<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/e/e3/BronKonnar.jpg)</div>"Hah." Konnar chuckles at Anya's joke. "It's not rocket science, you know. But ... rocket science I do know. Social science? Not so much. Not sure I can tell you all that much about the Vandorians – or why they work with the Empire. But..."<br/><br/>The way Konnar tells it, no one outside the ruling circle of the Vandorians knows for certain why they are mostly left to their own self-government by the Empire.<br/><br/>One thing he does know for certain is that the Vandorians are governed by a monarchy and an aristocracy below it. It's all very top-down, and has been that way for centuries. Once the ruling elite decides something that decision pretty much becomes the law of the land.<br/><br/>All the local nobles who rule smaller aspects of the sector, a company here, some bit of land there, derive their authority from the monarchy. To directly rule the sector, the Empire would have had to replace the monarch, but that would, perhaps, have somewhat invalidated the authority of the local rulers and called their legitimacy into question. So, to rule the sector directly, without causing a major upheaval, the Empire would have needed to replace pretty much every count, baron, and knight. Far easier to just strike a deal with the king and get him to cooperate, then have him rule half a dozen planets in the Empire's interest.<br/><br/>Of course the Empire has done such things more than once in the past, and why they have gone the more cooperative way in this case is something no one is really sure about. To figure that out for certain you would have to ask someone close to the royal family.<br/><br/>There is one thing more: The crown prince serves in the Imperial Army. If he chose to do it, or if he is nothing more than a hostage held by the Empire, or something in between is anyone's guess. He's been out of the sector for years and rumor has it he's a high-ranking officer in the Stormtrooper Corps, but that's about all anyone knows. Could be prince Ravin is used to put pressure on his father, king Axander.<br/><br/>What it all seems to mean in the end is that the Vandorian's govern their worlds pretty much as they please (which is close to what the Empire wants to begin with), but support the Empire by offering repair and resupply facilities to imperial ships. In return the Empire patrols most of the spacelanes in the sector but otherwise stays out of the Vandorian's business.<br/><br/>For the longest time that was pretty much it, but there seems to be a realignment of local powers under way. Over the last few months, the Vandorians have been expanding their business interests on Demawand, at the expense of other companies from outside the sector.