Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-136.160.185.232-20141214035658/@comment-25947200-20141231144012

Do you know what's fun? All these assumptions. Just because they are called "Kingdoms" does not mean they are necessarily anything like our Earthen counterparts. One suggestion made, which is quite a sensible one, is that we interpret the language used -as in the word Kingdom- to represent the concept of strength that these communities possess within their law, military and structure. We have no knowledge that these Kingdoms have fought for land in current or recent times, so that rules out the probability that they are empires (which are about expanding domain, not always for a monarchy) which makes any war likely either philosophical or racial, and we also have no knowledge about the actual specific structure of the ruling bodies of these Kingdoms, which may each have different, similar or identical structures, however we do not know. We assume that they are democratic, however they could just as easily be plutocratic, aristocracy or just veiled autocracy.

So if we were to ask the question of "If they are called Kingdoms, how come there aren't any kings?" we can only answer with the facts: We do not know if there ever has been kings or any previous colonial expansion/imperial conquest, and we only know of their status as Kingdoms from more colloquial conversation, instead of direct reference to legislative text or doctrine. This therefore makes it highly likely that based on what we know, the Kingdoms may not be such in our contextual knowledge of kingdoms on planet Earth, and might just be the name given to the nations by their people to symbolise their strength, security and resilience to the dangers of the world. If this is not the case then the other most likely postulate is that any existing monarchy is purely ceremonial, or at least a constitutional monarchy, likely hereditary if this is the case -however elective monarchy is still possible-, and the actual power lies in the constitution and government, cabinet, parliament, senate etc. and that because of this, monarchy is never directly referenced in the "World of Remnant" mini-series.

Either explanation is plausable, and both offer solutions to the current culture which has been observed in Remnant. This does not make them necessarily true, all I can vouch for is that they are likely, that they are probable based on human society in all stages of history, and as the current world of Remnant is a pseudo-modern esablishment of human and faunus society, which may have its own unique history, however that has not been delved into in any episode, so we shall forgo making any assumptions on what previous governmental composition was, however based on the anti-faunus discrimination it is likely that there was some form of faunus-sufferage campaigning at certain points, but not necessarily true, we can make some hypotheses on the political landscape and make-up of Remnant, and must remain open to new ideas and concepts, and be willing to end recognition and accept the truth if Oum ever decides to give it. So continue coming up with ideas!