Out of all of the issues with primary sources on the revolution, especially its earliest days before it became clear just how momentous the events would become, the Emperor is subject to the gravest of them. More than any other major figure of the revolution, there is nearly no documentation for why the Emperor made the decisions they did, what their thoughts on events were, or even what their ultimate plans were. Historians have been forced to reconstruct these by essentially guessing, looking at the Emperor’s actions in the past and attempting to reconstruct their most likely train of thought. The delegates of the Symposium were in approximately the same situation as the historians, but with significantly less time.
The lack of sources on the Emperor’s decision making is not a flaw of textual transmission in the way many gaps in sources are, but was an intentional facet of the Emperor’s image. A total opacity and impenetrability into their inner life and mind was a feature, not a flaw. While the Empire was still strong and flexible, this was an asset. It put the Emperor above the fray of personality and politics, their ever presistent presence a stabilizing force against excesses of reform or conservatism. That they were occasionally unpredictable helped create an image of a truly responsive and active Emperor. Far less than a human blessed with immortality from unknown means, they were able to portray themself as an omniscient, omnipotent God. This deification was not state policy, but the way the Emperor acted encouraged their subjects if not to worship them, then to consider them as an all powerful force that knew what was best. In order to keep up this perception, the Emperor had to be distant and opaque. They could not seem like someone truly human, they had to appear otherworldly for the illusion of omniscience to be effective. The issue was that the policy of quiet deification the Emperor had been carefully cultivating for millenia had been irrevocably shattered by the Necrotic Decrees.
By declaring that they would, and indeed even could, die someday, the Emperor imploded the carefully constructed black box around themself. By inviting normal people to the Vaird, a borderline heavenly domain in the popular imagination, the Emperor was desanctifying themself. The entire facade of implicit divinity the Emperor had claimed was in the process of being demolished. Now of course, most people did not literally worship the Emperor as divine (although a few esoteric groups did), the which is why I refer to the process as quiet deification, rather than outright deification. But if you read texts from the Imperial period, you get a sense that that is the best description of how they think about the Emperor. Most prominently, but not exclusively, in the period of intellectual malaise leading up the revolution, the Emperor is most frequently described in glowing, exuberant terms with their desires framed as “the Emperor’s, and nature’s, will,” conflating the Emperor’s desires with the universe itself. This was not only the result of the Emperor’s policy of distance, their extreme age and the censorship of the Imperial bureaucracy helped, but it played a major role. This was the intellectual climate that the delegates had been raised in, and now that it had been shattered they were very slowly having to piece together an entirely new interpretation of reality. And for those furthest along in reconstructing their world view, the Emperor’s refusal to recognize the resolution to the Mawr dispute was going to spark massive resistance.
The Emperor first arrived to greet the delegates two days after the Mawr dispute appeared to be solved. The triumvirate of Ghurka, Barahata, and Tromwitz was stable enough that it appeared as though the arguments that had characterized the first week of the Symposium had been successfully solved. For two brief days, the delegates of the Symposium truly believed that they would be able to act as a relatively unbiased, unpoliticial advisory body. These were the only two days in the entire revolution that the entirety of the delegates actually believed this.
To hear the Emperor’s opening address, the delegates were all crowded into the castle’s massive stage. After they were seated, the curtains drew back and the Emperor stood alone to speak. It was the first time any of the delegates had actually seen the Emperor, whose image at that point had never been distributed to the public. They were startled to discover that the gargantuan personality who had dominated human history for the past eight thousand years was in fact a small, frail old figure. Bald, wrinkled, and with a raspy voice, the initial sight evoked a gasp from some of the delegates. Even with all this though, the Emperor was a strong speaker.
As the Emperor began their speech, they started congenially, praising the delegates for managing to coordinate elections and arrive so quickly, before moving into an extended monologue on their experience acting as the Emperor. Throughout all of this, they expressed no inclination that they were displeased by any of the events that had transpired nor did they offer any rationale for the more extreme measures in the Necrotic Reforms other than that “a time of change is arriving on humanity, one that we must take up with vigor.” After speaking for half an hour, the Emperor turned to close the speech by walking into a bombshell.
“It is unfortunate then that some choose to disrupt that great dream [of human unity] with plots to foil the true representatives of this realm. It deeply saddened me when I learned that some delegates of this very Symposium, no doubt of very little repute and myopic vision, conspired against this. I am certain it was not many, for I know the majority of my subjects and my delegates truly believe in our mission and would never purposefully disrupt it without being manipulated by unsavory individuals, but it is unfortunate nevertheless that so many were manipulated as such. It is clear that the lawful government of a planet is the only one authorized to determine a delegate, it is not the Symposium’s right to decide that on its own. As I’m sure all of you understand, and as my most loyal subjects will approve and rejoice, I will take actions to remedy this evil imposed on us by the enemies of the Empire and humanity. For the overwhelming majority of you that I know remain obedient subjects, I thank you yet again for sacrificing your time and ability to this project of renewal. We will begin work in two days, once the traitors have been cleaned out.”
As the Emperor quickly left the stage, a murmur arose from the delegates. This was going to be the first real test as to if they could stand in direct opposition to the Emperor. It all depended on whether or not the unconscious reinterpretation of the Emperor that they were all engaging in had gone far enough that they would be willing to defy an explicit order from the absolute power in the universe. There were at least two people who unambiguously had gone that far, and indeed may have been harboring more radical sympathies that they were keeping hidden for the moment: Colonel Javier Simsek and Leaf Rivers.
After his pivotal role in resolving the Mawr dispute (at least until the Emperor opened it back up again), Simsek was looked at as one of the most prominent delegates. At this point in the revolution that wasn’t as impressive as it sounds, he was really only well known among the organized Anti-Imperial bloc, whose active members probably made up a bit less than 10% of the Symposium. Even now as tensions were clearly rising, a shocking amount of delegates were only half paying attention to what they considered mere “procederal matters.” Simsek’s experience made it immediately obvious to him what the power and tradition of the Emperor mystified for others: any attempt by the Emperor to remove the unloyal delegates (probably including him) would not be done by magic, but would require the physical force and bodies of the military. If they could convince the military to refuse to obey the Emperor’s orders, whether that be through the common soldiers or the commanding officer, they could cut off the Emperor’s ability to enforce their will.
Leaf Rivers, the pro-mining corporation advisor to Ghale Thusif, had been one of the relatively early individuals to get involved in Q’s Anti-Imperial bloc. It had been they who had alerted Thusif to the movement and for the moment, they were the member of the duo most prescient to the shifting political moment. Just like Simsek, they had spotted the facts of power and were willing to mobilize on behalf of it. In the aftermath of the speech, the two of them quickly gravitated toward each other and began to plot. It was decided that Rivers would be tasked with getting the delegates to politically support resistance, while Simsek would have the more critical (and probably more difficult) task of convincing the military to not follow its orders.
Rivers initially had an easy time, starting with the Anti-Imperials closest to them. Thusif and them were personally close, while Q and many of the most active Anti-Imperials were easily convinced that resistance was both possible and desirable. They started running into difficulties when talking to any delegate not actively at risk of being arrested. In order to motivate people into resisting the Emperor, Rivers needed some ideal for them to rally around that would have as much appeal and spiritual power as the collapsing edifice that surrounded the Emperor once had. For what would become the virtue that in time billions would fight and die in the name of, Rivers took only a few minutes.
“Delegates and advisors, you may have heard that there are those in this satellite who have been misled. That there are those who have lost their way. That there are those who have lost sight of humanity’s greatest virtues. And I am here to tell you that all of that is true. That as the years have passed, the greatest of all the virtues has been lost, not by the delegates of this Symposium by the Emperor themself – the perfect beauty of JUSTICE!”
Invoking “justice,” a fundamental principle that everyone agreed on, was a political masterstroke by Rivers, although they almost certainly were not planning for just how effective it would be. With the assistance of a few other of the more active Anti-Imperials in gaining a congregation, Rivers was able to give a speech to many of the delegates in a smaller auditorium (the opening of which is quoted above). They railed on the failure of the Emperor to maintain the virtues of humanity, on the historic decline of the Galactic Empire, and on the absurdity of the charges the Emperor had unilaterally declared. Critically, Rivers declared that the Emperor could not, by the inherent principles of justice itself, simply remove a delegate. If they wished to do so, they must go through official, court sanctioned channels. The delegates, intellectual voids to this point, ate it up.
There has been a lot of analysis and criticism by historians on this speech, for good reason. It was the first major work of oratory of the revolution and really the first real text of any kind that can be analyzed. Prior to this there was politics, but the ideal of justice would move the politics into ideological conflict through which normal individuals could assign themselves a role. The speech itself can be approximately divided in two: the historical section and the philosophical section. The historical section features a recounting of the decline of justice in the Imperium and has essentially no basis in actual history. It appears that Rivers, being a former minor corporate union negotiator, had no real knowledge of history and fabricated most of it using various events they only fuzzily recalled. This was not called out in the immediate aftermath of giving the speech, most likely because none of the delegates there knew much history either. The modern study of history really only picked up in the post-revolutionary period. The second half has been commented on much more extensively and been subject to considerable debate among both historians and philosophers. Rivers’ claim that the Emperor was not and could not be above justice, that they could not be allowed to declare innocent people guilty was legally nonsense, but philosophically was drawing on a tradition going back to the roots of the human tradition. The question that has dogged historians since this point is where Rivers would have gotten these ideas from, and where they would have gotten them so deeply stuck in their head that they were able to call upon them at a moment’s notice to frantically write a speech opposing the sovereign. To avoid diving into several hundred years of historiography, the answer can be shortened to “we have no idea.” There is no evidence and no reason to believe Rivers had ever read any philosophy, but either they must have or they independently came to their own conclusions that were shockingly similar of several philosophers (this point of view is taken by several philosophers using it as evidence that their own beliefs are obvious from the natural use of reason, but this seems too ridiculous to affirm). Either way, Rivers had made the point they did and it was shockingly effective.
The mood of the Symposium changed rapidly within a matter of hours. While nearly all the delegates had been willing to accept the Imperial decree, after Rivers’ efforts a defiant mood was overtaking the camp (or at least a significant minority of it, it’s unclear still how many delegates were not paying close attention). Still though, while Rivers had been successful at convincing the delegates that resistance was acceptable and indeed virtuous, the resolution of the crisis would ultimately depend on whether Colonel Simsek could replicate that success.
Ultimately, all authority on military affairs on the Vaird came down to the decisions of General Lorkisian. Lorkisian (mononominative) had been born to a prestigious line of military officers stretching back in time past the Early Imperial Dark Age. Family tradition held that their founding member had been one of the loyal servants to the Emperor who personally stood by their side when they overthrew the previous decadent regime. Such a claim is impossible to prove and most likely a fabrication, but the spirit of ancient service to the Imperial crown is undeniably correct. Throughout all the major events of Imperial military history, it is not difficult to find a Lorkisian involved if one looks for a little bit (“Lorkisian” was the family name, but also the sole name of the head of the family. This has led to confusion both for contemporaries and historians).
Given this background, General Lorkisian had a reputation of strict loyalty and subservience to the Emperor. This reputation is not entirely unwarranted, they were known to be harsher toward failure than many of the other generals of the Imperium. A story of him ordering a private who failed to properly fold her uniform to starve for a week while the rest of her unit was lavished with sweets is of dubious veracity, but it speaks to his reputation. This isn’t entirely accurate though and those who were able to look beyond his gruff exterior were able to see that. General Lorkisian’s harshness grew from his overall hatred of inefficiency and unordered life. With just as much enthusiasm as he whipped a disobedient corporal, he was committed to increasing the efficacy of the Imperial military. In this, he was constantly stymied by the Imperial bureaucrats who he came to loathe over the coming years. And through this, Lorkisian became a quiet but fervent believer that something had to be done and most likely some radical break with the past was necessary. He was never going to be a man to lead the revolution, but more than any of the delegates may have known he was willing to let one happen.
Colonel Simsek spoke to General Lorkisian before anyone else. Even with Simsek’s remarkable foresight throughout the revolution, it is unlikely here that he actually thought convincing Lorkisian to disobey orders was possible. But Simsek was not going to leave that path untread just in case it would, because getting Lorkisian’s approval would undoubtedly be the easiest way. What he found when they started talking surprised him.
According to Simsek’s later account, Lorkisian identified immediately what Simsek was proposing to him in coded language and confronted him on it. Rather than rejecting it outright, Lorkisian proposed a deal. He would order his troops to stand down and claim he had never seen the orders, but he must personally confirm that Lorkisian would be given overall command of the Imperial military and that if things went too far or moved too quickly, the entire Symposium would be shut down by force. Seeing no other option, Simsek agreed to the proposal. In the future, Lorkisian would absolutely deny having made either of those demands and the implicit threat that rejecting them would have sparked. Historians tend to side with Simsek though, considering Lorkisian absolutely was appointed overall commander of the Imperial military and absolutely did attempt to break up the revolution with force once he felt things were escalating too far.
With both Simsek and Rivers successful, the plan was hatched. Rather than conveying the orders given to him by the Emperor, Lorkisian would instead allow Rivers to address his troops on the nature of justice and the value in rejecting unjust decrees. The idea proselytizing the virtue of rejecting an unjust order must have made General Lorkisian a bit uncomfortable, but it appears in negotiations he was committed enough to seeing change that he was willing to make that considerable concession to ensure it succeeded. The speech Rivers delivered was essentially the same one they had given to the delegates a few hours earlier and it had the same electrifying effect. While Lorkisian would never officially tell them to disobey orders, the troops obviously had his implicit approval to refuse an arrest and made their refusal known. “We will not be the club of tyranny! We will not murder justice in its crib!” was the call rising from the barracks.
It was a day before any response came from the Emperor, one that as usual we have no knowledge of how or why they reached. It came in the form of a book length reply and several hundred thousand words, going into a deep and convoluted explanation of the philosophical concept of justice and the history of its interpretation throughout the entirety of human history. How the Emperor had the time to write this is entirely unclear and as with some many facets of the Emperor it leaves modern historians to give up any attempt at explanation. The text itself has been fodder for philosophers in the centuries since, especially because it contains information and long excerpts from philosophical texts that had been thought lost in the Dark Age. A further discussion of the philosophy is beyond our point here because it had next to no impact on the revolution and is unclear how delegates (or actors outside the Vaird who would come to prominence over the next few years) even read it. Clearly the delegates had upset the Emperor and upset them enough that they elicited a book length dissertation on the nature of justice.
Most importantly for the course of the revolution, in the preface to the book the Emperor announced that they would be rescinding their arrest order against the so-called disloyal delegates. The revolutionaries had done what had been thought impossible: they had resisted the will of the Emperor and won. And they had won more than they thought. When they finally did meet the Emperor, the mass of delegates that was still somehow unaware of the momentous events that were occurring would be abruptly awoken from their slumber. The Emperor was ready to dissolve the Symposium altogether. It, and its delegates, would reformulate into the Constituional Chamber.