Daystrom Institute

I'm hesitant to give the Section 31 writers this much credit, but a recurring theme from Star Trek (especially since TNG), is the notion that people are a product of the cultures they come from, and asks the question of if they can grow beyond it.

This move showed us that Terran empire causes suffering for everyone, even for the top leaders. The system is working for nobody and yet they are all stuck within it. The system of abusing children to choose a new leader seems engineered to make sure that nobody can escape.

Georgiou, somehow, escaped. And now she's (in her own words) "a monster with a conscious (ie: useless)" in a system that has no need for monsters. She felt useless to change the empire, and useless to do anything once she found it no longer surrounding her.

I could see it as part of a Tetrarchy type system. For periods during the Roman Empire there wasn’t a single Emperor there were 4. A junior (Caesar) and senior (Augustus) emperor for the Western and Eastern empires.

The Roman Empire’s government had two major related problems. It never established a stable and reliable means of succession and because of that the Emperor couldn’t delegate major problems to anyone else because that person would become a threat to overthrow the Emperor. The Tetrarchy was an attempted solution. Two emperor’s would share power and have junior colleagues that they could delegate tasks to who would eventually succeed them. It didn’t really work out and only lasted about 30 years before Constantine made himself sole Emperor.

The Terran Empire would clearly face similar problems with regards to succession. I could see an Emperor setting up a system where a junior Emperor was chosen by the Hunger Games method. I also wouldn’t expect it to last.

In another timeline, the two-part pilot of the Section 31 series would just be Mirror Universe Hunger Games 😥

It’s very unsatisfying.

An empire overflowing with ambitious and unscrupulous climbers who have all decided to allow young Georgiou to have the crown.

Ya let’s make the unhinged evil empire very civil and obedient so our protagonist actually back into the throne instead of actively seizing it. How convenient.

Ultimately it feels like they want to have their cake and eat it too: Georgiou is the baddest bitch, but also she was just trying to survive man! She cried when she murdered her own family, under coercion and duress!

I guess I liked her better when she was bonafide evil.

I'm guessing that this is something they do if the previous emperor dies of natural causes or willingly abdicates.

I can't remember how many candidates they said there were, but I assume each one is sponsored by some kind of nobility within the Empire.

With both The Hunger Games and the Terrans being inspired by the Roman Empire, I didn't think it was entirely out of left field (with the caveat that the Mirror Universe is a very silly place).

In DIS, it's stated that Starfleet

discovered a chimeric strain on the subatomic level in the Terran stem cell, implying that this could explain the Terran inclination towards malevolence.

Georgiou described the Terrans as "untroubled by pesky motivations", other than revenge. Kovich observed that they created the Terran Empire for no particular reason beyond simply feeling like it.

So it's possible (and on-screen appearances don't really seem to dispute this) that Terrans are just mean and, subsequently, emotionally immature leading to the Hunger Games-esque line of succession you're describing.