Politics
The Coordinator, the hereditary leader who rules over the Combine, is armed with a well-equipped, fanatical military in one hand and an ever-pervasive, all-seeing civilian bureaucracy in the other.
Two rival intelligence agencies, the Internal Security Forces (ISF) and the Order of the Five Pillars (O5P) keep watch against any potential external and internal threat from lowly commoners, ambitious nobles, and members of the Coordinator's own family. The duty of physical protection of the Coordinator falls to the Otomo, a regiment of palace guards who are recruited from the military, not from the intelligence services.
The idée fixe of the Combine and the Coordinator is conquest. Since the days of Takashi Kurita, the Coordinator has been called the Unifier of Worlds. This is ironic: under Takashi's rule, many worlds slipped from the Combine's hands, first to the succession of Rasalhague Prefecture (now the Free Rasalhague Republic), then to the invasions by Clans Smoke Jaguar, Nova Cat and Ghost Bear.
Read more about this topic: Draconis Combine
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)