# Palace Coup

> Palace Coup is mapped as the seized center: it changes rule by capturing command, disabling rivals, or hollowing institutions.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:coups-breakdown:palace-coup` |
| Family | Coups, Breakdown & Consolidation |
| Domain | State Power |
| Kind | process |
| Archetypal function | The Seized Center |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Palace Coup belongs to the **Coups, Breakdown & Consolidation** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Palace Coup changes rule by capturing command, disabling rivals, or hollowing institutions, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Palace Coup, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Seized Center.** Palace Coup is mapped as the seized center: it changes rule by capturing command, disabling rivals, or hollowing institutions.

## Gift

can end paralysis or dislodge a failed regime; through Palace Coup, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

substitutes coercive fact for public authorization and normalizes exceptional rule; Palace Coup can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Palace Coup to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Seized Center enters through Palace Coup. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Palace Coup becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**resource.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Palace Coup; another player names a countermove. Initiative 3.

## Relationships

- **distributes costs to — Self-Coup:** Self-Coup distributes costs to Palace Coup by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **depends on — Putsch:** Palace Coup depends on Putsch by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **depends on — Consent Decree:** Palace Coup depends on Consent Decree by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Palace Coup from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Palace Coup is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Palace Coup: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [V-Dem Dataset and Codebook](https://www.v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/) — V-Dem Institute, 2026. Comparative measurement of democratic institutions; indicators remain model-based measures.
- [National Emergency Powers](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/98-505) — Congressional Research Service, 2024. U.S. emergency authorities and congressional checks.
- [Charter of the United Nations](https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text) — United Nations, 1945. International institutional order, sovereignty, security, and cooperation.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
