Politics of the Crystal Millennium

Like all other factions, the Crystal Millennium does not exist in a vacuum.

Leadership

The Senshi are a democratic Monarchy, with a directly elected Parliament for the civilian government. The Monarch is elected for a 10 year stint, and upon taking the throne takes a Royal Name. (Queens can take the name Serenity or any of the names of the other Sailor Senshi or any magical girl of comparable power and standing. Kings have a similar naming convention, but due to the general lack of powerful Magical Boys are likely to take the name Endymion).

Queen Serenity I, the first faction leader

Queen Serenity II is the current Empress of Venus (succeeding Serenity I), and is head of the Privy Council. The other members of the Privy Council are Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki, Deputy Prime Minister Min Credible, the Secretaries of State for Interior, Defence, and Planetary Development, Military Chief of Staff Crystal Senshi Beverly Hayakawa, and the Head of the Royal Council.

The Prime Minister runs the civilian government on the behalf of Her Majesty via a cabinet of Ministers. These ministers are commonly referred to as the Secretary of State for their ministries. Some ministries include:

• Ministry of Interior (The Home Minister)
• Ministry of Defense
• Ministry of Planetary Development
• Ministry of Education
• Ministry of The Treasury (The Chancellor of the Exchequer)
• Ministry of Health (The Surgeon General)
• Ministry of Law
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Ministry of Technology

The Royal Council is a group of Peers of the Realm, and has an appointed Head. It includes such luminaries as the Chief Justice, the Military Chiefs of Staff, AMP Commissioner Tachibana, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The only Non-Peer on the Royal Council is the Deputy Prime Minister, who serves as Official Liaison to Her Majesty's Government.

The Royal Council's role is to provide Her Majesty with information as to the Faction's emotional state, as well as provide some oversight on the civilian government. The Royal Council's other role is to monitor and occasionally recommend appointment to Her Majesty those Senshi who are Named.

Political Blocs

Besides (and across) the fiction-specific groupings described elsewhere, the Senshi subdivide into three informal subfactions, based on the members' outlook on life. These are the closest that the Senshi have to political blocs.

The Love Subfaction

These Senshi believe that what the Senshi should be doing is making life better. Creating new technology, terraforming Venus, advancing art and science and philosophy. The Love subfaction contains thinkers and dreamers (most notably Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki), people who want to serve as a shining example.

At their best, the Love subfaction are idealists who get things done, helping to develop new forms of medicine and recreation, and being nice people. At their worst, they are lazy hedonists, more interested in acquiring new toys and experiencing new sensations then work, who shuck off responsibility and whine and complain when forced to do things.

The Justice Subfaction

These Senshi believe that they should stop thinking and Do Something. The Justice subfaction is the most ardent supporter of women’s rights in Fenspace. Sexism is still surprisingly common among nerds and geeks, and they seek to correct this. But more importantly, they see women’s rights as an issue they should deal with on Earth as well. There is a small but significant (and well supported under-the-table) group in the Justice Faction who liberate oppressed women (and other minorities) on Earth. Most of these women are moved to new lives in other places on Earth. Some suspect that small biomods are used to conceal these women in their new lives. A small minority are taken up to space, to help as they can. They almost always join the Justice subfaction.

Unsurprisingly, the Justice subfaction is well behind Great Justice. They believe Haruhi is pretty much their leader, and really like her ideas – during the Boskone War, there was some talk of electing Haruhi to the official leadership of the Justice subfaction.

At their best, the Justice subfaction are dynamic people who accomplish a great deal (such as noted geneticist Leda Swansen). They put in twenty-hour days doing thankless jobs because It’s The Right Thing To Do. At their worst, they’re control freaks and demagogues who believe They Know Best – militant feminists, borderline fascists, and very dangerous.

The Black Subfaction

This is an un-talked-about subfaction that is very, very much in the minority. The Black subfaction is made up of goths, nihilists and other malcontents who left Earth not so much out of a sense of hope and exploration but because it sucked less than living on Earth. The Black subfaction does not believe in anything, which means they aren’t really organized at all.

For the most part, they’re harmless, if a little depressing to be around. The Senshi took them in as a whole because the Love subfaction (especially the Perky Goths) thinks it can help them stop being so gloomy and the Justice subfaction thinks it can use the manpower.

The Senshi Sailors Armed Militia

The "Sammie" Roundel

Main article: Sailor Armed Militia

While the term “sailor-suited warrior” is integral to the base description of the canonical ur-senshi, the “Sailor” part has, over the years, become something more generic. This has led to quite a number of residents of the Crystal Cities being people who don’t really cleave to the concept of “girl power” that the Crystal Cities draws its central image from.

These folk have latched onto the “sailor” appellation and made it their own. The various countries on Earth have long and, in the most part, honorable and glorious naval traditions. To be a sailor in the British Navy or U.S. Coast Guard is an honorable thing, and provides a set of goals and rules to live a good life by.

The Sailor Armed Militia has become the Crystal Millennium's armed forces. However, they pattern themselves more after the various Earthbound Coast Guards and less after the Navies. Active Sailors can be found on patrol, training new recruits, researching, or active in the other main pursuit of the S.S.A.M. – search and rescue. No-one has responded to more distress calls and automated beacons than the Sailors, and while they carry that as a mark of pride, they search and save because they believe it’s the right thing to do.

Relations with other factions

The Crystal Millennium are known to work well with the Wizarding World, the Justice League Interplanetary, Stellvia Corporation, and the Soviet Air Force. This makes them natural go-betweens between these four groups who don't always see eye-to-eye with each other.

The Senshi/Supers Alliance

The Senshi and the Supers are allies because their source materials share common roots. If the Senshi hadn't started their own faction, they would have been a major power bloc - maybe the dominant one - within the Supers. The Supers recognize this, too, and especially since both had their first toeholds in space on the Moon they more or less automatically offered each other the hand of friendship - without even the obligatory "beat each other up over a misunderstanding" first!

Well, actually the hardcases on both sides insisted on the traditional "befriending each other into the ground," so they held one in 2008 after formalizing the alliance. It was a for-fun head-to-head featuring the best fighter each side had at the time - a fistfight with padded gloves, preceded by a scripted sketch that "justified" the "misunderstanding" leading to the battle in such an extremely overwritten, over-the-top manner that it left the entire arena roaring with laughter.

The actual fight (now known as the Mary Marvel Memorial Melee, despite only two people taking part) was to first blood, and took all of five minutes. The rest of the night was a party celebrating the alliance.

The two factions have continued to work together since then, sharing life-support technology (in the way that most Lunar-based factions do - actual hardware and seed stock, as well as plans and expertise) and working together in matters of mutual concern. The Justice League Interplanetary maintains a large cultural-liaison office in Crystal Tokyo, matching the office the Crystal Millennium maintains in Kandor City.

Senshi and Stellvians

As has been mentioned elsewhere, the positive understanding between the Crystal Millennium and Stellvia Corporation goes back to the days of the First Fen, when Yayoi Fujisawa gave equipment and advice to the faction, and was given the gratitude of the early faction members (and named "Sailor Stellvia" by them) in return. Neither group has ever forgotten this early cooperation.

The two groups worked together in later years as well. When most of the Convention was shunning the Stellvians because of the Kaboomite Incident, the Senshi were working with them to establish the fuel-refinery facilities at Crystal Titusville - a project that secured a stable funding base for both the faction and the company. The Senshi had the raw materials, the manpower, and the drive to succeed, while the Stellvians had the know-how and the connections needed to purchase refining equipment at a not-ruinous price. Other projects have followed the same pattern: somebody would come up with an idea, the Stellvians would kick off the project, and the Senshi would take the ball and run with it, to the benefit of both groups.

There has always been some talk about StellviaCorp becoming an official arm of the Crystal Millennium, either in the Exchequer or the Ministry of Technology - whenever the two groups work together, they heterodyne to create things that are larger than either could create alone. While both groups would benefit from such an arrangement (much like the Sozvezdie Soviet benefited from becoming part of the United Federation of Planets), neither group's leaders want to change their current relationship; the Stellvians value their independence, and wiser heads among the Senshi realize their friends' reputation has not always been the best. They're all happy to go on being friends and making money together.

The Crystal Millennium and the Soviet Air Force

Like most early Fen (and First Fen), the Sozvezdie Soviet and the Crystal Millennium have a long history of cooperation dating back to the earliest days of Lunar colonization - both groups were committed to peaceful uses of the Solar System, and they shared their techniques and technologies when building Korolevgrad and Bristol.

This arrangement deepened during Operation Great Justice. The Sailor Armed Militia stepped forward to protect VVS bases while the Soviets took the battles to the Boskonians, and the Sammies continued to help protect those bases while the Soviets brought their X-COM forces to an operational level.

Relations between the two groups became distant after the Boskone War as a secondary effect of the cooling of relationships between the Soviets and StellviaCorp. The lowest point came in 2018 with the revelation that the Whole Fenspace Catalog had been released in a doctored format; the Soviets were extremely unhappy about this, and a few Soviet hardliners wanted to break off relations with any group connected to StellviaCorp as a matter of principle. However, cooler heads in both factions prevailed - the Senshi reached out to the Sozvezdie Soviet, asking to take an active role in exploring and publishing the no-longer-redacted parts of the WFC. This was enough to keep the two groups on speaking terms, and the Senshi's contribution to the Soviet research efforts has done much to restore the relationship between them to the level it was at before the Boskone War.

The two group have worked together in colonizing other star systems. The most famous of these efforts is the Gallifrey colony, which is basically made up of socialist Senshi expats.

Senshi and Wizards

(TO BE DEVELOPED: An ad-hoc alliance of the two big "magical" fen groups, more a matter of common dreams than a working relationship... until the LOLsec Revelation.)