The craft of designing realistic power struggles, alliances, and governance structures that drive conflict and shape character choices.
Political worldbuilding is the work of figuring out who has power in your world, who wants it, and what everyone is willing to do to get or keep it. It goes beyond choosing a government type; it includes the messy human dynamics of alliances, betrayals, propaganda, laws, and the gap between how a system is supposed to work and how it actually works. Great political worldbuilding makes your reader feel like the world would keep scheming even if your protagonist left the room.
Politics creates some of fiction's richest conflicts because it's inherently about competing interests, moral compromise, and stakes that affect entire populations. Even if your story isn't a political thriller, your characters live under political systems that constrain what they can do, say, and become. Ignoring politics makes your world feel flat.
The gold standard for political fantasy. Martin makes you track dozens of competing interests and feel every betrayal coming without being able to stop it.
Shows political worldbuilding from the perspective of someone learning the system for the first time, making complex court politics accessible.
Empire, colonialism, and economic control explored through a protagonist who tries to destroy the system from within.
Every political decision in your world should change what your characters can do next. If a law passes, show its consequences on the street.
Real politics is full of factions that each have legitimate (and illegitimate) grievances. Give every side a point, even the ones your hero opposes.
Choose a political crisis for your world: a disputed succession, a trade embargo, or a border conflict. Write a 15-minute scene showing three different characters reacting to the same crisis from three different political positions. Each character should believe they're right.