Rather than focus on the individual, let us think about the wider context.
We can divide human civilization into the Inner Sphere and the Periphery. The Inner Sphere wants to control the Periphery and the Periphery wants to self-determine. A similar center/margin tension had been at play within the Inner Sphere up through the 2560s, with the Terran Hegemony seeking to politically dominate the Spheroid States and the latter emphasizing their sovereignty. By the late 2560s, this tension in the Inner Sphere stabilized when the Spheroid States agreed to participate in a balance of power against one another hosted by the Terran Hegemony; hence, the Star League. Under the banner of the Star League, the Terran Hegemony unilaterally articulated a right to authority over all humanity throughout the galaxy via the Pollux Proclamation of 2575. By 2596, the allied militaries of the Inner Sphere had forcibly subjugated the Periphery, incorporating at gunpoint four erstwhile sovereign nations into the Star League as the Territorial States.
Whereas the Spheroid States conceived of themselves as sovereigns participating in the Star League as a matter of consent, the Territorial States consisted of conquered subjects whose consent was legally immaterial. This represented an inconsistency in the constitutional logic of the Star League: why would the Star League require the consent of some members but not others? Was there really a legal distinction to be made of the difference between being marginal to the Terran Hegemony (i.e., being a Spheroid State) and being marginal to the Inner Sphere (i.e., being a Territorial State)? Or was this purely a matter of might making right? if so, the supposed sovereignty of the Spheroid States was also compromised, even despite that protecting their sovereignty was the very basis of their participation.
The Star League thus served both to stabilize as well as to aggravate the fundamental center/margin tensions of galactic civilization. And this precarious dynamic found its most strained expression in the Rim Worlds Republic. Uniquely among the nations of the Periphery, the Republic embraced domination by the Star League; or rather its First Consul did. Even before the Pollux Proclamation, the Republic functioned as a protectorate of the Terran Hegemony, probably because it was ruled by the Amaris family, who, in turn, were originally Hegemony officials. The Amaris family were thus not only outsiders in the very nation they governed but also represented the (foreign) centralizing will to dominate the marginal nation. Case in point, First Consul Gregory Amaris leveraged optical loyalty to the Hegemony/Star League to bolster his own rule of the Republic. He was overthrown only four months after the Pollux Proclamation.
Star League allowed the resulting provisional government to rule the Republic for 21 years. Only four years after finally being restored to power, Gregory was assassinated as part of a military coup that installed his son Richard as a figure head (and hostage). Again, Star League failed to intervene, leaving Richard to stage his own reverse-coup five years later to reconsolidate effective control over the Republic by House Amaris. Because these 30 years of political turmoil never amounted to a formal objection to the its de jure authority over the Republic, Star League was inclined to turn a blind eye. This apparent abandonment is the the basis for grudge against House Cameron supposedly harbored by House Amaris. But by the time Stefan Amaris became president of the Republic, House Amaris rule of the Republic had not been challenged for over 130 years. The period between 2599 and 2604 may have taught House Amaris not to rely on Star League rescuing it from localized resistance. But the larger lesson seemed to be that Amaris rule was nonetheless aligned with the center claiming authority over the margin.
>TBC<
