That's the thing I liked the most about the books. It was so painfully obvious that empires fall and rise that a mere human could predict the details of how it

That's the thing I liked the most about the books. It was so painfully obvious that empires fall and rise that a mere human could predict the details of how it would happen. It's hand wavy sci-fi, but it's a fun setting and it does really push the point. The change in rhetoric, stagnation of culture, centralization of wealth, talks of secession, they're all markers of a declining empire. It's already happened.