Is Kralorela 'centralised'? Not very, IMO. All those Exarchs seem to me to be pretty powerful people, and there'd be little point in having 'em, if Godunya and his ministers were going to try and run everything from back in Chi Ting. How much diversity there is between provinces (or further down the 'pyramid') is another matter, though it'd be a bit of a waste of 10 million characterisation possibilities if there were _too_ identikit. Nor is loyalty of the Exarchs anywhere noted to be any sort of a problem, so in the sense that the Exarchs run their provinces, and the Exarchs do what Godunya commands them too, then devolution of power can be said to work on fairly Blairite lines. Certainly when he commands that infeasibly large bridges get built for no reason that makes any sort of obvious economic sense, they most assuredly get built.
Does Kralorela have 'strong government'? In a sense, yes. Being able to sack a city for paying its taxes late implies quite a capability. In a sense, no: _having_ to resort to such measures implies that tax collection isn't all it could be in the first place, or otherwise such frankly eccentric tax-default procedures would surely not be employed. This could be symptomatic of truly widespread tax 'avoision', which the authorities are more concerned to make an appearance of fighting, than the vastly more difficult task of reclaiming every last eurocent of it. We've discussed the approximate nature of the Kralori state apparatus in private before, and I don't recall any real fundamental disagreement (between either David and Peter, or me, in any permutation). Clearly the state has pretty considerable resources: maybe not the military manpower of the Lunar Empire, but they do have bureaucracy so labyrinthine as to make the Lunars look like procedurally slap-dash Orlanthi in comparison, and in many other respects are the single most 'advanced' and 'powerful' nation on the Lozenge, with all the 'interesting' consequences that has. (Like the most sophisticated and systematic tax avoision...)
As I've said more than once, the _purpose_ of the Kralori state should be kept in mind. The most important thing is that it continue to exist, and that it serve the cosmic purpose that Daruda instituted it to, and which the other Emperors have refined ever since, which is to hold out the possibility and the means of mystical progress to its citizens. If push comes to shove, everything else can go to heck in a hand-cart. In other words, we have an essentially a similar problem to the Lunar case: how to work out what our rulers have up their sleeves, when they're a bunch of whacked-out mystics? This means that when something is left undone, or 'mis-done' in Kralorela, there's as a rule some creative ambiguity about whether this is due to impotence on the part of the relevant state apparatus; outright widespread and shocking corruption; strange priorities in certain areas of 'policy' (such as who does or doesn't get persecuted for their heterodox beliefs, or crime, or poverty, and all the Mundane stuff); or perhaps, some strange actual purpose in the apparent failings of government, which serve some ultimate purpose. (As a Naked Sage might say, if the Exarchs could perfectly hide all Suffering, who would feel true Compassion?)
Cheers,
Alex.
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