How could a monarch rule in a vast, isolated, medieval city

Question

The City itself

Let's assume we have a city of the size of the Peloponnese (round about 22'000 square kilometers) which is very dense populated (by medieval terms) and is isolated from the rest of the world (think of something like an ocean surrounding the island). The city wasn't 'planned', it just grew bigger and bigger so the city layout itself is a bit flawed (e.g. bad street layout). Let's for simplicity assume there is enough food for (nearly) everyone.

The Population

All citizens use the same common language, although many dialects do exist. Nevertheless it's a multi-ethnic population with different religions an different customs. Sometimes the tension between these different culture groups leads to nasty crimes but all in all the situation could be considered as stable. Wealth is distributed pretty bad (as usual) but there is no particular cultural group having a much greater share of wealth than the others.

The Government

Now that’s the questions. I'd like to have a central ruler sitting right in the middle of the city. Given the size of the city, a direct rule however is deemed to be impossible. Therefore, a greater deal of decentralization appears to be required.

Ideas so far

Feudalism

This is the first thing I had in mind: Have a single king with multiple vassals, which in return have multiple vassals themselves. You get a high decentralization with an acceptable control from the central government/ruler and you get a decent degree of stability. Feudalism also allows for some interesting storylines regarding counts, bloodlines and similar stuff. There are some fatal problems though...

• Feudalism was built on an agricultural society. The lower vassals had a large mass of peasants beneath them. Feeding people was hard so agricultural land was expensive.

• Feudalism needed a constant change in borders. The liege gave its vassals land in return for favors or good work which the vassals children inherited on death. Works fine until you got no more land to distribute. I'd like to dispose the idea of the civil war emerging every 100 years because the vassals get greedy for more land or the idea of extreme balkanization of the city until every citizen is a landlord himself.

'Mayorism'

This approach features more bureaucrats and fewer nobles. Each district has a mayor and a smaller council designated to govern the pile of land he's been assigned with. A mayor is not of noble blood but excels in administrative skills. Each mayor may rule until death, after which he is replaced by any other administrative professional from anywhere, or until another person has been assigned to do his job (because the former mayor was incompetent, corrupt or....). There are no elections for the mayor as we don't want the citizens to get a taste of democracy and get uppity against the crown-authority. Up to this point the system would prove pretty stable, but here are some problems:

• The king most likely has better things to do then to assign each of his thousands of mayors day to day anew. Like in feudalism he'd install multiple layers of administration, that in the end a group of let's say 10 people assign the jobs for him. This would then lead to a concentration of power in the hands of very few people which in return could get come to the conclusion a council of ten people is better than a single king.

• Bureaucracy was on the rise late 17th or early 18th century which is clearly not an option for a medieval based setting. Writers in ancient Egypt did a similar job and different empires had different people doing the same job too, but all of them used a more or less centralized approach. Using common people for administrative jobs became fancy after bourgeoisie was on the rise and enlightenment was more widely accepted.

EDIT

As there were many question regarding the city. First of all, it’s a fantasy setting. The size is absurd, but that’s what it’s all about and that’s why it’s interesting in the first place. No some answers:

Underground caverns/tunnels

Get yourself some underground cave system with some tasty mushrooms and some solid building material to mine. If you’d go crazy you could use your poo to fertilize the mushrooms and build underground farms etc. but I’d rather like to keep the details out of here. Just dig down, eat mushroom and be happy. One could also dispose corps into catacombs. The risk of plagues a heavy disease is still high, but on the other hand side a city of that size probably won’t be a nice place in the first place. Constant mining may also lead to parts of the city to collapse into the depths below, requiring the city to be constantly being renewed.

Outer world

The city is isolated because there is virtually nothing out there. Total wasteland, nuclear fallout, giant metal dome, isolated island – you know what I mean. Nobody wants to go outside, because there is nothing to go to.

How to maintain order

Having a high revolt risk and a high population density some nasty uprisings should be pretty common. But then again it’s not utopia. The ruler keeps an entire army to keep his citizens ‘happy’. In other words were maintaining order with shock and awe. No bad intention here from the ruler, but the alternative is anarchy which is probably a lot worse

How to communicate

This is a problem for sure. Even if you’d use a mounted express line as suggested (which is exactly what I was planning to do), getting through the crowds will prove rather difficult, even if the horsemen were ruthless and wouldn’t care about the citizens surrounding them. An alternative for must-receive-immediate messages are carrier pigeons. However getting a message delivered in a matter of hours shouldn’t be as important as getting the message in a reasonable time. Sending messages in the middle age took it’s time too. In fact, waiting for messages was most common for that time. Governors would need to be able to take care of themselves (and their realm) without getting orders constantly from the central government.

Answer 1

So I will write the dissenting answer here and simply say it is not possible. Ok it won't be that simple I have to explain...otherwise I would just comment.

Some of the problems have been listed in other answers so a nod to those folks.

Issues

• First and foremost the isolation aspect. A city that size would not be able to support building itself in the first place. The amount of wood, stone, clay and other building materials needed would destroy the habitat and the resources would disappear.

If we skip the building aspect there are still a whole host of problems.

• Food and water. Where does it all come from?!? Keep in mind that the water recapture and agricultural technology we have today is not available...and even today the largest metropolitan area in the world is only: 36,000,000 If we accept @Royal Canadian Bandit's 790,000,000 person estimate that puts you at around twenty-two times larger.

• Waste and pollution. No powerplants, no electricity, no modern sewage removal, no running water. People in the medieval era were completely filthy from King to peasant by modern standards. If this city existed it would be rife with plague...and then where would the bodies go?!?

• Infrastructure, communication and transportation. The magical food arrives...how do you get it from the fields to the center of town? It would take days to get food to the center of the city not to mention there is no refrigeration so it would be rotten by the time it got to consumers in many cases. Communication would be virtually impossible, especially since you mention the city is not well laid out. IF there was a planned city with major thoroughfares then MAYBE you could effectively communicate but still...at horseback speeds you are still talking several days to traverse the city.

• Bureaucratic nightmare. How many city employees would you have to have to run this place, let alone maintain, build and expand. The response time of a government managing a city this size would be so very very very slow. It could take two weeks for a problem to traverse the city and layers of leadership to get to the supreme honcho man.

Should it be done...

If you simply must have this city, it demands magic, and not the kind where we have to discuss conservation of energy etc. The magic is necessary for a couple things.

• Raw materials...you need so many you need to be able to conjure them out of thin air essentially. Same goes for food and clean water.
• Communication. To make the bureaucracy, particularly the upper levels, effective without modern communications technology you would need to be able to scry on a massive scale.
• Sanitation...I don't feel I need to elaborate here..but I will... waves wand "crappus vanishicus"

Combining powerful magic and a Romanesqe system of layered management would be my only suggestion...but even then the initial level of disbelief is going to be tough to overcome from a user/reader perspective.

The numbers.

It takes 1.2 acres per person to support modern American dietary standards. I think we can safely assume that your in your medieval setting that standard wont be met so I am going to drop that down to about .9 acres per person. (1/4th less).

TL:DR At 790,000,000 people and .9 acres per person that results in 711,000,000 acres which works out to 2,877,314.91 sq/km...which is kinda why I started out saying... it can't be done. That is over 100 times larger than your total landmass...

If we drop it down to 2/4ths and go with .6 acres you are still looking at a total needed landmass of 1,918,209.94 sq/km...just for farming.

Answer 2

The form of government will depend heavily on the history and economy of your city.

Ancient Rome had an estimated population density of 36,000/km^2. Your city of 22,000 km^2 would then have a staggering population of roughly 792 million. Roughly speaking, this is the equivalent of crowding double the population of the modern USA into the state of New Hampshire; or similarly, the whole European Union into Belgium.

Since you specify that it's "densely populated" by medieval standards, this is an absolutely huge city.

Some obvious considerations:

• How do people eat? You say "assume adequate food," but where does it come from? 700 million people won't be fed with rooftop gardens and fishing the nearby seas. Are there massive food imports, or is there some sort of magical solution? Where does the food arrive, and how is it distributed?
• In a broader sense, where do resources come from? The city needs raw materials such as fuel, wood, cloth, and metal.
• What about pollution and sewage? If it's a medieval city, the smoke from 700 million cookfires alone might make it uninhabitable. I won't even try to address the logistical challenge of handling the sewage from that number of people.
• How is order maintained? If the citizens decide to riot, a very large and destructive mob can form very quickly.
• What relations (if any) does the city have with the outside world? Is it open to trade and visitors, like Victorian London; or closed off to outsiders, like Tokugawa Japan?

It is possible to govern very large numbers of people without modern technology -- China in the 19th century managed it with a population of between 300 and 400 million. However, the unique challenges of such a dense population would require an extremely stable and well-organised government. Feudalism seems unlikely to do the job. Some sort of highly centralised bureaucracy, on the model of medieval China or the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan, seems more plausible.

The figure(s) at the top of this government might be selected in all kinds of ways: A hereditary emperor, council of aristocrats, prime minister promoted from within the bureaucracy, or some other way.

To sum up: It would be best to think about this city's government from the bottom up. Who distributes the food, maintains the infrastructure, puts out the fires, and quells the riots? Once you have answers to these questions, you can work upward to the Grand High Exalted Overlord.

Answer 3

Since the city grew organically you could assume a mix of low level spontaneous organization and high level dictates of the king melding to work together.

So at the low level you would have individual neighbourhoods that choose some of their number to represent themselves and handle administrative duties. If there is a heavy prejudice against democracy these representatives can be chosen by the next step up, but there is no real benefit. In practice such administartors would either be people respected by local community or deal with the people respected by the community. So barring an ideological reason it is easier to simply let people choose a small group, let that group deal with the commoners and their problems, as well as communication with the higher levels of the hierarchy. These councilmen would be assisted by locals chosen by lot or some other fair method in performing their duties and be responsible for keeping the peace and upholding the laws.

For example see the Roman vicus. In general, if it worked for the Romans, it is probably close to as good as you will get.

Due to the insane size of your city, you'll need lots more layers above this local neighbourhood level, but if you take the neighbourhoods to be equivalent of the medieval village, which the Roman vicus kind of was, you can use feudalism for that. This would probably result in a patchwork map of vicus owned by different patrons, but that is how it was in Feudalism.

Romans actually had a system of clients and patrons similar to feudalism that could be adapted to this purpose. And probably would be a better model than the medieval feudalism based on equippind mounted military forces. Such forces would be of limited use in an isolated urban area. So the noble families would more likely be based on commercial relationships?

Answer 4

It's called a bureaucracy. Ever hear of Byzantine used as an adjective? The Byzantine Empire is renowned for it's bureaucracy it grew to manage/rule it's empire. A City of that size could run very smoothly as long as the wheels were kept greased (and many palms).

Delegation and splitting of responsibilities are the only way it even has a chance. after a couple generations the king would be mostly a figurehead.

Answer 5

A historical/biblical answer that might work...
During the 40 years in the wilderness Moses is leading well over a million people through the desert, and he's just about killing himself trying to deal with all their squabbles and problems. So some of his key people come to him and say, "Moses, this is not good. You are wearing yourself out dealing with all these petty problems when you should be focusing on the big stuff." So they set up a system kind of like our modern judicial system. Captains over thousands of families, and under those captains over hundreds of families, and under those captains over tens of families. If there is a problem it would go to the lowest level, and if the problem was difficult it would get bumped up the chain to that captain's captain. The most difficult problems would get to Moses, kind of like a supreme court. And it pleased the people.

In your case, your city could be divided into districts with a district manager. Each district is divided into neighborhoods with an overseer who is respected in the neighborhood. The overseer is charged with keeping peace in his area. If the people have problem they take it to him first. If he can't handle it, or if the people don't like his decision they can take it to the district manager.
The district manager is in tasked with keeping his overseers in line and honest, dealing with the bigger problems brought by overseers, and responding to complaints that people bring against overseers. He would want to know if an overseer is overstepping, but wouldn't have much patience for false complaints.
If a district manager comes up with a problem that he can't deal with, or if the people don't like his verdict they can go to the king, with the understanding that they better have a really good case, because the king's time is valuable.

Answer 6

As your city is so vast it is like an empire within an empire. I think you look at how ancient empires maintained control. Intelligence and soft power would be used a lot. They often controlled the courier or primitive 'postal' network which doubled as spies. This city would obviously need some courier network. You have already mentioned that the army is essentially royal or imperial, and that is under the direct command of the ruler.

You would want to keep the army happy like dictators do, but also diffuse their power a bit so you would want to keep different generals in competition with each other over various sectors of the city.

Strong centralized empires and rulers who want to maintain tight control directly appoint officials. This bypasses nobility and insures you have direct line of authority. So you would want your ruler to directly appoint your own governors or various district leaders.

Since this is a city, then you would maintain centralized control, especially of critical infrastructure. This is typically expressed in different settings by the central government having tight control over food, water, electricity, and basic resources. This is also how dictators maintain control. Your ruler would have absolute control of the critical infrastructure of the city and could cut power as well as other needs. You may also have tight control of surveillance if that technology exists, but if not then you would use couriers as well as spies among the population. Agents who are handlers can handle multiple informants, and a whole network of informants can be created.

Your king should control trade and commerce. Minting coins and currency would be under the control of your king. That way the coinage would reach all sectors of the city. All other currency would be suppressed.

Gateways between districts of the city and control of passage would also be important. Your king's government would control trade, taxation, and passage between sectors of the city.

Your king and his spymaster among others would be skilled in learning the informal networks of power in the city. That is who are the more prominent citizens, merchants, neighborhood leaders, elders, and others in each neighborhood of the city. You would make sure that your government and governors kept close track of these informal leaders. You could even institute a type of millet system for various ethnic groups if there are particular areas of the city where they reside and if they demand to be governed by their law.

Sci-fi often depicts governance over small cramped domains in space. The series Battlestar Galactica shows what control and rebellion in a small tight space look like as early on the government is primarily governing a few cramped ships. Babylon 5 also depicts a government over a confined space. Control of critical infrastructure is often a theme.

Answer 7

Magic... Magic for everything!

Magic is the only thing that can make your city work.

Food and other raw materials

First of all, get a lot of replicators. They will be essential for producing all foodstuffs and materials needed for maintaining the city and her population. It would make sense to conjure only raw materials and do not allow duplication of manufactured goods. Replicators do not have to be machines.

A sensible solution would be creating a network of temples that have replicators. You can choose between a machine, divine help, or magic-wielding priests. I would go with the latter.

Local governing

Organised religion is great for controlling masses. Especially, if it is also in charge of food and other materials. Make your king the head of the church and use church hierarchy as an additional brunch of bureaucracy and spy network at the same time.

Supplement your church with any other system of governing to create some balance. I would go with something similar to scholar-officials of the Imperial China. They would be perfect for maintaining cultural unity and common language. They would also take care of standards, local regulations, local disputes, etc. Mandatory rotations will prevent them from gaining too much power.

Keep churches, scholars, and local populations demilitarised. Make military service a privilege for noble born.

Organise all citizens into some kind of restricted societies. Medieval guilds are one of the possible options. Guilds would keep an eye on their members, take care of propagating standards, and maintain order within their ranks. Guilds are also great for dīvide et īmpera approach. If they try to become labour unions you can always bring some guns/cannons or just cut their supply of materials off.

Communication

Magic will also solve the communication problem. You can opt for magical teleportation, or limit yourself to FTL magical communications via orbs, scrying bowls, mirrors, whatever suits your setting.

Things to kill for and to die for

Obviously, in a world with replicators, the only things that will have a real value are magic and time.

You can keep the system more or less stable if only the ruling class can use magic. The easiest way to do it is to link magic with blood, i.e. only people born to two noble parents (to limit magical abilities of bastards) can initiate magic. You can also invent some kind of a ritual to 'activate' this blood bond/ability to prevent the unnecessary and inconvenient spread of magical abilities outside the circle of the Chosen people.

Time becomes even more valuable if only raw materials can be produced by magic.

Answer 8

The answer is fairly simple: give your ruler sole control of the magitech the city needs to survive.

As other answers have pointed out, without some serious magic this city hasn't got an ice-cube's chance in hell of existing; a settlement of this size would require a colossal hinterland and super-advanced trade network to supply it with enough food and raw materials to sustain itself, which your question specifically states that it doesn't have. The question also states that there are nonetheless enough resources to go round, which presumably are supplied by an unspecified magical means. Given that you're already relying on this magic, when you fill in the details of how it works you may as well set some limits on its usage which ensure that it is under the king's control; perhaps the royal dynasty pass down the knowledge of the resource-replenishing spell as a closely guarded family secret, or maybe there is one artefact/entity in their possession which enables the magic. If this is the case then it will be possible to maintain a basic level of order in the city despite its size and complexity, because if the population try to overthrow the king he can just turn off the magic and starve them rapidly to death.

The king will still need a sizeable political apparatus to distribute the fruits of his magic and translate his colossal power into everyday policies, of course. I second the other answers which recommend a bureaucratic solution rather than a feudal one. There are in fact pre-Enlightenment models for how bureaucratic administrations could administer roughly comparable populations in the Chinese and Roman Empires. Look up the Chinese 'ever-normal granary' system or the Roman 'cura annonae' for some ideas about how state control of the food supply (in your case, generated by magic instead of agriculture) could be used as a tool to promote stability and control.

I actually think that your polity has reasonable prospects for success; it has no external enemies, no crippling internal faultlines, and I am a little confused as to why other answers cite 'communication problems' as a massive issue. Yes, you won't be able to pass messages from one side of the metropolis to the other as quickly as you could in a real-life tiny medieval city, but (even without any extra magic) it will still be much easier to maintain contact with all parts of the realm than it would have been in most medieval kingdoms and empires. Concentrating the population makes communication and administration easier, not harder; it wasn't concentrated on this scale in the real middle ages because it was logistically impossible, but as we've said, this problem has already been magically erased. Running any polity of this size will always involve a large degree of delegating and a certain amount of unavoidable chaos, but it can be done.

Answer 9

The Seven Sevens

As a lot of people have already pointed out, your city is absolutely enormous an virtually impossible to be physically maintained. That's not the question though. The question is how you govern a city that size. The answer is by stratifying the country into distinct social classes determined by your political station.

At the top, you have the God Emperor, King, President, whatever he's calling himself this generation.

He rules over everything because he's the king and everyone under him belongs to him.

Specifically, however, only seven men (or women, maybe it's not a patriarchy) report to him. These are your First Sevens.

Each First Seven has seven Second Sevens that report to them.

Each Second Seven has seven Third Sevens that report to them.

...

If you see where I'm going, then with a little math you'll see that there are 7^7 Seventh Sevens. In other terms, there are 823,543 of the lowest level lords. With a population of roughly 792 million people, that leaves roughly 961 peasants to be ruled by each lord. That's incredibly manageable on the lowest level, and the king only needs to get involved if things can't be handled on one of the seven lower levels of governance.

As far as keeping nobles from revolting, that's why there's seven of them at each level. At the highest level, any upstart Seven would have to secure the support of 3 other Sevens without arousing suspition of dissent. At the lower levels, the number of dissenters required to create a legitimate threat increases exponentially.

Truthfully, once any form of bureaucracy is well established, it's virtually impossible to unseat without a violent peasant uprising, and with each of the Seventh Sevens being responsible for no more than 1,000 souls, it's actually fairly unlikely that they will be particularly cruel to their people without being brow beaten by the other Sevens or murdered and quietly replaced without a fuss.

Hell, if you made the whole system a Democratic Republic where each of the Sevens is voted into power by the Sevens who they administer, then you've potentially got a system with better representation than most of the world today.