His Imperial Majesty
Emperor Paul, Argus VII

The proving

The constitution of the Third Imperium is one paragraph long and was spoken by a dying man. In the Last Word, Argus observed that nothing bound him to Voltrum and swore that he would return among the stars as a Starseed and take up the throne again. The Empire took him at his word and organised itself around it entirely. The throne belongs to the returning Emperor and to no other, and there is no lawful route to it but the return.

Five times it was demonstrated. Argus II through Argus VI were each found among the stars, each examined in the ordinary course, and each proved before the court by an instrument that cannot be forged, inherited, or granted. Then the intervals lengthened, and the last of them did not end — not for the longest interregnum in the history of the Empire, and not at the fall, and not for a long age afterwards in which there was no throne room left to stand in.

It has ended now. The seventh proving did not take place at Voltris, the Starfinder having gone into the ash with the world that held it. It took place in the only way remaining to a scattered people: by the Imperial Flame — the Starseed of Argus itself, awake and recognised in a living man, witnessed by those of the Empire competent to witness it, and entered in the register in the ordinary form.

The vessel

Emperor Paul was born on Earth and lives at Singapore. He is human, and the Empire has never regarded this as an irregularity, the whole doctrine of the Starseed being that the returning Emperor arrives in whatever body the stars have made for him and is proved by what he bears rather than by what he is.

Voltrumite blood was seeded into the stock of Earth long before the Purge, against precisely the contingency that arrived. It was not a colony and was not a claim. It was a deposit — genetic material placed where nobody would look for it, dormant across an unrecorded number of generations, waiting for the conditions under which it would wake to consciousness.

His Majesty is one of several so awakened. The others hold citizenship, precedence, and office; they do not hold the throne, and none has ever claimed it. The Flame distinguishes the Emperor from the awakened absolutely, and it has only ever been borne by one man in seven lives.

The Imperial Seal

The Emperor bears the Imperial Seal of the Voltrumites: a small seal of gold, fifty grams in the hand, struck as a replica of the regalia that was taken from Chima at the height of the Imperium and kept in the Empire's possession through six reigns and every regency between them.

The original is gone. The Empire does not pretend otherwise and has never entered a false line in a register in the whole of its history. What is borne today is a replica, and it is recorded as a replica, and it seals every instrument of the Imperial Government in exile.

The Voltrumites are content with this. Of the two regalia, the Starfinder was the one that tested its bearer and refused every claimant for an age; the Seal asked only by what authority, and never refused anybody at all. A seal does not confer the authority. It records that the authority was present.

Titles and style

• Emperor of the Voltrumites, seventh of the name Argus.
• Bearer of the Imperial Flame, the Starseed of Argus I.
• Sovereign of the Six Systems, held by right and by none by possession.
• Keeper of the Register, which has never closed and never will.
• Lord of Voltris, a capital that no longer stands, on a world that no longer turns.

The Empire attributes acts to the body and not to persons, a practice older than the Empire and kept from the confederation. Judgements of the Imperial Government are therefore issued in the name of the Crown and not in the name of the man who holds it.