Skrull Empire (Ultimate Earth)

The Skrull Empire is a major interstellar state encompassing the Skrull people and their subject worlds and species. The Empire was known for its xenophobic character and policies of spiritualism, subterfuge, and territorial expansionism.

## Overview

The **Skrull Empire** is a vast intergalactic empire that dominates their home galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy which has millions of inhabited worlds. It is the oldest interstellar empire in the cosmos.

Some worlds have voluntarily joined the Skrull Empire and they have been granted varying degrees of autonomy. Other worlds were conquered and their inhabitants subjugated. The Skrulls have also expanded their dominion by colonizing uninhabited worlds. Within the Andromeda galaxy, the Skrulls have conquered or colonized every suitable world.

They have also established peace treaties with pacifist races, which they don't regard as being a threat to the empire, such as the Kryptonians. Profitable trading relationships are maintained with these worlds. It's an empire that has laid waste to a thousand galaxies.

The philosophy and politics of a majority of Skrulls and the emperors was to not be interested in having any representatives of other interstellar nations come to the Skrull Empire. They were very proud of their personal belief systems, their order, their government, and their culture and considered a majority of those outside of the Skrull Empire's borders as “barbarians.” Although some exceptions were made.

The Skrulls consider it their duty to bring peace to the cosmos by conquering and subjugating every inhabited world in the universe. Skrulls are taught that every world in the cosmos is meant to be a Skrull world, they see it as their destiny.

## Government and Politics

### Emperor/Empress

In the Skrull government, the emperor was the supreme judge and lawgiver, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and sole designator of official nominees appointed to the top posts in central and local administration. In traditional Skrull political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heaven and the autocrat of All under Heaven.

The absolute authority of the emperor came with a variety of governing duties and moral obligations; failure to uphold these was thought to remove the dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and to justify its overthrow. The power of the emperor was also limited by the imperial bureaucracy, which was staffed by scholar-officials and in some dynasties eunuchs.

### Foreign relations

The philosophy and politics of a majority of Skrulls and the emperors was to not be interested in having any representatives of other interstellar nations come to the Skrull Empire. They were very proud of their personal belief systems, their order, their government, and their culture and considered a majority of those outside of the Skrull Empire's borders as “barbarians.” Although some exceptions were made.

The Skrulls consider it their duty to bring peace to the cosmos by conquering and subjugating every inhabited world in the universe. Skrulls are taught that every world in the cosmos is meant to be a Skrull world, they see it as their destiny.

In external application, Skrull political agendas appeared largely unified over the centuries. Their goals focused on maintaining Imperial security through vigilance, and negating the perceived advantages of their rivals. Both goals were accompanied by a near-paranoid reticence to reveal information, even facts as basic as their racial identity, that might illuminate other Skrull ambitions or motivations. Short of war, the means to those ends have generally varied between favored methods:

* **Surreptitious political disruption of rivals:** The Skrulls most favored tactic is to take advantage of their shape shifting abilities, to replace key military or political figures within a rival government with Skrull agents, often these are Tal Talonkari agents.
* **Limited, surprise or covert military action**
* **Political Marriages:** Political marriage is a diplomatic union of two members of different royal or ruling families. Often Skrull Emperors used his daughters to marry off rulers of different states. They like marrying into the royalty of other alien races in order to strengthen their empire and become more powerful.