Wiki Showcase: Aristocratic Lens - Maradonian Noble

Ahh, here it is, the one you've likely been waiting for.  Since I started working on the Alliance, I think the Maradonian nobility are second only to Communion itself for interest from the community, thus they likely need no introduction, but here we go anyway: the lingering remnants of a psychic aristocracy, bred to save the Galaxy from some great apocalypse coming in the future, are the main force standing up against the Emperor.  They present themselves as heroic defenders of democracy, while quietly seeking to secure their own power over the galaxy.  The Emperor's empire was founded on removing their aristocracy from the Galaxy and bringing equality with him (though, perhaps, he has not succeeded at that as well as his propagandists say).

I created the Maradonian aristocracy for a few reasons, but primarily I wanted real opposition to the Empire.  Star Wars presents the rebellion as a plucky group of rag-tag farmers and adventurers who just happen to have their own fleet. This is based on a very optimistic and romantic notion of what a "rebellion" looks like.  To be sure, the American revolution saw the Americans with their own fleet, and the American civil war likewise saw the Confederation sport their own fleet, but in both cases, these were fully fledged states waging war on one another, rather than a band of guerrillas.  You need shipyards and workers to maintain a fleet, you need training grounds to train your pilots, you need to perform exercises to get your fleet to work well with one another.  George Lucas based a lot of his vision of the rebellion on a romantic view of the Viet Cong, but they didn't need to fight naval battles on the scale of what we saw on WW2 and, even if they did, they had the backing of a state (North Korea, which itself had the backing of China).

So, if you want to have large, sweeping naval battles in space, you need a state.  If Psi-Wars is WW2, and the Empire is Germany, then the Alliance is Britain.  Other good inspirations would be Napoleon vs the monarchies of Europe, or the aristocratic arm of the Roman civil war that led to the rise of Augustus Caesar.

I also created them because we need space princesses.  Space opera is based heavily on the "fiction of the day," and the fiction of the day that inspired works like Star Wars were fantasy works and, especially, the Ruritanian Romance, stories that involve swashbuckling adventures in small, valley kingdoms with very 19th century aristocrats. One needn't look that hard at Star Wars, with its princesses and heroic space knights rushing to rescue them from a grasping, napoleonic Empire.  We like stories about prim princesses who need a good scolding, or who heroically rebel against their gilded cage, or princes who seek to earn their father's favor and who must bear the crushing responsibilities of the state and the needs of the people at a tender, youthful age.  And, of course, everyone must know how to duel.

To make such an aristocracy work, we need to embed them in the setting and create a mythology around them. In large part, aristocracy is built on mythology, the story that some people are better than others, and that they're the better people.  They trace ancient, prestigious lineages, and they explain that their bloodline gives them greater right to rule. In Psi-Wars, we manifest this with their eugenic bloodlines and their ancestor veneration.  This gives them a reason to be picky about whom they marry, or to look down their noses at one another ("Bloodline purity 0? Seriously? Were your parents even trying to retain their dignity, or did they just give up when they decided to have you?"). Their heritage as space knights gives them a reason to retain their martial lineage, but the lack lack of warfare has turned it into something ceremonial, a game that focused duelists seek to win, rather than a way of war.

Thus, if you're thinking of Psi-Wars Aristocracy, chances are, you're thinking of one of them.  So, check them out here.  If you find my varieties of aristocracy confusing, just ignore the rest and focus on these, because they're the ones people seem to know best. Currently, I have four houses, four lineages.  You can make your own, and I have four more available in the Lost Book of Houses if you're a patron.