u/Sanctuary2199

This is my first post here, so bear with me. I've been working on a project that stemmed from my creations in Space Engineers. I call it, "Lakanate: The White Sun Reigns." In the shortest possible way, I can explain this universe is "A Filipino colony fleet gets flung into another galaxy by accident and becomes an interstellar empire called the Maharlikan Empire." That's the gist of it.

However, this project was never supposed to go this big. The whole thing started as merely a joke to give some flavor text to my creations, which were inspired by WW2 naval designs and Space Battleship Yamato. I'm more of an amateur naval historian than a political nerd. Heck, the Maharlikan Empire started as the Philippine Empire, and it was significantly more cartoonishly evil. But that was when I was younger. As I grew to experience the world and as more creations piled up, the universe started asking for more. Throwaway characters became staples, weaponry suddenly started to have names, and dates for events started popping up. Now I have to sort things out and turn this cartoonishly evil empire into something more discernible and serious. The first drafts are being made, horrendously disorganized, messy, and don't hold up well. I want to change that by starting here with my main faction, the Maharlikan Empire.

So I'm asking for advice on how to create a semi-constitutional parliamentary monarchy.

For context, I had imagined the Maharlikan Empire's cultural and societal foundation being formed by the first Lakan, the monarch of the Empire who overthrew a democratic society and proclaimed himself king. He wanted to reform the Filipino colonists' society and used various misconceptions, truths, half-truths, and imagined realities that served his vision for the country, a vision continued by his successors, who turned them into an amalgamation of a Filipino honor-bound warrior culture. Partially successful with some caveats. But by the time of the fourth Lakan, a civil war broke out due to his poor relations with the nobility and citizenry. This establishes the current political system for the Maharlikan Empire.

I wanted to have some balance the Lakan's authority being curtailed by the presence of a parliament of the nobility (Datus) and the people (Tao). The one issue I have is that I'm not really sure where to start. If someone can help me with advice on how to get started or provide resources, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Here's also a snippet on a wiki page I'm working on to help organize my thoughts.

https://preview.redd.it/5d69k4f8fd4h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a26a56130051ddca6bbadcb079cb4515c5d54e5