The History of the Emperor Card

The Emperor is perhaps one of the least interesting trump cards, in terms of its evolution in the old decks. The essential features of the design change very little from place to place or through the centuries. The Emperor sits on his throne, holding a scepter, and accompanied by the heraldic Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, typically on his shield. In the Tarot de Marseille and some other designs, he sits in a very stylized pose, in profile with one leg tucked back to form a triangle. (See the Tarot de Marseille and Belgian Tarot images here.)

The Waite-Smith designs gave us an Emperor seen full-face, looking like a patriarch with his long white beard (the Visconti-Sforza designs show a similar grandfatherly figure). Waite-Smith also introduced the Ram's heads on the throne to represent Aries, and the mountain peaks in the background. I think the Emperor in the historic decks is actually a stronger masculine figure; he appears to be in his prime, with his pose emphasizing the phallic connotation of the scepter held stiffly upright.

Sometimes the heraldic eagle is liberated from the shield and becomes a free-standing statue or live bird. (See the Minchiate Etruria and Soprafino designs). The Emperor is almost always bearded, although the Soprafino offers an interesting exception--I think he looks a bit like Rex Harrison. The eagle ultimately goes back to the signa of the Roman legions.

Visconti-Sforza Triumph Cards, c.1450	Western Emperor Minchiate Etruria, c.1725	Soprafino (Della Rocca) Tarot, 1835

The Emperor sometimes got caught up in the censorship imposed on the Papess and Pope, as when the Bolognese cardmakers in 1725 replaced the entire quaternity of Papess, Pope, Empress, and Emperor with four moors or turks. In the Minchiate, the Emperor is assigned number III because of the removal of the Papess from the deck.

Most people today are unaware of the peculiar institution of the Holy Roman Empire in European history. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the image persisted of a unified dominion uniting all of Christendom under a single ruler. Charlemagne's coronation by the Pope in 800 as "Emperor of the Romans" was an early expression of this ideal. Although Christian kingdoms felt obliged to endorse the concept of the Empire, in practice it was politically impossible to actually bring them all under a single yoke. By the time of the invention of the Tarot, the Emperor was elected by a council of German princes. He might be a formidable political and military force or an impotent figurehead, depending on the shifting political allegiances of the day. It is safe to assume that in the first centuries of the tarot, people would have seen in the Emperor both the ideal of a united Christendom and the cynical reality of political manipulation.

There is a bit of wit and irony in the design of the game of tarot, I think. The Emperor, despite his trappings of rulership, is a very low-ranking trump. He can capture a king or queen, but is worth no points himself. And a good player is unlikely to lose a valuable court card to the Emperor. So like many of the lower trumps, the Emperor is "filler", a card that might win a low-value trick during the middle of a hand, but still much less desirable to hold than high-numbered trumps, court cards, or even the Magician or Fool! One can see in this an interesting commentary on the importance of the real Emperor in Reniassance Europe.

Nevertheless, the ideal persists. The Emperor is king over the kings, uniting all four suits under his rule. He symbolizes the apex of the secular hierarchy, the ultimate manifestation of the male ego. If one considers only the formal structure of feudalism, then the Emperor is the absolute ruler of the world. And no doubt he sees himself that way, even as he is outranked by 17 other trumps and holds only the most tenuous grip over the kings and queens who supposedly answer to him.

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