Well in reference to the military removing nobles, Vice or Star Admirals are actually given rank "Noble" which is why William Ross and Yu Lin suddenly went from "William Ross" to "Lord Admiral" and Yu Lin became "Admiral Lady".
The military is given limited judiciary power over nobles when it comes to them disobeying the armed forces advice leading to the deaths of civilians. OR if they begin forming a private military. Both of which are the fast lane to the end of a rope.
As far as the "religious freedoms" you notice I said "Legal Religions" right
the only really Legal Religions are "The Path" (i.e state religion) and Buddihsm (and that's mainly because the ESS had to be incorporated and since the bulk of Asia is Buddist you can't outlaw their religion wholesale).
There are small enclaves of other religions such as Hindu and Islam but they are few and far between and tend to avoid government scutiny by not getting involved in politics or anything that would make them look like a threat.
Crusade:
often Crusade Any of the military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.
A holy war undertaken with papal sanction.
A vigorous concerted movement for a cause or against an abuse. See Synonyms at campaign.
I am sort of opting for #3's description since #1 and #2 are irrelevent as the Icarans took over Rome long before the formation of the papacy so "No smoka, no popa".
If you have any other ideas for what to call these wars of conquest (and no not wars of conquest
) then I'd be more then happy to read them.
Oh and as far as government loyalty and the like goes well I see it this way Icara is meaner then the US but nicer than Nazi Germany and Japan (WWII) and quite frankly most of the Islamic states and if people can happily jump in line with these regimes I'm pretty sure there would be relative stability for Icara.
Oh and BTW I worked on a rough "Imperial Timeline" as in tracking "Dynasties".
It's pretty much like this:
(Dawn of History)
Icaran Principality (destroyed in effect by Sparta)
Icaran Empire (Effectively ends in the year the first Lunar colony is founded)
Icaran Solar Empire (slight political reforms to deal with non-Terra provinces) (later destroyed by UN forces and forced to evacuate Sol, first encounter with an unstable warp point)
New Icaran Empire (Icara, Norvor system- effectively ceases to exist when the ESS population is finally merged)
Icaran Royal Empire (What we see in the era of my fan fic, lasts a thousand years and effectively ceases to exist for reasons I wont state here)
Second Icaran Royal Empire (Reformed in Novor on the fortress world of New Icara effectively reunifies the Empire over the next fifteen centuries)
Basically yeah "Icara" has survived millenia and by time we hit the Second Royal Empire we are looking at about 9,000 years. But the Empire has changed time and again.