Vestigial Empire: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''"There was a time when this whole quadrant belonged to us! What are we now? Twelve worlds and a thousand monuments to past glories. Living off memories and stories, and selling trinkets. My god, man! We've become a tourist attraction.

 

This nation used to [[The Empire|rule the known world, or at least a sizable chunk of it]]. Unfortunately, for the last ''n'' years, its influence has been declining and its territory shrinking.

 

Contrast with [[Precursors]]—an entire species of Vestigial Empire which tends to leave little to no working infrastructure and is also long gone by the time the story takes place. All or part of the '''Vestigial Empire''' may be [[The Remnant]] if they're still fighting for the (usually) lost cause of restoring their former glory.

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* In ''[[Lyrical Nanoha]]'', Ancient Belka was a powerful empire that spanned many dimensions, a mighty civilization that conquered every world that came its way with its superior magic and technology. However, infighting mixed with the [[Lensman Arms Race]] and widespread pollution have destroyed the empire from the inside until it finally fell apart after the self-sacrifice of the last Saint King, Olivie Segbrecht. All that's left of the Belkan Empire in modern times is the Saint Church Autonomous Region in the Northern Mid-Childa, although the Saint Church focuses more on the religious than political power (their doctrine is based around [[Crystal Dragon Jesus|Olivie as the messianic figure]]) and preservation of the Ancient Belkan cultural and magical heritage. [[Ace Combat|Setting a number of nuclear bombs off on themselves didn't help.]]

** If the live-action film ''G-Saviour'' is canon, then the Federation finally collapsed around UC 200, when the Earth succumbed to pollution and became uninhabitable.

* In ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'', the now dead countries of Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Rome, and Germania play this role, with Rome being the prominent one. He left two (idiotic) grandsons behind who are constantly being fought over because of their grandfather's inheritance, Germania is the father/grandfather of the Holy Roman Empire, Germany, and Prussia, and Ancient Greece and Egypt each left behind a son who spend a great deal of time discovering and researching the ruins of their mothers' kingdoms. Rome even comes back from heaven occasionally to check up on N. Italy and bother Germany. And if history's any indication, this may apply to Austria as well, who, as both the Austrian Empire and (one half) of Austria-Hungary, served as a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire.

 

 

 

 

** The post-Endor Empire is like this, getting progressively more so as time passes. Various defeats actually led to factions led by formerly-Imperial warlords splintering off. Now and again it surges back somewhat, like under [[The Thrawn Trilogy|Grand Admiral Thrawn]] or the [[Dark Empire|Emperor Reborn]], but since the people behind these surges are inevitably killed, these are temporary. The one good thing [[Jedi Academy Trilogy|Daala]] did was to reunite the forces under the warlords; she promptly [[General Failure|killed off]] a good portion, but she did leave the still-united remains in the command of someone who knew their limits. By the time of the [[Hand of Thrawn]] duology, [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gilad_Pellaeon the weary Supreme Commander] looks at the eight sectors and thousand systems they still command, the two hundred Imperial Star Destroyers, the "Preybird" class fighters they buy from he knows not where, and thinks about how the Empire once ruled a million systems, had twenty-five thousand Star Destroyers, and could afford more than one surviving major shipyard which couldn't keep up the demand for capital ships, let alone starfighters. He believes that the only way it can survive is for him to [[Peace Conference|make peace]] with the New Republic. And he does. When, while pushing for the Moff Council to support his peace treaty, he's told that the Empire still has significant military power, Pellaeon's response is that they have ''just enough'' power for the New Republic to consider them worth destroying if peace is not achieved. Fittingly, this territory is called [[The Remnant|the Imperial Remnant]] by the rest of the Galaxy.

** A century or so afterwards, it's the republican government that replaced it (The Galactic [[The Federation|Federation]] of Free [[The Alliance|Alliances]]) that crumble and survive only as the [[La Résistance|Galactic Alliance Remnant]]. [[Star Wars]] is cyclic about these things.

** The ''[[Star Wars]]'' Empire was inspired by the ''[[Foundation]]'' Empire, above.

* Melnibone from Michael Moorcock's ''Stormbringer'' series is like this, having ruled over the entire world for almost ten thousand years under the blessing of [[God of Evil|the gods]] [[Cosmic Horror|of Chaos]]. It is noted that its latest emperor (and series protagonist) Elric could restore much of its former power if he had a mind to.

* In S.M. Stirling's novel ''[[The Lords of Creation|In the Courts of the Crimson Kings]]'', the Tollamune emperors once ruled all of Mars. By the time of the story they are reduced to ruling the territory around their capital at Olympus Mons, where all the old court officials and functionaries continue, though largely without actual functions.

* Almost every nation in ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' is this, at least on the continent where most of the story takes place, due to a mysterious depopulation and the effects of repeated wars. Even the tiny city-state of Mayene claims to be ruled by a descendant of Artur Hawkwing's continent-spanning realm, and there were entire kingdoms swallowed by [[Garden of Evil|the Blight]] that were supposed to be very strong. Much of the depopulation since then could be attributed to people being killed/enslaved by raiding from the Blight. All of the major southern cities are indicated to be very large, as they have never been attacked and some (at the beginning of the series, at any rate) did not even believe that [[Goddamn Orcs|Trollocs]] existed.

* Harry Turtledove's "Videssos Cycle" doesn't even [[Serial Numbers Filed Off|file all the serial numbers off]] the late and declining Byzantine Empire, to the point of including historical names, places, battles and personas from the Empire and its neighbours, and adding a cohort from Caesar's Imperial Legions. To be fair, [[Write What You Know|the author has a degree or two in the subject]]...

* In Fritz Leiber's ''[[Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser]]'' series, Quarmall used to be a large kingdom, but by the time the eponymous pair see it, it's a single city that's almost all underground.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** The Imperium of Man has been in decline for 10,000 years. A hundred centuries of millions of soldiers dying in pointless wars every day, billions slaughtered to sate the thirst of angry gods, while every part of the Imperium falls apart. The words most commonly used is "decaying" and "rotting" and that's pretty much perfectly accurate.

** And then there's the Eldar. Theirs isn't a vestigial Empire as is it's the skeletal remains of one. When you discuss Empires of trillions upon trillions, one can see how it might take thousands of years for them to finally all get wiped out.

** Said Slaan and their Lizardmen aren't doing too well themselves. Most cities are gone and the Slaan have lost contact with most of the world. However...they are in a better position than most. Whereas the Dwarfs and the Elves have only ''lost'' cities, the Lizardmen are actually ''rebuilding'' some of theirs. Granted, several cities are still marked on their maps with Lizardmen equivalents for "Never Go Within Thirty Miles Of This Place Again", but it's a start.

** This change has also been reflected in their rulers: The Slaan have gone from a [[Dying Race]] incapable of replacing their numbers (in earlier editions) to one that is capable of replacing their numbers, albeit very slowly.

* Unther in the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]''. Up until the Time of Troubles it was a force to be reckoned with, ruled by [[Physical God]]s. After the gods' mortal incarnations are killed, Unther becomes a shadow of its former self and is mostly annexed by its neighboring empire, Mulhorand. In 4E, Unther is one of multiple countries that was [[Throwaway Country|unceremoniously destroyed]] by the Spellplague.

* In ''[[Traveller]]'', the Vilani Imperium. It was superficially powerful, controlling thousands of worlds when the Terrans found it. But it was senile, indecisive, and generally a meal waiting to be snatched by whomever discovered it.<ref>Or, as its conquerors eventually found out, a dying elephant that would crush and suffocate anyone bold or unwary enough to try to topple it under its sheer dead weight. The Rule of Man inherited all the old empire's problems, and managed to prop it up for a while, but a thousand-year Dark Age came anyway.</ref>

* Lookshy of ''[[Exalted]]'' fashions itself as the last remnant of the Shogunate, the worldwide Dragon Blooded government prior to the Great Contagion, reduced to a single (if securely independent) city-state.

** The Realm itself is not quite there yet, but it is a lot less strong abroad for having spent the last five years drawing the lines in preparation for civil war, and being reduced to a fraction of its former power is a noted possibility. Some Dynasts would even ''prefer'' a Vestigial Empire; it would be easier to manage, and they don't have any greater ambitions than maintaining their own tremendous wealth and luxury.

** The Lintha have been on a downward spiral since the fall of the Primordials. Depictions of the First Age show the Lintha Empire (which once ruled most of the West) to have been reduced to a small coastal state where pure blooded Lintha (the only ones able to use their magic and operate their technology) are virtually an endangered species. The default setting shows the vestigial remnant of ''that'', where the Lintha are nothing but a few criminal families (with practices of incest and self-castration/mutilation) operating off of the back of a dying monster.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** [[The Empire]] of Tamriel is on the decline politically, though not geographically (yet). The Province of Cyrodiil (the Capital) appears bloated and lazy, while various political factions are constantly vying for control of the outlying provinces. Two of the games (''Daggerfall'' & ''Morrowind'') deal with different [[Gambit Index|Gambits]] by the Emperor to keep the empire together and delay its break up, while the last game has you actively saving the empire from an invading force and a conspiracy:

*** In ''Daggerfall'', the hero is sent on a personal errant for the Emperor (the protagonist is "friend" with said emperor) {{spoiler|The emperor's true goal is to have you find a [[Forgotten Superweapon]] that was used to forge the empire and that you'll return it to him. You have the choice to give it to many factions, all with their own plot. Later games reveal that a [[Divine Intervention]] made all the game's endings happen at once, most of them cancelling out and bringing peace and some stability to the region}}.

*** In ''Oblivion'', the very heart of the Tamriel is attacked by [[The Legions of Hell]] and the emperor who has been the last link to keep it together is assassinated. Fortunately, he has an heir, but unfortunately he doesn't survive long. So unless the Elder Council finds a new dynasty to replace the Septims, Tamriel will degrade to a "full-fledged" Vestigial Empire by the next installment of the series. Which of course will be a ''very'' bad thing as the Empire was the only thing keeping the provinces (and races) from killing and enslaving each other.

*** In the novels taking place 40 years after Oblivion, {{spoiler|the Empire has fallen but slowly coming back thanks to a warlord.}}

* In [[Knights of the Old Republic]], the player eventually comes across Rakata Prime, which is all that remains of the once galaxy-spanning, trillions-enslaving Rakata Empire.

* In the [[Rance]] World, the Helman Empire is this. This makes sense since it is the [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] to [[Russia]].

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* The Western Roman Empire and its ever-decreasing territory during the 5th century is a rather good example. By 395, its last partition with the Eastern Roman Empire, the West included Britannia (Wales, England), Gallia (Gaul: France and certain areas of the Low Countries), Hispania (Spain, Portugal), Italia (Italy), Dalmatia (Croatia), Mauretania Tingitana (Morocco), Mauritania Caesariensis (western Algeria), and Africa province (eastern Algeria, Tunisia, Libya). Imperial troops left Britannia between 407 and 410, leaving the Romano-British to fend for themselves against invasions. Gallia and Hispania were increasingly settled by Germanic populations from c. 412 onwards. While often allied or even subordinate to the Romans, they set up regional kingdoms and eventually become fully independent. The last Roman governor in Gaul, Syagrius, fell to the Franks in 487. Most of the North African areas fell to the Vandals between 429 and 439. The Vandals use their new ports to replace the Romans as the chief naval power of the Mediterranean Sea. Italia fell to its own Germanic mercenaries in 476. Dalmatia followed it in 480. By the end of the century what was left of Roman rule in the west was an independent but isolated Mauretania Tingitana. Eventually Belisarius took it back for the East, but then the Arabs [[Oh Crap|came along]]... That makes this at least [[Older Than Feudalism]]

* The so-called [[Byzantine Empire]], the Roman Empire's eastern half, centred around Constantinople/Byzantion, lingered for just under a thousand years after the better known fall of the western half. It spent most of that time gradually losing territory, power and influence, though it also had several resurgences—one under Justinian and Belisarius, one under the Macedonian dynasty, and one under the Komnenoi emperors. It spent the last century or so of its existence as a few disconnected regions and cities around the southern Balkans, until the Ottoman Turks put it out of its misery in 1453; technically, though most forget it, the last vestige of Roman power was not Byzantium, but the small Empire of Trebizond, which did not fall until 1461. This example is probably closer to fictional portrayals than most others on this list, in that for a long time Constantinople's wealth and glory lingered, even if they could never recover the political or military power of the old empire. In fact Basil the Bulgar Slayer is believed by some estimates to have been worth almost 170 BILLION in modern US dollars, placing him among the top ten richest men to have ever lived. That last century or two, however, it was simply a shadow of its former self, barely holding on.

* The Mongol Empire. It used to be one of the largest empires ever, conquering many well developed societies under it, till it stretched all across Asia, from the Caspian to China. Now, its back at former position as a swath of desert, and a bunch of nomads. It has the lowest population density (people per square mile) in the world. And it was the largest empire ever up till its time by far.

** This is also one of the quickest examples of this trope happening. Very soon after Genghis Khan died, his empire split into several Khanates, which took a while to collapse themselves.

* The Mughal Empire, before the [[Mega Corp|British East India Company]] put it out of its misery in the early 19th century. The Mughals are the most recent example, but India is scattered with ruins of long-dead empires, like the Gupta Empire, the Vijayanagara Empire, and the Maratha Empire.

* 19th and 20th century Spain fits this trope to a tee: losing its empire and all pretensions of world power status, sinking into a deep economic decline, dominated by an over-powerful nobility, racked by constant political instability, coups, and the occasional civil war. Attempts to lord over its former South American colonies led Spain to get its ass kicked by them in the [[Chincha Islands War]]. Lingering imperial delusions and hubris were finally shattered in 1898, when they were quickly and brutally defeated by the United States (mind you, the American armed forces were viewed as a joke in 1898, making this especially humiliating), but not much changed after that.

** For some 20 years after they fled in fear of Napoleon, the seat of the Portuguese monarchy and capital of the Empire was Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, making Brazil a "united kingdom" (of Brazil, Portugal and the Algarves) and also making Brazil the only former colony to ever become the capital of the empire it belonged to (Imagine if the British royals had simply up and moved to Montreal or Calcutta...). Later on, Brazil was one of the few colonies to gain independence peacefully. (And by "peacefully" we mean [[A Million Is a Statistic|"after about two years of irregular warfare with only a few dozen thousand battle deaths."]] That this was actually considered peaceful says something about the wars of independence further west in the Spanish colonies). This was why Brazil was an empire in its first half-century of independence, and probably would still be had it not been for some rich aristocrats declaring staging a coup and declaring a republic to protect their rights against the leveling Imperial family (Peter II signed the Lex Aurea in 1888, outlawing slavery).

*** One of the contingency plans Britain had back in World War II in the event of successful Nazi invasion was to relocate much of the Royal Family and top leadership to Canada. So it could almost have happened twice, at least in theory. There was even a plan to move the royals abroad during the Blitz; however, George VI insisted on staying in London [[In Its Hour of Need]]. Note that by this time, Canada was independent of Britain in all but a few, very minor areas.

** Had the Turks not become involved in the First World War (which caused the British to instigate the Great Arab Uprising), they would have soon discovered that they were sitting on 20% of the world's oil deposits. Judging from the disproportionate power that countries such as Saudi Arabia wield as a result of "the politics of oil", it would certainly have regained its status as a Great Power - unless its neighbours then decided to simply divide it up between them.

*** Had it not been for a now-obscure series of both diplomatic and military blunders by the British at the start of World War I, it's very possible that the Ottoman Empire would have joined the Allies or at least remained neutral, in which case it almost certainly would be one of the world's great powers today.

* Austria under the Habsburgs once held hegemony over pretty much all of Central and Eastern Europe, especially during the 16-17th Century. But by 1914, the Dual Monarchy had long become (perhaps not ''fully'' justifiably) the basis of [[Ruritania]] for much of Europe. The next decades would see the country dismembered, absorbed into Germany, and ultimately reduced to only a fraction of its former territory. Indeed, given their shared history, much of that could be said of Hungary as well; a quick look at the complete lyrics of the latter's national anthem ought to give it away.

** If you look closely as the Hungarian anthem, the ''Himnusz'', it's actually a surprisingly solemn hymn lamenting their lost achievements and calling on God Himself to pity their fallen glory.

** Britain is also a key member of [[NATO]], [[Ultimate Defence of the Realm|is an acknowledged nuclear weapons state]], and still has the world's third-highest military budget, is the world's fifth-largest arms exporter (thank you BAE Systems!), and is the world's sixth-largest economy (by GDP, nominal) (thank you City of London!).

* The French also subvert this to a degree like the British do, and many of the same traits apply to it ([[NATO]] member, [[The Ultimate Resistance|nuclear weapons capability]], fourth-largest military and fifth-largest economy. They remain a powerful force in the world and in Europe and Western Africa in particular, both by themselves and through their influence with the EU. That, and they still have a number of larger overseas territories around. Not bad for a bunch of [[Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys]].

[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]