Monarchs, of course, are a problem. A person, imbued with unlimited temporal power, must act both with perfect moral clarity and with perfect understanding of the reasons for and consequences of their actions, lest disaster befall eir realm. As this is impossible for a mere person to sustain for any meaningful length of time, Agora is instead governed by a deliberative process, in which temporal authority is enshrined in a process with well-defined rules for discussing, proposing, enacting, and reviewing change. This is, it is widely understood, a Good Thing for the health of the game.
Unfortunately, a monarchy is also the only effective reward Agora offers to a masterful player. There is, to date, no higher achievement in the game beyond the privilege of transcending the deliberative process and imposing one’s will directly upon the game. To a certain strain of player - and I think we are all that player, sometimes - there is no worthier goal than to beat the system, and thus no victory offered by the rules will ever be as consistently tempting as victory over the rules themselves. It’s presently possible to win by accumulating Trust Tokens - but if anyone’s even bothering to track them, they’re not saying. It’s presently possible to win by accumulating Ribbons - but the Tailor’s office is cold and dusty. It’s presently possible to win by election - but there’s no sign of a victory election. In the last six months alone, we have had not one but two distinct monarchies. I think we have to deal with the fact that Agora will, inevitably, accumulate monarchs. We’ve been extremely fortunate that the players who have achieved a monarchy have treated it as a transient honour, and have put the health of the game ahead of their own accomplishments over it. I’d like to trust that this will always be true, but it might be worth evaluating ideas to ensure that it remains true even if some future monarch is rather more selfish. I happen to live in a country that has a real, bona fide monarch as part of its legal heritage. The standing convention, here, is that the Crown theoretically has the the authority of a monarchial head of state, and both consents to the enacting of bills and has the authority to veto them. However, any attempt to exercise this power other than on the advice of the prime minister and the governing parliament would immediately precipitate a constitutional crisis, and could easily cause the government to re-form itself such that the crown’s power is extinguished. To date, the Crown has chosen to retain symbolic authority rather than exercising temporal authority and risk losing both. Mining that for ideas, a bit: Could we instate such an office, and a system of succession for it, without destabilising the game? Would building in an office with the effective power of a monarch, along with systems to jettison that office if the monarch should ever prove willful, work on an Agoran scale? -o
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