The Clan Champions seem to genuinely revere the institution of imperial authority. Shoju is a good example of this. What's less clear is whether anyone is personally loyal to Hantei XXXVIII. There is such a wide gap between the gravity of the office and how influential the actual office holder is. In Rokugan, the latter is actually discouraged as antithetical to the former. The practical effect is, imperial authority gains an increasingly hypothetical quality the further away from the capital one travels. As a rule of thumb, the Emperor is most powerful wherever exquisite manners are required.

The Emperor is the absolute authority. In person. Or if they agree with me. Or if they're making things more difficult for my rivals than they are for me. The rest of the time? Well, who can say what the Emperor truly means? How literal am I to take their commands? What is the actual desire of Heaven? Such are the mysteries of the Void.....

I think the Hantei have been reigning but not ruling for a while now, so signs of life from the current Emperor are... disconcerting to those accustomed to the "normal" way of doing things.

On 12/12/2017 at 6:21 PM, Shiba Gunichi said:

I think the Hantei have been reigning but not ruling for a while now, so signs of life from the current Emperor are... disconcerting to those accustomed to the "normal" way of doing things.

Yup. Why do things when you have the massive Imperial Bureaucracy to do things for you?

For that matter, why stand in the rain when you have shugenja to dispel the clouds for you, amirite?

See, Sotorii understands how to do divine personage right. If he were Emperor you can bet that the Heavens wouldn’t dare rain on him. And if it did, well now it’s time for a war on the Phoenix. Obviously their fault.