Government Structure
The Moon Kingdom is obviously a kingdom, right? But there are many ways to be a monarchy, and in some respects, the state led by Neo-Queen Serenity will resemble other kinds of governments a lot more.
Fundamentally, the types of governments have not changed since the ancient Greeks first defined them: monarchy, rule by a legitimate king; democracy, rule by (then a male subset of) the people; oligarchy, rule by a small group of families; and tyranny, a dictatorship run by an illegitimate king or a small group of oligarchs pretending to be a democracy. Added to this list are republic, the abstracted version of democracy, and theocracy. Those basic forms keep recurring over and over again, because they say something fundamental about the human condition.
All of the Sailor Senshi came from some sort of monarchy, but were reborn into a place where people vote for their representatives. And obviously, growing up in Japan, they will have picked up some republican values. In our version, they additionally lived in Canada, so have become accustomed to living in another country governed like a republic. But both of these "republics" are actually monarchies! The government may afford extra privileges to the monarch, but effectively functions without them entirely.
This might seem like an invention of the modern era, but the Roman Republic had a Rex for the entire run. After all, if your rituals for Jupiter need a king, then you better darn well have a King of Rome, even if it's just a ritual office. Why would you piss off the gods just to make a point about democracy? -- that's just stupid.
On the topic of gods, though, we do have to deal with the question: is Usagi a goddess? OG Queen Serenity is supposedly the incarnation of the Moon itself, Selene I suppose. And Usagi by becoming Neo-Queen also becomes Serenity, which certainly rings a bell of apotheosis. And if a goddess is the center of a state, doesn't that by definition make it a theocracy?
But if we take the title Queen literally, Neo or not, it implies a monarchy. We have lots of evidence for this too in canon.
Charlemagne, King of the Franks, conquered a lot of land. In fact, he conquered too much land -- so much land that he could never hope to manage it by himself. The Romans before had relied on a vast sea network to maintain their large empire, augmented by roads, which mostly relied on trade across the Mediterranean to keep it well supplied. Charlemagne's German possessions never had good roads, and the trade network had long since become saturated with pirates. So he turned to his friends to help manage different parts of the land, his companions, which is comes in Latin. These comes became the first counts, managing the empire in a newly developing feudal system (specifically the vassalage part of feudalism).
And in Sailor Moon, we see evidence of the same thing happening again, with the warrior companions becoming princesses of a new realm, with dominions far from Earth. It's implied in the anime, but with the orbital castles in the manga, it's reasonable that those are actual holdings of each princess. But more on this later.
Charlemagne had three sons, and by the custom of the time (partible inheritance), gave each son an inheritance. The western third became France and after a long period dealing with the vassal appanages and the English became highly centralized, the middle kingdom got eaten by its neighbors, and the eastern third became the Holy Roman Empire - a decentralized blob of vassal states that Voltaire once quipped was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."
The HRE is, however, the best model of what kind of monarchy the Moon Kingdom could be: a reasonably decentralized one, where leadership is decided by the elector princesses. The very last episode of the Sailor Moon S season might have seemed fairly weird, because immediately after defeating Pharaoh 90, Sailor Moon has a duel with Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. For anyone aware of medieval politics, this no denouement but is in fact the real climax of the season.
This is going to go pretty deep into aside territory, but the whole season hinges on a moral question: is it okay to sacrifice a very few people in order to save the entire planet? Usagi's stance is clear: she will not back down on love. Haruka and Michiru were willing to kill the Senshi of Destruction from the very beginning -- and it's not a shallow belief either, as they are quite willing to kill themselves to find the talismans. They are like Spock, saying that the needs of the many outweigh the few. Usagi as the nominal leader presses on, ignoring their message, Mistress Nine awakens, and things get really dangerous.
And then the end of that battle is inconclusive. Usagi does save nearly everyone, but at what cost? We don't get to see this fight on screen, but Usagi returns with an infant Hotaru, at once the image of the Holy Madonna and simultaneously someone suffering PTSD, or at least shock. Put aside your bias for Usagi for a moment, and look at the other point of view: She risked literally everything to save that one life, the disaster was one step way from extinguishing humanity, and that life she "saved" is just an infant now. Everything and everyone came this close to utter destruction for this?
And so they do the thing that disloyal vassals do: they challenge her for leadership. Usagi tells her loyal vassals not to intervene, because the fight becomes far less meaningful if the monarch cannot control her vassals alone. And so they do battle to prove their beliefs. And as soon as it is clear that Usagi has the upper hand because the heavens are on her side, the duel stops. They now offer their fealty to the daughter of Queen Serenity, for so long as she has the mandate of heaven. (Yeah, I mixed in some Eastern thought here, but Europeans also thought kings ruled by divine right.)
In any case, we get a couple things from that battle: the Sailors are acting as Princess Electors and also accepting vassalage to the true queen. In the later events of the Amazoness Quartet -- the so-called Asteroid Senshi that reappear in manga!Stars -- we see that there are Sailors Senshi who are not electors, but other smaller vassals. This makes sense, since there's a lot of land in the Solar System, even though no planet offers quite as much land as Earth.
At the same time, it's hard to imagine children of the twentieth century are going to recreate a feudal monarchy in the precise image of the HRE. They want all of the romantic castles and parties and clothes, but none of that peasant uprising crushing or succession war stuff. But Sailor Moon is postmodern, so why not just keep the stuff we like, and throw all of the bad old stuff away? New Age crystal spires are in, Salic Law is out. I don't see any of the Sailor Senshi being particularly interested in "kinging": solving disputes, enacting laws, and assigning taxes. They are interested in the military roles of monarchs and nobility, though.
For most of the government, especially at lower levels, they're going to want to have elected representatives taking care of the business of governing, along with a civil service. This is good, because republics are stable, they have lower levels of unrest and high levels of legitimacy, usually less corruption, and they really do not like to go to war with each other. These are all good traits, at the cost of giving up some personal power over people. Since our nobility all have a power in their own person, this isn't the same risk it would be to real life nobility.
These would likely become a parliamentary democracy, largely on the Westminster model. (No country seriously tries to duplicate the U.S. model this century, since the flaws are too apparent. You can have the upsides of federalism and a written constitution without the downsides of very divided government.) Not only are they familiar with this model, but so too will most of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, who will be our initial citizens in this setting.
But for a second, let's get back to that point that Usagi is a goddess, or nearly so. There's a certain cognitive disconnect to having an incarnate goddess leaving all of the decisions to the people under her, isn't there? The classic theocratic structure would place the church at the head of the government, as in Tibet and the Papal State. That's kind of an interesting question, of whether a church of fen would rise up to worship Her Holiness Neo-Queen Serenity. I feel like she might be saddened that she had more girls worshiping her than cute boys, you know?
In any case, that's not the right model. We need something more modern and innovative, that still recognizes the holiness at the center of the state. And as promised last post, I'm bringing it back up: The Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran's government is actually kind of cool. It has all of the trappings of a normal republic: elected President, elected assemblies make all of the laws. But above that lies a council of clerics (Assembly of Experts), and a Supreme Leader. The Assembly can impeach the Supreme Ayatollah, but of course they are always selected by him in order to qualify for public election, so that never comes up. Some of those Experts become a Guardian Council. So in a way, it's this postmodern combination of a classic theocracy with a modern presidential republic.
But, like, if you squint, doesn't the Supreme Leader look like a elected king, and the Council of Experts like a House of Lords, and the Guardian Council a Privy Council? Other than having a directly elected head of government, it all looks a lot like older versions of Westminster. The monarch's authority is more explicitly divine, rather than military, but it's still both. Which feels a lot like Sailor Moon, except for the whole part where Iran represses women while the Moon Kingdom is established on principles of feminism... but more on that later.
We also have one faction in our fanfic setting, the undines, arguing fairly loudly for a Serene Republic. She's going to take the name Serenity, right? So why not look at the old government of La Serenissima, Venezia. It was quite a stable government, lasting roughly a thousand years. A doge (Latin: dux -> duke) was elected in the most complicated process imaginable from amongst the council, but all of those votes did manage to ensure that there really couldn't be vote packing or bribes, because you wouldn't know who you needed to bribe until the very end, when it was too late.
The Doge was not much of a monarch; though he did rule for life, he could be checked by the council and could only exercise authority in the presence of other officials. Later on in the Republic, they restricted new families from joining the council, which certainly limited the democratic aspects of the state.
Our other group of initial settlers in our setting come from Moonbase Alpha. Commander Koenig, whose name literally means "king", is a red-blooded American and will want to live in a republic. Most of the rest of his crew seems to be British for some reason, which probably has nothing to do with where Space: 1999 was filmed, right? So we should have a good mix of republicans, monarchists, and "who cares I'm just an engineer".
If we throw all of this in a blender, we end up with the Serene Kingdom of the Moon. The earliest incarnation of the Neo-Queen-in-Council will pretty much just be Usagi sitting in a room with John Koenig, Victor Bergman, and Michiru with Ami taking notes. As we grow, the government also grows to meet the demands.
Eventually, the titles like Princess Jupiter will become geographical titles, as other planets and moons become terraformed. With enough magic and technology, anywhere can become livable. Other Earth nations will dispute this sovereignty, but the Moon Kingdom will have gotten there first.
At this point, the outlines of an entity resembling the Holy Roman Empire become more clear. Princess-Electors choose the Neo-Queen, to whom they owe fealty but they are so far away as to be functional sovereigns. You can also see it as a federation of constitutional monarchies, with the Lunar government determining foreign policy for the federation, but less so on domestic policy which is determined largely by elected representatives.
You might also choose to see it as like the Commonwealth of Nations, but that's wrong. In fact, in our setting, the Moon Kingdom a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. There are already six different monarchs of Commonwealth members; why not a seventh? Due to their Canadian citizenship, the senshi are all subjects of the Canadian Crown in the person of Elizabeth or Charles while in Canada, yet are monarchs in their own right.
(If you think this sounds weird, you are not thinking feudally enough. The Burgundians paid homage to both the Holy Roman Emperor and the French kings, in their respective lands. The English kings once owned lands in Normandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine, which meant that they paid homage to the French king as well.)
It's a complicated structure, but constitutional monarchies tend to be the most stable of all government types, balancing the short term interests of voters and politicians with the long term interests of the royalty and nobility. They are inherently classist, which feels like a problem, but what if your leader is literally a goddess? Usagi is definitely my better -- and that's not just because she's a Brigadier Saint in the Discordian Church.
Immigration and Culture
Culture will be a contentious issue in the Moon Kingdom, just as it is in all nations in the modern era. And, naturally, immigration will be a big issue. The earliest days of the the Moon Kingdom will be resource limited, as well as separated by a good piece of vacuum from the nice environment of Earth; much like Svalbard is now, anyone can come, if only they can actually get there and survive. These people will be all be immigrants of a sort, and have original national identities, which they may choose to maintain or disavow.
But as things develop, the Moon Kingdom will develop its own culture, starting from our astronaut community on Moonbase Alpha, which will come preloaded with certain assumptions about authority, environmentalism, and the grit it takes to survive in space. This will mingle with our Sailor Senshi's own opinions -- as well as their own Japanese cultural assumptions -- and eventually merge into something new. Given enough time, this always happens.
I was just reading an article on Wikipedia on where Romanian culture comes from. Or rather, no one actually knows where Romanian culture comes from, and how a Latin speaking isolate survived in Roman Dacia, despite the mass migrations of Slavs, Huns, and others that inundated the Balkans as Roman power declined. Some researchers think a group resettled in Romania from the south, because Dacia was only Roman for 325 years, given that it took other Roman provinces at least 500 years to fully convert to a Latin language. Others think it was a Roman soldiers and settlers who just stayed in the area, which is rather mountainous, and stayed isolated that way.
In either case, 500 years is a very long time for cultural integration! In modern times, it's much shorter, as nationalist forces in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries took advantage of new technology and state power to enforce new languages and cultural norms on people. But even in the old days, look at the Basque language isolate in Iberia, one of the most thoroughly Romanized provinces of all. And not only that, it seems to have also survived the invasion of Proto-Indo-European speakers!
Honestly, in Sailor Moon fanfic mode, I would definitely use PIE as a starting point to explain something about the Earth during the Silver Millennium. There were people everywhere before PIE started spreading -- and certainly the invasion theory of "Kurganization" is more dramatic (and also, oddly enough, rather matches Aleister Crowley's ideas about Aeons). Perhaps the first speakers were those who first tried to harness the horse youma, and imposed their culture on the people they conquered?
In any case, cultural change takes a long time, and while cultures obviously evolve, they have relevance thousands of years after they first came about. Certainly Americans think of themselves as having the American culture, but there have been books written about how the source of immigrants has deep political effects on the regions of the United States today.
Even totally determined, and using her not-brainwash stick, Usagi is not going to build a Lunar culture overnight, or even within two generations. But they will get there.
Still, the first wave of immigrants will be of a few types that will make a protoculture: hopeless romantics looking to join the cause of the Holy Moon Rabbit, hikikomori otaku who think being stuck in a moon base doesn't sound so bad if there are some animu there, adventurers and capitalists looking to make money off of lunar resources, and friends and family of the above.
By the time Kingdom gets bigger, and expands to other planets, immigrants will largely be just like immigrants to every other country. Except for, perhaps, a few space aliens. I don't think it's a stretch to think that Usagi will want to take all of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. Her response to pretty much every invader from another planet was an attempt to make friends.
Which brings me around to Haruka and Michiru, who were definitely not about making friends with the outsiders. In fact, any time anyone new showed up, their first reaction is to mistrust them. Which is actually pretty normal? Distrust of outsiders is definitely a thing.
I think it's easy to miss if you're not looking for it, but Haruka and Michiru are the conservatives of the Sailor Moon cast. Don't believe me? Well, they're immediately distrustful of anyone new that shows up, they're totally rich, Haruka likes to drive fast cars to show off. One time they take a helicopter just to cross town; find me a liberal who does that. They think that it's noble, even necessary to sacrifice lives in war. Even their patrons are the old gods, the Titans. Their literal job is to protect the border (of the Solar System).
Okay, they're lesbian, and some people have a trans reading on Haruka. But so what? Conservative gays are a thing in real life. They're going to have feminist attitudes about everything, but so does everyone else in the Moon Kingdom. Feminism is a fundamental part of Lunar culture. At some point, Princess Uranus is going to complain to the Privy Council that these fundamentalist immigrants are a threat to the national feminist culture, and therefore immigration needs to be reduced. (See first post: even canon had a group exiled, and unsurprisingly one of their leaders was a giant incel chauvinist.)
Immigration is one of those intractable problems that will continue long into the future, because culture change is real, resources are limited, and immigrants are intrinsically as good as natives. There are always valid reasons for and against immigration, and I would expect it to remain a major cleavage in Moon Kingdom society for a long time. Even in the canon future where Earth is also ruled by Serenity and Endymion, we know there's enough aliens out there for Uranus and Neptune to worry.
Once settlements happen on the other planets and moons, and Princess is less of an honorary title than an actual principality, there will probably be some geographic (?) sorting, similar to our red state/blue state dynamics. I don't think deep partisanship will be tolerated, or all that successful in their government, because of the long-earned respect that Usagi will have.
And Usagi is a classic bleeding-heart liberal. She wants to befriend everyone, she wants to save everyone. And as I made clear in the first section, she wants to forgive. At the same time, she and the other Inner Senshi know that unforgivable things happen, and that some enemies are beyond the redemption that is offered to them, and must be destroyed. As a monarch, that is her duty.
I talked about the events at the end of season S before, but not from Usagi's perspective. Ultimately, what happened off-screen with Pharaoh 90 is instrumental in her taking up and winning the battle with Haruka and Michiru. Usagi had to choose to destroy Pharoah 90, and had to choose to save Hotaru, and paid the price for both decisions. Unlike the past season-enders, she feels the weight of her decisions, the heavy cost written on her face. And for the first time, steps into the role of a monarch in earnest.
And because this is a society that takes military leadership seriously, the Moon Kingdom will definitely believe in having a strong military, often leaning towards militarism. Being a warrior of love is a core part of the identity of the nobility, so how could it be otherwise? At least they will lead from the front. (Honestly this matches my own ideals of being a liberal socialist who also wants a strong military, but I think the evidence led me to this point, not my own wishes.)
There are plenty of other aspects of the culture that will develop, most of which I haven't thought about yet. But culture will pull the Moon Kingdom in new directions, as it always has. It will, at the very least, pull it outward, as there will definitely be a belief that they are destined to rule and protect the Solar System, with the possible exception of Earth itself.
The Moon Kingdom is obviously a kingdom, right? But there are many ways to be a monarchy, and in some respects, the state led by Neo-Queen Serenity will resemble other kinds of governments a lot more.
Fundamentally, the types of governments have not changed since the ancient Greeks first defined them: monarchy, rule by a legitimate king; democracy, rule by (then a male subset of) the people; oligarchy, rule by a small group of families; and tyranny, a dictatorship run by an illegitimate king or a small group of oligarchs pretending to be a democracy. Added to this list are republic, the abstracted version of democracy, and theocracy. Those basic forms keep recurring over and over again, because they say something fundamental about the human condition.
All of the Sailor Senshi came from some sort of monarchy, but were reborn into a place where people vote for their representatives. And obviously, growing up in Japan, they will have picked up some republican values. In our version, they additionally lived in Canada, so have become accustomed to living in another country governed like a republic. But both of these "republics" are actually monarchies! The government may afford extra privileges to the monarch, but effectively functions without them entirely.
This might seem like an invention of the modern era, but the Roman Republic had a Rex for the entire run. After all, if your rituals for Jupiter need a king, then you better darn well have a King of Rome, even if it's just a ritual office. Why would you piss off the gods just to make a point about democracy? -- that's just stupid.
On the topic of gods, though, we do have to deal with the question: is Usagi a goddess? OG Queen Serenity is supposedly the incarnation of the Moon itself, Selene I suppose. And Usagi by becoming Neo-Queen also becomes Serenity, which certainly rings a bell of apotheosis. And if a goddess is the center of a state, doesn't that by definition make it a theocracy?
But if we take the title Queen literally, Neo or not, it implies a monarchy. We have lots of evidence for this too in canon.
Charlemagne, King of the Franks, conquered a lot of land. In fact, he conquered too much land -- so much land that he could never hope to manage it by himself. The Romans before had relied on a vast sea network to maintain their large empire, augmented by roads, which mostly relied on trade across the Mediterranean to keep it well supplied. Charlemagne's German possessions never had good roads, and the trade network had long since become saturated with pirates. So he turned to his friends to help manage different parts of the land, his companions, which is comes in Latin. These comes became the first counts, managing the empire in a newly developing feudal system (specifically the vassalage part of feudalism).
And in Sailor Moon, we see evidence of the same thing happening again, with the warrior companions becoming princesses of a new realm, with dominions far from Earth. It's implied in the anime, but with the orbital castles in the manga, it's reasonable that those are actual holdings of each princess. But more on this later.
Charlemagne had three sons, and by the custom of the time (partible inheritance), gave each son an inheritance. The western third became France and after a long period dealing with the vassal appanages and the English became highly centralized, the middle kingdom got eaten by its neighbors, and the eastern third became the Holy Roman Empire - a decentralized blob of vassal states that Voltaire once quipped was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."
The HRE is, however, the best model of what kind of monarchy the Moon Kingdom could be: a reasonably decentralized one, where leadership is decided by the elector princesses. The very last episode of the Sailor Moon S season might have seemed fairly weird, because immediately after defeating Pharaoh 90, Sailor Moon has a duel with Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. For anyone aware of medieval politics, this no denouement but is in fact the real climax of the season.
This is going to go pretty deep into aside territory, but the whole season hinges on a moral question: is it okay to sacrifice a very few people in order to save the entire planet? Usagi's stance is clear: she will not back down on love. Haruka and Michiru were willing to kill the Senshi of Destruction from the very beginning -- and it's not a shallow belief either, as they are quite willing to kill themselves to find the talismans. They are like Spock, saying that the needs of the many outweigh the few. Usagi as the nominal leader presses on, ignoring their message, Mistress Nine awakens, and things get really dangerous.
And then the end of that battle is inconclusive. Usagi does save nearly everyone, but at what cost? We don't get to see this fight on screen, but Usagi returns with an infant Hotaru, at once the image of the Holy Madonna and simultaneously someone suffering PTSD, or at least shock. Put aside your bias for Usagi for a moment, and look at the other point of view: She risked literally everything to save that one life, the disaster was one step way from extinguishing humanity, and that life she "saved" is just an infant now. Everything and everyone came this close to utter destruction for this?
And so they do the thing that disloyal vassals do: they challenge her for leadership. Usagi tells her loyal vassals not to intervene, because the fight becomes far less meaningful if the monarch cannot control her vassals alone. And so they do battle to prove their beliefs. And as soon as it is clear that Usagi has the upper hand because the heavens are on her side, the duel stops. They now offer their fealty to the daughter of Queen Serenity, for so long as she has the mandate of heaven. (Yeah, I mixed in some Eastern thought here, but Europeans also thought kings ruled by divine right.)
In any case, we get a couple things from that battle: the Sailors are acting as Princess Electors and also accepting vassalage to the true queen. In the later events of the Amazoness Quartet -- the so-called Asteroid Senshi that reappear in manga!Stars -- we see that there are Sailors Senshi who are not electors, but other smaller vassals. This makes sense, since there's a lot of land in the Solar System, even though no planet offers quite as much land as Earth.
At the same time, it's hard to imagine children of the twentieth century are going to recreate a feudal monarchy in the precise image of the HRE. They want all of the romantic castles and parties and clothes, but none of that peasant uprising crushing or succession war stuff. But Sailor Moon is postmodern, so why not just keep the stuff we like, and throw all of the bad old stuff away? New Age crystal spires are in, Salic Law is out. I don't see any of the Sailor Senshi being particularly interested in "kinging": solving disputes, enacting laws, and assigning taxes. They are interested in the military roles of monarchs and nobility, though.
For most of the government, especially at lower levels, they're going to want to have elected representatives taking care of the business of governing, along with a civil service. This is good, because republics are stable, they have lower levels of unrest and high levels of legitimacy, usually less corruption, and they really do not like to go to war with each other. These are all good traits, at the cost of giving up some personal power over people. Since our nobility all have a power in their own person, this isn't the same risk it would be to real life nobility.
These would likely become a parliamentary democracy, largely on the Westminster model. (No country seriously tries to duplicate the U.S. model this century, since the flaws are too apparent. You can have the upsides of federalism and a written constitution without the downsides of very divided government.) Not only are they familiar with this model, but so too will most of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, who will be our initial citizens in this setting.
But for a second, let's get back to that point that Usagi is a goddess, or nearly so. There's a certain cognitive disconnect to having an incarnate goddess leaving all of the decisions to the people under her, isn't there? The classic theocratic structure would place the church at the head of the government, as in Tibet and the Papal State. That's kind of an interesting question, of whether a church of fen would rise up to worship Her Holiness Neo-Queen Serenity. I feel like she might be saddened that she had more girls worshiping her than cute boys, you know?
In any case, that's not the right model. We need something more modern and innovative, that still recognizes the holiness at the center of the state. And as promised last post, I'm bringing it back up: The Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran's government is actually kind of cool. It has all of the trappings of a normal republic: elected President, elected assemblies make all of the laws. But above that lies a council of clerics (Assembly of Experts), and a Supreme Leader. The Assembly can impeach the Supreme Ayatollah, but of course they are always selected by him in order to qualify for public election, so that never comes up. Some of those Experts become a Guardian Council. So in a way, it's this postmodern combination of a classic theocracy with a modern presidential republic.
But, like, if you squint, doesn't the Supreme Leader look like a elected king, and the Council of Experts like a House of Lords, and the Guardian Council a Privy Council? Other than having a directly elected head of government, it all looks a lot like older versions of Westminster. The monarch's authority is more explicitly divine, rather than military, but it's still both. Which feels a lot like Sailor Moon, except for the whole part where Iran represses women while the Moon Kingdom is established on principles of feminism... but more on that later.
We also have one faction in our fanfic setting, the undines, arguing fairly loudly for a Serene Republic. She's going to take the name Serenity, right? So why not look at the old government of La Serenissima, Venezia. It was quite a stable government, lasting roughly a thousand years. A doge (Latin: dux -> duke) was elected in the most complicated process imaginable from amongst the council, but all of those votes did manage to ensure that there really couldn't be vote packing or bribes, because you wouldn't know who you needed to bribe until the very end, when it was too late.
The Doge was not much of a monarch; though he did rule for life, he could be checked by the council and could only exercise authority in the presence of other officials. Later on in the Republic, they restricted new families from joining the council, which certainly limited the democratic aspects of the state.
Our other group of initial settlers in our setting come from Moonbase Alpha. Commander Koenig, whose name literally means "king", is a red-blooded American and will want to live in a republic. Most of the rest of his crew seems to be British for some reason, which probably has nothing to do with where Space: 1999 was filmed, right? So we should have a good mix of republicans, monarchists, and "who cares I'm just an engineer".
If we throw all of this in a blender, we end up with the Serene Kingdom of the Moon. The earliest incarnation of the Neo-Queen-in-Council will pretty much just be Usagi sitting in a room with John Koenig, Victor Bergman, and Michiru with Ami taking notes. As we grow, the government also grows to meet the demands.
Eventually, the titles like Princess Jupiter will become geographical titles, as other planets and moons become terraformed. With enough magic and technology, anywhere can become livable. Other Earth nations will dispute this sovereignty, but the Moon Kingdom will have gotten there first.
At this point, the outlines of an entity resembling the Holy Roman Empire become more clear. Princess-Electors choose the Neo-Queen, to whom they owe fealty but they are so far away as to be functional sovereigns. You can also see it as a federation of constitutional monarchies, with the Lunar government determining foreign policy for the federation, but less so on domestic policy which is determined largely by elected representatives.
You might also choose to see it as like the Commonwealth of Nations, but that's wrong. In fact, in our setting, the Moon Kingdom a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. There are already six different monarchs of Commonwealth members; why not a seventh? Due to their Canadian citizenship, the senshi are all subjects of the Canadian Crown in the person of Elizabeth or Charles while in Canada, yet are monarchs in their own right.
(If you think this sounds weird, you are not thinking feudally enough. The Burgundians paid homage to both the Holy Roman Emperor and the French kings, in their respective lands. The English kings once owned lands in Normandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine, which meant that they paid homage to the French king as well.)
It's a complicated structure, but constitutional monarchies tend to be the most stable of all government types, balancing the short term interests of voters and politicians with the long term interests of the royalty and nobility. They are inherently classist, which feels like a problem, but what if your leader is literally a goddess? Usagi is definitely my better -- and that's not just because she's a Brigadier Saint in the Discordian Church.
Immigration and Culture
Culture will be a contentious issue in the Moon Kingdom, just as it is in all nations in the modern era. And, naturally, immigration will be a big issue. The earliest days of the the Moon Kingdom will be resource limited, as well as separated by a good piece of vacuum from the nice environment of Earth; much like Svalbard is now, anyone can come, if only they can actually get there and survive. These people will be all be immigrants of a sort, and have original national identities, which they may choose to maintain or disavow.
But as things develop, the Moon Kingdom will develop its own culture, starting from our astronaut community on Moonbase Alpha, which will come preloaded with certain assumptions about authority, environmentalism, and the grit it takes to survive in space. This will mingle with our Sailor Senshi's own opinions -- as well as their own Japanese cultural assumptions -- and eventually merge into something new. Given enough time, this always happens.
I was just reading an article on Wikipedia on where Romanian culture comes from. Or rather, no one actually knows where Romanian culture comes from, and how a Latin speaking isolate survived in Roman Dacia, despite the mass migrations of Slavs, Huns, and others that inundated the Balkans as Roman power declined. Some researchers think a group resettled in Romania from the south, because Dacia was only Roman for 325 years, given that it took other Roman provinces at least 500 years to fully convert to a Latin language. Others think it was a Roman soldiers and settlers who just stayed in the area, which is rather mountainous, and stayed isolated that way.
In either case, 500 years is a very long time for cultural integration! In modern times, it's much shorter, as nationalist forces in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries took advantage of new technology and state power to enforce new languages and cultural norms on people. But even in the old days, look at the Basque language isolate in Iberia, one of the most thoroughly Romanized provinces of all. And not only that, it seems to have also survived the invasion of Proto-Indo-European speakers!
Honestly, in Sailor Moon fanfic mode, I would definitely use PIE as a starting point to explain something about the Earth during the Silver Millennium. There were people everywhere before PIE started spreading -- and certainly the invasion theory of "Kurganization" is more dramatic (and also, oddly enough, rather matches Aleister Crowley's ideas about Aeons). Perhaps the first speakers were those who first tried to harness the horse youma, and imposed their culture on the people they conquered?
In any case, cultural change takes a long time, and while cultures obviously evolve, they have relevance thousands of years after they first came about. Certainly Americans think of themselves as having the American culture, but there have been books written about how the source of immigrants has deep political effects on the regions of the United States today.
Even totally determined, and using her not-brainwash stick, Usagi is not going to build a Lunar culture overnight, or even within two generations. But they will get there.
Still, the first wave of immigrants will be of a few types that will make a protoculture: hopeless romantics looking to join the cause of the Holy Moon Rabbit, hikikomori otaku who think being stuck in a moon base doesn't sound so bad if there are some animu there, adventurers and capitalists looking to make money off of lunar resources, and friends and family of the above.
By the time Kingdom gets bigger, and expands to other planets, immigrants will largely be just like immigrants to every other country. Except for, perhaps, a few space aliens. I don't think it's a stretch to think that Usagi will want to take all of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. Her response to pretty much every invader from another planet was an attempt to make friends.
Which brings me around to Haruka and Michiru, who were definitely not about making friends with the outsiders. In fact, any time anyone new showed up, their first reaction is to mistrust them. Which is actually pretty normal? Distrust of outsiders is definitely a thing.
I think it's easy to miss if you're not looking for it, but Haruka and Michiru are the conservatives of the Sailor Moon cast. Don't believe me? Well, they're immediately distrustful of anyone new that shows up, they're totally rich, Haruka likes to drive fast cars to show off. One time they take a helicopter just to cross town; find me a liberal who does that. They think that it's noble, even necessary to sacrifice lives in war. Even their patrons are the old gods, the Titans. Their literal job is to protect the border (of the Solar System).
Okay, they're lesbian, and some people have a trans reading on Haruka. But so what? Conservative gays are a thing in real life. They're going to have feminist attitudes about everything, but so does everyone else in the Moon Kingdom. Feminism is a fundamental part of Lunar culture. At some point, Princess Uranus is going to complain to the Privy Council that these fundamentalist immigrants are a threat to the national feminist culture, and therefore immigration needs to be reduced. (See first post: even canon had a group exiled, and unsurprisingly one of their leaders was a giant incel chauvinist.)
Immigration is one of those intractable problems that will continue long into the future, because culture change is real, resources are limited, and immigrants are intrinsically as good as natives. There are always valid reasons for and against immigration, and I would expect it to remain a major cleavage in Moon Kingdom society for a long time. Even in the canon future where Earth is also ruled by Serenity and Endymion, we know there's enough aliens out there for Uranus and Neptune to worry.
Once settlements happen on the other planets and moons, and Princess is less of an honorary title than an actual principality, there will probably be some geographic (?) sorting, similar to our red state/blue state dynamics. I don't think deep partisanship will be tolerated, or all that successful in their government, because of the long-earned respect that Usagi will have.
And Usagi is a classic bleeding-heart liberal. She wants to befriend everyone, she wants to save everyone. And as I made clear in the first section, she wants to forgive. At the same time, she and the other Inner Senshi know that unforgivable things happen, and that some enemies are beyond the redemption that is offered to them, and must be destroyed. As a monarch, that is her duty.
I talked about the events at the end of season S before, but not from Usagi's perspective. Ultimately, what happened off-screen with Pharaoh 90 is instrumental in her taking up and winning the battle with Haruka and Michiru. Usagi had to choose to destroy Pharoah 90, and had to choose to save Hotaru, and paid the price for both decisions. Unlike the past season-enders, she feels the weight of her decisions, the heavy cost written on her face. And for the first time, steps into the role of a monarch in earnest.
And because this is a society that takes military leadership seriously, the Moon Kingdom will definitely believe in having a strong military, often leaning towards militarism. Being a warrior of love is a core part of the identity of the nobility, so how could it be otherwise? At least they will lead from the front. (Honestly this matches my own ideals of being a liberal socialist who also wants a strong military, but I think the evidence led me to this point, not my own wishes.)
There are plenty of other aspects of the culture that will develop, most of which I haven't thought about yet. But culture will pull the Moon Kingdom in new directions, as it always has. It will, at the very least, pull it outward, as there will definitely be a belief that they are destined to rule and protect the Solar System, with the possible exception of Earth itself.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto