Noble Equity

At the dawn of the Empire, its system of runér titles was labyrinthine: each of the five original signatories of the Imperial Charter possessed different systems of government with different positions, ranks, and titles of office attached thereto, as did those nations which joined shortly thereafter, all with their own origins, appurtenances, and nuances of division, position, and relation. More, it could easily be seen that as the Empire would expand throughout the Consolidation, the resulting complexity would increase beyond the point at which the best efforts of the Office of Title and Estate - and this publication - to track their interactions would fail.

From this we were saved by the wisdom of Valentia I Amanyr and the Great Convention of 502, which introduced the Table of Ranks for the Court of Courts into law. Under this system, all the runér, whatever their title, are attached to one of fourteen numerical ranks, from the Great Lords of the Sextants down to the myriad local lairds, and within each rank, formal precedence is determined simply by date of patent.

The system retains a certain complexity of appearance, since the Convention required no changes be made in title or style - and as such, every rank contains multiple possible titles, and several titles appear at multiple ranks - and yet it retains underneath the simple elegance that permits one to know instantly, for example, the parity in precedence of a Selenarian dimar, an Alatian count, and a Veranthyran treekeeper; or an Alatian duke, a Telírvess jarl, a Jussovian voivode, a daimyo of Kanatai, and the Doge of Eume.

The Table also proves useful when foreign rulers and governance interact with the Imperial system. Masters of protocol from the Office of Title and Estate seconded to the Ministry of State and Outlands carefully scrutinize the station of non-Imperial rulers and assign them appropriate equivalent dignities, a judgment made both in accordance with metrics, such as the volume, population, and significance of their fief, and also taking into account certain more intangible qualities. (Such qualities, of course, are those attached to the office rather than its holder of the moment, such that no-one need fear that a single incumbent buffoon will taint relations forever.) These equivalent dignities then provide a basis for the courtesies of ceremony, court, and correspondence thencefrom.

It should be noted that the Imperial Couple themselves, and indeed the Imperial family in general, stand above this system, and as such no foreign prince or potentate may be assigned an equivalent dignity. This is only correct: the doctrine of the Ecumenical Throne holds that Their Divine Majesties' mandate is universal in scope if not in acknowledgement, and as such, they can have no peer.

- from the introduction to Talenith's Peers, Precedence, and Protocol of the Empire