I'm fine with Alaric not having the political skills of Victor or Katherine (and honestly neither of them were ever that impressive when it came to stuff that was shown while they were doing it instead of the audience just being told "they did this thing and it was very impressive"). The Clans' belief in genetic superiority has always been magical thinking, and let's face it, Katherine was actually quite incompetent when it came to actually ruling.
Both of them were. Incompetent at ruling, that is. Victor thought he could rule from the seat of a battlemech on the front lines, Katherine thought she...was smart at anything EXCEPT chasing power.
that is, she didn't have the intelligence to actually USE it, she could only pursue it.
Victor lacked the ability to use it, AND to pursue it.
But that's what, 3062-3084?
The flaw here, is not Victor or Katherine, it's Alaric and the Republic.
or rather, the amount of force used to make Alaric the Conqueror of the Republic.
not military force, but force as applied to plots and circumstances from outside.
God power, aka the power of the Editorial Direction, which turned what ought to have been an epic struggle between equals, into a wallowing one-sided mess to glorify one, inbred, scion of Steiner and Davion.
but maybe Epic can be SAVED...the problem being that such salvation will have to come from ceasing to flinch and force, and pursuing the rule of natural consequences.
When your overlord is outnumbered a thousand to one, a conquered people
don't stay conquered for long.
When the Germans bombed london into rubble, the British were not cowed. It took a god (Literally a diety) to make Japan surrender-and that's after two atomic bombings. Schoolchildren were making
spears to fight tanks. The SEATO allies bombed so much of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos that people are still bumping into live ordnance over fifty years after it was dropped-notably the USA does not influence Vietnam.
Atrocity has one of two outcomes-the one the war criminal hopes for, where the will of the people to resist is broken, and the one that has somewhat more history behind it, in which their will to resist deepens and stiffens and becomes more resilient. The Warsaw Uprising is an example of the second.
I fear we're not going to get that. Instead they're going to redistribute assets to the factions they didn't kill and leave the Republic dead, because it's not convenient.
That is, after all, largely how they handled the entirety of the Clan Invasion.
but here's a thought for y'all...
Wars are not won on the field of combat. Battles are, but those are only ever part of the story. To win a war you need to break the enemy's resolve, to force him to accept defeat. Otherwise the war will never end. Too many conflicts persist because battles are won but the hearts and minds of the people are not. Winning involves every level of society, from the generals and politicians to the shop girls and street cleaners. The infantryman with his rifle may be the blunt weapon used to win this fight, but he is neither the instigator nor the concluder. ”
— Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht, 3058