Originally Posted by
Nerd-o-rama
All of which are necessary departures from reality if you want to make "War and Peace IN SPACE", which is what LoGH is. Except the planetary populations but, well, sci fi writers and scale.
And personally, odds of a Space Reich existing aside, I think it's a good plot device simply for carrying through a theme of the series, which is presenting democracy and autocracy not as good and evil, respectively, but demonstrating the benefits and drawbacks of both. Sure beats the heck out of Gundam when it comes to presenting both outlooks as morally gray.