Klingon Imperial Empire Again
- Thread starter MAGolding
- Start date
That's a good point -- the founding Federation Member States themselves comprised multiple planets.
Yes, that's what makes the United Kingdom a unitary state rather than a federal state. A federal state, by contrast, has no authority to abolish its constituent polities without their consent -- the U.S. Congress cannot abolish the State of Delaware, for instance; the German Bundestag cannot abolish Bavaria; the Canadian Parliament cannot abolish the Province of Alberta. Etc. By contrast, the U.K. Parliament could abolish the Scottish Parliament and Scottish First Minister tomorrow if they wanted to.Ergo, the British kingdom is inherently legally "united" and putting the word in the name is redundant.
Only if it's a microstate like the Vatican. A sovereign state larger than a city is impossible to run without administrative divisions.
Pure nonsense. All kingdoms larger than a city have administrative divisions. The Kingdom of Spain somehow doesn't need to put the word "united" in its name to "fix" that.
Yes, I said the same thing when I noted that the word "United" is in the U.K.'s name for political purposes, to emphasize that its constituent countries were formerly independent and rivals but are now united in one kingdom.
Why? It's the same situation: Formerly independent constituent polities that were once rivals, now united in one Federation.
Not necessarily. In legal theory, you could have a federal state styled as the "United Kingdoms of X" where the constituent polities are kingdoms with their own kings, united in one state with a "federal king." That's basically what the German Empire pre-abdication was -- the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of Bavaria, the Kingdom of Saxony, and the Kingdom of Württemberg were all constituent polities of the German Empire with their own kings. The Kaiser was separately and simultaneously King of Prussia, but there was still a King of Saxony, King of Bavaria, etc., and they all reigned under the Kaiser. If the German Empire had been styled "the United Kingdoms of Germany," it would have made perfect legal sense.
For chrissake. You said, "not necessarily," and then regurgitated exactly what I said. I mean, I literally had just said that it makes sense only if there were multiple kings. If it's the word sovereign that's bothering you in what I said, I was using "sovereign ruler" to mean a gender-less king or queen.
The words you are looking for are, "You are correct."
I think it's just the way the translations work. The Emperor is Kahless, who is a ceremonial figurehead, kind of like North Korea with their Eternal leaders, and all that.
You can’t decanonize what was never canon.
Malaysia's political system might be a contemporary example of the situation that you are describing in that paragraph. It's a federation, and it's a constitutional monarchy.
The country is comprised of a number of constituent states of which nine are monarchies themselves, headed by a hereditary chief. Many of them have the title of sultan. Every five years, the state rulers elect one of the hereditary state chiefs to serve as the federal head of state, loosely translated as King. As far as I know, the federal head of state position is more or less a ceremonial position. The federal head of government is the prime minister, who theoretically needs to have the confidence of the federal parliament to remain in office.
I don't know if what is now Malaysia (which btw, at one point was part of the British empire; or in other words, the time when it was the subject of British colonialism) has ever called itself an empire or has ever been referred to as an empire, though.
Anyway, enough with my political science 101 lecture.
On the matter of "Klingon Imperial Empire" ...
I assume it was a harmless gaffe uttered by Picard. It was probably a good thing that Picard didn't say "Klingon Imperialist Empire", instead, even though "imperialist" was probably a more accurate description. That might have sounded belligerent or offensive to a Klingon audience, after all Picard was actually talking to a Klingon when he said what he said.
Or perhaps Picard was just being imperiously careless in his phrasing.
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Imperial Empire, that was just universal translator acting up again.
