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The IoM is neo-Gothic and parallel's Imperial Britain's architecture in the late 19th century. In fact the IoM has many parallels with Victorian imperial Britain.

The PDF = the Yeomanry, a kind of Home Guard.
The IG = Native and volunteer forces, such as the armies of the East India Company.
The SM = regular army.

Before widespread telegraph, Britain ruled a massive empire with slow, indirect bureaucracy. Local agents and governors had the initiative in many situations because of the lack of communication.

The status of Victoria, who was made Empress half way through the period, resembles the Emporer's. She was respected and venerated as the figurehead of the EMpire, but had little real power since she had withdrawn herself from public life following the early death of Albert in 1861 (this itself parallels the Emporer's seclusion on the Golden Throne).

The religious aspect of the IoM is paralleled in Victorian ideas of muscular Christianity and the "white man's burden", involving a lot of racism though obviously not the full genocidal tendencies of the modern IoM. The attempt to cut back and replace local culture with British ideas is a "culture-cide".

It's worth thinking about, anyway.

That's not a bad look at it either - and under those circumstances, its not surprise that born out of that time frame in Britannia the adoption of the "Neo-Byzantine" form of architecture.



Though really what those examples emphasize if the actual Imperial -if diffuse- nature of the IoM (and how pre and early Industrial Imperial organizations tend to parallel one another in terms of organization), while the Dune universe is a parallel of Western European Feudal society, a society that isnt actually conductive to real Empire building, ala the Byzantines, Britian, or the IoM.