B5: Severed Dreams

[Mickey_Rat15]

Centauri Republic -- It's ruled by a hereditary Emperor. That is LITERALLY the exact OPPOSITE of a republic. The definition when you type in Republic is "a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch." or "a group with a certain equality between its members." Now you can argue that the Centauri have a very Roman-esque feel to them, having many gods, loving wine and revelry and maybe the Republic/Emperor thing is a reference to how the Roman Republic became an Empire ... but I can't see high born people in the Roman Empire, noting the coronation of the 12th Emperor or whatever, commenting about how they're a "republican" (lowercase r) as Londo once did. And he's from a prominent noble family so that makes no sense either.

The Patrician families supplied much of the the leadership of the Roman Republic througout its history. Until its final fall to the Ottoman Turks in 15th century, the Roman Empire never stopped referring to itself as the Roman Republic. None of the titles Octavian gave himself at the time suggested monarchy. The root word for "Emperor", Imperator, meant "commanding general". His title of "First Citizen" evolved into English's "Prince". Those words became assocuiated with monarchy because of the later understanding of what Augustis Caesar had established truly was. The Centauri were modeled on the Byzantine phase of the Roman Empire, going into slow inexorable decline with occasional fits of resurgance. The Imperial Throne was sometimes hereditary from father to biological or adopted son but often not.

What a political entity calls itself is not necessarily indicative of what it actually is.

P.S. - Do the Vorlons call themselves anything? We never really saw any internal workings of the Vorlon government, so it is possible none of the younger races had a clue about how the Vorlon were organized. I imagine "empire" is a word someone just slapped on them and they were too aloof to care.

[Trinary]

I think the formal name for the Vorlon state is the Vorlon Empire. But yeah, we never get any measure of how the Vorlons operate that would justify or not justify calling them an empire.

[T-L]

The United Kingdom is mostly united by hatred for the English

That's a VAST oversimplification of the relationship between countries that have interacted with each for over a thousand years.

Indeed it is, some are not as that fond of the English as hating them would imply.

[Dînadan]

What a political entity calls itself is not necessarily indicative of what it actually is

Isn't there an old adage that a country that calls itself something along the lines of 'The Democratic People's Republic of...' will almost certainly be a tyrannical dictatorship?


Also, throwing another sci-fi example onto the pile, from TNG it's implied the Klingon's empire is officially titled 'the Klingon Imperial Empire', which as Chuck notes in the review for the episode that's brought up in "...is a lot of Imperial references for something that doesn't have an Emperor."

[Trinary]

What a political entity calls itself is not necessarily indicative of what it actually is

Isn't there an old adage that a country that calls itself something along the lines of 'The Democratic People's Republic of...' will almost certainly be a tyrannical dictatorship?

Also, throwing another sci-fi example onto the pile, from TNG it's implied the Klingon's empire is officially titled 'the Klingon Imperial Empire', which as Chuck notes in the review for the episode that's brought up in "...is a lot of Imperial references for something that doesn't have an Emperor."

That was a single mention from Picard in one episode. I really, REALLY hope that's not taken as cannon, because Imperial Empire is redundant. Also stupid. It's like naming something the Republican Republic of XYZ.

But the adage your referring to is probably a throwback to Voltaire's observation about the Holy Roman Empire: which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. This was ultimately parodied in the 1980s Transformers series with Abdul Fakkadi (also spelled Faghadi) "the self-professed Supreme Military Commander, President-for-Life, and King of Kings of the Socialist Democratic Federated Republic of Carbombya. One gets the feeling that if you were to inform him that, by definition, a republic cannot have a king (much less a "King of Kings"), his likely response would be to stare blankly for a long moment, and then order your immediate beheading." (taken from the Transformers wiki)

And of course, Carbombya (Yeah, can't imagine WHY Casey Kasem quit the show in protest of its racist depiction of Arabs) is not socialist, democratic or a republic. I have no evidence, but I strongly suspect its not a federation either.

[Robovski]

The United Kingdom is mostly united by hatred for the English

That's a VAST oversimplification of the relationship between countries that have interacted with each for over a thousand years. In any case, they're a group of kingdoms united under one monarch starting when the Scottish King James VI inherited the English throne in 1603, so the name is accurate.

He's not wrong though. The Scots hate the English (the SNP is the lead party inside Scotland in part because of this), the Welsh (who were conquered well before 1603) hate the English. Don't even start with the Irish.

Mind, the English don't really care about that, they outnumber the rest of them by a long chalk.

[G-Man]

That was a single mention from Picard in one episode. I really, REALLY hope that's not taken as cannon, because Imperial Empire is redundant. Also stupid. It's like naming something the Republican Republic of XYZ.

Although to be fair, redundancy may have a syntactical function in Klingon. I know that in the New Testament, repeating a word like "truly" would emphasize the word. Perhaps there is a meaning to a redundant adjective-noun pairing in Klingon.

[Rocketboy1313]

Centauri Republic -- It's ruled by a hereditary Emperor. That is LITERALLY the exact OPPOSITE of a republic. The definition when you type in Republic is "a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch." or "a group with a certain equality between its members." Now you can argue that the Centauri have a very Roman-esque feel to them, having many gods, loving wine and revelry and maybe the Republic/Emperor thing is a reference to how the Roman Republic became an Empire ... but I can't see high born people in the Roman Empire, noting the coronation of the 12th Emperor or whatever, commenting about how they're a "republican" (lowercase r) as Londo once did. And he's from a prominent noble family so that makes no sense either.

A Republic can also refer to any government run by a representative body, like the Roman Senate, the UK parliament, or the United States legislature.
Hereditary monarchs are not impossible in such a system, but I don't think the role of Emperor was strictly hereditary for the Centauri, otherwise Londo and Vir would have never been able to take the role.

Generally speaking a Republic will have some kind of ruling body, a legislature, the head of which will be the head of state/government. There can be other government leaders (for instance, not a lot of people know this, but Germany has a President... Seriously... HUH!?) and an Emperor or King can fill that role as head of Government/people/state (I think another fictional example would be the Klingons who have a high council with the chancellor but there is also the Emperor who is a clone of Kahless).
Typically to serve in the governing body you have to meet certain criteria (be of noble blood, serve a term in the military, be a land owning white male, pass a state aptitude test) and often the selection process is to be appointed by a lesser legislative body (like how US Senators were chosen by state legislatures till the constitution changed that) or only certain citizens can be allowed to vote (typically this is the same requirement as those that allow you to serve).

The less restrictive the criteria are to serve and vote are the less "Republic" the government becomes and moves toward Representative Democracy, and then to limited Democracy, and then full democracy. The more restrictive the criteria become it moves toward (I forget this one, I think many would say Aristocracy), then Oligarchy, then Monarchy/Dictatorship.

Keep in mind all of this is a spectrum. With the right constitution powers of the various branches can be rolled out and back tweaked to better match popular sentiment, or can grip hard to the letter rather than the spirit of the law (se Electoral College for instance). There are many popular definitions, academic definitions, or just redefinitions to create a workable vocabulary to explore ideas. Nothing is really set in stone, language in Social sciences is descriptive rather than prescriptive and things shift a lot.

[griffeytrek]

I think the formal name for the Vorlon state is the Vorlon Empire. But yeah, we never get any measure of how the Vorlons operate that would justify or not justify calling them an empire.

I've always just assumed that "Empire" is simply how one of the other races, likely the Centauri, described the Vorlons to the Humans. Whatever passed for governance among the Vorlons was not anything that they shared with others. It was more a reflection of "That's Vorlon Space over there. Just don't go there, like ever!"

[Cassandra]

When you hear the term Germany or France or Russia, you don't get what type of government they have, served on a plate either.

The formal names of those countries do, however, do describe the rough nature of their respective governments: the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland), the French Republic (République française), and the Russian Federation (Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) respectively. The common English names are just shorthand.