#final empire

This is what I miss the most after completing the Mistborn trilogy. I truly, truly wish I could go back and read the whole thing all over again, but for the first time. While I love the character developments of the characters, particularly Elend’s, and Spook’s, even more specifically in Hero of Ages, I still want to go back and stay in The Final Empire because… dear lords, The Lord Ruler was terrifying but I would much rather just have him be the big bad guy. Things were… relatively easier. I miss Kell, but I understood why he had to die, and somehow, that understanding hurt more than his death. His death changed everyone. But… so did his life. Kell could walk into a room and leave everyone awed. He practically adopted Vin, and taught her to trust. To hope. When Kell says that Mare would have loved Vin… 😭🥺✨

Currently reading HoA. Setting aside the suspicions of Spook's new pewter abilities and mysterious Kelsier-voice, I stopped to admire the character development arc for Spook. He transformed from being a shy, cute kid to a confident, decisive beast who carries the will of the crew on his own. He's no longer just a shy nephew who tagged along. He along with the other surviving members of the crew is one of Kelsier's heirs who inherited Kell's will.

So I finished Well of Ascension last month and I thought Elend's attempt at constructing a system of governance was naive and failed to consider all the factors at play and how to ensure proper protections are in place.

This bothers me a lot in fiction so I decided to make my own proposal holding to the principles Elend intended to uphold whilst balancing a the various factors at play. (My personal politics would've favoured a totally different system that would've relied on Kelsier's crew doing more ground work but I find these things interesting to work out regardless)

The intention of the system is to fairly represent the people whilst improving livelihoods and safeguarding the interests of different communities. Elend attempted this by having a simple elected assembly split 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 between the Nobility, Merchants, and Skaa whilst having a king which it's implied has a veto as a safeguard. Unfortunately this fails to account for how self-interested these members may end up being (as we see with the merchants) or how the disparity in extra-political power can be reflected in parliamentary politics (money and power have their interests inherently overrepresented). The reliance on his position as king also means the politics of the day depend on the individual in that position to safeguard every community.

We can't really blame Elend for this though as he would've had few books on alternate political systems and even before the time of the Lord Ruler it is unlikely there would've have been many attempts at democratic systems.

Instead of this I present the system in the diagram above to provide balance, the broader people elect a lower chamber of 60 representatives via proportional representation, the upper chamber is selected by sortition (random lots from the public) in order to ensure ultimate power rests with a truly representative group.

The elected chamber is expected to have stronger interest in governance and to have more experience so proposes a government, who the sortition chamber then give confidence to (or not and it is thrown back to the elected chamber).

We also have a system of commissions representing the various groups in order to safeguard against very extreme actions. These commissions are generally expected to be non-partisan and only vote for the veto if there is a genuine concern to their community. However to ensure they don't just hold the government to ransom they are elected and operate in a way to safeguard against this. There is also the option of adding more Commissions here when / if other communities require safeguarding.

An example of a passing of a (controversial) law might go as follows:

Skaa expect more funding of public services

Given that the People's Chamber reflects the people's general interests the government crafts a law to appropriate some of the assets of the nobility to fund more spending

The elected chamber largely agrees with the government and passes the law, potentially with amendments (it is not mentioned in the chart but this is intended to be a parliamentary system, the government would likely be members of an alliance in this chamber, though this is also not necessary)

This law goes to the People's Chamber which of course passes it

Each of the Commissions review this law (I can't figure out how to sub-bullet list):

Skaa have no issue and forgo veto

Some Merchants raise concern but nowhere near enough to veto or protest

Nobility have major concern but cannot raise enough for a unanimous veto as the Skaa got to choose some members of the Noble commission, eg. Elend himself. However they probably still get the >80% required to submit a protest to the courts.

They submit this protest on the basis that it unfairly targets them, however the courts find this invalid reasoning as the law goes toward rectifying historic injustices and bringing about reparations so invalidates this reasoning and the law passes through the Noble Commission without veto

The law has passed through all stages and is formally passed and enacted.

Downsides I'll admit to this system:

Pretty complicated

3 different systems in place to obtain representatives