loyalty and relations in the burgeoning new species’ population.
As more dynasts were added to the ruling Dynastium, consensus became harder to reach whilst disagreements became more common, providing an early warning sign of the animus to come.
The dynasts also gradually stopped seeing themselves as representatives of a species, and more like ruling authorities on their own. As the Creatures of Earth tended to mingle over time, the geographic, political and often cultural lines between them blurred into almost total obscurity. Therefore, the dynasts’ roles as representatives of a species, who could be clearly defined politically, geographically and even culturally, significantly diminished. It’s at this point they completed their transition into a ruling aristocracy of Great Houses, more often looking out for their own interests over those they originally took their roots from.
The Great House and Dynastium system was unstable and prone to infighting, which in later eons often turned into violent civil wars. Furthermore, Rodinia had no central figurehead to the outside world and no one able to make decisive decisions and take swift action for the good of everyone. Tyranny was all too common, and Rodinians often found their rights curtailed in different ways.
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