Ralgon Nobility

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The Nobility of the Ralgon Empire differ from province to province, according to local laws, customs, and traditions. Each province has its own unique way of appointing or electing members of its aristocratic classes as well as their rulers, and for a time even had widely disparate titles for these people. Since the Great Reformation that took place post-Unification, however, these customs have been, for the most part, streamlined over the years. Notably, the naming standards and conventions of the Empire's upper-tier nobility have been fully standardized and brought into line with much of the rest of Micras.

Presently, there are several standardized tiers to the Ralgon Empire's nobility. At the top of the social pyramid sits the King and the Imperial Family, who each have unique political and clerical powers within the nation. In addition to the King, the extended Royal family (consisting of the King's increasingly distaff relations) holds significant power in the country, and even rule half of Stormhold directly, having slowly usurped power over the years. Third on this social pyramid are the Grand Dukes, who collectively hold about as much power nationally as the Imperial Household (and are perpetually at odds with them). Fourth on the social stratum are active members of the Senate, as well as the Lords of Ralgon (themselves powerful provincial nobles).

Lesser nobles who (for the most part) answer to their own provincial governments fall on the lowest portions of the aristocratic pecking order within the Ralgon Empire. They are relatively common but proportionally powerless) in Nixtorm and eastern Stormhold. On the contrary, these lower-ranking, non-royal nobles are relatively scarce in Drag'nor and virtually nonexistent in western Stormhold, and thus influence great autonomy outside of restrictions placed upon them by their superiors.

The Imperial and Royal Family

Contrary to popular belief, these two terms are separate, and never interchangeable. Also contrary to popular belief, there is an extreme amount of overlap between the two. All Imperial Family members are also members of the Royal Family, but not the other way around. The Imperial Family only consists of the King, his spouse(s), all of his direct descendants, the King's brothers and sisters, and all of their children (but not their grandchildren). The extended Royal Family, on the other hand, contains all relatives of the current King by blood (never by marriage alone). Honorary membership in the Imperial Family is sometimes given to specific individuals for life, based on service or a very close bond of friendship with the King. This membership never outlasts the life of the individual, and most of the privileges attendant to this honor do not outlast the King himself. The extended Royal Family, in an effort to prevent power from diluting, has not given out such honors in centuries.

The Imperial Family

The current Imperial Family consists of the following notable individuals:

The Emperor, Shiro Ral I. Crowned at the beginning of 1672 AN after winning the Tournament of Champions by right of election and conquest. Born 1650 AN. King Nobunag'an IV's male-line grandson through his oldest (deceased) child. The Emperor Emeritus, Nobunag'an Ral IV. The current Emperor's grandfather, he took the throne in 1595 AN and reigned for a record-breaking 77 years before abdicating in favor of Emperor Shiro I on New Year's Day of 1672 AN.

Crown Prince Draeg'ar Ral (Nobunag'an IV's youngest son and the Emperor's uncle. Born 1632 AN). The only Crown Prince to retain his place in the Order of Succession. Crown Prince Masamune Ral (Nobunag'an IV's grandson, born 1644 AN). Named Crown Prince by the Senate in 1669/1672 AN. Retained eligibility for nomination by making it to the Tournament of Champions' pre-combat voting round. Crown Prince Julius Ral (Nobunag'an IV's grandson, born 1642 AN). Named Crown Prince by the Senate in 1667/1672 AN. Retained eligibility for nomination by making it to the Tournament of Champions' pre-combat voting round.

Under normal circumstances, there would be a Queen Mother, Queen Grandmother, or a King Father, or a King Grandfather installed if the Emperor has direct parents who retained titles in their own right. If there remained more than one eligible person, the Emperor could only name one of each. This is not the case: Emperor Shiro's parents are both deceased (one from disease and another from a dragon attack during a hunting expedition). Any otherwise eligible grandparents do not have secondary Royal or Princely titles (male or female) and are therefore unable to be appointed to any such post. Thus, the current Emperor is the first since Bael'or IV (r. 1260) who has no elder relatives seated behind him since the day of his coronation.

With the hard reset of the Imperial succession upon Emperor Shiro's coronation, only direct descendants of the Emperor Nobunag'an IV who are also related in parentage to the Emperor Shiro are eligible for nomination for succession. Therefore, the previous list of eligible persons was all but obliterated, removing almost 120 people from the line of succession altogether. Currently, there remain only 30 persons related to both Emperors within three generations by either blood or marriage.

The Royal Family

The Royal Family consists of the various distaff blood relatives of the current King. For centuries, anyone with strong proof of ties to the Royal Family could claim membership, and induction into the family was never made through adoption. As the original boundaries of Stormhold grew, so did the King's number of direct relatives, and so the Royal Family entered into every possible level of politics in the western portions of Stormhold, until they had entirely usurped that entire half of the province. By the time King Nobunag'an came into power, the royal family outnumbered the rest of the entire nation's pool of actual titular nobles, and royal status came to mean a lot less for extremely distaff relations.

Therefore, the royal household cooperated with the King and the Imperial Senate to pass laws restricting membership in the Royal Household to those persons within four generations removed from the Throne. That is, anyone who was the great-grandchild of any ruling King of the Ralgons could hold a royal title, but not their children unless the line of succession moved closer to them. Additionally, the giving of any noble titles was to cease for any individuals less than three generations removed. The Province of Stormhold took additional steps to attempt to prevent royals from inheriting old noble titles given on basis of royalty, but such measures were only effective in the Eastern Stormhold.

To placate the disaffected people of Stormhold, King Nobunag'an IV passed a nationwide edict very early in his reign that serves to prevent titles from being inherited from parent to successor without provincial approval. Additionally, the inheritance of princely titles were abolished in all individuals who are not themselves the child of a reigning King, or a direct descendant of a currently reigning monarch.

While this has served to largely decimate the ranks of the Ralgon Empire's titular nobility writ large (especially among the Barons and Counts), it also served to curb the Royal Household's power and re-concentrate its remnants back into the hands of a manageable few individuals. This new "Royal Clan" has been largely responsible for directly influencing the King's decisions in his old age, including the determination of many of those individuals who are deemed unfit to participate in the succession upon the King's planned abdication. Their actions have served to create a level of distrust and instability between the Imperial Household and the Royal House that have resulted in the rise of a bloc of younger succession-eligible princes that resist their power. This new voting bloc of six different Princes may serve to result in a succession that bypasses the current Crown Prince Draeg'ar Ral, thus triggering further tensions and instability within the Imperial Court.

The Imperial Conclave

If the King should die or abdicate, an Imperial Conclave shall immediately convene in the capital city of Stormhold and begin the vote in secret. This Conclave will always consist of 50 total individuals: the 24 members of the Imperial Senate (Plus the Prime Minister), the 5 Grand Dukes (including the Crown Prince), the 15 Lords of the Ralgon Empire, and five individuals (usually succession-eligible) appointed by the King before his death/abdication. Upon convening, the Conclave will elect a new King based on a series of ballots. One rounds of voting shall be immediately cast upon the Conclave's initiation. Eligible candidates are immediately expunged from the roster if their names are not listed. Ballots are then continually cast twice a day, during which the candidates with no votes and the one with the least amount of votes are expunged from the list, until only one candidate remains. This individual is then immediately crowned the King of Dragos and Emperor of the Ralgons while the Conclave is still assembled.

Voting for a new monarch tends to be a tricky business for the Conclave, especially owing to the presence of six election-eligible individuals within the Conclave. Most of the time, these same individuals will have already grouped into allied factions that continually support their favorite candidate up until the moment the first ballots are cast. In most cases, these alliances fall apart due to the influence the Crown Prince typically wields among the Grand Dukes and many appointed Senators (owing to his own status as a Grand Duke). However, it is not unheard of for the Crown Prince to lose the vote if he is uncharismatic, or if a rival prince has set up an exceptionally strong voting bloc among the popularly elected Senators as well as his fellow eligible princes.

Upon the election and coronation of the new King, the Imperial Family's composition immediately changes. The new King's mother remains part of the Imperial Family, while the former King's other spouse(s) will only remain should the new King decide as such. The new King's cousins automatically lose their place in the succession, and the line starts over again, beginning with the new King's father (if his father was not the previous King). In the event of an abdication, the former King is removed from the succession along with any marriage-only relatives, thus ensuring that the line of succession remains based solely on blood ties (outside of the very rare adoption into the Imperial Family).

Provincial Governance

The nobility in the Holy Ralgon Empire differ from province to province, each with their own means of selecting high nobility from amongst their own people. The various Princes and Grand Dukes of the Holy Ralgon Empire are no different. Each of these people occupy a place at the highest echelons of Imperial society, and, as of the 1690's, have begun to serve near-exclusively as the heads of state in their respective provinces, according to their own laws and traditions. Unlike the Imperial Family, the two Princes and various Grand Dukes have their own authority bound specifically to their respective domains. The only instance in which the Princes and Dukes of the Empire may step outside their authority only to elect an Emperor (as of 1695, per Emperor Shiro I of Ralgon).

Individually, the Grand Dukes act as representatives of the three provinces of the Empire and of the royal household (including Western Stormhold) within the Imperial Court, as well as in the Imperial Conclave during royal elections.

Powers and Responsibilities

The various Princes palatine and the Grand Dukes are also required to approve laws passed by the Imperial Senate, and act as a de facto second arm of the Ralgon Empire's legislature, despite being so few in number. Historically, their collective approval was a soft requirement to approve treaties and declarations of war against other nations. The Grand Dukes also played a heavy role in electing the new King of the Ralgons from among his (or her) heirs upon their death as a part of the Imperial Conclave (see above). Finally, they were capable of vetoing a decree or edict issued by the King with a unanimous vote -- the only group of people in the entire nation capable of doing so. Their ability to stall the government into inaction on unpalatable topics made them a collective force to be reckoned with during a time of crisis. While their presence led to a more deliberate method of national-level decision-making in all circumstances, it also killed any chance for haste should it be required.

Before 1685, their collective power rivaled that of the central government for these and other reasons. However, their strength was also their downfall. In the wake of the Crisis of 1685 and the Ralgon Civil War, along with the abject failure of the opening phases of both the Cibolan Reconquista and its subsequent conflict in the Ralgon Reconquista after the country lost most of its mainland territory, it was generally thought to have been the slow-acting authority of the nation's senior mobility coupled with their deep involvement in national politics. As they were also autonomous rulers in their own right, there were times even the Ralgon King (subsequently the Ralgon Emperor) found themselves at their mercy even during a dire emergency. This led to the Ralgon Restoration of 1693, in which a military and political coup took place in the Imperial Palace and in the administrative capital at Valeria. After the coup and subsequent restoration and centralization of imperial authority (where the overall event took its name) the senior nobility's collective power was generally broken.

The changes were many and they were profound. Instead of a hard veto, these nobles were instead given greater autonomy over their own holdings at home... what was left of them, had they chosen to remain and fight to reclaim former Ralgon lands.

Government of Scarterra

The Province of Scarterra, formerly a mixed republic ruled by wealthy merchants and nobles, elected their head of state for centuries before they joined with Stormhold and Nixtorm to form a new unified nation in the 1400's AN. After the collapse of imperial authority on mainland Drag'os in 1685 AN, the elite of the province relocated and rebuilt everything from the ground up on a chain of islands not far from Adrestia's heartland in the Sea of Storms.

They continue their ancient traditions by using their General Assembly (consisting of these same people) to elect their Prince to a life term... although it's still usually a very short one due to near-universally advanced age. Because of the Princes' usually-fatal and seemingly endless weakness, they wield virtually zero authority over the General Assembly, the region's legislature. Instead, real power is vested in an executive Viceroy, which oversees the island's internal affairs while ostensibly leaving external affairs to the Prince.

This task became monumentally more convenient when the country gave up its independence and rejoined the Empire as part of Adrestia (effectively a western Ralgon Empire by now) in early 1695 AN. With an incredibly weak Prince and an absolutely unfunded, disbanded, disjointed, and nigh-nonexistent defense force, it couldn't have been easier for the Royal Court of Adrestia to integrate the small country into its now-vast network of strategic territories.

The only catch? The country wanted to still govern itself as usual, as it cared little for foreign affairs, couldn't defend itself, and had a weak Prince. Additionally, the Barons desired as little interference in their vast estates as possible and were content to keep to themselves. Adrestia was happy to oblige, as it meant that governance of the new territory came at such an astronomically low cost that "as cheap as Scarterra" quickly became a byword.

Grand Duke of Nixtorm

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The office of the Grand Duke of Nixtorm cycles between the noble households of that ancient province, as it has since time immemorial. The Grand Duke of Nixtorm serves as the head of state of the Province of Nixtorm, and heads their ruling body, which is known as the Council of Six. This Council represents the Lords of Nixtorm, as well as their Great Houses. When the Grand Duke dies, a new Grand Duke is promptly elected by the Council. The Great House the new Grand Duke is elected from rotates in a fixed order between Nixtorm's six Great Houses, regardless of how long they serve. Although the Grand Duke enjoys a lifetime appointment, this appointment does not tend to last more than a few short years: The members of the Council of Six almost always looks for the oldest possible person to appoint because the vote is always contentious. Consequently, the office of Grand Duke rapidly change hands because a terminally ill or very elderly Grand Duke is always appointed, thanks to the efforts of the collective to keep turning the perpetual cycle in an effort to get to a House that is amenable to the most favorable to most of the Council members' own interests.

Domestically, the Grand Duke always joins the Council of Six as its presiding officer, and their affirmative vote is almost always required for any measure originated within the Council to pass. This office is usually seen as a nobleman's crowning (and final) achievement in life, as Grand Dukes within Nixtorm also hold local (and substantial) religious power thanks to the requirement that a Grand Duke be a current or former member of the Draconic clergy. The unfortunate part of being the Grand Duke of Nixtorm is almost the unsaid and unwritten rule that the newly elected Grand Duke is going to die soon anyway due to terminal illness or extreme age. In fact, a Grand Duke who is not senile/terminally ill, and instead fully fit to rule is a nearly unheard of phenomenon within Nixtorm. Due to the Grand Duke's near-perpetual infirmities, the Council of Six usually exerts its influence over the surrounding areas (Eastern Stormhold and the Imperial Court included) in their place.

Since the collapse of authority on the island of Drag'os in 1685, the Grand Ducal family moved to northern Adrestia and now falls under the authority of the Royal Court in Gondolin. Unfortunately, due to the principality's constrained territory and the astronomical costs of real estate, the Ducal family enjoys very little territorial rights. Instead, they set up their palatial residence in a newly built and restored Nixtorm, this time being an incorporated city within the Old Forest Ruins. The primary goal of the Dukes of Nixtorm is to extend their rule directly north on the mainland of South Island before other ducal and princely families colonize the area first.

Grand Duke of Glacier City

The Grand Duke of East Stormhold was appointed directly by the King every time a new Lord Mayor of Glacier City is popularly elected, or once every five years. They hold joint power within this part of the Stormhold province in fact, even if not in name. Everything that the Grand Duke does in East Stormhold goes through the Lord Mayor of Glacier City, and the same is true the other way around, thanks to the sheer size of both the city itself and its national influence. The Grand Duke of (Eastern) Stormhold is based in the provincial capital of Mashiro, where they rule the city directly. Although they're technically the "Grand Duke of Stormhold," they only hold true political power in the eastern part of the province due to complicated political issues that have basically divided the Province of Stormhold cleanly into two separate entities. No Grand Duke can hold the office after their five-year term is over, and thus usually go on to either hold high office in the clergy or the nobility in the eastern part of Stormhold.

After the crisis of 1685 and the further swelling of the already-vast metropolis's population, the city's rule became all but independent, with its government being presided over directly by the Ralgon Emperor. Since the near-collapse of Eastern Stormhold, the seat of power was no longer based in the vast conurbation of Mashiro. Instead, the title was combined with that of Lord Mayor of Glacier City, and a Dukedom over the city was awarded due to its now-paramount importance in the Eastern portion of the Ralgon Empire due to its status as the empire's cultural capital and (by far) largest city.

Prince of Stormhold

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The titular Grand Duke, until recently, was historically also the nominal Crown Prince. Although the Crown Prince is not supposed to hold political power within the provinces themselves, he does so anyway through the power of this title.

Since time immemorial, the royal household has taken advantage of its power over the western areas of the Province of Stormhold to elect their own Grand Duke to represent the Royal House (essentially, themselves) in the Imperial Court directly. However, the family branched off and a cadet branch now holds the Ducal title independently, since the appointment of Prince Draeg'ar Ral as Prince of Stormhold in 1688 AN.

Using this power, they also tend to sway the King's decision on his choice of a Crown Prince, which in turn tends to hold an influence on the Imperial Conclave's decision of a new King when the time comes. At times, it becomes a struggle of the King versus the Royal House to determine which of their supported candidates will win, and the strongest-willed decision-maker usually wins the war, with the winning candidate almost always assuming the other title within a couple of short years. The current Royal Grand Duke is also the Crown Prince Draeg'ar Ral V, and he was appointed by the King against the royal clan's collective initial will.

Since the collapse of Ralgon rule on most of the island of Drag'os in 1685, the current dukedom has lost most of its historic prestige. With expansion on the Cibola mainland going extremely slowly and dominance over Dragon's Reach remaining tenuous at best, the dukes of Stormhold have done everything they can to retain what is left of Ralgon territory in their ancestral homelands. As the senior non-royal or imperial house in Ralgon's constituent countries, they took a different approach from other senior Houses in Ralgon. Instead of leaving, they instead stayed on Drag'os and then expanded the country's holdings south onto Cibola's mainland. Currently, the family controls two sets of territory: the tenuous holdings of New Ralgon to the south, the old province of Stormhold and its adjoining remnants from breakaway entities, and the environs of St. Mara. While their authority nominally extends as far as Zamma in the territory of Dragon's Reach and the former Western Territory, they also know that Duro is likely lost forever.

Currently, military campaigns waged in the eastern half of the island have been generally more successful, and they have re-established the territory in the name of the imperial house. That said, the territory still belongs to Glacier City, as reclaiming the farmland to the north of that vast metropolis is

Provincial Lords

Currently, provincial lords are tied in so closely with the Grand Ducal families that the two became all but the same after the Ralgon Civil War and the attendant Crisis of 1685, which saw other counties like the Franco-Batavian Empire collapse as well. With the scattering of the nation's population and the blurring of ethnic lines, the age of ethnocentric lords and territories ended by 1690 when the remaining Grand Dukes either took what was left of provincial authority or departed the mainland altogether in search of opportunity elsewhere.

Currently, there are some subdivisions where a sub-provincial lord still exists. The government of New Ralgon currently holds sway a set of scattered territories and other such Ralgon holdings on the Cibola mainland, and itself answers to the Duke (or Prince, depending on the current ruler) of Stormhold.