Republic of Saint Guillermo

The Republic of Saint Guillermo was constituted by declaration, upon no land, by persons holding no authority to do so.

The founding assembly, being without territory, without recognition, and without any instrument by which either might be obtained, resolved that these were not obstacles to the founding of a state but the conditions of it, and proceeded.

The Republic takes its name and its patronage from Guillermo, who is the saint of things that ought not to work and do, and who was canonised by the state he founded; which is circular, and invalid under every recognised authority, and which the founding assembly considered at length and found acceptable.

1. 1(1)The Republic of Saint Guillermo is constituted as a sovereign association of persons and not of land. It exists wherever its citizens are found and nowhere else.
2. 1(2)The Republic is indivisible. No province, dependency or overseas possession may be created, there being nothing to divide.
3. 1(3)The seat of government is the Office of the Registrar, wherever that office is for the time being kept.

1. 2(1)Sovereignty is vested in the citizen and travels with the citizen. A citizen of Saint Guillermo carries the Republic wherever the citizen happens to be.
2. 2(2)The Republic maintains no borders, no customs service and no immigration control. The Ministry of the Interior is charged with records and not with entry.
3. 2(3)No act of the Republic shall diminish the sovereignty of any citizen, nor shall the sovereignty of one citizen be preferred to that of another.

1. 3(1)Citizenship is universal. No person is excluded by reason of nationality, residence, age, means, occupation, or existing citizenship elsewhere.
2. 3(2)Citizenship is acquired by entry in the register of citizens upon application in the form prescribed at Schedule 1, and submission of that form constitutes the declaration required by this Article.
3. 3(3)Citizenship is free and permanent. No fee is charged for registration and none may be charged. Citizenship, once entered, cannot be revoked by the state.
4. 3(4)Citizenship may be renounced by the citizen in writing. Renunciation is recorded in the Gazette, and the number of the renouncing citizen is retired and is not reissued. Those who renounce remain welcome.

1. 4(1)The Republic shall not claim, purchase, occupy, annex, lease or otherwise acquire territory, whether by instrument, by purchase, by gift or by prescription.
2. 4(2)A gift of land offered to the Republic is declined by the Registrar on receipt, with thanks, and the declinature is recorded.
3. 4(3)Nothing in this Article prevents a citizen from marking a notional frontier at a place of the citizen's own choosing, at the citizen's own risk, under the law of the place concerned.
4. 4(4)It follows from 4(1) that the Republic cannot be invaded, and cannot invade. The founding assembly considered this to be the principal advantage of the arrangement.

1. 5(1)Seventeen ministries are established, enumerated in the Directory of state: the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Meteorology, the Ministry of Public Works, the Office of the Registrar, the Ministry of Complaints, and, by Amendment No. 2, the Ministries of Culture; the Treasury; Foreign Correspondence; Education; Transport; Agriculture and Window-Boxes; Sport and Recreation; Heritage and Archives; Health and Rest; Science and Measures; Tourism; and Posts and Postmarks.
2. 5(2)Each ministry publishes a quarterly return to the Gazette. A ministry that has nothing to report reports that fact.
3. 5(3)No further ministry may be established except by amendment of this Constitution, and no ministry may be abolished while a matter stands before it.
4. 5(4)In every ministry save the Office of the Registrar the offices of Minister, Minister of State and Under-Secretary are open to any citizen on appointment for a term of one year, renewable. The number of such offices is not limited. No citizen holds more than one office at a time. An office resigned is not refunded, and a citizen who has resigned may take up another. (Amendment No. 2, confirmed 24 August 2026 by Decree 5 of 2026.)

1. 6(1)The Guillermine Gazette is the newspaper of state and the sole organ of publication. What is not published in the Gazette has not been done.
2. 6(2)The Gazette is supplied to all citizens without charge in electronic form. A printed edition may be issued to subscribers at a fee covering manufacture and carriage.
3. 6(3)Decrees take effect on the day following publication unless otherwise stated in the decree.

1. 7(1)All offices of state are filled by public register, and the register remains open to inspection at all times.
2. 7(2)A seat left vacant for four consecutive quarters reverts to the Ministry of the Interior for reallocation.
3. 7(3)Certified transcripts of this Constitution are supplied by the Registrar without charge to any person on application.
4. 7(4)Corrections to any register preserve the original text in the margin.
5. 7(5)The register of citizens is kept in the order of arrival and in no other order. The sequence of numbers is unbroken, no number is withdrawn, and no number is reissued. The first entry is of no higher standing than the last.
6. 7(6)No office confers authority over a citizen. Offices are held in service and not in rank, and any citizen may petition any office directly, in any form, without introduction.

1. 8(1)The device of the Republic is the spiral, turning clockwise from the centre. It shall not be reproduced reversed.
2. 8(2)The flag of the Republic is prescribed at Schedule 2 and shall be manufactured to that specification and no other.
3. 8(3)All instruments, documents and regalia issued by the Republic are commemorative in character and are to be so described wherever they are issued.

1. 9(1)This Constitution may be amended only by public gazette notice, laid for one full quarter before taking effect.
2. 9(2)No amendment may abolish the register of citizens, break the sequence of citizen numbers, or cause the Republic to acquire territory.
3. 9(3)The four schedules annexed hereto form part of this Constitution.

1. 10(1)The Republic recognises every other nation unconditionally, immediately, and without being asked, and asks nothing in return.
2. 10(2)The Republic shall not petition for recognition of itself. A state that must be acknowledged in order to exist did not exist to begin with.
3. 10(3)Instruments of recognition are issued by the Registrar and entered in the Register of Representation. Recognition once extended is not withdrawn.

1. 11(1)The Republic maintains no army and shall raise none.
2. 11(2)Grievance is the only weapon permitted to the Republic, and the only weapon permitted against it. It shall be filed in writing with the Ministry of Complaints.
3. 11(3)Every grievance shall be answered in writing and the answer published, whether or not the matter falls within the competence of the Republic. No grievance is dismissed for being small.

1. 12(1)Once in each year every citizen shall forgive one person.
2. 12(2)This is the only duty of citizenship. It cannot be enforced, the Republic has no means of knowing whether it has been discharged, and it is nevertheless required.

The application for entry in the register of citizens is made on Form C-1, stating the name to be entered, an electronic mail address, and a country of residence recorded for statistical purposes only. The name stated is the name published in the public registry, in full and without abbreviation. Any name may be chosen as a citizen, excluding offensive, derogatory, or hateful names in any language.

The flag of the Republic is a rectangle in the proportion 2:3 (hoist to fly), the ground being state pink, and bearing at the centre of the field the spiral device in state lime, turning clockwise from the centre.

The inks of state are pink (#F5157F) and lime (#C8E31A). No third colour is admitted to the flag.

The device is appliquéd and not printed. A single-colour rendering of the device, in black upon white, is authorised for seals, stamps, embossing and marks of authority, and for no other purpose.

The flag shall not be displayed inverted, nor the device reversed, nor the proportion altered in manufacture.

Marginal note under Article 7(4): the proportion was given as 3:5 from 22 to 25 August 2026. Confirmed at 2:3 by Decree 6 of 2026 and construction sheet SG/PW/SPEC/2, published in Gazette No. 2.

1. 3.1The Republic holds that no citizen is under any obligation to be realistic. Every citizen has the right to attempt what they have no standing to attempt, and the Republic recognises the attempt as sufficient grounds for citizenship.
2. 3.2The Republic recognises no expert and no authority over any field. Any citizen may take up any discipline at any age, in any condition, and the Republic holds that permission was never required and was never anyone's to grant.
3. 3.3Every citizen has the right to be new. The Republic keeps no record of how long a citizen has been bad at something, and holds the first day and the ten-thousandth to be of equal standing.
4. 3.4Every citizen has the right to build a thing that does not exist. Where a citizen is informed that the thing is impossible, the objection is entered in the record and disregarded.
5. 3.5The Republic asks that no citizen be small on its account. A citizen who diminishes themselves in order to be accepted has been failed by the Republic, and the failure is the Republic's to correct.
6. 3.6Every citizen has the right to begin again, in full, at any age, without accounting for the prior attempt. The Republic maintains no register of failures and would not consult it if it did.
7. 3.7Every citizen has the right to be serious about a thing that others hold to be trivial. The Republic does not rank the objects of devotion, having been founded on a dredging error and being in no position to judge.
8. 3.8Every citizen has the right to say the ambitious thing out loud. No citizen may be held to account for a stated intention that was not fulfilled, the statement itself being the act the Republic recognises.
9. 3.9Every citizen has the right to their own standard, and to be measured against it alone. A citizen who has met their own standard has satisfied the Republic entirely.
10. 3.10Every citizen has the right to work slowly. The Republic, which took two years to register its first citizen, holds that a thing made carefully over a long period is not late.
11. 3.11Every citizen has the right to keep an unfinished thing unfinished, and to return to it at any distance of years. The Republic recognises the making as the work, whether or not the thing is completed.
12. 3.12Every citizen has the right to change entirely. The former position is struck from the record without prejudice under Article 7(4), and no inference may be drawn from the correction.
13. 3.13Every citizen has the right to take a thing seriously in public. Irony is permitted in the Republic but is nowhere required, and no citizen may be compelled to pretend they care less than they do.
14. 3.14Every dog is a citizen from birth and requires no application under Article 3(2). The Republic holds the dog to be its first and least troublesome citizen, and notes that the patron of the Republic asked for nothing, proved nothing, and was canonised regardless.
15. 3.15No citizen may be ranked against another. The register is kept in the order prescribed by Article 7(5) and in no other order, and the first entry is of no higher standing than the last.

Note. The rights in this Schedule are not enforceable, and the Republic maintains no court in which they could be claimed. They are recorded here because a state ought to say plainly what it believes a person is capable of, and because a citizen who has read them may find they were true before the Republic said so.

1. 4.1The Republic shall not sell citizenship, nor any grade or condition of it, at any price, under any name. The Republic sells what it makes and never what it is. This Schedule does not limit fees charged under Article 6(2) for manufacture and carriage.
2. 4.2The Republic shall hold no record of a citizen that the citizen may not read in full on request, without charge and without stating a reason, and shall keep no record it would not print in the Gazette.
3. 4.3The Republic shall not rank its citizens, nor publish any measure of their standing, nor maintain any order among them save the order prescribed by Article 7(5).
4. 4.4The Republic shall answer some letters and petitions it receives, whether or not the matter is within its competence and whether or not the Republic is able to assist.
5. 4.5The Republic shall not compel any citizen to any act, and possesses no means by which compulsion could be effected. Article 12 is a duty and is not an exception to this Schedule, being unenforceable by design.
6. 4.6The Republic shall post its errors. Where the state has been wrong, the correction appears in the Gazette above the name of the office responsible, and the original text is preserved under Article 7(4).
7. 4.7The Republic shall not represent that its instruments carry legal effect, and holds that a thing which must be mistaken for something else was not worth issuing.
8. 4.8The Republic shall not outlive its usefulness in secret. Should the Republic cease to be worth belonging to, the Registrar shall publish that finding in the Gazette, and the register shall be closed with the sequence intact.

This Constitution confers no rights that any authority will recognise, no protection that any border will honour, and no status that any registry will accept.

It records what the Republic holds to be true of the people in it: that they are capable of more than they have been told, and that a person who has been counted once is not easily uncounted.