Marble Emperor

Marble Emperor
Emperor of the Coscivians
Predecessor	Auxibrev the Feverish
Regent	Basswood Emperor
Occupation	Statue

The Marble Emperor (High Coscivian: Siarōrix Vantŗn, Kiravic Coscivian: Śaurórix Vander) is a marble statue that embodies the body politic of the Coscivian Emperor and functions as the head of state of the Kiravian Federacy. The current statue is the latest of many statues that have served such a purpose over the millennia.

Background

Prehistoric Origins

The figure of the Emperor is fundamental to Coscivian culture, civics, and identity. Traditional narratives credit the first Emperor, Ĥ, who was anointed 19,600 years ago, reigned for 3,000 years, had five testicles, and was his own grandfather, with imposing the Four Laws and Four Rites and forming the Lawful Commonwealth, a tribal confederacy that delivered the primitive Coscivians from their state of primordial barbarism and endemic warfare and enabled the flowering of civilisation. Modern scholars are divided as to how much basis these narratives have in prehistoric reality, with some, particularly outside of the Coscivian World, regarding the story of Emperor Ĥ and his Pentorchid Dynasty as a charter myth legitimising an actual, historic system of paramount chieftaincy and customary law that had developed organically on the Kiravian offshore island of Éorsa sometime during the Formative Era between 5700 BC and 3200 BC.

Whatever the case may be, there is manifest archæological evidence that by the time of the Kiravian Megalithic the Emperor-figure was routinely represented in giant stone sculptures, which have have been excavated in large numbers from the various coastal beachheads in Great Kirav and northern Levantia where early Coscivians migrating outward from Éorsa settled in multiple waves commencing circa 6750 BC. Anthropologists and deep historians interpret the Emperor-figure during this period as an essentially religious one, from whom local chieftains in the various megalithic settlement nexi derived legitimacy and to whom they appealed for favour. The mythologies of most Coscivian groups today feature descent from one or more of the original Emperors, and it is believed that such myths date back to this period in the past when Emperor-worship became combined with preëxisting traditions of ancestor worship. Through this synthesis and the consummate sacralisation of the Emperor, the Four Laws and Four Precepts were cemented as religious laws and precepts (if they had not already been such for centuries), and a proper Coscivian macro-ethnic identity took shape as the legacy and laws of the Lawful Commonwealth became the patrimony of the Ancestors, embodied in the Emperor as the greatest among the Ancestors.

Living Emperors

[Conquest of Adra and the First Dynasty] Occidental so-called historians, always eager to slander the illustrious history of Coscivian civilisation, claim that the first Emperor of probable historicity^{dubious — discuss} was Xosqern IV, however this hypothesis has been called into serious question for its failure to explain how there were no Xosqerns I-III.

Over the long arc of Imperial Coscivian history, the legal and ritual concept of the imperium gradually became distinguished from the mortal person of the Emperor: State powers were exercised in the Emperor's name even during interregna, governors in remote provinces carried out official acts invoking the Emperor's authority that he couldn't possibly have signed off on, and so forth. In times when there was no undisputed Emperor and places where the Emperor wasn't personally available, there developed a custom of carrying out state rituals in the presence of a statue representing the Emperor. Originally, statues of past emperors were used, though over time there came to be a proliferation of generic Emperor statues meant to evoke the presence and majesty of an Emperor without being modelled on any individual. Human emperors continued to intermittently reign and rule, though their power was increasingly constrained by a growing body of constitutional customs and challenged by powerful bureaucrats and military leaders.

As Coscivian civilization passed from its Silver Age into its Brass Age, state power became so attenuated and decentralised that the Empire itself ceased to function as a political entity. It did, however, persist as a powerful cultural idea and marker of identity among the Coscivian peoples. The last Emperor to personally exercise power was Arenian IV in 20446, and the last widely-recognised human Emperor was Auxibrev the Feverish in 20511.

During the Viceregal Period, which preceded the Republican Revolution, the civilised areas of Great Kirav and its adjacent islands were ruled by numerous "viceroys", all claiming to govern "provinces" in the Emperor's name and prostrating themselves before local Emperor-statues in their capitals, but ruling independently.

The office of Emperor was not abolished with the Republican Revolution. On the contrary, the Fundamental Statute of the Confederal Republics of Kiravia established thereafter swears loyalty to the Emperor in its preamble and describes itself as a "charter to uphold the Law and Good Governance of your Lands and Peoples". One of the first orders of business for the Confederal government was commissioning a new Emperor statue to preside over its activities and serve as a symbol of the nation's renewed unity.

Significance

Coscivian culture regards the Emperor as a universal monarch, commanding the obedience of all truly civilised peoples. Paralleling theological ideas about the Divine as the ground of all meaning and source of all authority, traditional Coscivian culture regards the Emperor as the "font of all lawfulness" whom all civil law and state power must serve in order to carry legitimacy.

The Emperor is also a popular monarch - the Emperor of the Coscivians - and represents, or more properly, embodies the historical continuity and cultural heritage of Coscivian civilisation and the socio-political cohesion of their subject peoples (Coscivian and otherwise). This derives naturally from the Emperor's role as the font of all lawfulness: Historically, recognition of the Emperor as sovereign and submission to the common body of law decreed by the Emperor or in their name was the precondition for the disparate peoples and communities of ancient Kiravia to escape from the near-constant cycles of intercommunal war and banditry that characterised pre-Imperial times. As such, submission to the Emperor came to be seen as the essential factor differentiating the civilised from the barbarous.

Modern Constitutional Role

The Kiravian Federacy is the most extreme example of a crowned republic. The federal government and those of its federated states are all instituted as stewards of the Emperor's lands and defenders of the Emperor's subjects. However, these governments are structured and function entirely as republics. Kiravians see nothing absurd or contradictory about this state of affairs. Indeed, [kéarita vs. royan distinction]. The concept of vanduriğuv ("imperium") in Kiravian constitutional law is not altogether different from that of The Crown in Commonwealth realms, as an abstraction and separate legal entity bearing little practical correspondence to the person of the reigning monarch.

At the federal level, the enacting clauses of all legislation appeal to Imperial authority. Acts of the Stanora begin with "In service of the Emperor" (Termē Vādursk), and resolutions with "May it please the Emperor" (Távoı sandrá Vanderınd). Depending on the type of legislation and desired legal force, decrees of the Prime Executive and Executive College may be issued "on behalf of the Emperor", "in the name of the Emperor"/"on the authority of the Emperor", or "in service of the Emperor", in descending order of the measure of Imperial authority invoked. This is generally true at the state and territorial level as well, though some states in mainland Kirav use more standard republican language for ordinary legislation.

The Emperor's practical duties in the modern constitutional system are entirely ceremonial. Key ceremonies involving the Emperor include the receipt of tribute and demonstrations of fealty from governors of Kiravian states and territories, and from the rulers of Kiravian protectorates (e.g. Scapa); acceptance of the credentials of foreign ambassadors in the Emperor's presence by the Prime Executive; and the Triennial Audience. The Triennial Audience is performed every eighteen months under the first quarter moon, and during this ceremony the Prime Executive formally briefs the Emperor on conditions in the country and his policy priorities. This ceremony is televised and in modern times serves a political function analogous to a State of the Union address or [whatever the fuck Bong PMs do]. Imperial ceremonies also accompany the inauguration of Prime Executives, instatement of Consistorial Court judges, admission of new states, ratification of constitutional amendments, and certain national holidays.

A more colourful and complex set of Imperial rituals, which are less related to the Emperor's role as head of state in the modern sense, are performed by the various customary subnational monarchs and ethnarchs in the Emperor's realm, such as the King of the Valosian Coscivians and King of the Skithanawites; or pertain to cultural holidays or certain astronomical events.

The electromagnetic spectrum was declared property of the Emperor in 1912 AD.

Statue-Emperors in the Republican Era

White Marble Emperor

The first Emperor statue of the Republican Era, commissioned by the Confederal Stanora, was fashioned from white marble and reigned from 210XX to 211YY. It was accidentally destroyed while being moved from the old capital (West Valēka) to the new capital (Kartika) in 20796, coinciding with the transition from the Confederal Republics of Kiravia to the Kiravian Federacy. The symbolic significance of this incident was not lost on anyone, least of all detractors of the Federalist constitution, who interpreted the shattering of the White Emperor as indicative of the new order's illegitimacy. Fragments of the White Marble Emperor remain on display at the old Imperial Sanctum in West Valēka, now the Imperial Museum of Art.

Basswood Emperor

Following the demise of the White Marble Emperor, an interim Emperor carved from basswood was used for state ceremonies while the government oversaw the sculpting of the current Green Emperor, installed in 20800. The exact provenance of the Basswood Emperor is unclear: There is no evidence of it being commissioned or purchased by the Stanora, leading most historians to conclude that it was likely a preëxisting statue from a provincial capital.

The Basswood Emperor was retired after the completion of the Green Emperor (see below). During the Kirosocialist usurpation, it was hurriedly evacuated from Kartika by numeraries of the Imperial Order. With the Green Emperor falling into the hands of the Kiravian Union, the Basswood Emperor would reign again over the Federalist rump state in Æonara during the Sunderance.

Green Marble Emperor

The current Emperor, sculpted from green marble, was commissioned by the newly-constituted Government of the Kiravian Federacy in 20797 to replace the destroyed White Marble Emperor. It resides in the Imperial Sanctum in Kartika's Imperial City, and its reign has witnessed such momentous events as the Continental War, the overseas expansion of its domains in the 16th-19th centuries AD, the Kiravian Civil War and the rule of the Kiravian Union.

Unlike all previous Kiravian governments, Kiravian Union did not rule in the Emperor's name. Although the imperium was not explicitly abolished, it was no longer recognised, and the KU discontinued all Imperial rituals and closed off the Imperial Sanctum, using Imperial City as office space for high-ranking party functionaries. Although rumours of the Kirosocialists prepetrating all manner of grave indignities on the statue were widely circulated and became a feature of anti-socialist propaganda in the Kiravian Remnant, the Green Emperor remained in the Sanctum but was covered with a red tarpaulin, which became known as the Red Shroud or Red Vestment. Although the Kiravian Union scrubbed all references to the Emperor from official communications, the common folk of Kirav were generally under the impression that the Emperor remained in place as a state institution and continued to reign as the "Red Emperor".

After the Restoration, the Emperor once again became a central fixture of Kiravian public life. The Imperial Sanctum was first opened to the public for regular viewing in 1988.