Prismatic Empress

She Who Rules Over All The Colours Of The Rainbow

Type

Royalty, Hereditary

Creation

Was created by the first Prismatic Empress, Rurana

Form of Address

"Radiant One"

Source of Authority

Derives her authority from the system set down by Lyrielle in ages past.

Length of Term

For life

Related Locations

• Intersedra

Related Organizations

• The Intersedran Empire

The Prismatic Empress is the female ruler of The Intersedran Empire, who stands atop the hierarchy of the Scalebearers as Lyrielle's appointed successor. The role conveys near-absolute power over the empire, albeit with several significant limitations; primarily to do with how the empress may interact with the Scalebearers. The position of Prismatic Empress also conveys great religious significance, as it is often believed that the empress is the incarnation of one of the minor deities worshipped throughout Intersedra.

Role

The empress's role is to oversee and direct the actions of the Intersedran bureaucracy and military, as well as to serve as a political figurehead representing the upper classes of the country. Her duties in the latter involve securing the continued support of the empire's many Scalebearers; upon whom she relies to stay in power.

Administrative Duties

Each year, the Prismatic Empress helps to decide upon the specifications that will be listed in the new labour tithe for the season. She does not personally take care of the allocation of labour, but is instead responsible for setting goals and deciding what the goals for the tithe that year are. Certain things which remain the same every year, like the maintenance of roads in and around the capital and the requisitioning of artisans for making clothes, are usually not brought to her attention unless there is something that needs changing.
Her primary role is in commanding the empire's labouring population. The Empress must decide both how much of the population to call upon during a given year, and for what purpose to call upon them. Generally speaking, she will always summon a significant number of people each year - usually measured in the hundreds of thousands - to perform maintenance on important public infrastructure; primarily roads, but also temples and sometimes embankments preventing landslides. This is the most essential duty which must be completed every year to make sure that the empire's network of transport maintains functional, and only after this is taken care of can large-scale building projects be considered.

Construction of Public Works Projects

One of the central means which Prismatic Empresses employ to maintain power is the cultivation of prestige; and the most effective way to earn it in Intersedran society is through the construction of great architectural works. The construction of high-quality architecture, either due to its aesthetic qualities or the skill displayed in creating it, is one of the most celebrated parts of Intersedran society; and so one who creates many astounding buildings will be awed and respected by everyone.
As such, once the mandatory tasks of repairing roads and other facilities are complete, the Empress will dedicate the remaining portion of labourers to the construction of either new palaces or temples. The amount of labourers she will call for this depends on many factors, and must be decided carefully. Many empresses in the past have over-taxed their labouring population, and this can lead to civil unrest, and in severe cases deposition by the Scalebearers.

History

The position of Prismatic Empress was originally manufactured in order to provide a justification for Rurana's conquests and her attempts to unite Intersedra into a single nation. Prior to the invention of the title, the various local warlords had made little attempt to legitimate themselves and ruled primarily through simple right of conquest; relying purely upon military strength for obedience. Rurana, however, understood that trying to keep an empire the size of the one she wished to create together through mere military strength would never work, and so sought a way to make her rule appear just to her new subjects.
To this end, Rurana chose to call upon the history of the Intersedran peoples' time with Lyrielle as their ruler. Prior to the awarding of the scales and the later diaspora, the Thousandforms had lived in one single large community of a thousand individuals, ruled over by Lyrielle; who served as more akin to a group mother than any type of formal sovereign, intervening to mediate disputes and serve as an arbiter in conflicts where neither side could agree on a resolution.
Rurana crafted a narrative depicting herself as the would-be adjudicator in such situations. She made it appear as if she sought not to rule over Intersedra as an iron-fisted dictator as the various Scalebearers had been doing up to that point, but rather to serve as a mediating force between the Scalebearers, in order to try and create a state of peace for the continent.
This idea proved appealing to many. Intersedra had indeed been ravaged by near-constant warfare ever since the collapse of the initial Thousandforms nation, which had alternated between small skirmishes and full-on battles that left hundreds and thousands dead. The peasantry, in particular, were sick and tired of these conflicts; which almost always bore no benefit whatsoever to them and were all for the purpose of their Scalebearer's self-enrichment.
However, the peasantry had little power to decide anything for themselves, and it was the Scalebearers that Rurana needed to appeal to. To that end, she came up with a cunning plan: She gave the Scalebearers a guarantee that neither she nor any sequential Empress would ever hold the right to strip them of their scales, and that they would not intervene in the local government or culture.
This meant that in essence, the Scalebearers subjugated by the Prismatic Empress would retain nominal control over their villages and territory. They would forfeit the ability to engage in wars of their own volition and be forced to submit to the Empress's adjudication in conflicts with other Scalebearers, as well as become subject to the yearly labour tax; but other than this they would be allowed to continue running their affairs largely as they had before.
It was this guarantee of non-intervention that allowed The Intersedran Empire to annex so many Scalebearers without conflict. When faced with the choice of losing a small amount of autonomy and becoming subjected to new taxes, in exchange for which they would gain access to Intersedran roads and storehouses quite possibly worth more than the value of that which they were giving up, or be invaded by the mighty Intersedran army and face certain death if they were defeated; the majority of Scalebearers chose to simply accept annexation without a fight.
Those who did not submit, however, were instead crushed by the Intersedran army. The scale of the former Scalebearer would be confiscated by the empress and given to a new individual who she considered worthy to hold it. These constituted the first of Lyrielle's scales to fall under some measure of the empress's control. Although at first the Scalebearers assigned by the empress were not legally distinct from others, there was always an understanding that the one who had given them their scale could just as easily take it away from them. This unspoken rule gradually became cemented over the following centuries as this very thing happened intermittently when Scalebearers appointed by the empress displeased her, and eventually, it came to be formally understood that the scales given out by the empress were her property.