Trope-a-Day: Vestigial Empire

(This is actually yesterday’s.)

Vestigial Empire: There aren’t any really obvious Vestigial Empires – the Empire and the Consolidated Waserai Echelons are still vigorous; while the Voniensa Republic is near its clionomic control limits short of the kind of reforms their ideology won’t permit, it’s not yet vestigial; and the Rim Free Zone was never organized enough to be an Empire.  Probably the best candidates for non-obvious Vestigial Empires are the Under-Blue-Star League (senescent, but used to be a Great Power and still is on the Presidium), and the League of Meridian (not quite senescent with bursts of revanchism, depending on whose throat got cut in the cutthroat politics this week).  None of them are exactly huge chunks of the known worlds, although the League of Meridian comes closest.