On 27Sept2024 0452, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> In an environment as necessarily paranoid as you describe the need for
> effective security & counter-measures would be even greater.
> Dulinor's gun would definitely have been detected.
> (Say, my lord, whatcha' got a gun for?)

That's explicitly dealt with - he had the ceremonial right to be armed
in the presence of the Emperor.

But, back to my original point - with the Emperor dead, unlike back in
the first Civil War, where by and large everyone thought that the
Imperium was a good idea, and most worlds seemed happy to stay members
and let the admirals fight it out to see who sat on the throne, by 1116
things had got to the point where everyone asked 'Why stay?', and there
was no good answer.

Then Lucan (and later some others) started demanding worlds have loyalty
not to 'the Imperium', but to the leader personally, and started bombing
worlds that had aided the 'enemy' (even if they'd done so because it had
a fleet in-system.

I'm suggesting that corruption had a good deal to do with this. It sucks
the profit out of trade, makes doing any business be it personal or for
the state slow and expensive, and if not aggressively stamped out it
tends to spread, because the only way to make your way in life rapidly
becomes to become corrupt yourself.

In particular it kills off the little guys, and the new guys, so the
megacorps manage (and frankly were always part of a corrupt system), the
great noble families manage, the hi-pop hi-TL worlds manage (but become
increasingly insular, with less and less external trade), but the free
traders, the little feeder companies, and the worlds that aren't hi-pop
powerhouses never get to improve. Why be part of the Imperium if you're
going to be stuck at TL5-7 and a few million population, with your best
and brightest leaving year on year and never coming back?

So the Imperium stumbles along, largely on inertia and because the
frontier sectors *do* still see value in remaining, until some 'bright'
'reformer' thinks they can do a better job, and promotes themselves in a
thoroughly illegal manner, and the heir apparent then confirms his
position in an illegal manner, and the wheels come off.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>