Character Study of the Week: Sun-Tzu Liao
Who: Sun-Tzu Liao
What: Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation
First Lord of the Star League
Celestial Wisdom
When: 3031 - 3113
Weapon of Choice: Politics
Intelligence
Intrigue
EMP-6A Emperor
The third Capellan Chancellor prominent in fiction, the longest featured in fiction, Sun-Tzu is certainly the most influential Chancellor since the Star League, if not ever. His accomplishments, his impact in the Battletech universe, are going to reverberate for a long time.
As a Chancellor Sun-Tzu breaks the mould we’re used to. Though still a dictator, as all the Successor Lords ultimately are, he is not as great a terror to his own people as he is those of enemy states, though his initial public moves were misleading.
Now all but forgotten is that early in his reign Sun-Tzu Liao fostered the image that he was incompetent so as to get others to underestimate him. This lasted until his first grand moves to retake the Sarna March.
As a Liao Sun-Tzu upholds the traditional form of being cunning and ruthless, he is as intelligent as his grandfather and as capricious as either of his predecessors, showing a profound flexibility in his planning. Furthermore he is not overtly insane, the trait all Liaos are tarred and feathered with thanks to the majority of fiction feature Chancellor Liaos.
By his own admission he is slightly paranoid, though given the environment he was raised in this is less a mental illness and more of a survival trait. Nonetheless it sticks with him and he copies his mother’s tactics of putting allies within his own government at subtle odds against each other as a hedge against potential betrayal.
Sun-Tzu is also rather obsessive. Again this may not be a mental illness in the strictest sense, as the object of his obsession is the desire to re-establish the Capellan Confederation as a strong nation, beholden to no one, and reclaiming its former borders.
That last one is a bit tricky, Sun-Tzu focuses on what was lost in the Fourth Succession War, which principally means the Chaos March and St Ives Compact, leading to a two front war. When told, quite sensibly, by then fiancé Isis Marek that he should consolidate and focus his forces on one objective at a time he snaps, berates her, reveals quite a bit of his personal motivation and then breaks off their very long running engagement.
This would probably only have been the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back, the engagement by that point was ridiculous, any gains from marrying Isis were long gone and largely limited to giving Hanse Davion a heart attack and far more limited assistance in assaulting the Sarna March than Sun-Tzu would have liked. But that was Isis.
Naomi Centrella, his eventual wife, was a different story. Though from a Periphery nation she shared a similar outlook to that of Sun-Tzu and was far more a partner. This shows up principally in how the Trinity Alliance plays out, the Taurians are cannon fodder, the Canopians are far more equal, even allowed to withdraw with little animosity at one point causing the Taurians to further commit themselves on Capellan fronts.
Did Sun-Tzu love either woman? Doubtful. He certainly considered both useful, but only Naomi did he respect. Love is not something Sun-Tzu would allow himself. This is another key difference between himself and his predecessors. Max was all about Max, Romano was self-indulgent in her games and manipulations, Sun-Tzu is largely anhedonic. Small pleasures he allows himself, yes, but everything is working towards those goals.
Remember when I said re-establishing the Confederation’s former borders was interesting? While the pre-Fourth Succession War boundaries were the immediate goal, and never achieved thanks to the Chaos March, the Blake Protectorate, the Jihad and the Republic of the Sphere, had he managed to achieve those it’s worth considering if he would have gone further. Sun-Tzu was never one to hold back, and the nation would be riding high on a string of military victories, and it feeds into the obsession. Alas we have no real indications, though it would have revealed much about his character.
For one thing it would have fed into his role as an antagonist to, well, pretty much everyone. Sun-Tzu entered into only useful alliances and discarded them once they had served his purposes. The Canopian alliance is the only long term one because, as his marriage shows, there was a strong partnership and mutual respect at play. Everyone was to be used or fought.
This is also the traditional role of Capellan Chancellors, if not Liaos in general. Cunning, ruthless, manipulative, all with goals of conquest, they make perfect antagonists.
Of course as mentioned Sun-Tzu’s goals of conquest aren’t simply those of a warmonger or wannabe First Lord.
Funnily enough he was the First Lord, and used that position for all it was worth to the betterment of the Confederation, creating a military and political situation that gave him casus belli for going to war with St Ives.
He cared nothing for the position beyond what use it could be, but it is the pinnacle of his political skills and far from his only political move, this sort of thing further marks him as an antagonist in the Battletech setting.
This is further cemented by the few times he attempts actual military action in person. While minimally trained in the military arts, thanks to his mother’s paranoia about her heir, he shows outright incompetence on Outreach while training with other up and coming nobles, self-sabotaging all attempts to reach out to him, further isolating himself and the Confederation, reinforcing the perception that the Confederation was a weak, self-destructive nation. His first in fiction political move.
At that time he piloted a stereotypical Capellan machine, a Cataphract, and later ejected from a perfectly serviceable Dire Wolf in a rare miscalculation to make cousin Kai Allard-Liao look bad.
During actual military action Sun-Tzu pilots an Emperor, gold plated of course. As one of the most powerful assault designs that could be called Capellan at the time it was perfect for him. Though in actuality given the name he could never pilot anything else. And in this he proves to be at least competent, though he would on occasion have a Death Commando pilot in his stead because Sun-Tzu is not stupid and knows full well what his falling in battle would represent.
Nonetheless that is what he chooses in the end, precisely because of what it represents at that point, the elevation of himself from a mere Chancellor with a cult following into a legend that would power the Capellan people for generations.
I won’t delve further into his death, it’s a rich source of debate and conspiracy theory, and that’s just how Sun-Tzu would have wanted it. And from a writing point of view it makes sense as it furthers the legend, ambiguity always serves that purpose.
The fact is as far as anyone can prove Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao died in combat fighting a foe holding traditional Capellan worlds, ostensibly rising to heaven because there was no body.
And that is his legacy, as much as the Capellan people have been revitalised and empowered by his efforts Sun-Tzu is a legend on par with Shiro Kurita, Aleksandr Kerensky or Jerome Blake.
It’s an interesting fate because the cult of personality that formed around him was a side effect of his efforts, not a deliberate act. For you see Sun-Tzu was not infallible, Operation Guerrero proves that, he utterly miscalculated how far Thomas Marik would go in prosecuting his part in the war, did not foresee the Chaos March develop, and was later foiled by his own obsession as mentioned earlier.
Daoshen may yet be considered another. While their relationship devolved in a manner similar to Takashi and Theodore Kurita in that both relationships were coloured by successor paranoia it’s clear that Daoshen is a return to the self-centred Liao stereotype that Sun-Tzu knew nearly brought the nation down, even while his son was competent and absorbed Sun-Tzu’s dedication to the nation.
All things considered it’s hard to call these miscalculations in the strictest sense but still represents something that isn’t in Sun-Tzu’s control.
Likewise the Black May attacks, though in all fairness not even God knows what Kali Liao is going to do at any given time.
These are probably his greatest set back, they are a terrorist attack on such a scale that he knows it courts retribution beyond that of St Ives and it’s currently dubious ally the Federated Commonwealth.
He reprioritises military assets, cooperates with former foes and gives up his sister to avoid annihilation since no decent nation can let him get away with gassing what he claims are his own people.
It barely works out well because Kali is so obviously mind bogglingly insane and out of control, and he is thankful for it, even though it turns his war with St Ives into a quagmire.
This means that he is at the mercy of events, something more frequently associated with protagonists, which he is for two novels. This muddies Sun-Tzu’s overall role, and humanises him considerably, and the Confederation by extension.
While far from a perfect protagonist we can no longer see him as just another villainous Capellan out to take whatever he can, and this characterisation carries over into the Jihad era. Remember, though the Confederation pulls out of the Star League first Sun-Tzu makes no aggressive actions until George Hasek acts first.
Thus, while he starts out as a stereotypical continuation of a theme and winds up a legend Sun-Tzu is the first fully realised and fleshed out Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation, providing a traditionally antagonistic faction with a hero and an icon counter to what has come before, enriching the faction and indeed the setting as a whole.
