Hoshido Autonomous-Zone Status

Hoshido Autonomous-Zone Status designates Hoshido City and the surrounding nomadic settlement as a special political territory rather than a normal province of the Empire. Selfia explains that nomads are not officially Imperial citizens and that extending citizenship to them would provoke resistance from her supporters; instead, the region is to be classified as a special autonomous zone. The arrangement is therefore both an administrative solution and a test of whether nominal self-government can survive inside an expanding imperial system.

Creation Through Imperial Expansion

Selfia links the zone’s creation directly to military conquest and economic planning. She expects General Olivia’s forces to take the region within roughly a week and intends to turn it into a gateway to the frontier because of its natural resources. Hoshido’s political status is thus established before its population can determine its own future. The language of autonomy masks an underlying sequence of occupation, reclassification, and access to valuable territory.

Jack learns that his people are being incorporated into this arrangement while he is connected to the Imperial court through his marriage to Selfia and his position as king. His unease comes from the gap between the official designation and the lived consequences: the village he remembers may be transformed by the time the policy is implemented. Hoshido is not simply being protected from outside threats; it is being repositioned as an Imperial frontier gateway.

Citizenship, Sovereignty, and the Exception

The status depends on withholding ordinary citizenship. Selfia’s explanation makes clear that the nomads remain under Imperial power without receiving the full political identity of Imperial citizens. Their inclusion is therefore conditional: the Empire claims authority over their land and security while avoiding the obligations and political controversy associated with equal membership.

This arrangement becomes more coercive when read alongside the Empire’s purge of three hundred and sixty-nine people, including political opponents, rivals, dissidents, and anyone considered an obstacle to the New Republic. Selfia presents the killings as necessary for human survival and the consolidation of power, while Jack rejects the idea that mass murder can be made legitimate by calling it necessary. The Hoshido policy belongs to the same emergency political environment, in which exceptional measures are repeatedly justified as protection.

Jack’s Alternative Settlement

When Jack later confronts the surviving leaders of the Theocracy, he proposes a related but more protective version of the autonomous-zone model. He orders the evacuation of the remaining Theocracy citizens to the Flying City and offers them territory within the Empire where they may settle. His stated objective is survival: they lack adequate food, shelter, and ammunition, and he warns that demonspawn will eventually reach them.

Jack insists that the plan is not a negotiation. His power is unmistakable, and he reminds the paladins that he is the King of the Empire, the ruler who previously killed hundreds of them during their attack on Frelia and brought down the Green Bishop. Yet he also distinguishes his proposal from Selfia’s intended eradication of the Theocracy. He argues that Selfia wants to destroy its people in order to seize the flying city’s research and facilities, whereas his plan would allow Selfia to study the city while the Theocracy’s survivors remain alive and retain the sovereignty of a free nation.

The exchange exposes the instability of the word autonomy. Commander Velmont objects that living under Imperial authority cannot be freedom. Jack answers that they will be under his authority rather than Selfia’s, asking only that they survive. The offer preserves a measure of collective identity, but it remains dependent on the will of a conquering monarch rather than on an equal treaty between sovereign powers.

Protection as Control

Hoshido’s status also exists within a wider security structure shaped by the Infinity Machine and demonspawn. Sahaqiel discovers that the Saint Citri statue weakens demonspawn and disrupts their connection to the Infinity Machine, creating a protective radius around the city. Jack immediately recognizes the military and civil value of such protection, imagining that places equipped with similar statues might not need high walls and gun emplacements. Removing the statue, however, could doom the Theocracy.

This protective technology clarifies why Hoshido and other territories become objects of strategic competition. Security is not merely a public service; it determines who controls settlements, weapons, research, and movement. The Empire’s promise to preserve an autonomous zone can therefore operate alongside surveillance, militarization, and resource extraction. Even Jack’s evacuation plan is structured through threats, restricted choices, and the authority of the strongest available ruler.

Narrative Significance

The Hoshido Autonomous-Zone Status embodies the book’s recurring conflict between declared protection and actual dispossession. Hoshido’s people are spared the formal insult or political risk of forced citizenship, but they are still exposed to conquest and economic redesign. The Theocracy’s proposed resettlement offers a sharper contrast: one power seeks to eliminate a population for access to its institutions, while another claims to save it through controlled relocation.

The status also reflects the transformation of Jack’s own position. He moves through a world of royal schedules, security details, paper records, and political plans, yet his new authority does not free him from the machinery of power. He can intervene on behalf of threatened populations, but he does so as a king whose command replaces negotiation. Hoshido consequently becomes more than a regional designation: it is a compact expression of the story’s political dilemma, in which survival may require accepting protection that simultaneously limits citizenship, sovereignty, and self-determination.