Ooh, these are separate things imo - a rule where the Emperor can win is one thing but a single rule that allows both mantle-passing AND imperial victory is too broad, as you’ll never know which scenario you should be defending against.

could make a new proposal that just adds emperor victory as a separate special case rule

Good point.

Dynastic Distance would already do the job of such a separate special case toggle, since achieving victory is always framed as something that a player does.

But yes, maybe worth spelling that out explicitly in a separate clause (“If Dynastic Distance is off, the Blizzard may also achieve and declare victory”) so that we don’t have to be on our guard against a tricksily-worded victory condition in a dynasty where the Malign Emperor isn’t actually walking around as a player.

@Kevan wouldn’t work if the Emperor wanted to have a sole different to just being a player

*role
only now noticed this

For a case where a Malign Emperor didn’t want to be a Player but still wanted to be able to win, we’d have to write some kind of specific dynastic “a player achieves victory if X, the Emperor achieves victory if Y” rule anyway, which is no different to the Special Case rule saying it.

It does seem like too much of a tripwire in future Malign dynasties where Dynastic Distance is on and the group don’t regard the Emperor as an on-the-board player, but that Emperor could still swoop in and unintuitively claim some kind of “when the sun sets, the player with the fewest bites wins” victory condition.

To some extent this would be on that dynasty’s players to notice this when writing their victory condition, but I think the core rules should generally try to be as unsurprising as possible. The reaction to a tricksy “the Emperor is the player with the fewest bites” scam should be to groan at that Emperor for a good scam, rather than to also groan at the voters of a long-past dynasty for phrasing Malign Emperors like that.

But we should have more Malign Emperors to test this kind of thing out.