Government of Seleucidenia

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The Monarchy

The Shah of Seleucidenia


Isidor IV Barakis, Shah of Seleucidenia, Grand Duke of Polesia, Duke of Wallon, and Protector of the Church

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Isidor IV is the current Shah of Seleucidenia, having ruled since 1901. His reign has been one of transition and stability for Seleucidenia, focusing on the increasing industrialization of the country's few major cities in a bid to bring the nation up to modern standards and increase domestic manufacturing to be able to continue to contend against his nation's greatest rival, Galra. This transition has seen a more recent redefining of the national serfdom system, legally known as the Contractual Employment System, to create more flexible options for industrialists and engineer an easier transfer of "contracted labor" from the rural regions to the cities. Local administrations have also gradually expanded the employment rights of contracted laborers, including better pay, less atrocious hours, and more protections in case of contract transferals. Though these changes have only been implemented regionally and not in any official law-code propagated by the central government, many of those performing contracted labor nonetheless attribute the recent rise in living conditions for urban workers to the Shah's permitting of these regional decisions.

Those close to the Shah know the truth: the Shah frowns upon these regional loosening of the rules, seeing the great machine of Seleucidenia having its gears worn down by overly privileging the working class, and opening the risk of them growing defiant in pursuit of further concessions. The Shah tolerates these individual, regional weaknesses, as the great machine of Seleucidenia is a complex one, with many moving parts, and he, the great designer of the machine, is frequently busy crafting further improvements and fixing the worst, most broken parts to bother fixing loose gears. Nonetheless, his great machine lurches ever forward into the future, and the assistant mechanics to the great designer - the regional administrators who actually perform much of the work keeping the state running - wonder when they shall receive credit for their part.

It can be said that Seleucidenia, for all its faults, is on the precipice of joining the modern world and reaching development levels on par with Galra, Lusatia, and Ulster-Gaelia (even if this development matches their poorer regions, rather than the wealthier ones), and this can be attributed to the grand efforts of the Shah and his bureaucracy. Despite this, the grand designs of the Shah can only persist if those under him continue to see his as a visionary and a glorious hero, as opposed to the obsessive, austere, and ultimately stubborn megalomaniac he actually is.


The Crown Prince of Seleucidenia

Luka Barakis, Crown Prince of Seleucidenia, Administrator of Kee Province

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Despite his role as heir to the throne of Seleucidenia, there is likely no one in the imperial council more opposed to the autocracy than the Crown Prince. Like his father before him, Crown Prince Luka received an expensive, all-encompassing education as required of a future absolute monarch, but unlike his father, the Crown Prince became sympathetic to the ideas of devolution of power and, at minimum, a legislative body to assist the monarch in governing the nation. Identifying the personal, heavy-handed autocracy as an inevitable source of discontent, the Crown Prince hopes that adapting to the pressures of the outspoken masses, who increasingly are becoming more conscious of ideas that they may not have to stand absolutism forever, will result in the preservation of that which makes Seleucidenia great.

Aware of the abuses of the Contractual Employment System, but seeing in it the potential to make Seleucidenia the most productive nation in Ouhiri, Crown Prince Luka has pressed for reforms to the system that will shift the greatest burden of the contracts from the employee to the employer, in addition to wild improvements in workplace safety, wages, and worker benefits. He's not naïve in his pursuit of these goals, and hopes to offset costs by importing further technological innovations to boost workplace efficiency from Seleucidenia's allies, who are anticipated to become more open to dealing with Seleucidenia should the nation begin opening itself up.

Despite the general disapproval of his ideas from his father, the Shah knew that entirely neglecting the Crown Prince would only ensure that he would never become a great leader willing to follow in his footsteps. Appointing the Crown Prince to administer Kee Province, home to Escaraz, the nation's largest and most wealthy city, the Shah hoped the Crown Prince would learn that his desires to "experiment" with the "Great Seleucideni Machine" would prove to him that it was already en route to perfection based on his own plans, and that the Crown Prince would soon follow in his footsteps. For the moment, anyway, such thinking has not taken hold in the young heir, who has turned Kee Province into one of the most permissive regions of the empire (behind only the Grand Duchy of Polesia). Instead, the industrialists chafe under the restrictions the Crown Prince has placed on their operations, but lacking options in relocating their various industries, the Crown Prince's plans have instead forced upon the city of Escaraz a genuinely better-off working class, which has further enabled investment into making the city catch up to cities in neighboring nations in terms of prosperity and urban development.

The Shah, of course, sees a spuriously-designed subsystem in danger of wrecking large portions of the machine he has so laboriously designed, a danger which will erupt sooner or later upon his apprentice, who will soon learn why the machine was designed as it was in the first place.

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The Administration

Overview:

The Seleucideni government is an autocratic, centralized monarchy that maintains administrative cohesion by sharing some duties of government with regional governors made up of a new bureaucratic class, born of the reforms of Isidor II in 1857, which had seen governing authority transfer from the nobility to this new middle class of administrators. Their authority and independence from the Shah's authority relies entirely on how closely the Shah decides to interfere with their administration. In the cases of Kee Province, run by the Crown Prince, and the autonomous Grand Duchy of Polesia, this is minimal interference, but in other provinces, particularly those on the southern and eastern borders, this is taken to a maximum, frequently frustrating administrative attempts to rationalize law codes and judicial procedures with inane prohibitions of changes due to "security concerns."

However, the system has worked due to the generally successful foreign policy Seleucidenia has maintained for the past century, in addition to the general disconnect of the military from the people it is nominally supposed to protect. Army garrisons exist in special military towns and soldiers and their families receive generous liberties in regards to the Labor Contract System, meaning soldiers and their families are isolated from the concerns of the rest of the population. The army has, without fail, suppressed agitators and rebellious activity, and seem likely to do so as long as Seleucidenia runs well.

In terms of government services and taxation, the government attempts to maintain a strong military in addition to investing in industries vital to national defense. It pays for this by predatory loans and investments into foreign nations in addition to a harsh taxation system that collect unutilized yearly income to spend again immediately afterwards. Though universally detested, the upper class is kept loyal by the amount of government investment in their industries (i.e., most of the money confiscated returns to the upper class, anyway), the middle class is kept loyal by the social mobility their specific status achieves, and the lower class is kept in line by the worry that things will only get worse if they resist the machine of governance. Despite this methods of income, the state is greatly in deficit, kept aloft by loans from Lusatian and Ulster-Gaelian institutions... as well as tendencies to "forget" about debts owed to domestic parties.

The national government runs via the Shah and a group of ministers who dare not question his judgment. An intense micro-manager, he frequently interferes in ministerial duties with little to no pushback from his subordinates. The only fortune is that the Shah is not a complete buffoon, and outside of his stranger ideas such as the unutilized income tax, he's generally aware of what decisions and actions to take to keep his power intact. His greatest flaws is his pet policies and his unyielding grip on power. Should he encounter a crisis that requires an answer he refuses to accept, the dominos that will lead to his regime's collapse will surely begin to fall.