Wanda Maximoff had never dined in Latverian Castle before, so she had no idea that the Emperor's so-called mealtime was actually an hour later than the mealtimes of civil servants in other departments. By the time he began lunch, those civil servants had already started their afternoon work. Thus, even during meals, the Emperor had to receive department heads and secretaries from every branch. Just as Wanda Maximoff picked up an appetizer of garlic butter bread and vinegar-dressed crab legs, three Military Affairs Department officers in dark blue Planetary Navy uniforms were led into the Emperor's private dining room by Hammurabi, interrupting Wanda's attempt to share her food with her teacher.
The Military Affairs Department functioned much like a combination of the United States Ministry of Defence and part of Strategic Command. It was the department with the broadest jurisdiction over Latveria's military forces, overseeing nearly all planetary naval, ground, air, and auxiliary forces aside from the Void Fleet and Gene-modded Warriors. After the South Federation surrendered, its armed forces were absorbed into this department and reorganized around Gene-modded Warriors. The surrendered populist militias were likewise broken apart and restructured, with commissars serving as discipline officers and ideological propagandists to prevent the warlordism and populism that the Emperor despised from resurfacing within the military.
Although the importance of the Planetary Navy had greatly diminished after the introduction of Helicarriers, the Military Affairs Department still retained a Planetary Navy branch and built it into a more economical planetary defense force than the Void Navy and Helicarriers. As a result, the Latvian Navy occupied a far more awkward position than either the Air Force or Army. The U.S. Marine Corps structure had been replaced by Air Force Marines, while the overwhelming majority of special operations were handled by Gene-modded Warriors.
The Emperor