> Note that if the Empire were land-rich there ought to have > been some mention of this in the opening chapters of _FHYA_ > and perhaps in _Orca_. The Empire probably isn't land-rich, in the sense that there's a lot of unowned land lying around. However, for there to be Imperial Titles to hand out, there has to be some imperial land for those titles to govern. It seems clear that each House has it's own governing body and its own political agendas. Likewise, we have the example of the Jhereg who sell titles willy nilly to anyone able to afford one, but which are still real titles. If there was Imperial regulation of Jhereg titles, then it would seem to be more difficult to acquire them and they should have more importance attached to them than the governance of one square block of Adhrilanka. (This is ignoring the possibility that, through long tradition, the "Imperial Regulators" simply allow themselves to be bribed to hold the Jhereg to a lower standard.) Anyway, for there to be Jhereg titles that go unregulated by the government, those titles must perforce be regulated by the House itself. If one house regulates itself, the rest most likely operate similarly. Since titles are associated with actual zones of control (land, peasants, resources) the implication would be that House titles govern land that is controlled by that House. From there we can see that for Imperial titles to exist, there must be land associated with them that is controlled by the Throne and not by any particular House. This makes some sense when you consider that the Throne is not hereditary. Under a traditional hereditary monarchy or dictatorship, all land belongs to the Throne. In Dragaera, land belongs to the Houses and the Throne is merely the seat of authority. If ALL of the available land belonged to the Houses, then the only way for the Emperor to reward a vassal would be to take land away from one of the other Houses. That pretty obviously would be bad for the non-ruling Houses and could lead to civil war under the right circumstances. For the sake of stability as well as commerce, the Throne would require a certain number of "neutral" titles (with associated land) that it can use as rewards and as bargaining chips. This also allows the Empress to arbitrarily sub-divide regions without regard as to whether the leige and vassal are of the same or even compatible Houses. A side benefit is that this also means that there is plenty of "Federal Land", as someone put it, for the Tekla to use during their turn in office. That's my thinking on it. Feel free to point out any obvious holes.