A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Third Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC

In the end you settle upon the more neutral Ministry of Information. No sense risking offense when you are about to do so much else that could be seen as objectionable to the highborn of Essos and Westeros both. Of course, they should hopefully be busy with other matters soon enough. You then lay out a plan to expand the current Imperial Council into a two-chambered advisory body, the Curia. They will debate matters of the state to express the opinions of their constituents and areas of expertise to help the Throne form opinion on the topics. They serve similarly to the Small Council of the defunct Seven Kingdoms, but vastly expanded to accommodate the needs of a vastly larger and more interconnected realm...

The Lower House, the Curia Vox or Council of Voices, shall be made up of the delegates sent from the Duchy-level elected councils of the realm. Unlike the lower councils, it shall hold no power, executive, judicial or legislative, but shall instead serve as a body for the council representatives to exchange ideas and concerns, and to give them a forum to petition the Imperial bureaucracy and the Crown. Effectively, it is a mechanism for much more effective petitions that nonetheless require some level of consensus to actually get the proverbial ball rolling, and if they get that consensus, odds are it shall be something worth listening to.

"Now as to the matter of the nobility," you say in the tone of a man about to debate the making of sausages, or at least so Dany assures you, though you do not recall her speaking to many sausage makers over the years. The Upper House, termed Curia Principium or Council of the First, shall include twenty who are First by Blood, making them a plurality in the realm though not even close to a majority. Nine will be chosen by vote and twelve by edict, Governorships appointed by the Crown. To stack the deck even more in that direction, as well as putting in people who are experts in their fields, you introduce all level Ministers and the Censor, which is to say Alinor, who will keep her broad responsibilities in making sure the wheels of government continue to turn and do not creak overmuch against one another.

There is a bit of a debate when you reach the Princeps Militia, the First by military service, seven in all, they are envisaged as being the five new Legion Marshals, the Air Marshal and the Princeps Praetori. Of course, you are going to want military commanders on such a body, not only to vote but to propose resolutions. The trouble is that more than any other landed lord, they would likely have to send representatives that they might continue their duties in the field and to avoid overlong debates that might wear upon the spirit, or as Ser Richard colorfully puts it when he hears the proposal, "Clegane is going to strangle someone with his chain of office if he is stuck in debates too long."

"He will be under no obligation to be part of the Regular Sessions, nor is not expected of him," you counter. "Full Sessions will not be lightly called and only for causes that warrant it."

Still, he does have something of a point about the military. Where the territorial or administrative positions have ready made pools from which to name proxies, for the task the military is in a unique position. Any sort of permanent envoy to the Curia would risk losing through misuse much of the military skill for which they had been chosen. By the same token, however, cycling proxies risks creating a situation where the representatives of the military in Regular Sessions do not know the political 'lay of the land' as it were.

How shall the military appoint proxies?

[] As a permanent position connected to each Marshal (Will lead to more politically capable proxies, but might cause a loss of martial skill)

[] They shall cycle appointments (The position will be a honor granted to skilled officers, though they might not always be the most politically adroit)
-[] Write in on what time period

[] Write in

OOC: I'll have a few of these decision points to give Curia debates a sense of institutional character. This will also influence how factions form in the Curia around different ideologies and philosophies. If you have a deliberative body, even one without direct power, that is going to happen.