The Aristocracy

The Aristocracy are the remnants and descendants of the ruling class of the Empire. Their authority and influence fragmented with the Empire during the Disappearance, and most of the clan became introspective, brooding on the past glories of their families and cultivating a melancholy air of mourning and aloofness while fighting for status among their peers. Despite this introversion, the Aristocracy remain unrivalled as diplomats and negotiators.

History

In many senses, the history of the Aristocracy is the political and military history of the Empire. Certainly, most of those named in the official histories were either members of the Aristocracy from birth or were recruited to its ranks because of their accomplishments. However, what concerns us here is not Imperial history but the history of the Aristocracy as a distinct clan.

The origins of the Aristocracy are as varied as their titles and offices. During the time of the Terran Sphere and the Human Federation, awarding titles was a cheap way for successive governments to encourage the ambitious to self-finance colonization or the defence of an outpost while retaining a political claim upon the resulting colony. Other colonists who struck out on their own chose titles for themselves that were later confirmed as the Empire expanded. Some of the largest and oldest families of the Aristocracy were first ennobled through such arrangements, including the Pendragons of Avalon, the Valois of Sacre Coeur, and the Baburs of Great Delhi. As their names imply, these families claim a lineage that extends into the pre-history of humanity. Some even purport to have claims to holdings in the Ghost Rim. However, these claims are extremely dubious, and few scholars take any of them seriously.

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, and Circuit Board, a planet ruled by an artificial intelligence that calls itself Prince of the Gateway.

The next wave of the Aristocracy came during the Great War, when higher titles were given to successful generals, moderate ones to quartermasters and diplomats, and minor ones to combatants who had distinguished themselves.

Since the Founders, Spacers, and Spartans led the rest of humanity in the Great War and often bore the brunt of the fighting, many of the Aristocrats created during the Great War are drawn from these clans. They include the Gleb-Suzdals, the Grand Dukes of New Kiev; the Santiago del Sol, Governors of the Space Station Campostella; and the Fielding-Fuchuns, the Chairman of the Board of Blue Tasman. This group of Aristocrats considers the Aristocracy with earlier claims to be spurious, and pride themselves on having more legitimate claims to nobility, although they themselves have to live down the story that the traitor Walker had been promised the title of Baron Li Po before the disaster at Sentinel. Still, the practice of awarding titles and offices for aiding the war effort proved too popular to end for long, and, to place against Walker, its families have the first Duke of the Spartans and Marcus I, the first Emperor.

War-time promotion to the Aristocracy continued throughout the history of the Empire. However, these titles reflect the relatively smaller scale of wars during the Empire, and only occasionally result in titles beyond Baron or Knight. 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 -- a proliferation of Aristocracy almost unheard of since the Great War.

By the time the Empire arose, the Aristocracy existed as a distinct clan, although many of its members kept their numbers up by intermarriage with the three clans that had produced most of the leaders in the Great War. However, throughout the history of the Empire, these original aristocratic strains have been added to by successful diplomats, tycoons, artists, and scientists. In addition, under some Imperial dynasties, system governors received titles with their appointments, or simply because they were friends of the governor. In one notorious case, the Emperor Basileus III (reigned 1928-33) created 328 members of the Aristocracy so he could carry a government vote; these titles have since largely lapsed, since few members of the Aristocracy would care to claim a title so obviously sullied by politics. The same emperor is also said to have made 37 of his pet cats Dukes and Earls -- although one feline Duchess is supposed to have been demoted to Baroness when she scratched him.

The last strain of titles are those awarded to members of the imperial family, or to members of lapsed dynasties. By tradition, King/Queen or Prince/Princess were reserved for the direct family of the Emperor, and Duke/Duchess for their direct descendants or for the remnants of past dynasties. Since the Disappearance, these titles have become the most coveted, but they are also the hardest to prove. The only one of these titles that is undisputed today is that of Grand Duke Constantine, a nephew of the last Emperor who lives on Nifilheim, where he runs a small research station dedicated to the study of non-sentient alien life forms, and resolutely refuses all non-scientific contact.

No matter what the origin of a title, during the Empire, all members of the Aristocracy held their positions directly from the Emperor. An aristocrat might recommend that a title or office go to someone, or a family might expect its oldest son or daughter to inherit a parent's honors, but, ultimately, the Emperor decided where all honors went. Unsurprisingly, this dependency often chafed, and revolts of the Aristocracy are commonplace throughout history. In a few cases, these revolts even resulted in a change of dynasty, as well as several interregnums where two or more Emperors reigned.

Throughout the history of the Empire, the Aristocracy occupied a varied but always central position in Imperial Society. In some times and places, its members held a frankly feudal position of power. Much of the time, however, the Clan co-existed with democratic institutions, at least at the local level. Some were awarded automatic seats in the upper houses of governing bodies such as parliaments, while others were technically politically powerless. Many political scientists professed to see an alliance of the Imperial House with the middle and working classes to keep the Aristocracy in check; others consider this view a piece of sentimentality designed to keep commoners in their place.

Whatever the correct view of the Aristocracy, at its best, its members provided the Empire with a core of cunning diplomats and foreign affairs experts, many who are still remembered in popular culture today. Of special note are those who first obtained treaties from alien species, such as Countess Turner of the Downs who negotiated successfully with the Bappakana (some of whom, to this day, seem to believe that she is still alive, and that every human they encounter is under her orders). Many others won fame as politicians in their local systems. If many members of the Aristocracy were self-indulgent, many others alleviated resentment against their clan by loyal and intelligent service during the Empire.

All that changed with the Disappearance. It seems safe to say that no other clan was harder hit by the Disappearance than the Aristocracy. For one thing, the Aristocracy tends to live on the most developed and populous worlds -- exactly the ones hardest hit by the event. Many, too, believe the rumour that the Disappearance was an Aristocratic coup that went wrong. Most important of all, the fact that all power came from the Emperor means that, in recent decades, no one has been the final arbiter of how titles and offices are awarded. Instead, several different arbiters have emerged, and the pattern of Aristocratic succession has been shattered.

The Aristocracy Today

The disappearance of so many of the Aristocracy -- to say nothing of the Emperor -- has devastated the pattern of the survivor's lives by leaving many titles and offices without any clear holder or successor. As a result, competition for honours has rapidly escalated within the Clan. Moreover, just to make matters worse, pretenders from outside the clan are joining in the competition, and the rulers of parts of the fragmented Empire have been known to back rival claimants for a particular honour in the hopes of expanding their own influence.

In many parts of the galaxy, Clan members have turned inward, spending their days in political maneuvers and displays of status in order to justify their claims to various honors. The older a title or office is, or the longer that a particular family has held it, the greater the competition tends to be. Those with a claim to the oldest titles often try to claim that the Emperor's disappearance does not affect their title, since it pre-dated the Empire, but the time when titles were not awarded directly by the Emperor has long passed, and this claim has a hint of desperation about it.

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 rulers for support. To influence decision-makers and prove their suitability for vacant honors, many spend their days in organizing elaborate and costly spectacles ranging from masked balls and pieces of performance art to such 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 for honors 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 a show of disdain for the contested honors, 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 both to reduce the ranks of the Aristocracy -- since several displays have resulted in the deaths of their sponsors and even their families -- and to convince other citizens 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 and Walkers.

At the same time, these displays have created 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, too, 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 for an honour 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. Poorer Aristocrats 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. Richer ones have sealed off their estates and hired game masters to create the illusion that the Empire 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.

Another 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. Now fabulously old, she is said to wander the galaxy 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 stories say that she now lives surrounded by extensive life-support, having vowed not to die until the Empire is re-established under a new ruler.

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. Many, finding 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 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 a small part of the former Empire. When they are successful in establishing their claims, they are often courted by those competing for honors as part of the battle for legitimacy.

Relations to Other Clans and Intelligent Species

Traditionally, the Aristocracy has always had close ties with the Clans from which it derived. Now, many Founders, Spacers, and Spartans have started to withdraw from the Aristocracy, denouncing its excesses and considering it a Clan whose time has gone. However, a few members of these Clans are still inter-marrying with the Aristocracy, either in the hopes of claiming a title or office, or of reviving the Clan. In addition, these Clans are still the ones most likely to employ an Aristocrat for his diplomatic skills.

Sharing the Founders' pride in the purity of their origins, the Aristocracy is often disdainful of those who have been modified, or those who believe in modification like the Empaths. 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 traitor 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 skills, 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 parts of the Aristocracy. 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 or debunked, but Aristocrats are also said to have had the most contact with that alien species.

Names, titles, and offices

The Aristocracy favors first names from two imperial traditions: the Byzantines (Justinian, Constantina, Leontias, Anastasia) and the Chinese (Zhou, Borjigin, Hongxian). Surnames and titles are often borrowed from seventeenth and eighteenth century France (Dieudonne, Quatrebois). However, the aristocracy also draws on any other imperial tradition for names, and, at times, on the dominant culture around them. In some cases, the origins of an Aristocratic family is shown by its tendency to use a particular Clan's naming patterns.

Most titles are familiar to any scholar of western European history: Emperor/Empress, King/Queen, Prince/Princess, Duke/Duchess, Earl/Countess, Marquis/Marquisa, Count/Countess, Baron (Lord/Lady), and Knight/Dame. However, Khans, Margraves, Chieftains, Tsars, Chief Executive Officers, Commodores, and any other title imaginable can probably be found somewhere in the galaxy.

The lines of succession to titles are equally variable. Some titles are inheritable by the eldest child of a family, some only through the male or female line. In others, the current holder of the title names his or her successor, or the emperor does. In still others, the surviving family votes on the most suitable relative to take a title when it falls vacant. This last approach has become more common since the Disappearance, in the absence of clear lines of descent or a single emperor to make decisions.

Offices were originally assigned by the emperor, although many traditionally accompany a title. In some cases, these titles carry specific duties; for instance, the title of Warden of the Prime Spacefold on Safe Harbour, while hereditary, is also a job description -- and a very lucrative one, since its holder is in charge of collecting customs duties on ships coming into the system. However, other titles are purely ceremonial. It is doubtful, for example, whether the Emperor's Master of the Wardrobe has helped to dress an Emperor for millennia.