Political and narrative consequences of this scenario

Basic story idea: Humanity made first contact with aliens that are roughly analogous to Kryptonians/Viltrumites (if considerably nicer than the latter, as low a bar as that is) with the powers to match, and as a peace offering their queen’s daughter agreed to a political marriage with an up-and coming politician who has since been elected president. I have this problem where I come up with a great overall idea but not a specific plot, and this is no exception. About all I’ve conclusively decided on is that the secret service aren’t completely out of work because she’s not allowed on diplomatic visits, etc, because her husband doesn’t want it to look like he’s trying to intimidate people.

A political marriage between a politician in a republic and a monarchy's child is not a great idea.

It doesn't buy an alliance, it relies on the politician staying in power effectively for life (unlikely, in a democratic republic, as is implied by this question) and if it's an "up and coming" politician, then there can be no assumption of an alliance in the first place. For example, the Prince of Sikkim in real life married a somewhat influential American citizen, but America still supported India's Annexation of Sikkim.

I won't object to the aliens using a monarchy, as that's clearly a central conceit of the story, but for the record monarchies come in two flavors. One's just a dictatorship (an awful government form) and the other's feudal, which is notoriously a really ineffective system when governments centralize and are capable of administrating larger areas.

In all fairness, it could be that the aliens have an elective monarchy; "queen" doesn't necessarily mean "queen for life".

As to the politician falling out of power—well, perhaps that's the story hook: what are the diplomatic results of this politician losing power? Do the aliens understand that this is something that will likely happen? How do they respond? And how do people on the human side respond in turn? etc. etc.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jun 29th 2023 at 10:21:08 AM

There can also be an angle of the married princess acclimating to earth culture and becoming a Superman (or Supergirl in this case) analogue. And the conflicting loyalty that ensues.

Could even use it as an Invincible-like where the alien culture has some serious skeletons in the closest that risks conflict betwixt the two planets as a result of the failed alliance and puts the princess in direct conflict with her fellow nobility.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 29th 2023 at 8:09:09 AM

I'm not entirely sure if I agree with @Florien

FDR was elected 4 times, the Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Clintons were all fairly powerful political families in a legitimate Republic. Also, marrying very rich and well connected people yields a lot of wealth and connections.

There is also the possibility that the Republic starts becoming a One Party state or there is rigging of elections.

Finally, what if a specific party was just overall able to get 51% of the vote or even, for demographic reasons it's share was growing? What if that party had a family that was the center of that party?

Or maybe all the governments are coalition governments and the middle party is always the same, but who is in the coalition changes. Plus, we could have a family in the center of THAT party.

TLDR: There are ways to have a family consistently as the most important family in a nation and consistently not be the "Opposition"

Dynastic Democracies are a problem, yes, but the problem is, dynastic politicians are notoriously bad leaders.

The only US president from a political dynasty who wasn't a disaster was abraham lincoln, for example (He was from the Harrison Family of William Henry "Dropped Dead in a Month" Harrison and Benjamin "Scared of Light Switches and Couldn't Even Win the Popular Vote Once" Harrison fame)

(Kennedy was also pretty bad at being president incidentally, he tripled the nuclear weapons stockpile on the advice of the manufacturers who claimed their was a missile gap when there was no missile gap, and repeatedly failed to do anything of substance and spent most of his time doing enormous amounts of meth, and of course the Bush dynasty everyone already knows how they failed again and again in all kinds of ways. The roosevelts aren't much of a dynasty, it was two fairly distantly related people who happened to share a name and few other roosevelts got involved in politics between the two. And of course the Adams dynasty but they are already famous for being ineffective) The Clintons aren't even a dynasty, they're just two people.

Also, marrying in may give you influence, but the key thing here is that it doesn't secure an alliance. Citation, Sikkim, of course, as said earlier, but also fundamentally, democracy and marriage alliances are incompatible, because families rarely hold dominance in a party for very long. For example, the Kennedys first became relevant in the 40s, and they were essentially irrelevant by the 80s. The Bushes became relevant in the 80s, and are nearly irrelevant today.

The longest successful dynasty was the Harrisons, and even they barely managed to go five generations and were essentially irrelevant within any party by the time of Lincoln (about 80 years because they'd been around since the declaration)

There was one time when the US had a clear dominant party, the Republicans from 1860-1912, who held the presidency every time except two. And there was no internal dominant force, much less a family, then, and this dominance only extended for 52 years. Things change very fast in democracies in ways that it doesn't for monarchies.

And it's extremely extremely rare that a family becomes THE dominant force in a party unless it's some tiny irrelevant party. Not the Harrisons, not the Bushes, not even the Kennedys exerted that kind of control over their party. Also "but what if the presidential republic becomes a dictatorship" is a terrible argument when a central conceit of the idea is that it's a presidential republic that has elections that matter. Marriage does not secure alliances in democratic systems. In fact, even if we accept "oh yeah the president turns dictator" it doesn't even secure alliances between republic dictatorships! Otherwise, you'd have the Kim family in North Korea marrying their kids off to like, the Burdimuhammadows or whatever in Turkmenistan, which they don't.

Also "FDR was elected 4 times" is meaningless because it was only him. No other president got that many terms before him, not for lack of trying, and it's just straight not allowed since. Also, you don't get coalition governments in presidential republics, so that option's right out.

Anyway the point is, marrying an influential family is all well and good but it's a terrible way to secure an alliance when it's not a monarchy that you're marrying both out of and into.

Some nuance here: a political dynasty in a democracy doesn't mean any particular political office becomes hereditary, it means that members of that family are reliably and consistently elected. The first Kennedy in the US government was P. J. Kennedy in 1884, for instance, and descendants have present in a range of elected and appointed government positions ever since.

On the one hand, since political office isn't directly inherited, a political marriage doesn't offer the same reassuring parallel between the individual relationship and the diplomatic alliance it's meant to represent. On the other, however, it isn't implausible that an alien monarchy might decide that a family with such resources and connections available to have such consistent influence is the next best thing to a royal family - and perhaps could become one, if the right circumstances could be arranged.