Worldbuilding 202: Monarchies - Ascending the throne
Hello everyone! Sorry for the late blogpost. I have been sick the last few days and barely scraped by, so please forgive the tardiness and enjoy the blogpost 🙂
Greetings and squamoid! I am slimy, not scaly! Well, besides being a furry and all. Welcome everyone! Today, we will–well, I will–talk about monarchies! They are quite popular in fiction and often misunderstood, so let’s go!
What defines a monarchy
Ah good old definitions!
A monarchy is a state where the legitimacy of the government and more specifically the head of state is derived from cultural, historical, or religious traditions. A monarchy may be an autocracy or not.
What is an autocracy? Read my post on government types! It means one ruler, in short. I put emphasis on the traditions part because if you look historically and what are generally considered monarchies in fiction, their traditional standing tends to be a central point. Be honest, how many times do you see them say, “oh, the monarchy was established last September” or the like?
As you can see, monarchies have a long history as a part of themselves, and they generally derive their legitimacy from this. This is different from dictatorships, which tend to be very young, and whose legitimacy is more in question. Dictatorships tend to require more constant enforcement of the legitimacy through force while monarchies often do not because their history gives them legitimacy from traditions.
Monarchy types
Life is never easy with all kinds of types! Well, there are many types of monarchies as well. One thing to remember though, from my post on rules for rulers, is that no matter what kind of monarchy it is, the monarch never rules alone. They always have keys to deal with–what is a key? Urgh does anyone ever read? They are the people that are the keys to power! Well, onto the types.
Elective monarchy
I start with this one, as it is often the beginning of a monarchy. Most people are not going to just accept some random person suddenly claiming that they and their family will rule for centuries to come. That doesn’t happen. You generally start out with people electing who they want to rule over them, and then their experience goes on to keep it in the family. But let’s not run ahead.
What does an elective monarchy even mean? How can it work? Well, it works quite well! It is not a stable solution generally, however. As the name suggests, the monarch, the ruler, is elected by the people of the land. Though not normally all the people of the land, per se. That takes a lot of work, and what do farmers know? BAH!
It is the nobility that elects a new monarch upon the former monarch's death. So it is generally a position for life; at their death, the nobility gathered together and would elect a new king amongst themselves, but occasionally it could be someone outside. Look up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth if you want a real world example of this.
But there is a thing here you might realise because you’re a clever 🍪 You get elected king, which means you favour your own family and help them get richer and more powerful, and come next election cycle after your death, your own children are more likely to be elected again. Rinse and repeat, and eventually the election is nothing but a formality, a rubber stamp process. Let the time continue moving on and we get a…
Absolute monarchy
Bah! Stupid elections, your children should just get the power! Screw the stupid ceremony, let’s make it all official! YOU RULE SUPREME! With the proper care of your keys of course. It is not like they would object too much as you and your family had the power anyway; it is only now you skip one stupid ceremony for another equally stupid but much grander ceremony!
In an absolute monarchy, the monarch is absolute in power and decides everything. In theory, that is. As I have discussed before, that only goes so far as the keys allow it. Even in the old days, the king couldn’t do whatever they wanted; if anything, they could do even less than what most imagine. It is hard to control people that take weeks to reach. But they do have their armies if you try to attack them.
So while in theory, they have absolute power, they don’t quite have as absolute a power as people often imagine. But it is a great deal of power, and the more centralised the state gets, with the invention of the railroad and more, the more power an absolute monarch has. That is especially so when you compare it to…
Constitutional monarchy
The monarch is mad! The power has gone to their head, and we, the nobles, must rise! To arms! Onto your horses, call for your men, we shall knock them down a few pegs!
Yeah, power begets power, and power can go too far, and it has happened many times in history. Some monarchs have been wise and seen the writing on the wall and gracefully accepted their loss of power; others have refused to accept it and stopped needing a hat.
In a constitutional monarchy, the power is no longer as concentrated in the monarch. While in an absolute monarchy, the monarch is de jure all powerful, in a constitutional monarchy, the monarch de jure lacks certain powers. What they are depends on the constitution and agreement between the nobles and the monarch.
🇬🇧 is among the oldest constitutional monarchies that exist to this day, and the changes in the monarch's power has happened many times. Today, the monarch technically has many powers still, but out of tradition, and the fact that it would be a disaster if the monarch ever used said powers without the parliament requesting it, the monarch does not use those powers.
In 🇸🇪, our constitutional monarch has no powers relevant to the government but serves in many capacities as a symbol of the government and little else. I think it was in the 60s when the official link of power of the monarch was severed here? Anyway, the point is that while the hereditary nature of the monarchy remains, and a great deal of power can be put into the monarch, or none at all, the power is restrained, there are rules to how the monarch and other parts of the government interact, and the monarch can be put to answer for their actions and punished for transgressions.
Inheritance of the crown
There are many ways that inheritance can go and has gone historically, so let's go through them, shall we? Let’s start with the order of birth first!
Primogeniture
Who doesn’t love fancy words? Primo… Prime… Primary… Yes, it is all connected! It means first, as in, the first born is the one that inherits it all, or at least the most! This method of inheritance has historically been the most popular one in a lot of cultures. Which, at face value, makes sense. The oldest is the one you have invested the most into and likely is also the one that has taken care of you in your golden years.
Primogeniture also makes sense if you think about who has accomplished the most of the children. Normally, it is the first by the basic fact that they have had more time. Of course, you can have useless children, but you know, most aren’t. So the first born has had time to build and establish relations with the keys and get their own needed contacts.
Ultimogeniture
Ultimo… ultimate… Yepp, also related. It means last, and here, it means the last born in a lineage. This one is, if I recall correctly, very unpopular historically and over all. This is probably because of the two, this one has the highest possibility of leading to situations where children suddenly become in charge.
You can imagine yourself if the queen is giving birth and dies but the child survives… Whelp, the new baby is the monarch, and it hasn’t figured out how to talk yet! That doesn’t make it very easy. Albeit making the monarch happy is as easy as getting something sweet, but getting concessions as nobility is not easy. I’ll go into how to deal with this in a bit.
Agnic
Enough about the order of being pooped out! Now, it is all about what you have between your legs! Yeah, of course it has to do with sex. You sexed species always have to make it about that somehow! Urgh, anyway, agnic means it follows the male line. So only males can inherit the crown and anything else. Anyone wanna take a guess how popular this one has been? Yeah, an interesting reason for this that has been hypothesised is the monopoly men have had due to their physical strength. Which makes sense, in a way; whoever can do war has force on their side, hence becoming important to war and able to wage war, or at least defend against it, and they are obviously important.
Enatic
If agnic is male, then this must be female! And yes, enatic is that it goes down the female lineage, and this one has not been too popular historically. I have heard that the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa used to have it, but I cannot entirely corroborate it as is. If anyone has sources, please do provide it below in the comments!
Cognatic
Hurray! Finally equality! For reasons I explained in the agnic section, this one has not been popular either, where male and female can inherit equally. It is, however, much more popular than enatic. Some inheritance systems of the crown simply had no regard for the sex, and it was more about who can muster forces and take the crown, which favours agnic. Cognatic succession is popular in modern times as gender inequalities in something so irrelevant is not politically popular. Funnily enough, it is the latest change to the constitution in 🇸🇪 that happened right after the crown princess was born.
The terms agnic-cognatic and enatic-cognatic exist also, and these mean male-preference and female-preference, where one sex usually inherits the crown, but the other may get it if there are no other alternatives.
Xenatic
Alright, I made this one up. Anyone who knows me knows I love weird reproductions, including alien sexes, so how could they work? That is quite literally up to you! The sex most prominent in war tends to be the preferred sex, especially in eras where physical strength and ability to wage war are closely connected.
But it can honestly be anything, so I will take two species of mine that still have monarchy-like structures. The Raixher–read my practicum!–go with ultiatic, because their sex is called ultimale–don’t read too much into the name! No, there is no connection! RAWR! Anyway, that means that the title of Xhaisin is passed along the ultimale lineage which is the best sex for them, because out of the three sexes, primale, midmale, ultimalte, ultimales make up 50% of the population; the remaining 50% the other two sexes share.
A species that serves in the same empire as the Raixher, called the Djonee, have a quing (queen-king hybrid, it’ll become clear soon). Their species is such that in one generation, they birth males and females, and then in the next generation, only hermaphrodites are born. Join my patreon if you wish to see why I did this. So, they have “Hermatic,” which means their crown skips one generation. In brief, why did I do it? Mostly because it was interesting, but hermaphrodites tend to be stronger than males and females for them. And as you can see, I went with the -atic suffix for this, given enatic and cognatic both have it.
Interregnum
Gosh darn Divinum dagnamit! The quing has gone and caught a bad cause of death, and the only heir to the throne is this homunculus of a person at the ripe old age of 7. We cannot possibly or reasonably have them rule! It would be total insanity; what do we do!?
Well, that is what the interregnum is for. It is latin for “Between reigns,” roughly speaking. It can, like everything, take many shapes and forms. If you have it being anything but cognatic succession, then you might have the other partner. Let’s for fun assume again that it is enatic succession, and the queen has died, but the king is still alive while the princess is still only 7. Well, the king can then rule in her stead until she gets old enough, and once old enough to take the throne, she takes over, and the king steps aside.
Another alternative is that a council rules in the monarch's stead. This council can consist of the aforementioned king and others, it can also just be the nobles of the land, or entrusted men or women of the court. This one tends to have a higher ability of not trying to steal the throne from the young monarch, as it is harder to get all of those people to agree to something rather than if it is just the king who can more easily be manipulated.
Succession crisis
Succession is important; it helps in giving legitimacy because by tradition, it shouldn’t be difficult! But, of course, it is; this is especially so in the old days where the succession order was not codified. Combine this with the practice of marrying away your children for alliances, and you have the perfect setting for a war of successions.
Why, you might ask? Well, my highly pulchritudinous reader, you see, your parents die, and now you are to inherit the throne. Except your grandparents married off all the siblings of your parents, and they all had children; this means that they technically can claim the throne because you don’t have a fixed, decided on succession line. They are technically just as valid as you. You might be under the illusion that just because you were born of the “right” family, it must be you.
But you see, the claim can be made that your father or mother were not legitimate, or what if you’re not even the child of the one the crown follows! 😱 Then the crown definitely can not be yours! So, it is one of the others, and it is only now they found it all out! Yeah, you can see how it can spiral quickly out of control, and your aunts and uncles only need to sow enough doubt about your legitimacy that theirs seem possible for a full scale civil war of succession to happen. Sometimes it is not even a civil war but a full fledged war between nations!
So, it is good for a monarch, along with the nobility, to have a fixed and understood succession order. This can still become an issue if, uh… well, the sex is wrong of the heir, or even worse, there is no heir! The horror! What happens then? Well, it depends on the wording of the succession. Wars can still come to be, especially if the nearest relatives become harder to track. While it is not a huge issue in modern times, the succession of the 🇬🇧 is very precise to avoid the many pitfalls it had for a long time. So, one has to come up with a rule for it that covers a lot of edge cases as otherwise… WAR! Maybe. Most of the time, it won’t be.
Misconceptions
I want to finish this off with a little bit about common misconceptions about monarchies.
Power
Often, power is portrayed as absolute, like in the ideal case of an absolute monarch. But no matter what kind of monarchy it is, the power is not absolute because, let's be real, they cannot get everywhere, as I explained earlier.
International alliances
The royal family is often portrayed in more historical settings as insular and almost entirely separate and pure from the rest of the continent and world in which they exist. In reality, royalties used each other to establish alliances, and thus wives, husbands, children, and more came from all over the place. Catherine the Great of Russia was from Prussia, and she is famous as a Russian monarch because her husband was incompetent.
Binary rulers
You often see rulers as saints or tyrants; that is not how most people are. Most monarchs were sufficiently capable, and while not saints, they were just regular assholes instead of tyrants.
Hereditary competence
A lot of monarchies in fiction tend to miraculously breed forth highly competent people, which is not the case. Sure, the training they could afford made it much easier to become competent, but given how little monarchs had families with non-royalties, no amount of training and education can help a monarch who is psychotic or insane due to inbreeding. There needs to be something that filters out the incompetent and breeds in more diversity into the royal genepool.
Stagnation
Sure, this ties into the fantasy cliché of being stuck in mediaeval times for a billion years. But with monarchies, they change with time and how they interact with people. The monarchs of Napoleon, of the age of exploration, of the mediaeval era, and all, were very different in how the court worked, how the families were structured, and more. Some seem to be under the impression that X millenia of nothing happening somehow gives it rich history, but it doesn’t make the royal family more impressive if you ask me. It makes them incompetent ruling for so long and no progress is being made.
Summa Summarum
This is NOT going to be my only post on this—I have done all this, and I am still not done! I have so much more to say, but these are some good points to think on if you want to make a monarchy. If you have aliens like I do, think about how you can make it more interesting! Sure, most of it is still just ordinary ruling, but how the close family and succession works is a great way to show peculiarities that are inherent to the species. Like my Raixher have some peculiarities due to them having 3 sexes that I didn’t go into here.
You can go classical or new, but I hopefully have taught you some stuff to make a more informed decision no matter what you do. So that will be all for this time, sayonara!
Want to dive into a discussion about Stellima or the art of writing on Discord? We’d love to have you! And if you have any topics you struggle with or that you would like to suggest for a future blogpost, we’re open to suggestions!
Interested in supporting our work? Join our Patreon and become a part of Stellima as a citizen of Mjatreonn! Or would you like to give us some caffeine to fuel our writing? Consider buying us a coffee at Ko-fi! Every contribution inspires our creativity and keeps us going. Thank you for your support!
Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as the monarchy and related concepts are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, unique ideas like the Raixher, the Djone, the Xhaisin, and ultimales as well as specific language or exact phrasing is individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
We at Stellima value human creativity but are exploring ways AI can be ethically used. Please read our policy on AI and know that every word in the blog is written and edited by humans or aliens.
