MAGIC IS MIGHT
"Ministry of Magic?" bellowed Uncle Vernon. "People like you in government? Oh, this explains everything, everything, no wonder the country's going to the dogs."
A society ruled by wizards. Wizards, plural, that is — a king or queen who just happens to be a spellcaster (such as the Benevolent Mage Ruler) doesn't count, nor does the traditional tower-dwelling Sorcerous Overlord. This typically takes the form of either a self ruling society entirely made up of mages or of an otherwise relatively normal society (for a given value of "normal") that is governed by a magic-using oligarchy. Sometimes there is a Muggle figurehead on the throne, but clearly power lies with the spellcasters.
A magocractic government can be good, bad, or indifferent. If everyone can cast spells, the Magocracy is usually depicted as good or indifferent. On the other hand, if the wizards rule over a population of Muggles, either because those cannot cast spells or because the knowledge to do so is restricted to the higher class, they are more likely to be evil. A Magocracy can also overlap with a Magical Society, although it's quite possible to have a Magocracy which is more loosely organised than that. If Religion is Magic, it may overlap with The Theocracy. A Magocratic society may also be a Proud Scholar Race when mystical learning and arcane knowledge are valued as much as or more than raw sorcerous power. The most sinister versions will have the society consist of undead wizards and double as The Necrocracy. If the society is hidden from muggles, it's a Wainscot Society.
If the laws of magic require intense study and not just talent, a natural limitation may be sharing time between magic improvement and actual ruling. Immortal wizards break this limit, having centuries to both accumulate knowledge and entrench themselves in power bit by bit.
Related to Rank Scales with Asskicking (more likely ass-fireballing). If there's not just a handful of magic-users but the whole society is influenced, it's likely to develop lots of Magitek. When one or more of these countries goes to war, you've got a Wizards' War on your hands. If the ruler maintains their power through magic but this is not part of the official political system, see Sorcerous Overlord. For mages who are part of the government but hold only subordinate or advisory positions, see Court Mage. For a smaller-scale version of this, when a mage has only one or a few ordinary humans in their custody, see Muggle in Mage Custody.
Sometimes overlaps with Mage Species. Contrast Anti-Magical Faction and Muggle Power.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Berserk: The Kushan Empire is governed by an Emperor who has turned himself into an Apostle as Emperor and his right-hand man Daiba is an Evil Sorceror. Both make use of foul magic to control their armies.
- Nasuverse: In ancient times this was played straight with the likes of King Solomon and Queen Himiko but, come the modern day, when a more formal structure fitting this trope has been established, the political and mystical powers of mages have been severely diminished due to Generational Magic Decline. This is viewed neutrally or even positively in the setting's various stories as mages typically exhibit amoral or even sociopathic mindsets, barely considering the moral ramifications of experimenting on ordinary people to further their own knowledge or goals.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi's magical world is like this, and being a pocket universe that was created by a mage, it's rather to be expected. The real world, though, is more Harry Potter-style "mages in charge of governing themselves and keeping themselves secret, nothing more". They get a little influence by posing as unreasonably talented mercenaries and NGOs, but nothing beyond lobbying and combat work.
- Lyrical Nanoha: The Time-Space Administration Bureau looks to fall into this mold at first, but there are subtle hints of a subversion in the form of Amy Linetta, who never demonstrates magical ability but is in a position of fairly high responsibility aboard the local Cool Ship. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS makes the subversion much more blatant, with numerous non-magically-able TSAB personnel featuring. These include an apparent Muggle commanding a battalion of mages and Regius Graz, head of the Ground Forces branch, is explicitly a Muggle who got his start with the Bureau as a good trainer. The TSAB appears to actually be very egalitarian, allowing those who can lead to lead regardless of whether they measure up in magical combat.
- The Familiar of Zero: Magical power and nobility are (officially) inseparable; in fact, mages are called Nobles. Of course, that attitude becomes inconvenient when a noble is, say, cast out from their family or the child of two mages is born without magic.
- Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: Implied to be the case in Valeria, and possibly the case in Celes. In the former case, people are expressly worried that the twin princes will eventually have enough power to usurp the throne from the current emperor, who is himself incredibly powerful. In the latter case, it's clear that the king is very powerful by the standards of his country, but it's hard to say if that has much to do with his position as king; he still has a court mage.
- Fairy Tail: The Albareth Empire was formed when a single mage Black Mage Zeref now currently as Emperor Spriggan forcefully united the western continent's 730 Light and Dark magic guilds, overthrowing that continent's equivalent to the Magic Council and previous governments in the process. It's heavily implied that non-magic users are second-class citizens, if not outright slaves.
- Black Clover: The Clover Kingdom is ruled by the king from the royal Kira family. The kingdom's legal authority is the Magic Parliament, which is a group of royals and nobles. The kingdom's military are the Magic Knights, comprised of chosen mages divided into squads with captains who all follow the Wizard King, the strongest Magic Knight who has more influence than the unpopular king. The society of the kingdom itself is dominated by nobility, who are all born with great magical power and look down on commoners and peasants as a result.
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Downplayed a little bit by the Kingdom of Sorcier as the country is effectively ruled by a magic-wielding noble class. However, unlike most other examples, noble houses are defined as "bloodlines that are on record to produce magic users", as Randomly Gifted often decides whether a particular noble can wield magic or not, just that higher-ranked nobles tend to have higher probabilities of producing magic-users. Nobles who happen to be Muggle Born of Mages can keep their titles and fiefs, but their route for advancement is limited. On the other hand, magic-users coming from pure commoner blood are extremely rare—in the area of one person per decade.
Comic Books
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: In the comic arc Imbalance, Liling believes benders should rule over non-benders. She and her daughters were made refugees by the Fire Nation's conquest of the Earth Kingdom, which she blames squarely on the fact that the Earth King is a non-bender.
- Fables: The Adversary's Empire is a highly organized magocratic bureaucracy. Interestingly, the leadership is well aware that Muggles Do It Better but actively suppresses post-medieval technology because technological power is much more difficult to concentrate in the hands of a ruling elite than magical power.
- The Dungeonverse has Cochonville, a city inhabited by magicians who fled Antipolis in the Dungeon: The Early Years era after their attempt at seizing power. Their laws are enforced by manavore and wizards of different magic disciplines and specialized themselves in selling magical objects and services to passersby. During Dungeon Twilight they were under siege by the Great Khan for years but thanks to their magic were still able to resist as some magicians can use functional autocannibalism and others turn piss into water.
Fan Works
- Arcanum: It is mentioned that, in the past, the Arcanists held a great amount of power over the rest of Remnant's people. The current system was set up specifically to avoid something like that happening again, as Arcanists are not believed to be reliable rulers.
- Child of the Storm has the canonical examples of the White Council and the various Ministries of Magic, though they only rule magical people — indeed, the White Council is structured to limit the possibility of this as much as possible, and their main focus is preventing various other supernatural powers from doing this as much as possible. They don't always have that much luck, with both the Red and White Courts of Vampires having serious influence (in the former case, until Strange wipes them out in chapter 52 of the sequel), and Victor von Doom rising to power in Latveria and extending his power across a chaotic Eastern Europe. However, they've been opposed by organisations such as SHIELD and MI13, and since The Masquerade is steadily falling apart, Muggle Power is starting to come to the fore, with magical governments in the US having been brought to heel by SHIELD, and MI13 doing the same to the British Minister of Magic during the series.
- Equestria Divided: House Moon and Star is a group of unicorn supremacists whose army is composed mostly of mages, magic knights and constructs, and they take orders from Archmagister Twilight Sparkle.
- Game of the Ancients: Riedra is a variation, being ruled by the Inspired (specially-bred humans possessed by powerful psionic beings) supported by the Empty Vessels or Chosen, humans who tend to be powerful psions in their own right even when not currently possessed.
- It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door: The kudu, who are ruled by a "Kingshaman" and whose process for choosing new rulers is said to involve grand displays of their innate fire magic, appear to live under one of these.
- The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World: The city of Daarthayu is ruled by a council of wizards. How this works is not explored, though the four have an unpleasant encounter with one of the wizards.
- Lost Cities: The Heartspire was a tower-city ruled by powerful unicorn wizards, who revelled in their immense power and mastery over nature and disdained ponies incapable of spellcasting.
- Outsiders (xTRESTWHOx): Halkegenia's system of government has been magocratic for the past six thousand years. The minority who have magic are the nobility, tasked with ruling the land and protecting its people, while the majority without magic are commoners, expected to serve the nobles. Unfortunately, this has created a highly stratified society where commoners aren't viewed very highly by members of the nobility. The Valliere family is noted to be much more courteous towards commoners and sympathetic toward their plights, but even they have a veneer of elitism that's culturally engrained.
- Zero no Tsukaima: Saito the Onmyoji: Defied in the backstory. Abe no Seimei forbade Onmyoji from holding noble titles or political office, and moreover from using their magic to influence affairs of state.
Films — Animated
- The Flight of Dragons: Envisioned by the green wizard Carolinus, as he sees humanity moving away from magic and nature, and toward mechanics and physics. Carolinus proposes creating an enclave where wizards, magic, and fantasy beings can exist, separate and undetectable by humans. The yellow and blue wizards concur, but red wizard Ommadon refuses to go along with this "fools' paradise," vowing to keep humanity under the thrall of magic, through fear and force.
Films — Live-Action
- Dungeons & Dragons (2000) features a corrupt Magocracy, Izmer, though the Empress wishes to give Muggles rights. Despite their corruption and their oppression of the Muggles, they're not the villains: one of their members, Profion, intends to dispose of them right alongside the Empress when he seizes control.
- The Last Witch Hunter: Witch society has a ruling council tasked to preserve The Masquerade and the truce with humanity by punishing practitioners of Black Magic.
- Star Wars:
- The Empire in the trilogy, and various other Sith states in the Expanded Universe. In the Expanded Universe, it's implied that the Emperor was shooting for being the immortal god-emperor of a magotheocratic empire. The Galactic Republic, on the other hand, is a republic, with the Jedi Council playing an advisory and military role — though note that in Revenge of the Sith, Darth Sidious uses fear of a Jedi coup to force through his own takeover of the state.
- In most stories, the Jedi are essentially an N.G.O. Superpower. Whether and to what extent they are actually answerable to the Republic (or it to them) is essentially Depending on the Writer.
- In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we get to see the ancient predecessor to Palpatine's Empire. It controlled half the known galaxy, was run by many Sith, including a Dark Council, and a 1000+-year-old Man Behind The Man Chessmaster Sith Emperor.
- In the distant history of the Republic, there were periods in which the Jedi Order did run it, either de facto or, for a time, with a long string of Jedi Masters as Chancellor. The Jedi eventually deemed this inappropriate and ceased to involve themselves in the Senate's affairs.
Live-Action TV
- Legend of the Seeker: Before being invaded by D'Hara, the ultimate authority in the Midlands belonged to the Confessors, women with the magical power to tell whether people are telling the truth or enslave them with a touch. The royal family of D'Hara has inherent magical power, but for centuries didn't learn how to use it because they can't help being corrupted by it. When Zedd taught the king how to use magic, Zedd's father was outraged because "no man should have the earthly power of the throne and the power of magic". He was proven right.
- The Witcher: Unofficially, the Northern Kingdoms are basically controlled by the court mages who "advise" these lands' sovereigns, serving as the power behind their thrones.
Roleplay
- The Gamer's Alliance: The Magicracy of Alent is a city ruled by the Council of Mages and where most citizens are accomplished wizards of their own right who have rallied under Alent's banner for the common cause of advancing research on magic.
- The Gungan Council has the Sith Council and its many worlds being governed only by Sith, both publicly and in the shadows.
Visual Novels
- The nation of Wyverngarde in Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is ruled by the king and several noble houses. These people have the ability to cast magic of several kinds, while the commonfolk is mostly unable to - every now and then non-noble mages like Wallace Nightgrave and Mosourika Tudor do pop up, but they are few and far between. This is because magic was bestowed upon a group of heroes a thousand years ago, and these went on to found the noble houses of today. Magic is hereditary, and they have mostly avoided breeding with the lower echelons of society. Rumors about the higher nobles being able to perform superhuman feats such as raining meteors from the sky abound, but it's implied they are blown way out of proportion as the player gets to meet these nobles and learn that leveling a city is not in their spell pool. In addition, there are some products that run on "artificery", which perform similarly to magic but draw energy from the surrounding aether, and can be purchased by anyone.
Webcomics
- Blindsprings The world was ruled by people born with magic and is ruled by people who learnt magic. The latter claim that their rule is more democratic, but they heavily discriminate against the former kind of mage, and overall, things do not look like a happy democracy in which everyone can take part.
- Code Name: Hunter has the Astorian Royal Court. Theoretically, only hounds of noble birth can wield magic. Winnifred manages to subvert this by having been born a peasant with the ability to wield magic, though she was adopted by a noble house as their society assumes that all peasants with magic are illegitimate children of nobles.
- Dominic Deegan: The few werewolf spellcasters ("spellwolves") are either born to noble houses or have their families elevated to nobility. The human kingdom Callan is ruled by a former archmage who was elected after the hereditary king and queen were assassinated by him, and it seems that many of the aristocracy are mages as well.
- In El Goonish Shive, in the society that the griffins come from, the royal bloodlines of humans have the strongest magic of all the humans
thus they are ruled by the strongest magic users.
- In MeatShield, the elves have a magocracy. It mentions that the equivalent title to "princess" translates literally to "she to whom we must show proper respect or her father will blast us into our component atoms".
- morphE takes place in the Mage: The Awakening universe and follows their political structure. Some extra content on their Tumblr page has revealed that Amical is a member of the Silver Ladder organization and the Guardians of the Veil tolerate his activities for reasons that are in everyone's best interests.
- Read the description at the top of the page. That's basically the world of True Magic, with a caste of Jerkass mages in charge who have made "harassing peasants" the National pastime. Although, there is the occasional good noble...
Web Original
- In Season 1 of the Empires SMP, the Crystal Cliffs is inhabited almost entirely by magic users, and led by Gem, who is a wizard.
- Impractical Magic: Istima, the Six Court Academy, is both a wildly powerful Magic School and a city-state unto itself. Though all the leaders are mages, and powerful, the trope is subverted. At some point, wizards become so powerful that having a job, needing to afford food, and the approval of regular mortals means nothing to them. As such they stop teaching and abandon their important influential jobs to take the best parts of the Big Labyrinthine Building and slowly fade into history as they do incomprehensible things. No one is sure if they died, become gods, teleported away, are on multi-millennia astral projection trips, or if there are higher levels of the school. They just know that it's dangerous, booby-trapped, and anytime orders come down from a high tower that it must be obeyed.
- The society in Mage Life is ruled by one of these.
- In Mother of Learning, the old Alliance of Eldemar was ruled by the leading mage families; the situation after The Splinter War seems to be more complicated.
Western Animation
- Played with in the various societies of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- In Ba Sing Se, the Earth King is not an earthbender, and the true power is held by an organization of powerful but extremely corrupt benders, the Dai Li.
- In general a lot of the government/infrastructure jobs in the Earth Kingdom are held by benders, as they literally control the ground on which you stand. The Omashu mail system and the Ba Sing Se trains are controlled by benders, and they keep everything running smoothly. Of course, there is the "bully forces his way to the top because he's stronger" situation in the village from "Zuko Alone", as the leader of the thugs/soldiers appears to be the only earthbender in town.
- The Fire Nation ruling class appears to consist of very powerful benders. The Firelord is considered the most powerful firebender, and he kind of has to be because if he isn't, someone else could challenge him to an Agni Kai and steal his throne. Azulon was specifically stated to be a prodigy, just like his granddaughter Azula; Sozin was apparently powerful enough to pose a threat to Avatar Roku (himself a Fire Nation noble), and Ozai is the most frighteningly skilled firebender shown.
- Also, for a fascist dictatorship, controlling the populace with force would be important, so firebenders would naturally have authority over non-benders.
- Originally the nation of fire was ruled by the Fire Sages, who performed administrative and religious duties, in an example of both magocracy and theocracy.
- In the Northern Water Tribe, the benders don't necessarily run the city, but they are highly respected and appear to control infrastructure in ways similar to benders in the Earth Kingdom. As for the Southern Water Tribe, it's unclear how they viewed benders back in the day, as by the time the show starts there is only one left from extensive Fire Nation raids killing or capturing all the rest. This last waterbender, a pre-teen named Katara, doesn't seem to be shown any special deference or treated any differently than the other members of her tribe despite not only being a bender but also being the last Bender in the entire Southern Tribe.
- Part of the reason the Air Nomads were such an egalitarian society was that they were all benders due to their high spirituality, so there was no ruling class.
- In the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra, benders still retain a strong influence over society. Non-benders have become influential enough that they are starting to resent this — the Big Bad Amon is the leader of an organization opposed to benders. We later find out that the government of the United Republic is an oligarchic council made up of representatives from the five bending nations; North and South Water Tribe, Air Nomad, Fire Nation, and Earth Kingdom. The non-bending community has no representation, and even the Air nomads, which consist of about five people in the whole world, have more say in the government than the thousands upon thousands of non-benders. There's no rule that they have to be benders (Sokka, who is not a bender, was at one point a member of the council), it's more a consequence of the council trying to represent all the Elemental Nations the United Republic's citizens descended from, plus the usual societal advantages benders benefit from. By Book Two, Republic City's government has been replaced by a democratic republic with an elected president.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Equestria has some elements of this. It's ruled by an immortal princess of vast power, and the aristocracy is filled with unicorns. However, there are still plenty of earth ponies in prominent positions, the pegasi have sole responsibility for the weather, most unicorns can only do minor telekinesis and one other personal spell, and just what the aristocracy does all day is never addressed.
- Pre-Equestrian pony society is a more clear example of this trope, with the three tribes having rigid, racially-enforced castes. The unicorns were rulers, the pegasi were military and controlled the weather, and the earth ponies provided food for all of them.
- Technically, everypony is a mage of sorts. They just have different kinds of magic: Unicorns have the basic telekinesis and possibly other spells, pegasi have flight and weather manipulation, and earth ponies are figuratively and literally Closer to Earth. And for a good chunk of the populace, what they do for a living doesn't actually require any magic at all.
- On Thundarr the Barbarian, there is a Council of Wizards, which is never depicted onscreen, but which the young wizard Artemus is very keen to impress. It is implied that there is at least some kind of loose government consisting of powerful wizards, although the overall system would appear to be feudal, with the wizards being akin to allied rulers at best, and ordinary humans as their serfs or slaves.
- The Owl House: The Boiling Isles under Emperor Belos are essentially this. While nearly everyone in the isles has magical abilities, Belos' status as the most powerful witch alive as a foundation of his authority; and the exemption of the Emperor's Coven from the Power Limiter brands imposed on the rest of the covens nevertheless marries magical power with political status. Inhabitants of the isles also exhibit uncharitable attitudes towards non-magic users (or those who have lost their magic somehow) ranging from Condescending Compassion to outright supremacy. Overall, it is shown that life on the isles as a non-magic user is hard, unforgiving, and offers very limited options for one to make a future for themselves.
- Over the course of the show, it is implied that Belos' goal is to invade the human realm to establish a Magocracy that rules over the non-magical humans, as well as the magic-using witches and demons. This makes The Reveal that Belos' goal was never to expand the Magocracy but to destroy it alongside all the witches and all the demons of the isles both all the more jarring and disturbing.
Magic is Might.
