Why Your Empire Sucks

Just think. Once upon a time, Sami was a normal nerd. Then CCP kidnapped her and installed an EVE Lore TCMC. She doesn’t even remember who Han Solo is now.

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Hmm. There sure is tons of negativity on Amarr there, but is there like any movement by the youngsters to try changing the old status quo? As i read that some top head is releasing slaves to their freedom, is there chances for more youngsters to become more liberal?

That’s the point, the series is called “Why your Empire sucks”, it’s meant to be negative.

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Haha. I know lol. It is just, i thought it will be nice to see some chance of change for Amarr in the future lol.

Doubt the slavery thing will change, the way I see it, each empire is supposed to be a dichotomy, having both its good parts and its bad. The Amarr draws on the good and bad parts of religion and imperialism. The Minmatar have the freedom fighters/ terrorists thing going on,the Caldari on one side, have their ~meritocracy~ and the benefits of collectivism vs how some individuals are discarded for a “greater good”. The Gallente have their freedom and democracy but also the problems associated with a large overreaching government and too much power given to the security services (black eagles). According to the source book, inequality is also a problem, with your parents income status determining how you’re raised and the education you receive.

That’s a very generalist way of looking at the factions and I’ve skipped over a lot but you get the idea that every empire is supposed to be grey and not viewed in black or white.

-Rambling over-

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Well—with the full understanding that I’m not Sami, so she’ll be able to point out where I’m wrong… ( :wink: )… two of the big influences that help a society liberalize like that are outside influences and the old folks dying off. Amarr society, top to bottom, is built to a)paint outside influences as full-on evil that’s attempting to sway people away from God, and b)tie self-esteem and nationalism to a history of conquest that ‘proves’ that those outside influences are working against God. Sure, there may have been some setbacks in recent history, but that just means the Amarr weren’t trying hard enough to be faitthful. You certainly weren’t one of those people who weren’t faithful enough, were you?

As for time… It’s been… what, two centuries since the defeat by the Jove, and the Minmatar Rebellion? For the upper strata of Amarr society, two centuries is middle-age. And look! The only military power to really defeat them, the Jove… why, the Empire’s clearly superior! The Jovians may have had their deal with Molok that gave them a technological edge, but you see? In the end, it cost them their lives, wiped out within living memory, while Holy Amarr lives on!

Amarr society may slowly liberalize… but compared to the rate of Terran socieities… expect it to take 5-10x as long… and if they go back to winning… that liberal trend goes away completely.

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I agree on ur explanation that as long as Amarr is winning, any movement into more liberals Amarr is not going to happen.

As long as Amarr win battle over battle, the conservatives and hardliners would had stronger position against the more liberalist young Ammarians who want change for the society.

Man, Amarr is such a difficult nation lol.

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Well, there’s a few factors here…

  • Amarr has been undergoing a drift towards liberalization over the last century or two under Heideran VII. Things such as CONCORD and other dealings with foreign cultures has been infusing outside ideas into Amarr. Heideran is dead now, as was his spiritual successor Doriam II, but Amarr is quite open to the outside now and this may lead to change as the future progresses (or collapse of Amarr, as the different belief systems come into conflict).

  • House Tash-Murkon are a “young”, liberal royal house, and now they have an emperor on the throne. Tash-Murkon, however, are classic liberals, not social liberals, which means that, while they encourage freedom, this is in the sense of “absolute freedom” where any kind of government overreach is disapproved of, including mandates to protect disenfranchised groups. Tash-Murkon policies are therefore going to involve expanding the free market and eliminating bureaucratic regulations, and as such they are likely to increase the freedom of people to engage in slavery (such as allowing commoners to own slaves, promoting use of TCMCs, and so on) rather than call for an end to slavery. This does further open up Amarr to outside influences, however.

  • House Kor-Azor were socially liberal under Doriam and Aritcio Kor-Azor. Doriam released many slaves, both before and during his reign as emperor, and Aritcio (post-change) went after Holders who were being corrupt and cruel towards their underlings. If any royal house were to promote an end to slavery, it would be Kor-Azor.

  • Actual Amarr youngsters are difficult to predict. On the one hand, there is an influx of foreign culture into Amarr lately that is certain to influence people growing up in today’s Amarr. On the other, recent education reform made throughout the empire by Yonis Ardishapur stresses traditional viewpoints and critical thinking (which encourages people to challenge the establishment), which may cause conservative and anti-globalization movements to emerge from the younger generations.

  • Houses Ardishapur, Kador, Sarum, and Khanid are socially conservative and support slavery, and they would challenge efforts to remove it. Tash-Murkon would likely fall in alongside them and support it as long as it is more economically beneficial than otherwise. With only House Kor-Azor as a potential supporter of abolition, change in this matter is rather unlikely.

So, in short? There is a wave of liberalization, but I don’t see it being enough to change things within the near future. If Doriam II hadn’t been assassinated then it would have been a lot more likely, but as it stands now I don’t see things moving too far in the direction of social liberalization (however, economic liberalization is very likely under Catiz I, but this doesn’t benefit slaves and may even actively harm them).

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Lol. Amarr Empire is like the old anime i watched called Legend of Galactic Heroes lol. There is so many political sides.

Tash Murkon seems to want improvement in Empire economies so if they keep pushing their agenda, i can ser Amarr in the future growing into kinda like PRC inRL where the economy is growing more powerful to be comparable to Caldari however the government still maintain its power over its people.

Meanwhile Kor Azor seems to be the one on extreme which can push Empire to liberalization however i can see it ruined the Empire as without proper planning, releasing slaves without any proper skills will only lead to more chaos.

The support slavery house is something i would love to see them not gaining too much power lol. As the Ardishapur i remember literally almost cause the Empire its live lol.

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Righto. Here’s my essay-like contribution for the Gallente Federation. Thanks, Mantel and Charles, for nagging the shite outta me.

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Well, I’m not too sure if it’s been mentioned yet. But I have some interesting things about the State. I got all this from memory from some old, old Eve wiki page I can’t seem to find anymore (thanks CCP).

So, there’s actually lots of colonized planets outside the Big 4. Planets that the Big 4 have eventually incorporated into their empires as they advanced. The Gallente Federation is well known to have very, very many ethnicities within their empire, and to a lesser extent so do the Amarr Empire and the Republic. The only reason we’re limited to 3 an empire is because video game reasons, I’m sure.

But the State doesn’t have various cultures. This isn’t so much that the State hasn’t found any previously-colonized worlds during their empire’s expansion, they did. It’s just that they had a habit of forcing these indigenous peoples out of their land and bulldozing whatever they didn’t like, and ignored the now homeless people. And if the people tried to resist, they were dealt with. Because in the State, either you adopt the Caldari culture, or you have no rights at all.

That’s about all I can really remember right now. I parahprased that a lot, so if anyone knows the page I’m talking about and has a good link, that’d help like, a ton.

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Okay, here goes Caldari State again, and why you wouldn’t like to be there! I’ll try to be laconic.

  1. Obligatory military service.
    Whole 3 years. For every citizen. Rejoice!

  2. Low age of becoming a military conscript.
    Do you love your kids? Well, the State needs them to go and die!

  3. No rights for capsuleers.
    The State is already known for not giving people some of the basic rights, but capsuleers don’t have them at all. That means you can be simply shot down for trespassing into Caldari baseline territory. It is probably the worst place where a capsuleer can find themselves outside of their capsule.

  4. Same-sex marriages are neither accepted, nor legal in the State.
    It doesn’t affect everyone, but if you are into your own type, you’d better be somewhere else.

  5. Caldari still have a huge thing about honor and offing themselves, sometimes even for others’ mistakes.
    A lore piece, taken from description of “Raven State Issue”

This State Issued version of the powerhouse Caldari Battleship - The Raven - was designed in a joint venture by the eight Caldari supercorporations. It was created expressly to honor those whose valor in combat, and adherence to the Caldari code of battle, has surpassed that of their comrades in arms. Of course, should the ship be lost, the immense dishonour to the pilot demands that he take his own life, but seeing as how this wouldn’t affect him in the slightest, tradition holds that the highest-ranked of the surviving crew members take his place.

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The essay was interesting to read, however, some of the claims and points brought there were as minimum disputable.

For example:
1)

The ethnic Gallente had nearly no race-based strife, very little slavery,

We know from the lore that Gallente did have slavery, but there is no source on its extent, making conclusion about “very little” is a bit far-fetched.

and at that point the ethnic Gallente and the Caldari had already interbred to the point where biological basis for racial divide had become blurry [49-51].

That lies in a direct contradiction to the lore claim that in the State Civire and Deteis, while have no racial tensions, do not really interbreed. One can make assumptions that such behavior was existent even during the time of Tikiona States, as it were Caldari social norms that were enforced with the formation of the State, while Gallente were tossed aside.
The Ref. 50 claims that:

“Several opportunities arose on the Gallente homeworld as many natives began to migrate off-world. The Mannar, Intaki and Caldari were quick to fill in the empty spaces on Gallentia. As a consequence, the intermingling between the different ethnicities began to take place at a more rapid rate, with the first heads of state on Gallentia emerging into office who had at least some off-world descent.”

And the Ref. 51:

while a brief overpopulation panic on Gallentia saw several nations negotiate the construction of underwater cities on Caldari Prime. Large segments of the ethnic Gallente population began to become diluted with Civire and Deteis ethnicities, starting the trend of the former becoming a true interstellar race.

As we can see, they both speak about Gallente societies, either on the Gallentea [50] or Gallente conclaves (as underwater cities) on CP [51], but not about Caldari society. If such mixture did take place, it was quite one-sided (from Gallente side), and it remains mysterious, why the author didn’t mention point of view of what was happening outside of the Federation in regards to this issue.

And I don’t understand the obession of race question by the author. Considering the write-up was about a guide to “hating it”, it was pointed multiple times that race didn’t have a place or purpose for the ethnic Gallente. Is it… bad?

I don’t understand at all accent on the racial question and the amount of time that was given for this discussion. I myself live in one of largest and progressive countries, and here when the question of race and crime comes together, we can think only about neonazi, who are already illegal here. Where there should be one race or multiple, in a modern society there shall be no collisions, and, I repeat, I don’t understand the reason of reasoning about races.

  1. And finally, after reading the whole essay, I had a feeling that it was more about “Why you should hate Mannar and not the Federation”. I would also like to point out, that it looked like it was written in the first place for Gallente players and didn’t reflect the most significant issues that outsiders might or will have with the Federation.

Overall, I would like to thank the author for the interesting read, and I eagerly wait for the following writings.

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You do realize the period between Caldari-Gallente contact (AD 22517) and the actual formation of the Gallente Federation (AD 23121) represents a period of 604 years?

Cultural and racial admixture (or the threat of it) between Gallente and Caldari did occur because the formation of the Caldari Megacorporations were a reaction to it:

“…the Caldari traditionalists found these changes outright sacrilegious, even an abomination, believing the new stability to the homeworld was not worth the price of cultural change.” [1]

While the extent of actual cultural change among Caldari due to Gallentean influence could be argued, there were strong elements within Caldari society that viewed it as a threat. Those that did would form the Caldari Megacorporations to preserve what they viewed as a traditional Caldari racial and cultural identity:

“An example of this was the megacorporation, which combined Caldari pragmatic authoritarianism with their collective outlook perfectly.” [2]

“These elites began to associate themselves with the Caldari megacorporations, who slowly grew in power and stature as a result. The influence of these megacorporations began to permeate the Caldari democracies, with many states simply becoming puppets of the corporate CEOs…”[3]

A significant portion of Caldari, at least were willing to believe in a threat posed by Gallente cultural imposition and a dimension of that is yes, likely a fear of being, “Bred out of existence.” A lot of politics is driven by emotion and perception and this seems to be felt by Caldari at the time as a perceptive reality on their part.

It was a believable threat to those who created the Megacorporations that they created and funded corporate colonies:

“Instead, it was the Caldari megacorporations that decided to undertake a separate colonization process from the Gallente, having the resources to do so. They were not bound to the ISC like most of the Caldari states were, allowing them to muster the industrial base to go it alone in regions of space that would later become the Citadel and the Forge.” [4]

With the apparent explicit intent of creating purely Caldari colonies away from the Gallente.

The formation of the Federation was just the final act in six centuries of tension between Caldari Megacorporations seeking to preserve what they viewed as Caldari identity against the threat of Gallente influence and cultural/racial mixture.

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Just to throw an additional wrinkle into this one for @Jin_taan: Arkon Ardishapur was Arzad Hamri’s close friend and had also been very attached to the Starkmanir (including, IIRC, a relationship w/a Starkmanir woman). However, Ardishapur’s an incredibly conservative and traditional House, so when the orders regarding Arzad came down from the Throne, Arkon carried them out. His intentions may have been noble—‘better I do it than someone who’d make him suffer’, and ‘this way at least he knows it’s not some heartless monster taking over his people’… but road to hell, best intentions, blah blah blah.

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It’s worth noting that in the Chronicle indicated, the ‘Revolution’ in question is a failed slave revolt on a single planet, 2 generations before the Midular/Shakor transition era… and the people being rounded up by the slaves (who know they won’t win, they’re working on borrowed time w/stolen caches of vitoc) are ‘sympathizers’.

That means they’re not Amarr. They’re Minmatar who’ve sided with the Amarr:

“Slave army, yes. Managed to get a hold of Vitoc. They knew it wouldn’t last; even if they got control, the Vitoc would eventually run out. So they were riding high on their luck, but they were never going to rule the planet. They were good with their words, and good at getting people excited, and they only wanted to lash out, like some young people do without heeding the consequences when they don’t know anything else.” Gran gave Beliah another look, but the young woman kept quiet.

“And they did so in terrible, terrible fashion,” Gran continued. "They went through the land, destroying everything they saw. Anyone who tried to stop them was automatically a sympathizer with the Amarrians, and was dealt with as such. If it was men or boys, they’d be shot on the spot. If it was women, or even girls, well, there’s some things we don’t talk about.

“And at some point, one of the rebel leaders got the bright idea that they needed to change tactics. They called it polluting the enemy, I hear, but what I call it is stupid men with guns deciding they don’t need to play by any rules anymore, and giving their souls to the devil. So instead of leaving the sympathizers on the side of the road to die, they started to round them up, and they built camps. Men were made to work, and women were made to do a different kind of work.”

Nor were they ‘sold into slavery within the Minmatar Republic’. They were abused there, on the planet, by the rebelling slaves, and the majority of the children who resulted from that abuse were relocated:

Gran took a deep breath. “Eventually something happened, as it always does, and the rebels were trapped, caught and shot. It was a better ending than they deserved, the poor fools, and their bodies were quietly buried in unmarked graves. But they’d left their marks. There were a lot of babies born later on, and most of those babies were shifted away to foster care of some sort, to them’s as would have them. Your mom was lucky, because she was taken in by a family and not an institution, ad by the time she was old enough to work, slavery had fallen out of favor in that part of the world. But she suffered for it. Oh lord, she did. A daughter of the revolution,” Gran said, spitting out that last word.

Actually reading the Chronicle gives a very different impression than you’ve taken from @Kogilla’s words. As he says: that Chronicle represents ‘an instance’. The overall picture is not ‘this was a systemic and common occurrence’, and representative of the Republic, but rather ‘abuse begets abuse, and slave uprisings almost always have their share of atrocities’. I’m all for embracing the entirety of these cultures, not just the pleasant bits, but let’s not misrepresent the bad bits as even larger than they are.

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So Caldari is like space Samurai with Nintendo,Sony,Phillips,Honda and other big corps rulling the nation lol?

Also, one the lack of rights for Capsuller. If i am a nation leader, i too would not want them close lol. Too risky for the nation.

That was Idonis, not Arkon.

Some or even most yes, but not necessarily all. I’m inclined to look at ‘Amarrians’ in this instance to mean ‘loyal to the Empire and its government’ rather than as a racial moniker. Especially with the ‘polluting the enemy’ bit which makes a lot more sense when viewed as an action against ethnic Amarr.

Daughters of the Revolution may not be accurate in this case, but King Slaver certainly is. These show a trend of behavior among freed Minmatar, even if DoR was itself one isolated case.

Forced-labor camps would almost certainly be commonplace, and probably seen as a matter of justice, but one chronicle isn’t really enough to say that the sexual abuse that’s central to DoR would be.

No, but human history is.

Also it happens in the King Slaver chronicle, too.