CITY HALL — Four months after stunning the realm by donning the Imperial Mianfu, Empress Vi has officially relinquished the Dragon Throne, triggering an immediate, violent descent into a Warring States Period across the Mecklenburg provinces.
In a final decree issued from the City Hall Pagoda, the Empress announced her retreat to the Ancestral Gardens of the Grandchildren, a move that has effectively decapitated the central government and shattered the Queen City’s Age of Quasi-Harmony.
Without her steady hand to mediate between the heavens and the earthly realm, the Empire has fragmented into a dozen feuding factions overnight.
The Gentry of Muraled IPAs in NoDa have fortified the colorful alleys of the East, while the Barony of Old Money in Dilworth has raised the drawbridges around their gilded southern estates, and the Chad Commons have begun mobilizing their Golden Doodle legions in South End, all competing for the now-vacant Imperial Seal.
Historians note that the Empress’s January appearance in the rigid ceremonial mianfu was the First Omen of this fragmentation.
By removing herself from the ordinary visibility of the public, she was reportedly preparing the realm for a life without a visible ruler.
“This is not a costume,” she famously told reporters in January, and it is now clear that the attire was a final, stiff warning that the Mandate was weary and the Great Vessel of State was about to be left to the mercy of the 35 Sons.
The power vacuum has unleashed the most ambitious of her disciples, as the Archduke of Infrastructure and the High Priest of Zoning now trade barbed scrolls and mobilize their respective bureaucracies for a protracted siege of the Council Chambers. Even the Viscount of At-Large Seats has begun a frantic campaign to claim the Mandate.
This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong.
天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分。
