Basic Trope: An organization or state is ruled by the undead, for the undead, and of the undead.
- Straight: His Immortal Majesty Emperor Evulz is a powerful Necromancer and Immortality Seeker who transformed himself into a Lich to escape death forever.
- Exaggerated: But not only did Evulz go down this path; all of his advisors, his cabinet, his chancellor, his Evil Minions, and all of the rank-and-file of the Empire of Evilus turned into liches, reigning over a true necropolis of the living dead.
- Downplayed:
- As a matter of values and customs, even though Evulz is deceased and has been such for decades or even centuries, people of Evilus still regard him and his long perished successors as a sort of guardian spirit, having achieved apotheosis in death, and that all living emperors are in fact subservient to dead emperors.
- Emperor Evulz is nearly dead, ruling his empire through Puppet Kings, delegates, and Unwitting Pawns.
- Justified: Evilus is what it is because of taking the trope Can't Kill You, Still Need You to it's Logical Extreme; because skilled workers and leaders are unlikely to flock over to Mordor, the state is forced to make the most out of what few surviving followers it has by prolonging their life expectancy by means typically regarded as dangerous, or simply thought of as requiring an moral and ethical investment that far outpaces any benefit that could be had.
- Inverted: A cabal of Necromancers rule over an army of the undead.
- Subverted: A dispatch from the armed forces of Troperitania storms the palace of the Evilian capital, in which bunker of Emperor Evulz and his subjects is expected to be under. Thinking that the royals of Evilus are undead and therefore evil beings, they bring all sorts of holy objects and icons and Holy Water to destroy them. But then it turns out that the royals are actually alive, and that the story of necromancy is a lie fabricated by the government of Evilus to hide the fact that Evulz was Dead All Along (or never existed in the first place) and has been for hundreds of years.
- Double Subverted: If only they just went ahead and thoroughly double-checked the corridors and floors of the imperial bunker, they would have found the cabal of liches that actually run the place.
- Parodied:
- Woe betide the fools who have to invade Evilus, for their hypogeal rulers are too SpOoKY for thee!
- The Empire rules over, not just undead humans, but also undead animals, undead plants, and even ninja pirate zombie robots.
- Emperor Evulz was found rotting in his throne. Apparently, he was killed some time ago, and no-one noticed because he was technically already dead. Of course, the people of Evilus rejected the reality of the situation and started revering the skeleton as their one true ruler.
- The government of Evilus was reduced to the bare minimum required to run the nation. Not because of an external crisis or constrained budget, but because they just had to double down on that Necrocracy shtick. A true Skeleton Government.
- Zig-Zagged: Evilus is ruled jointly by the living and the undead.
- Averted: Evilus is a regular empire of the living.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked:
- Evulz is dismayed and displeased by the marshal of incompetent buffoons selected to take up his sword upon his senescence and ultimate passing by his chancellor (who he is starting to suspect is disloyal), and decides to become a lich until a suitable successor is prepared.
- Wisdom scales with age, and perhaps, so does physical power, and so it follows that the wisest, most enlightened rulers would be immortals. And what other way to achieve immortality than through The Dark Arts?
- Exploited: As the royals of Evilus are technically 'evil' beings, then if one should deal with the Empire through the decapitation of central command, then holy items and entities are the logical solution.
- Defied: Term limits are rabidly enforced in Evilus, preventing any aspiring dictator from taking the helm forever.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Ruling is a dangerous profession and even powerful and paranoid liches surrounded by (literally) undyingly loyal, asskissing servants, yes-men, and trustworthy Creons, typically have a suppressed life-expectancy due to artificial truncation of lifespan. And as such, sacrificing ones humanity for greater political power is ultimately reveals itself to be meaningless.
- Or, ruling is mind-numbingly forlorn and soul-crushing, to the point where even the most determined lich wouldn't last more than a few decades of reigning before just giving up.
- Rule under immortal necromancers means that younger generations ultimately have no hope of ever becoming important figures within the political hierarchy of the Empire, for they will never eclipse the unending and growing wisdom of the undead elite and will never hope to outsmart them. Eventually, a sort of Fantastic Caste System is established unwittingly, and the only hope that younger generations have is to flee to the countryside and set up their own nation-state, with the resulting drain of potential soldiers, laborers, and scholars resulting in the eventually collapse of Evilus.
- Or, alternatively, the younger generations resort to assassination of members of the ruling class, which cascades and finally culminates in a massive Enemy Civil War which either results in the status quo being preserved, the rebels reigning victorious only for the empire to collapse shortly afterward because they lack the wisdom to effectively administrate it, the rebels being led by vicious political opportunists who hardly care about their wishes and institute a system far more tyrannical than the one already in place, or the state falls into eternal darkness, in which the ossuary once known as Evilus lives in the shadow of the chthonic nightmares of a dozen dead emperors. Perhaps forever.
- When an Evil Overlord or The Caligula is sworn into office, so too will their grotesque reign last for a protracted eternity.
- The standards of the past will live on so long as the liches live on. All the prejudices, all the many-times discredited ideas of a forgotten time guide the future of the Empire of Evilus, and it's foremost leaders unwaveringly cling on to outdated ideals. The Empire may not move on, but Time will, as progress is it's prerogative. And so, when it comes time to react to a shift in the sociopolitical environment of the world, the Empire will remain stagnant.
- Reconstructed:
- And so, an effective personal fighting force, a Praetorian Guard, is created for the undying emperor, to pledge their very existence in the preservation of their master's life. Or 'unlife', if you will.
- Emperors decide to divvy-up and divide their executive powers and responsibilities delegating them to imperial bureaucracies, officers, and other officials, as well as reforming the autocracy of Evilus into a diarchy or oligarchy, to distribute stress among a larger portion of the government. Also, some one came up with the clever profession known as the 'psychotherapist'.
- As per the Defiance of this trope, term limits are enforced to prevent the tyranny of ancient liches. Also, rudimentary forms of direct democracy and elections are introduced so that the lower classes feel that there is a way to ascend the political hierarchy, without political assassinations and civil wars.
- Separation of power, as well as a system of checks and balances, are established with the aim of limiting the power of an immortal fascistic dictator, and allowing the courts (and perhaps the people too) to hold them accountable.
- Played For Drama: To seek eternal life in this work is to sacrifice one's scruples and one's soul for a extended moment of splendor. The Blue Blood of Evilus are monsters, and the royal courts are decadent and immoral and could hardly care less for the suffering of the commonfolk.
- Played For Horror: Since the undead cannot procreate, the only way Evilus can sustain it's population is to meet neighboring countries with near genocidal violence and resurrect all of the dead as pawns of the Empire, or to capture millions of PoWs as breeding stock for their People Farms, to produce children who are culled at age thirteen and turned into reverents.
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