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Q: What's the difference between democracy and feudalism?
A: In democracy, your vote counts. In feudalism, your Count votes.
Feudalism IN SPACE!!!
Kings and queens, princes and princesses, nobles, courts. . . .
A form of Days Of Future Past which can incorporate elements from the High Middle Ages right up to the Victorian Age. The chief characteristic is that social status is legally enacted and hereditary.
Occasionally we are told that the king/emperor is elected, but it makes no difference in their authority. Certainly we never see them running for re-election. (A clever writer could make it like the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, also elected, but such issues as who are the electors and who is eligible to run never come up.)
Among the commonest societies in Space Opera, Planetary Romance, and other forms of Science Fiction.
Falls into two categories:
- A planet has such a social structure. Often justified by having technological regression (but why does it never regress further?) but may have futuristic technology.
- A multi-planet, even interstellar society. Always has futuristic technology, of course.
Prone to Medieval Stasis, even though technology is far above medieval level. May also involve anachronistic items from real medieval Technology Levels. Evil nobles may restrict commoners' use of high technology; medical technology is particularly common, but commoners often live lives of drudgery and toil.
Often an excuse to use Medieval European Fantasy tropes in SF. On the other hand, most historical (sedentary) societies have had legal enforceable hierarchies, and many do to this day; democracy has frequently been very ill-thought of, and has, from time to time, deserved it.
Frequently rather benevolent, but may range all the way to Aristocrats Are Evil and Deadly Decadent Court. However, it is seldom explicitly Dystopia; Dystopian authorities tend to be more blatantly kept in place by naked force. This trope covers only societies where social status is legally inherited; 1984, where the children of Party members are theoretically admitted because of an exam, and the children of proles who might qualify tend to vanish before it, does not qualify. Also, under this trope, the royals and nobles draw their authority from the law, where the ruling party of a Dystopia does not acknowledge anything as giving them their power.
In some works, heroes have great ease in converting them to democracies. Partly because writers seem to be unaware of any arguments against democracy, and of the complexity of developing a stable democracy.
Examples:
Planets
Anime
Literature
- In Poul Anderson's Corridors Of Time, the hero realizes that the futuristic society that recruited him to fight a Dystopia is rather Dystopian itself when he is dropped in it and learns that the queen has high tech medical treatment while the poor woman he meets looks ancient at forty because of her lack of it.
- In Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson's Hoka stories, the imaginative to the point of autohypnosis Hokas have emulated human societies, and since some have kings and nobles, they emulate them. They have a Victorian Britain with a Hoka Queen Victoria.
- Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover.
- Barrayar from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, currently re-progressing after a period of isolation and regression.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars
- John Christopher's Prince In Waiting trilogy. Set mostly in England, centuries after a nuclear-war-like natural disaster. England is a bunch of warring city-states ruled by princes, but with a dominant anti-technology religion in which people worship Spirits. Christians are an oppressed minority, and mutants are a lower caste.
- Anne McCaffrey's Pern.
- M.K. Wren's The Phoenix Legacy, which is a more literal version of a Feudal Future than most: most of humanity are Bonds, kept illiterate and oppressed to a greater or lesser degree depending on who has control of them. The Fesh are educated professionals (e.g. university scholars, technicians), while the Elite are the aristocrats who control the government. For the past few hundred years, it has been effectively impossible to change from one of the three castes to a higher caste. The civilization, which arose After The End of World War III, is teetering on the edge of another Dark Age as the story opens.
- In the Mankeen Revolt, a relatively recent historical memory, Lionar Mankeen attempted to liberate the Bonds by force. The attempt failed miserably and set back social progress a long way because the implementation was not well thought out; the Bonds were not only illiterate, but were unused to handling money and working for wages, and preparations had not been made to alleviate those problems.
- A Canticle For Leibowitz
- The Praxis (Dread Empires Fall) has The Peers, Lords and Ladies born to a higher station.
- Andre Norton features a good number in her SF: Ice Crown, Android At Arms, Forerunner Foray.
- In a Space Opera type story that I can't even remember the title of (it might have been a online thing, for all I know), it got a Lampshade Hanging. Yes, the Earth of the 35th century (or whatever time it was) has a royal family, but it is purely ceremonial and came into being as the dual result of deregulation of royal succession laws and the members of the few remaining royal families going to the same types of parties, until eventually all the royal families had basically become indistinguishable from one another. Since by this time Earth had ceased to have countries or anything, the idea of their being a British/Japanese/Belgian/Monacoian/Dutch/whatever royal family anymore was dumb anyway so it was just decided that there would be a cermonial "King/Queen of Earth" instead.
- Both averted and played straight by H. Beam Piper. Piper's Terro-Human Future History ended with a series of galactic Empires. This was justified: the universe was too big to hold a vote for general leader. Not only counting a vote of trillions, but also transporting the vote took far too long. The aversion is in the planetary governments: Piper's Empire allowed each planet to be self-governing, under a general Imperial constitution that controlled how the planets interacted with each other. This meant that any number of types of governments existed from planet to planet, from enlightened democracies to totalitarian nightmares. The capital planet of the Empire itself, Odin, was actually run as a constitutional monarchy, with a strong parliament to balance out the Emperor.
Film
- In Star Wars, we have Princess Leia, and her mother, Queen Amidala, "recently elected ruler of Naboo". Oddly, Naboo also has a Prime Minister, who insists in one scene that the planet is a democracy, which means they must have some sort of a constitutional elected monarchy, raising the question of what the hell the Queen actually does.
- Figurehead. For a Real Life equivalent, look at Malaysia's King, or the German President in a sense.
- The Queen serves as societies "Minister of Culture", hands out honors, takes care of national treasures, and other stuff that would have to be dealt with by Obstructive Bureaucrats anyway, and with far less style. She also deflects the razzle-dazzle of state in a harmless direction so that no politician is flattered by celebrity worship. Fairly useful roles.
- Another possibility is that the Queen and the PM share the top slot, possibly in different capacities. I wouldn't be surprised if one dealt with internal affairs while the other filled a more... international role.
- That's the difference between Head of State (The Queen) and Head of Government (The PM.) See also Queen and PM in the UK, as opposed to the President of the US, which is both.
- However the Queen in the UK isn't elected like Amidala, and only has authority and influence, not direct power. The job of head of state is in practice done by the Prime minister and Cabinet members for the ministry they represent.
- If that comparison was accurate, Amidala would be a powerless figurehead that absolutely no-one took seriously.
- Hah! Ask a Spaniard who was an adult in the 1980's about Juan Carlos. Queen Elizabeth II could bring down a Government of which she disapproved. King Baudoin of Belgium and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg have triggered constitutional crises over their opposition to abortion and euthanasia. The Prince of Leichtenstein has the power to call for referendums on laws passed by Parliament. In historical monarchies (Britain before George III, Imperial Germany, the Austrian component of Austria-Hungary) Prime Ministers were less independent and monarchs had signifigantly more say in state affairs.
- Queen Elizabeth can't/wouldn't because she understands the restricted power and duty of the monarchy; however when Prince Charles becomes king, most people think its very likely he will take and active part in politics, which is illegal for the monarch, so he will probably resign.
- Flagrantly untrue. The monarch has a truly massive amount of power in the British system(appointing the bulk of the House of Lords, choosing a Cabinet subject to the confidence of the Commons, an absolute veto over all legislation, the right to choose when and how to enforce most legislation, appointing most senior bureaucrats and judges, and command-in-chief of the entire military), and there is no law preventing any monarch from using any of those powers, though some limits do formally exist. In practice, it is respect for a tradition of noninterference that stretches back almost 200 years that prevents them from using that power in all but the most extreme circumstances, and that is a tradition Charles will continue to adhere to.
- Not really. Since 1688 the monarch's powers have been legally restricted (not by "tradition") and, importantly, one of these restrictions was that the monarch cannot rule without Parliament which, basically, means the monarch has no independent power. According to law the monarch does appoint people (including the Prime Minister) but the constitutional set-up of the UK means that this is purely ceremonial. Any monarch which tried to use their reserve powers independently would probably be forced to abdicate; in the extreme situation in which they refused to do so Parliament would simply pass a bill forcing them from the throne and appointing a new monarch (which isn't that different what they did in 1688 when James II refused to go).
- A better example may be Norway up until the establishment of the primacy of the Storting.
Live Action TV
- Doctor Who ran across these: "The Ribos Operation", "The Androids of Tara", "The Armageddon Factor" and many more.
- Interestingly, the three serials named above were all in the "Key to Time" sequence. Makes you wonder about connections.
Literature
- Bunches of star nations in David Weber's Honorverse, including but not limited to the Star Kingdom of Manticore (constitutional monarchy), Grayson (religious state with multiple hereditary oligarchies) and the Andermani Empire (absolute monarchy with rather nuttier monarchs). Then again, the whole series is Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE!!!
- Empire of Man / Prince Roger series, by John Ringo and David Weber.
- Also Weber's The Excalibur Alternative in passing, but there it's justified by the Emperor being an English noble born in the 14th century(yes, it's sci-fi - it's a rather odd story).
- If This Troper remembers correctly, it was one of MWW's earlier novels and is a quite fragrant imitation/tribute to the Poul Anderson's High Crusade
- Perhaps, but also tied in to David Drake's Ranks of Bronze.
- For that matter, the Empire from the Ashes/Mutineer's Moon trilogy.
- Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven's A Mote In God's Eye
- Dune. Good LORD, Dune.
- The Galactic Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. This is particularly clear after the breakdown of the empire begins. It is implied, however, that the Empire was a constitutional monarchy, with powers resembling Great Britain in the late 18th century (i.e. the ministers run most of the business of state, but if the monarch wants something done, it gets done.) Although the Emperor's power was gradually removed, by Forward the Foundation, in the later sections, he couldn't really do anything.
- This wasn't so much because the empire was becoming democratic, as because the court and ministers were becoming so corrupt that nothing the Emperor said had any effect on the facts on the ground after it had been filtered through layers of government officials, each with their own take on what really needed to be done. It's a common problem in empires with a large bureaucracy- the emperor vanishes into the royal palace and for all practical purposes it's the bureaucrats who really run the system.
- Also in Foundation, the Four Kingdoms that broke away from the Galactic Empire at the start of its fall were feudal. One of them attempting to take over and "impose its own peasant-aristocracy system" on the Foundation was the conflict of that time period, until the Foundation became an Expy of the Medieval Catholic Church.
- Katherine Kurtz's The Legacy of Lehr
- Elizabeth Moon's Hunting Party — although the author was apparently unable to suspend her own disbelief, as the sequel reveals that the feudalism is mostly societal set-dressing over democratic underpinnings, and deconstructs, sometimes unpleasantly, several of the tropes that were used straight in book one.
- Poul Anderson's Galactic Empire.
- Anderson also plays the trope for laughs in The High Crusade, in which a party of Englishmen heading for the Crusades is hijacked by aliens and winds up establishing an empire because the aliens have forgotten how to do combat on land.
- This is reworked by David Weber in The Excalibur Alternative, which is a sequel to David Drake's Ranks of Bronze.
- M. K. Wren's Phoenix Trilogy is this a thousand years after the Pandemic. World civilization was nearly wiped out, and only the more remote areas of the world really recovered. The world (and it's off-planet colonies) are ruled by a series of noble houses, and the government is based in what is today Australia.
- Simon R Green's Deathstalker series is a fairly dystopian version of this trope, and unlike many actually does deal with the difficulty of setting up a working system of democracy, although not in any great detail (if this troper's memory suffices, anyway). Given that it was almost a gleeful self-parody of the whole space-opera genre, this is not particularly surprising...
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 has the Imperium of Man, a justified use of a feudal structure on an interstellar scale-given the sheer unwieldly size of the Imperium and the unreliable nature of faster-than-light communications. To say the Imperium is also one of the rare dystopian instances of this trope would be an understatement.
- Although individual planets within the Imperium may operate democracy at a local or planetary level, this is relatively rare and often so horrifically corrupt as to not make any real difference.
- Eh, 40k is quasi feudal. Lords and ladies do not hold power, instead massive faceless bureaucracies of interstellar organizations do. It's very 1984, the whole feudal mentality is deliberately put there, "Blessed is the mind too small for doubt."
- Feudals do hold power in 40K (for example, the Planetary Governor is usually a hereditary title), it just doesn't extend over planetary scale, or, at most, a handful of planet. In his own fief the lord might do whatever he is pleased, as local Administratum branches are responsible to him, not the central government (an institution, which Imperium sadly lacks), but given the setting's nature, when things go south, he couldn't help but to call the Imperial authorities. And when there's a Black Ship or Astartes' strike cruiser in orbit, the local lord's authority tends to evaporate. And then there's Astartes systems like Ultramar... Well, it's really complicated.
- Everyone not part of the Clans in BattleTech. Feudal-like systems were initially adopted due to simple practicality: there was FTL travel but no FTL communication. So a ruler of an interstellar empire needed someone on-hand he could trust to take care of the day-to-day management. Even after the advent of FTL communcations, they maintain a feudal society. When the Inner Sphere joined together in the Star League, the head of the Terran Hegemony became First Lord, but his power was semi-limited by the heads of the other member nations in the Star League. Once the Star League was destroyed, it basically became 5 separate feudal nations at war with each other.
- Each of the 5 nations of the Inner Sphere has its own take on their feudal system:
- The Federated Suns is a pretty straight-up Medieval European feudal system, with nobles having almost total power over what happens within their fiefdoms, override only by higher nobles in the hierarchy.
- The Draconis Combine is basically feudal Japan, though with less direct conflict among nobles; high-ranking military leaders can often have greater power than planetary lords.
- The Free Worlds League is something of a democracy (it is also the nation with the most civil strife), but each of the member states and worlds in the League is a feudal society. Their ruler has the title "Captain-General", and his family has the right of first refusal of that tile. The Captain-General was initially just the highest military rank, until the League Parliament voted to give the Captain-General special powers "for the duration of the conflict." Naturally, the conflict has not been deemed to be ended, even after 300 years.
- The Capellan Confederation is a fairly traditional feudal system, though it has quasi-Chinese and Russian trappings. It also has the notion of having to earn ones citizenship.
- The Lyran Commonwealth is an odd form of feudalism. Feudal lords are more like chief executors in the overall governmental power structure, rather than absolute rulers. And one can gain nobility by becoming the head of a large corporation. This doesn't confer any de-facto powers on them, but it does give them access that might otherwise not have been granted. The nobility and the military even merged to a degree during peacetime. These "Social Generals" seriously screwed up the Commonwealth military once peace was over, infusing it with a lot of politicking that has lead to the richest nation having the least effective military.
- The Clans have something of a merit-based feudal system, at least among the ruling warrior caste. You have to actually earn your last name, called a "bloodname", in a Trial of Bloodright. These battles often are to the death. Once you have a bloodname, you get to have a vote on clan-wide business.
- Fading Suns role-playing game is set in a Dune-esque interstellar feudal empire, millennium after the fall of the Republic. The peasants are forcefully (nobles) and brainwashingly (the Church) restricted to medieval-level technology, while the upper echelons of the society are allowed to enjoy high-tech to the fullest.
- The Third Imperium of Traveller is one of the earliest RPG examples.
Anime
- In Code Geass The Britannian Empire is ruled directly by the Emperor and the royal family. While being an oppressive regime it is certainly not a dystopian future, as the countryside is full of Ghibli Hills.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam, we know the Zeons are the bad guys because they have hereditary nobility.
- The Zanscare Empire of Victory Gundam takes the feudalism schtick even further. Their entire stated goal is to reinvigorate human society by replacing the increasingly impotent democracy of the Earth Federation with a return to a traditional feudal way of life. Might have actually done some good if it hadn't been for Evil Chancellor Fonz Ka Gatie manipulating things for his own benefit.
- Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki, The Jurai Empire, the largest stellar empire in the show, is ruled over by four Imperial Houses, from which the Emperor is 'elected' - it's never explained how they're elected, but the candidate pool doesn't seem to be that big, and generally goes to the most powerful candidate. Or whoever Seto-sama wants....
- Correction: Whoever Tsunami wants, as it was their agreement with her that gives Juraian royalty their powers. And Seto actually installed just one emperor to the throne — her son-in-law Azusa Masaki Jurai. But then, Tsunami is her granddaughter... well, it's all really complicated.
- Pretty much all the major powers in The Five Star Stories, though Democracies like the Trun Union are not unheard of. The United Hathuha Republic is a bit of an odd case, as its leader is elected (though not by the general public), but many of its member states have monarchies.
Film
- There are a few monarchies in the Star Wars Expanded Universe - the Hapes Consortium is (despite its rather Cyber Punk like name) a hereditary absolute monarchy and major galactic power.
An even bigger example is the Legacy-era (set 100 years after the films) Galactic Empire which has evolved into a semi-benign hereditary monarchy.
Live Action TV
- Stargate SG-1 is set in the present, but the Goa'uld System Lords definitely operated under a feudal system. The main difference being that, due to their nigh-immortality, it was less about lines than about individuals, and holdings would usually pass from father to son by conquest.
- Star Trek's Klingon Empire has a very feudal feel to it. The Empire has technically always had an imperial throne, but for almost all of its history this was vacant, following the departure of the first emperor, Kahless the Unforgettable. Real power resided with the Chancellor of the High Council. Towards the end of Star Trek The Next Generation a clone of Kahless was installed as emperor in a ceremonial role.
Video Games
- The Elites/Sangheli from the Haloverse have a society set up in this manner. They even have their own keeps to rule over the surrounding countryside.
- The Amarr Empire in Eve Online, complete with a theocratic government and widespread use of slavery.
- Imperium Nova's whole schtick. Each player controls a feudal house with operations spanning several planets in a galactic empire theoretically under the rule of an imperial house.
- In Mass Effect, the salarian society is this, according to the Codex.
- One of the government options in the Master Of Orion series.
Web Comics
- The interstellar Nemesite Empire in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob has been shown to have an emperor, a princess, and solar system viceroys. As well as trials by combat.
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