The Honourable Sôgmô has submitted a proposal for a Sandum Table of Noble Ranks to the Council for review, after seeking advice from the Party Secretary Adam von Friedeck and the Facilitator of the Council Hatsu Ryuho. The proposal seeks to create several ranks of nobility in Sandus under the Sandum monarchy, while not interfering in the republican constitution of the State of Sandus. The proposal includes noble ranks from gentlemen and knights to barons on a table of six different ranks.
View þess proposal which was submitted to the Council here. The proposed six ranks and their titles of nobility are summarised below.
- the Sôgmô: held by the sovereign only
- Baron, Baroness: the highest rank of Sandum nobility, can be inherited, and given to the highest ranking State officials below the Sôgmô
- Baronet, Baronetess: next highest rank of Sandum nobility, given to directors of organs underneath cooperatives and larger organs in the Central People’s Government
- Knight, Dame: lowest specific rank of Sandum nobility given to officials in Sandum government and to members of Party committees
- Gentleman, Gentlewoman, Gentleperson: lowest, unspecific rank of Sandum nobility given to Party members, Council committee members, and workers in Sandum cooperatives
- Citizen: not a noble rank, all Sandum citizens are bestowed with the privilege of being addressed as “Comrade Citizen”
The table is based off of a principle of Russian nobility which was established by Tsar Peter I in 1722, the Russian Table of Ranks. The Sôgmô’s proposal, however, is uniquely Sandum. Its highest noble rank, beneath the Sôgmô, is that of baron, which is the lowest rank in English peerage. Sandus had previously been a barony twice from December 2009 to April 2010 and September to November 2010. The proposal also includes a series of other significant barriers, such as the fact that titles and ranks are not automatically inherited unless specified in one’s granting letters patent. The privileges associated with the ranks, as well, are nominal: nobles are entitled to certain styles of address, but these are to be used only on rare ceremonial occasions.
Certain grants of nobility, as well, might be given further privileges, such as the granting of heraldic coats of arms. The Sôgmô is in talks with the North American Micronational College of Arms to prepare coats of arms for future nobles, if the proposal is promulgated by the Sôgmô without opposition in the Council. Other extraordinary privileges might be added to a noble’s grant.
The proposal also establishes separate categories of grants, including personal and entitled grants of nobility which can either be inheritable or not. Entitled grants (those which come with a specific associated title) can be made hereditary, for example, in exchange for State access to the noble’s personal property and land—so-called “inholder nobles.”
The proposal is specifically worded so as to not violate Sandus’s socialist policies, practices, and laws. Inholder nobles, for example, are the Sandum equivalent of proprietary or estate nobles, except that in Sandus private ownership of property and land is illegal; “inholder nobles,” according to Sandum law, bestow upon the State certain rights to their personal property for State business. Nobility, as well, is bestowed in recognition of merit and based upon one’s governmental position in the constitution of the State of Sandus, not based on a position of birth. Sandum Nobility denotes service to the State of Sandus, meaning that there are obligations associated with the nobility’s relatively superficial privileges.
Only the second and third ranks, for example, are able to be inherited without a necessary dispensation from the Sôgmô; the third rank, baronets, must also be Sandum citizens by their 16th birthday if they are to retain the inherited title.
Members of the Sandum Royal Family receive certain specific ranks depending on their relation to the Sôgmô, but again also in a Sandum-specific manner. Since the Office of the Sôgmô is an elective and not a hereditary office, the Sandum Royal Family is time specific. The proposal lays out a system of nobility specific to the current and previous royal families in Sandus, though members of the Royal Family still must receive a grant of nobility from the Sôgmô and are not automatically entitled to such a grant. For example, members of the immediate Royal Family can become barons and the Sôgmô’s descendants can become baronets, but extended members of the Royal Family can only become—at best—knights in the Sandum nobility simply on virtue of their being in the Sandum Royal Family. Furthermore, all descendants of the reigning Sôgmô must remain Sandum citizens in order to inherit their title and, after the reigning Sôgmô dies, must identify their relationship to the previous Sôgmô after þess death. For example, the current Sôgmô’s sister would be styled “Lady Phanem Soror Elizabeth of the 1st Sôgmô.”
The proposal is in review before the Council of the State of Sandus. The Sôgmô presented the proposal on Saturday afternoon and asked for critiques and if there would be any objections to the proposal. If there are no responses by the Moon’s first quarter on 3 April, the Sôgmô will promulgate the proposal.
sandus.org 