My God, I love Mon Mothma in the good-old Expanded Universe so much. She’s great. She’s practically the embodiment of Republic values — the founding mother of the New Republic after the defeat of the Empire. She’s practically defined by this:
From the Clone Wars all the way to the end of her relatively short life, she fought for the people and against the tyranny of Palpatine’s chancellorship-turned-empire.
And instead of the beautiful and far, FAR more interesting Star Wars Expanded Universe we got the Sequels, uuuuuuuuuuuugh, it still hurts…
When bad times arrive, people want stability. The instability of the Late Republic justified the Principate, and the 3rd century crisis justified the Dominate. One can see that the greater the chaos becomes, the greater the powers of the sovereign get. It’s in line with Maslow’s hierarch of needs: people want safety more than freedom.
For a variety of reasons (most of them self-inflicted, I reckon), Iudia is now an autocracy. Until it is stabilised, and dangerous outside threats are dealt with, the people will not clamor for liberty. Rather, they want to see Julia crusading against the Witch-King like it’s 1095 AD. And also get some food. So, if a republic is to be reborn, then the Prefect must make sure that the shipments of grain from not-Egypt come to Kyro and that Iudia kicks some Khan ass.
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A great opportunity to ask you yet another pedantic question, @Azan, my apologies: Are there senatorial and imperial provinces? Since Egypt was IRL an imperial province, I wonder if it’s the same for Seyet. (it seems its acquisition is the result of a marriage between an Empress and Seyet’s queen, so would it be a sort of inheritance for the Imperial throne?)
Personally I endevored to make the conflict between the Senate’s republican ideals and the Empress’ autocratic ones have nuance to it. The Senate is a highly flawed, even corrupt, legislative body that prizes aristocratic interests over those of the commons, yet I have also portrayed the dangers of autocratic rulers as well.
Rulers like Scilla and Julia are products of the Iudian imperial system, and for all that the MC can attempt to shape Augusta into a model ruler, she has still been brought up in an environment where she was raised from three years old to see an entire Empire as her birthright. That does things to a child’s head. It will be no easy feat to try to make her into a genuine enlightened autocrat, if that is your MC’s goal.
That’s correct. The division between imperial/senatorial appointments was briefly touched on in Chapter I, I believe as well. Attika for instance, where Consentia governed for over a decade, is a senatorial province. Seyet was deeded to the Imperial Line due to the marriage between their rulers, and as such it is directly administered by imperial bureaucrats.
Here’s the rub with that one in this game for me, my mc is a both a (gay) man and not an aristo. Julia is one of the few people to actually see his worth and value him for it…the Senate would sideline him in heartbeat in a new republic without so much as thank you.
Game-wise it doesn’t help for a populist institution like the Senate that my mc is not necessarily very charismatic even if he is a superb administrator and spymaster, as I focus on the finance, scholarship and subterfuge stats.
I mean, the Organa have been in control or near the top of Alderaan for millennia regardless of what they say, they basically ARE nobles by blood and just play musical chair with the other top families from time to time to decide who’s the figurehead for the next century.
So you lack both the ‘Power to the people!’ self made man angle of an actual democracy and the ‘My illustrious dynasty!’ cool factor of being actual royalty.
It’s not different from the Senate who despite their talk of representing the people, are mostly nobles who are where they are because of their bloodline. It’s just a less compelling middle ground.
You mean the kid she doesn’t really see lol. Shes more interested in Augusta being raised to be Empress by you and the other instructors. I don’t think she cares about the family stuff all that much. She could be made to see differently when you’re on the lover route and Augusta is your kid cause she actually gives a shit about you. Titus is the guy who family forced her to marry him and have a kid, or be killed. Not to mention hes constantly expecting her to love him even though it’s just an arranged marriage she had no choice in, and he kinda dumb.
Being dumb doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to be happy with your family and he didn’t have any more of a choice than she did, it just so happen he ended up really loving her in the end.
Which are problems which I hope we can help with down the line.
Like it’s pretty obvious Julia need to change for everyone’s sake, her own included. A lot of the game so far has been finding how many people you screwed over and how many mistakes Julia’s inflexibility led you to.
Even then, at 40, even without menopause, having a kid is gonna be much harder and they’ll be a lot more likely to be on the smaller and weaker side, which in the Roman era mean they have a decent risk of dying from some mild disease at any moment.
Pregnancy will also take a much greater toll on the body in ways that the Roman era can’t compensate for as well as we can. Which could be very hard to handle given our key role in the Empire.
Yep a suggestion to make MC slightly younger like 30 - 35 years old. That’s pretty well aged I think to cover both male and female MC, no longer young and naive and well experienced.
I think the idea for you to be 40 was that it was around the minimum age for someone to be a senator (and you were considered outright old) but I don’t think it matters much since you’re not a senator, you’re an Imperial counselor who got the job because of a coup rather than the usual slow pace of normal promotions so you can be any age.
Also relevant is that around 60 to 65 in the Roman Empire, you stopped being considered ‘compelled’ to participate in meetings for most political jobs since it was around the average life expectancy of the era and people pretty much agreed you earned to slack off.
All the female ro are also over 40
And i don’t know how much of live expectancy have s person in the ancient rome, i don’t think that new children are in the future of the mc not mater the gender
People in ancient rome have life expectancy of 55++ if they’re moderately wealthy for the poor commoner not high really bad hygiene, bad lifestyle, being drafted as levy, plague and poor medicine, that’s why people in those age marry young like in teen.
The problem is again pregnancy, younger = easier and because infant mortality rate is quite high people have more children.
Also if MC want to be empress children should be priority because that’s a future heir, empress with no children is considered unstable monarch because there is always question of succession, monarch should ensure the heir is clear to avoid succession problem which can lead to war.
The problem here is if MC is a female, 40 is hard sell at those period of time, male have no problem with this since they’re not the one that get pregnant.
And mod please stop being so intrusive and quit banning comment that historically accurate, truth doesn’t care about feeling.
@G_Kagara I felt the MC’s age at 40 was important, as for one it allows me to put a certain weight of experience and history behind who they are and what they’ve done in the past. For the MC’s status and what they can do throughout the story and flashbacks, it seemed the youngest age possible to me, in fact.
The possibility of the MC having children (or more children in the case they have one already) won’t be touched on further in the story, for either male or female MCs. There are decently safe and effective abortifacients brewed by the sorceresses which are easily accessible to any of these characters regardless.
As for how a hypothetical ruler MC could have an heir if that isn’t possible, it isn’t unheard of for past Empresses to have adopted heirs, in the early days of the imperial period.
