Vauldans are generally very respectful towards authority and the rule of law. They only tend to get restive and disrespectful towards their rulers when laws or adjudications seem capricious or corrupt; if a Magistrate puts in place a law which sounds nonsensical or has significant negative impact on their people without giving a good explanation for why they’re doing it and proving that they’re not personally benefiting from it somehow, then their subjects are likely to make a stink about it and appeal to their Imperial Governor. In general, however, Vauldans treat laws as reasonable and something to be followed and respected unless given a good reason otherwise.
This applies to leadership positions, as well. Vauldans view government officials as something akin to holy folk, tasked by the Throne with their mission (whatever it is) and thus due the appropriate level of respect until and unless they prove they don’t deserve it. Should some feckless official ever meet that threshold, however, the results tend to be catastrophic, as Vauldans lose faith in the official’s ability to do their duty properly and simply stop obeying them. This tendency towards demanding professionalism and effectiveness in their officials is one of the things that has kept the Empire strong and vibrant in the two and a half centuries since Resurgent’s reforms: any official who proves corrupt, ineffective, or foolish is rapidly replaced by someone more capable and responsible, and problems that persist despite this are swiftly brought to the attention of higher and higher levels of government until they’re solved.
The Empire is ruled by the Emperor or Empress (referred to as just “the Throne” regardless of gender), and administered by a collection of Imperial Governors appointed by the Throne. Before Empress Resurgent’s reign, the Governors were lackeys of the Legions’ Generals, but now they have been granted significantly more leeway in running their respective Provinces — though the Throne is constantly investigating their books and personal affairs, and any corruption by a Governor results in an incredibly harsh set of punishments for them and their family.
The heir to the Throne is chosen in secret by its current holder immediately upon their ascension, and can be changed at any time. This information is kept by the Imperial Service, magically sworn to keep the secret so that the possible heirs don’t have a strong incentive to start killing each other (as has happened frequently during earlier eras in the Empire’s history). The heir does not need to be a blood relative of the current Throne, and the position has in fact passed to a Throne’s protege instead of one of their relatives four times in the past two and a half centuries.
The current holder of the Throne is Empress Vigilant, a Wood Elf who split her formative years between the 4th Legion’s Scouting Corps and Hammerhall’s civil service. She took the auguries of an oncoming Churning quite seriously shortly after her ascension ten years ago, and her foresight and efforts to prepare the Empire have been lauded since the Gates began appearing and the Churning was confirmed to have started.
The eight Imperial Governors are the administrators of the Throne’s will and the ones responsible for much of the actual day-to-day governance of the Empire. They are appointed by the Throne, serve at the Throne’s pleasure, and can be commanded to act by the Throne or (with the Throne’s permission) by the Senate, but overall they have a fair amount of leeway to deal with issues within their Province as such things crop up. Each Provincial government has a permanent administrative staff which serves whoever is appointed Governor, though each Governor is allowed to hire and fire staff as they deem fit.
Within a Province, the Governors rely upon regional Magistrates to oversee more local matters and relay problems up the chain of command. Magistrates are technically appointed by the Governor of their Province, but it’s become tradition to leave Magistrates in place unless a Governor has good reason to replace them. They tend to have a much better understanding of their local area than the Governor does, and staying on good terms with them ensures that the Governor doesn’t get caught flat-footed by a problem they didn’t see coming (or weren’t warned about).
The Imperial Senate began as an attempt at democracy after the Second Vauldan Civil War. It became just another corrupt catspaw of the Imperial Governors of the time within a decade, but it has survived in one form or another in each iteration of the Empire’s government ever since. In its modern version, the Senate acts as an advisory body to the Throne and as the elected head of much of the Empire’s bureaucracy. Senators are appointed by the Imperial Governors, but in practice the people they appoint are those voted on by the people of their Province; Governors have veto power over the appointment, but they tend to only use it when someone truly reprehensible or obstreperous manages to get elected.
Senators bring issues to the floor of the Senate, debate amongst each other what the Empire should do and thus what the Senate should recommend to the Throne, and (most crucially) form Committees to deal with various aspects of running the Empire. Many of these Committees have been in existence since Resurgent’s reforms, and are jealously-guarded fiefs of some long-serving Senators; others are formed to deal with a specific problem and then disappear once that problem is solved. Each Committee is allotted a budget to hire civil servants, and the oldest and largest Committees are behemoths of bureaucratic power. Though the Throne has the power to dictate policy to the Committees, in practice this doesn’t happen very often, as the Thrones in the centuries since Resurgent have learned that the Committees have ways of making their displeasure known which can’t be effectively traced or punished; a wise Throne attempts to make deals with Senators, rather than commanding them about like peons.
Currently, the most important and/or powerful of the Committees are as follows:
The Imperial Service is the umbrella name for the parts of the Empire’s government that are under the direct control of the Throne, and includes a wide variety of divisions:
The nobility of the Empire (the Duxea, Cometes, Baronnes, and lesser Nobilitea) are an endangered breed. In the past the nobility were a key power bloc in controlling the Empire, equal to the Legions and the Senate, and any would-be ruler of the nation needed to carefully play the nobility off against one another if they wished to prevent rebellion or assassination. However, when Resurgent came to power she saw them as a principle cause for the Empire’s decline, and set about carving away at the nobility’s political power and economic influence. The Thrones since Resurgent have never been able to completely crush the nobility, but over the last two and a half centuries they have still done their best to prune the worst and most corrupt nobles out of Imperial politics and society.
In modern times, the nobility still controls a sizable portion of the Empire’s economy, but their political influence has been harshly restricted by the Throne, Senate, and Governors. Nobles who leverage their wealth and economic power to oppress their workers or attempt to bribe officials face a very real danger of having their wealth stripped from them and being replaced by up-and-coming commoners. There are always rumors of nobles seeking to overturn the status quo and bring back the times when the aristocracy dominated the Empire, but the Throne and its Eyes have been successful enough in crushing such attempts that the nobles who are left standing have learned to either adapt to the modern world or keep their disgruntlement very well hidden.
Leadership within the Empire is based on one’s Strata. Higher-Strata individuals are the ones looked at first for leadership roles, and showing good leadership is a reliable way of raising your Strata even higher once you’ve proven to have basic knowledge and skills in your field. For any would-be Senators or Governors just starting out, the general recommendation is to focus on raising your Strata via testing; once that process is underway, look into finding a task that needs doing by a Regional, Provincial, or (even better) Imperial official, leading a small team in accomplishing it, and then keep doing that until your accomplishments speak for themselves and are reflected in a rise in your Strata.
Many officials take promising young leaders under their wing as protégés, tasking them with challenges and vouching for them when the Atria Examinae asks for character and skill references, until the protégé eventually equals their patron’s Strata. Other leaders rise on their own, their knack for management, leadership, and administration creating enough of a trail that they rise in Strata on their own merits without any assistance. Once someone gets into the Quintus Strata, however, opportunities for advancement tend to be restricted to either political roles, marrying into a noble house and inheriting their title, or rising in the ranks of the Legions.