Fearing that another Napoleon could rise and conquer all of Europe, the great powers enacted a series of defensive alliances to maintain the status quo. An attack by any realm would trigger two or three other realms to come to the defender’s aid, and any threat to the monarchies from internal threats would bring aid as well. It was the last, desperate gasp of the great noble families as they tried to maintain their power in a changing world.
We’ve uplifted so many different races since figuring out the gengineering required. Some like cats and dogs go everywhere we go. Others are rare, or stay away from the rest of us. You see, despite what a lot of people say we’re not all the same. You can give an eagle human level intelligence and an ability to speak our words, but he’ll still want to fly away from it all and live on top of a tree, mountain, or tower. We just want different lives.
The Outer Colonies are separate from Earth, with tenuous contact to the Core Worlds of humanity, and many were founded by small groups of people. Historical Reenactors colonized Camelot for instance, though many question the accuracy of their reenacting. In general though, people who went to the Outer Colonies did so because they wanted to leave everything and everyone behind them. They went in search of a new life and they built it. Their worlds reflect that.
In America, my family’s strategy was to strengthen those they thought could break the Union. In Europe though, the French Revolution was a clarion call of just how dangerous a revolution of the disaffected masses could be. Many of my family died in it, and we vowed to never allow that again. Any reformer was seen as another potential murderer of noble bloodlines and was stamped out without mercy. This did not improve the mood of the disaffected masses.
Over the years, the gengineers have uplifted most of the dog breeds. The process works best on the larger breeds. I guess there’s questions of brain size versus skull size and such. But they’ve refined the uplifting process pretty good until even the toy breeds can get the full treatments. And I’ve learned to never underestimate the vocabulary of a pissed off Chihuahua. Which, come to think of it, is most Chihuahuas I’ve met.