Idk if you've talked about it much, but the God in divine rights is an AI, right? Anything interesting you want to share about it?
yes!! it's called The Strata and is a 300 year old computer algorithm + surveillance system that controls *everything* in the Divine Rights world's fantasy version of europe*.
The "Divine Right of Kings" in this world comes from being a descendant of the creator/inventor of The Strata, since accessing its code is keyed to having her DNA. People in this world believe The Strata "rules through" their royals. (aka my sci fi interpretation of the actual Divine Right, which said that "God rules through the kings" and this is only a thing that can happen to you if you have the right royal blood. lol)
Since it's 300 years old, though, its algorithm is SUPER fricked up. Without the knowledge of literally anyone (there's no oversight on this thing, it's MachineGod!), the program developed to protect itself at all costs, and its internal logic systems decayed. It will determine using its data who in the population is a 'threat' to it and its society's continued survival, and wipe them from this mortal plane before that can happen.
Being a decayed and fritzy algorithm though, even those self-protective decisions are... iffy. The people attribute its erratic behavior to the fact that it's a Higher Being that knows more than they do, and they couldn't possibly understand its divine decisions.
*at least western europe, the setting of Divine Rights is based on the Portuguese revolution for independence against Spain. and the evil queen Luisa X is based off Louis XIV of France. The idea though is to have it rule over everywhere that christianity+the divine right of kings existed IRL, research incoming lol)
