Reform Appendices: Parliament, Princesses and Peerage · 8:17pm Oct 23rd, 2022
Hello everyone, I do hope you enjoyed the beginnings of Luna's reforms! I've been blown away by the responses to it thus far, thanks so much. We'll definitely be seeing more of Luna in the hopefully near future, and perhaps of Buff Envelope as well at some point.
I've been wrestling with how best to add appendices to stories without undue interruption for a while, and linked blogs seem like the way to go. If this works out, I intend to make it a regular thing for each story released, to clarify some concepts that might be a little opaque to readers and generally create a bit of a historical record of the development of the Quenta Roccolië.
For this blog, I'll be focussing upon the political functioning of Equestria, though below I'll also include auxiliary information in response to questions I've received. First off, the Dotted Line Report;
As mentioned in the story, the Dotted Line Report was compiled at the end of an investigation into the preparedness of Equestria's defences following the string of disasters during the early years of canon, as well as the secession of Severyana (now Stalliongrad) from the country four years before the events of the pilot. This story is in essence an expansion of the in-game event early in Equestria's focus tree in-game, speculating on what was actually going on behind the pop-up.
Equestrian politics in the Quenta Roccolië is loosely inspired by the early modern English system, during the transition from the council of nobles (as established by Magna Carta) Parliament in its earliest phases represented to the more modern electoral system. Rotten boroughs and the like are an ongoing problem, albeit one largely resolved in the more populous and wealthy north of the country. The south is a whole other kettle of fish as the map featured below will attest.
As this implies, the Equestrian system of government is a constitutional diarchy with the balance of power held firmly by the crowns. Parliament consists of a single house democratically elected by preferential voting every five years from the various (currently around three hundred and fifty) constituencies across the country. Most of the day to day running of government is handled by a Prime Minister, who recruits a cabinet from one of the several political parties (in this case loose coalitions of MPs who fall under umbrella monikers and freely flip-flop while being only answerable to their constituents, for whom they have a duty of care, not the rigid sort with party whips usually found today in our world) and requests permission from the Diarchs to form a government. This is usually accepted, though Celestia has a history of rejecting cabinets, either on the grounds of unsuitable individual members or overall policy. If rejected, then either the prospective Prime Minister must try to reach a compromise with the Diarchs or another Member of Parliament, usually from an opposing party, must attempt to form a government. This process can and on occasion has looped several times, but the governments generated at the end of it tend to be stable to the point of being downright dull, for better or worse. Most Ponies are consequently barely aware there even is a national Parliament, beyond half-forgotten lessons at school and the occasional pamphlet dropped through the letterbox.
Both Parliament and the Diarchs can put forward legislation, sending things back and forth for amendment until some agreement is reached and it is signed into law by either Celestia or Luna. By necessity of a modern country, the bulk of legislation comes from Parliament, allowing the Diarchs to focus upon more weighty matters than tweaks to regulations on food packing and the like. Ultimately, most of Parliament's legislation is controlled by the civil service, as there is a culture of 'taming' ministers among senior civil servants, bringing them to rely heavily on their advice. The civil service itself is a firmly meritocratic entity that has developed organically through Equestria's history, though it is far from perfect as ambition and intellect make for a heady concoction of pride.
In the extraordinarily rare event that the princesses cannot reach some concord over a topic, then Parliament acts as a tiebreaker. In the more common event of a deadlock between Parliament and crowns, the Diarchs have ultimate executive power to force a law through, though again they seldom have to exercise this power as Parliament tends to either be controlled by supportive 'parties' or too worried about looking bad in front of their voters by going against the crowns. It's hard to defy immortal princesses whose popularity and personal power have given rise to a sizable minority religious following, after all. Even if said worship is softly discouraged by its targets.
The Diarchs are supported by their respective courts, which are filled by a mixture of nobles (landed or otherwise) and retainers, who aside from ceremonial duties provide advice to the princesses, particularly on specialist topics. Celestia, for all her age and wisdom, is after all not a professional farmer, filmmaker or factory manager. The court itself has no direct power, but having the ear of a princess is nothing to be sniffed at!
This general structure is repeated in miniature across many of the forty-two administrative districts of the country, within the courts of vassal nobles (such as for example, the Countess of Riverpool), though other regions are run by elected local councils. Some larger regions have a devolved parliament with a fairly wide scope of autonomy, depending on their history. The Duchy of Cloudsdale and the Principality of Severyana (prior to its secession) are both examples of differing kinds, with the former resembling the national government on a smaller scale while the latter operated under a council of hereditary nobles (boyars). Since the secession, the parts of Severyana that remain in Equestrian control have been reorganised, with greatly decreased autonomy and the stripping of the landed titles of the boyars, who have been replaced by more elected councils.
The Crystal Empire is a fully independent allied nation with about a fifth the population of Equestria, though the process of rapid modernisation since its return has led to the adoption of a very similar political makeup to Equestria, which is presently (and not entirely unjustifiably) internationally viewed as its hegemon in most schools of thought. Prior to the return of the capital city, the rural outlying lands (sparsely populated by hardy nomads, miners and the inevitable service economy to support the latter) were run by a governor as a crown dominion in the same manner as New Mareland on the west coast of Griffonia still is. Greenland would be a good real life comparison to that situation.
Pictured: The forty-two administrative districts of Equestria, plus autonomous crown dominions, the Everfree March, Crystal Empire, Stalliongrad and Our Town, circa 1007ALB. Based upon Eltirions' world map base.
Miscellaneous useful information:
For the sake of relative brevity, I'll cover the calendar (Princess' Reckoning) in more detail in another appendix, but for the purposes of this story, take it as read that there are twelve months (moons) to the year and seven days to the week.
The recurring dream Luna has been having in chapter one is based on an event in the early game of Equestria at War. For context, the Thestral Friendship Campaign is an attempt to fix the historical discrimination against Thestrals, who are a relatively small ethnicity of Pegasi who lack feathers and tend to be nocturnal. In terms of Reform, one just needs to know that the Thestral Friendship Campaign can go one of three ways in-game:
- Celestia and Luna run it together and safely resolve the issue, but Luna remains overshadowed by her sister.
- Luna deals with the campaign alone (with or without the help of Rarity) and succeeds in spite of the Manehattan terror attack, reinvigorating her self-confidence and pushing toward an equal diarchy.
- Luna deals with the campaign alone (again, with or without Rarity), but when the bombing happens, she cracks catastrophically under the pressure, allowing Nightmare Moon to return and triggering a civil war. If Rarity was involved in the campaign, then she will use the in to help Luna resist the worst excesses of Nightmare Moon's corruption.
I don't want to go into too much detail here about the whys (both of the campaign and the terror attack) in case I want to use it for story fodder later, but as shown in Reform, the second outcome occurred in the Quenta Roccolië timeline. For an excellent example of a fic dealing with the third possibility, specifically with Rarity moderating Nightmare Moon, I recommend Piece by Piece by Eltirions.
Rarity did survive the bombing and will appear again, but as Luna mentioned, crude medieval healing magic isn't the gentlest of things.
At the last, it is worth noting that the Military Secretary is a distinct position from the Permanent Secretary to the War Office. The former is a military posting who acts as a liason between the General Staff of the military and the civil service, while the latter is the most senior civil service position within the War Office, reporting to the General Secretary (the chief position of the civil service, currently held by Dotted Line) and the Minister of Defence, who is a member of the cabinet and Parliament, though the role in recent years has usually been sidelined and given to some out of favour MP to try and get them to resign, owing to the bad press it frequently generates.
Neat, if more than a little puzzling. Mainly in the sense that, while Equestria’s massive size obviously lends itself far more to a Federalist form of government than Unitary, considering the pretty modern nature of the EaW setting, combined with Celestia’s “benevolent absolutism” (IIRC that’s what the name in-game name of the ideology of the harmonic ruling party is described as), I’d expected a lot of centralization. Admittedly, even the best of IRL “enlightened despots” really left something to be desired by our modern sensibilities, but I can’t help but feel that Celestia would really leverage her longevity to centralizing the power of government to, well, her government, rather than a noble who essentially rules in her stead in exchange for some taxes and military service. As demonstrated by the amount of red tape, used for both comedic effect and to help demonstrate the very sorry state of the army, there is no lack of literate individuals who either could be or are trained as bureaucrats to efficiently administer the state.
In other words, medieval (Western/Central/Southern European) governance took on its shape, with large realms such as France or the HRE having vassals of vassals of vassals of vassals, ultimately, because of a deficiency in administers, administrative power they’d give, and the ability to train and support sufficient quantities of them (on top of the nobility, like, REALLY liking their position and constantly fighting the efforts of the monarch to centralize and increase their power, at the nobility’s expense).
This started to change in the Early Modern Era—not least of which, I suspect, being that canons were both ridiculously expensive, even for rather rich and powerful nobility, such as dukes, and thus mostly the monarchs‘s purview, and how they completely broke the power dynamic between monarch and noble/vassal: namely, before, with a castle, one can (relatively cheaply, especially as their improvements were over many decades) force their superior to either find a far, far larger force to force them to obey, and thus meant that monarchs generally had to get obedience from their authority and other much more diplomatic avenues. Now, they can knock down your walls and force you to submit with relative ease. This becomes especially potent as the next step in fortification, the start fort, is atrociously expensive, even compared to a late medieval castle.
This is…not Celestia’s style, to say the least, but I think it nevertheless would see an increase to her power in the relationship with lower nobility. It certainly gives her quite a bit more ability to use “gunboat diplomacy” for those who need a…firmer touch.
Anyway, the central government became increasingly powerful over time, but it was a very slow process and while one king might curtail privileges and power, the next, through incompetence or weakness or in order to end a revolt, might undo those changes. It’s a very complicated topic that varies greatly from place to place and that I’ll freely admit I’m not especially familiar with, but a reoccurring theme is that the greatest thing slowing that centralization down was a monarch’s morality, and the relative rarity of an equally or more competent successor (one need only look a Prussia to see what several above-average to great rulers can do for even rather small and weak polities.
This has gotten a lot longer than I meant it to, but I hope I’ve successfully illustrated my confusion: Celestia has had access to an elaborate and sophisticated administrative apparatus whose loyalties lie with her and the national government she is a diarch of (and was a monarch of for a literal millennia), which eliminates the need of feudal or early modern vassals that have a great deal of autonomy, and combined with her immortality and the ability it gives her to play the long game, and slowly consolidate power, and have relatively few setbacks from a consistent goal, stability, and no succession, so for the life of me I can’t figure out why Equestria wouldn’t resemble a very modern state.
Also, what is the first story in “Quenta Roccolië” and what does it mean or refer to?
5715204
To answer the easier bit first: The Quenta Roccolië is the overarching name of my writings in the world of Equestria at War. It's a Quenya name meaning 'Account of the Horse-folk' when translated literally. It's a tie-in to the Quenta Nairelossëo (Account of the Snow of Woe), my Silmarillion work which is available to read on AO3. I shan't expand upon the cosmological context here since it's not the point of this appendix.
As for the bulk of your question, there are two main things to consider. Firstly, development takes time. The civil service didn't spring into being in its modern form as an intricate bureaucratic juggernaut, it evolved with the development of society and grew to fit the demand placed upon it. To expand beyond that would have been illogical, just the same way that having an entire branch of the civil service today dedicated to regulating asteroid mining would be pointless. The first civil servants were mostly drawn from the lesser children of nobility and the urban merchant class, but as literacy rates rose (particularly with universal education coming in around the beginning of the industrial revolution, circa 700ALB) you see more more of the burgeoning self-made middle classes appearing in there.
Secondly, Celestia's immortality is a major part of why Equestria is lagging behind say, the Kingdom of Wingbardy (a modern constitutional monarchy) in terms of political development, at least as we would understand it. The lack of upsets means that there is less drive to change by leaps and bounds. Instead change is slow and mostly iterative, which does indeed mean that Celestia has retained a huge amount of theoretical power. At the same time however, the velvet-gloved manner in which she's amassed and maintained that power against encroachment from the nobility means that she can't exercise it in full very much without risking upsetting the house of cards she's been building. She has to do everything gently.
To put it another way: Celestia's perfect princess persona has become so ingrained into Equestria that she practically is Equestria, and if she deviates from the persona in public, the economy crashes because stock markets panic. That incident with the photograph of her messily eating cake caused a dip in the value of the Bit. Now imagine what would happen if she decided to announce the abolition of the powers of all landed nobles...
This in part is why Luna is so effective. Not being tied up in the web of state nearly so deeply, she can bull-rush into things and force change where she sees fit, so long as Celestia is aware of her plans and can pull the right strings to mitigate backlash (as we see being arranged in Reform during their discussion).
As for nobility and the Parliament; Celestia's been playing the long game for almost three centuries long at this point. In the past, relatively slow travel (teleportation is quite a new thing, at least with any degree of safety) and the limits that imposed on communications were a hindering factor in pushing ahead of time or absorbing all power into the crown. I'll probably explain this better in another appendix or story on the rise and fall of the adventuring profession, since that is tied into feudalism in Equestria rather strongly. For now, just remember that Celestia is not omniscient, nor is she omnipotent and in the equivalent of the early middle ages she couldn't exert authority nearly so well as she can today (experience is also a factor to consider over such a long time gap), especially since she actively (and only partially successfully) worked to squash any attempts to deify her, thus refusing to use a potential tool that could have served her well on ethical grounds.
The workload only got worse as Equestria grew in territory, population and sophistication, to the point that Celestia barely has a private life these days. Even with modern communications like telegraph or teleport couriers coming in over the last century and Luna rapidly taking up slack since her return, it would simply be impossible to run Equestria as a centralised despotic state today by virtue of physically not having enough time in the day to get through everything.
Both the civil service and Parliament thus function as bureaucratic safety release valves for the diarchs, (barely) preventing them becoming overwhelmed by work. The reason that the civil service wasn't simply expanded to cover minor legislation as well is separation of powers. Giving them that authority as well as their existing administrative role would turn the civil service into a dangerously powerful clique that served Celestia and not Equestria at best and itself at worst, which very much conflicts with Celestia's ethics and pragmatism. Equestria's judiciary is also well-insulated for this reason. In the meantime, incompetent nobles get sidelined whenever an excuse arises while capable and just ones get to stick around, which over generations will eventually lead to their phasing out as political entities. Do keep in mind that the nobles who regularly give Celestia grief in Canterlot disproportionately represent the depowered and inept sort, since the good nobles are mostly the ones out in their fiefdoms doing their jobs. The Duke of Cloudsdale for example is an extremely popular old gent who's done great work throughout his life, and the next two generations also look solid for that family.
5715269
I see. Neat! I suppose what happened is I saw how small the “crown lands” was compared to everything else on the map and I both assumed that it was still feudal/vassal-like in how much autonomy they have, as well as getting CK2 PTSD.
If I’m not grossly misunderstanding you, while the various regions within Equestria still have a lot of those old elements, the nobility that’s actually in charge are more like Frederick the Great administratively, in that they see their role as “Servant of State,” or in other words while they’re nobles, and likely have the trappings and lifestyles that entails, in governance they act more like civil servants who run the day-to-day stuff, but still pass the buck to Canterlot for more important stuff, call Canterlot for both permission and the money for big infrastructure or industrial projects, and (especially since the whole Stalliongrad debacle), have some sort of oversight in behavior to make sure nobody else is actually being a greedy asshole by treating the common ponies like serfs.
5715320
What's not shown on the map is the fact that the 'Principality of Filldelphia' (de jure 'owned' by Blueblood) is effectively an extension of the crown lands in a historical context. Indeed the original capital of the country was Fillydelphia for a long time in the post-Discord aftermath period. It got partitioned off for admin reasons after the War of the Sisters as Celestia alone couldn't manage everything (especially in the state the war left her emotionally for quite a while) and it was more important that the capital be close to the most likely flareup point for trouble on the then-borders of the principality than in a relatively secure trade city behind days to weeks of communications lag. For all he's a twerp on a personal level, Blueblood and his family have always been tied closely to the Sisters and their most stalwart political allies/puppets.
And yes, you understand me correctly with regard to the nobility. The remaining landed vassals in the modern day are the ones who fulfil their function as you describe and understand that rights come with responsibilities. The ones who slacked off or abused their privilege were shown the door and their descendants haunt the halls of the palace in Canterlot like so many snotty phantoms as a warning to the rest. The remaining landed elite do retain all the trappings and ceremony of yesteryear, though the matter of autonomy varies from place to place, depending on the exact agreements made when the region was annexed over the years. The intricate legalities of that and how it interacts with the powers of the local MPs have supported the careers of many lawyers over the years and are major component causes of the legal bloat Luna bemoans in the story.
The aforementioned autonomy varies from (most commonly) effective figureheads for whom the stripping down of feudal levy obligations constitutes the final removal of their practical functions to having strong powers over local investment, policy, tax and the like. Cloudsdale is by far the most extreme example of this upper end after the loss of Severyana and comparisons with modern Scotland would not be too far off. In all cases, Canterlot does retain (and uses practically daily) the right to reach down and impose things if needed and has the sole say in foreign policy, which is what distinguishes Cloudsdale from say, New Mareland or the Crystal Empire, since those have the rights of sovereign nations. New Mareland could in theory independently declare war on Wingbardy for example, though it wouldn't because (aside from that being a stupid idea) the diarchs are also heads of state of that country with (seldom exercised) veto powers and would have to co-sign with the Governor. The Crystal Empire's ties to Equestria stem from a heavy reliance on them for modern skills and tools, though Cadance has been working with some success toward bringing her country into a position befitting of allies rather than subjects.
The local councils, such as in Vanhoover or the ones set up in the remains of Severyana, have about as much autonomy as the lower end nobles, but more power. In cases of those mostly ceremonial nobles you'll find a council doing the actual work with their 'blessing'. Look at the standing of say, Devon County Council in the UK and you get a good idea of what the councils do, albeit with the hangover responsibility of raising feudal-style levies at need (until the events following Reform).