Dishonored Video Game
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I got the video game “Dishonored” a couple of years ago; and, while I liked the game, what really interested me was the politics. In the game, one of the main characters is the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. However, the government of the fictional Empire of the Isles, the setting for “Dishonored”, is not a traditional monarchy. The government is formed of two prongs, one that can be considered secular, and one that is definitely religious. The monarch, who uses the title Emperor or Empress, acts as the head of one prong, the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy is composed entirely of an upper aristocratic class. There are several departments, and the head of each has the title of Lord or Lady, and the positions are hereditary. Each Lord/Lady is also a voting member of the parliament, who acts in the same manner as the Congress in the United States. The Emperor has a large amount of power in the parliament, and can force matters and laws through or kill them stop if they deem necessary, so the government is technically a total monarchy. However, the economy relies heavily on the Lords and Ladies of court, so the monarch really has to bend to the will of aristocrats to an extent.
The second prong of the government is completely separate from the first. The Abbey of the Everyman is a religious group that holds enormous political power in the Isles. They are led by an elected official who uses the title of High Overseer. The main purpose of the Abbey is to enforce their religion’s laws, known as the Seven Strictures. The monarchy and its bureaucracy have nothing to do with the punishments dealt out, or even the investigation of possible infractions.
The argument could be made that the Abbey is even more powerful than the monarchy. They cannot make new laws, but the laws that they do have are very loosely worded, and they can charge anybody they want with very little accountability for their actions, they have only themselves to answer to.