Federated Queendoms of Feldea
The Federated Queendoms of Feldea is a supranational organization representing the various Feldean nations in and around the Feldea System. Less a world government than a moderator between the competing interests of multiple large nations, the Federated Queendoms is no less important because it serves as the face of Feldea in the Cobalt Protectorate of which it is itself a member.
Structure
The various nations of Feldea are the product of centuries of a unique form of constitutional monarchy.
Feldean monarchy emulates some structures of eusocial insects, particularly bees. A given Feldean queen controls a sizeable tract of land which is subdivided into territories controlled by her relatives in the aristocracy in a semi-feudal fashion. She kills or drives away her sisters before she reaches the age of majority to demonstrate that she has the appropriate mix of cunning, political acumen, and ruthlessness required to run a semi-feudal state. Female survivors of this process who fail to achieve the throne go on to marry members of the traditional aristocratic class in other states, fortifying the ancient web of familial alliances that prevent Feldea from descending into global war as in eras long past.
Male relatives of the queen, as well as high-ranking members of the aristocracy, travel to other courts in the hopes of becoming the chosen suitors of the queen. Successfully courting a queen comes at a steep cost: once the queen falls pregnant, the man responsible is lobotomized, sterilized, or even killed to remove any chance of a later struggle for the power of the throne. Many men consider this grim fate worth the risk, however, as the man's surviving relatives are greatly elevated in wealth and status by the queen's court as a result of his sacrifice.
The queens of Feldea represent themselves or select a second to represent them in the Federated Queendoms. The Federated Queendoms function like a direct democracy, with each representative having a single vote in matters that affect the interests of Feldeans writ large. The organization employs a sizeable contingent of functionaries, including archivists, researchers, diplomats, and military officials, to help them make and enforce their decisions without upsetting the balance of power. Other supranational organizations, such as the Feldea Ecological Remediation Society (see Culture), serve at the pleasure of the Federated Queendoms.
Culture
The Federated Queendom of Feldea enforces laws that transcend the jurisdictions of the local constitutional monarchies.
The political culture of Feldea could, on the whole, be considered politically authoritarian, economically centrist, and socially libertarian. The average citizen of the Federated Queendom or its dependent states has little in the way of control over what his or her government does and gets ahead based on how well they can cozy up to well-connected members of the aristocracy. The government, for its part, cares little for the doings of average citizens as long as peace and order are maintained; even dissent is tolerated insofar as it has little risk of toppling the power structure. This has led to a free-wheeling society where, for a long time, the pursuit of pleasure, aesthetics, and the latest trends superceded all other concerns - all buoyed by an unshackled industrial sector that catered to the wildest flights of public fancy while pushing the planet to the brink of destruction.
The arrival of Wurth Harkin and the Harkinite Expedition rocked the foundations of the Federated Queendoms society. The Cobalt Protectorate extended an offer of assistance in preventing the planet from becoming uninhabitable in exchange for certain modest political reforms - namely, that those willing to undergo naturalization be allowed to join and live as citizens of the Protectorate, with all the rights and priveleges found within the Code of Evermorn. The Federated Queendoms agreed, resulting in a measurable shift in public sentiment towards a more representative form of governance. The federation's royal members resent this liberalizing external influence, but remain silent, as they fear doing otherwise might cause the Protectorate to pull its support for the important geoengineering efforts embodied in the collaborative Feldea Ecological Remediation Society.
Public Agenda
As an organization comprised of the royal families and aristocracies of several nation-states, the Federated Queendoms are most interested in preserving the status quo above all else. This means that the organization primarily promotes international peace, economic growth, and the continued power of the royals (though not necessarily the expansion of those powers).
Territories
The Federated Queendoms of Feldea lay claim to Feldea itself and the Feldean System in which it lies, as well as a smattering of orbital outposts which are more realistically the property of the Cobalt Protectorate. The Evermorn Strategic Colony Initiative includes Feldean colonists in its missions, but these colonies produce new territory for the Protectorate rather than the Federated Queendoms. The organization hopes to begin its own colonization efforts in nearby star systems once their technological base has matured enough to do so, though these efforts are perhaps decades from coming to fruition.
Military
In addition to the armed forces of its constituent queendoms, the Federated Queendoms has its own small military force which primarily sees use in peacekeeping and near-space patrol operations.
Religion
The Federated Queendom of Feldea functionally endorses freedom of religious belief. Feldea is somewhat unique among planets controlled by human- or human-descended races in that, while many small religious sects have inhabited it for a generation or two, no major religious movement has ever truly taken hold there for any significant period of time. Feldeans, on the whole, could be described as 'cautiously deistic'; many profess the belief that there's some sort of transcendant consciousness or truth to the cosmos, but there has never been a long-lasting, organized religion built around these beliefs. Superstitions, including a belief in luck, are the more prominent system of belief among Feldeans.
As such, the Federated Queendom supports no official religion and instead promotes a certain uniquely Feldean set of civic virtues - courtesy, creativity, the eschewing of judgement towards others, equanimity towards those among one's own station, fealty to those above one's station, and fairness towards those below one's station - in the place of religion. This puts the Federated Queendom at odds with the traditionalist, animistic views of Ancestral Patronism and theological inclinations of Lepi Monotheism, but it also means that these beliefs would not be systematically persecuted should they take hold among the Feldean population at some point in the future.
Foreign Relations
The Federated Queendoms pursues an isolationist policy on the interstellar geopolitical stage. The Feldeans recognize that, while they may have been an information-age society with rudimentary space travel capabilities at the time of Wurth Harkin's arrival in the system, they are no match for more powerful entities in the Sealed Kingdoms setting who might have qualms with their decadent way of life (i.e. the truly - as opposed to as a matter of fashion - eusocial Vbyifabid Family-Flock). The federation is on good terms with the Cobalt Protectorate Periphery of which it is a member.
Type
Geopolitical, State
Government System
Monarchy, Constitutional
Power Structure
Federation
Economic System
Market economy
Location
Neighboring Nations
Related Species
Member State
When the Harkinite Expedition discovered the Federated Queendoms of Feldea, the planet Feldea was undergoing severe ecological collapse as a result of centuries of industrial pollution. This also caused a steep drop in population and the development of a reckless, hedonistic lifestyle among the self-supposed doomed Feldeans. In keeping with their principles, the Protectorate moved in to assist in environmental ramediation while evacuating most of the population to space habitats while the world was fixed. While most Feldeans are grateful for this assistance to this very day, other had accepted their fate and see the Protectorate as having stolen their right to fade into extinction on their own terms. While the queens of Feldea have gratefully accepted membership in the Protectorate Periphery, the Feldeans are among the most contrarian and isolationist of member states.
Comments