Taldor has been around for nearly a thousand years, and has a civil war with brutal regularity at nearly every succession, because the next Emperor is appointed, technically by the Senate, a vestigial body in the capital with no real influence except once every few decades when it is called upon to name the next Emperor. The processes the Senate is supposed to follow are stunningly opaque and complex -- the word in Carissa's language for 'excessively complicated' stems from the capital city of Taldor, and there's no mechanism by which the Senate's rulings are enforced, besides that they lend the named person a lot of credibility. Needless to say, that doesn't really work, and peaceful successions are at this point practically the exception; unfit or young Emperors have a tendency to be elevated only to swiftly die of it, ruthless outsiders sometimes have a go until they misstep in the capital politics they don't understand and die, the army is always cheerfully threatening to proclaim a general as emperor....

Emperors tried in various ways to secure a preferred successor -- naming a co-emperor, say -- but it was common for junior co-emperors to be killed when their senior co-emperor died or lost his foothold. 

Taldor is mostly feudal, but the Emperor appoints the rulers of some provinces directly, and those military governors are supposed to be especially loyal to him and his enforcers, if a fight is necessary. Of course, if you let your military governors accumulate too much power in their own right they might overthrow you. Of course, if you keep the people who concern you most close to home they might assassinate you. 

Despite all this Taldor has remained a major global power, mostly for two reasons: firstly, even its outlying fortresses are a thousand years old and nearly unassailable (including by one another, during civil wars), and secondly, Oppara itself is a magnificently walled and warded city, and it's said those walls will outlast the world. It's lost some ground to Qadira, and some to Galt, but it's still larger than Cheliax. 

Taldor has been around for nearly a thousand years, and has a civil war with brutal regularity at nearly every succession, because the next Emperor is appointed, technically by the Senate, a vestigial body in the capital with no real influence except once every few decades when it is called upon to name the next Emperor. The processes the Senate is supposed to follow are stunningly opaque and complex -- the word in Carissa's language for 'excessively complicated' stems from the capital city of Taldor -- and there's no mechanism by which the Senate's rulings are enforced, besides that they lend the named person a lot of credibility. Needless to say, that doesn't really work, and peaceful successions are at this point practically the exception; unfit or young Emperors have a tendency to be elevated only to swiftly die of it, ruthless outsiders sometimes have a go until they misstep in the capital politics they don't understand and die, the army is always cheerfully threatening to proclaim a general as emperor....

Emperors tried in various ways to secure a preferred successor -- naming a co-emperor, say -- but it was common for junior co-emperors to be killed when their senior co-emperor died or lost his foothold. 

Taldor is mostly feudal, but the Emperor appoints the rulers of some provinces directly, and those military governors are supposed to be especially loyal to him and his enforcers, if a fight is necessary. Of course, if you let your military governors accumulate too much power in their own right they might overthrow you. Of course, if you keep the people who concern you most close to home they might assassinate you. 

Despite all this Taldor has remained a major global power, mostly for two reasons: firstly, even its outlying fortresses are a thousand years old and nearly unassailable (including by one another, during civil wars), and secondly, Oppara itself is a magnificently walled and warded city, and it's said those walls will outlast the world. It's lost some ground to Qadira, and some to Galt, but it's still larger than Cheliax.