Welcome to the first in the four part Capellan Chancellor series, where I'll be taking a look at the four most recent Chancellors, who have been covered in fiction and held prominence within the setting in recent years.
Character Study of the Week: Maximilian Liao
Who: Maximilian Liao
Aka: The Diablo
What: Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation
When: 2964 – 21 April, 3036
Weapon of Choice: Politics
Manipulation
In a fictional setting that has been running as long as Battletech there is a definite evolution, not simply of game tactics, but also of characters. Not simply in terms of development but also in terms of legacy, many a unit description describes regiments as having a character and requiring a commander that can continue that character, the same is somewhat true of nations and factions.
As the first Chancellor seen in fiction Maximilian Liao sets the tone for all who follow him, both chronologically in the setting as chronologically as written characters, which means he influences the characteristics of his predecessors as much as his successors.
And the tone set is one that emphasises traits such as a scheming nature, ruthless cunning, grand ambition and a hefty dose of crazy.
Part of this is the demands of the setting, a war game, which requires antagonism and impetus for the conflict. The personal ambitions of the respective faction leaders are enough to start with but the fiction requires a deeper motivation, and a means if differentiating the leaders. No less ruthless or cunning than his neighbours Max is somewhat more ambitious considering the state of his nation, and is differentiated by the crazy which increased as fortune turns against him and inadvertently became a defining trait.
Thus the majority of Capellan Chancellors are best described as preferring plots over direct combat, in contrast to the other four states, all of which have a good many leaders fall in combat as they led from the front. It has been a rare Chancellor who has risked their life in such a manner.
A good number of Chancellors have also been described as mentally unstable, and even more have been dictatorial in their approach to leadership.
Neither of these are rare in the Great Houses but only for the Capellans are they considered to be innate characteristics of the House and nation, this is a result of Max Liao being our first window into the position.
The weapons of choice list at the beginning of this article is a little incomplete, Max once headed the Red Lances and therefore at the least has some sort of military training, most likely as a MechWarrior, though we have no confirmation of what, if he were one, piloted.
It is rather irrelevant though, whatever military branch he belonged to that was not his weapon. Plots, personal manipulation, these are his weapons, more so than the organisations and individuals that will carry these things out such as the Maskirovka, which was as much a target of manipulation as the Mariks or Davions.
How one treats one’s subordinates and necessary organisations says quite a bit about a character, and quite aside from manipulative it shows a paranoid streak, which to be honest is less a form of crazy than it is a survival instinct in the Great Houses, however combined they are the first stroke in painting Max Liao as a crazy man.
Plot wise it’s a useful, if somewhat overused trait, to have the villain be crazy, it permits a lot of twists and turns that wouldn’t happen under an otherwise right thinking individual.
In this instance it is doubly useful as a pre-exiting condition that is exacerbated by the losses of the Fourth Succession War ground him down and we can see the increasingly desperate and unbalanced reactions from the man make him easily manipulated by Hanse Davion and his secret agents within Max’s own intelligence agency. This ultimately causes him to launch the raid that allows Hanse to deliver a coup de grace.
And even then Max Liao’s reaction is not military, not in the strictest sense, he still plots, manipulates, the hopes he clings to are not those of successful units but for schemes to come to fruition, for political winds to turn against his foes.
Which leads us to . . .
The other tone Max sets is that political characters are villainous characters. While Hanse and Katrina are equally political and manipulative Maximilian uses these exclusively as his tools, whereas the other two are more ‘honourable’, utilising warfare as equally as things like politics, personal and economic manipulation.
So calling him an evil dastard is easy, is it fair?
He is the antagonist of a trilogy, and sets up far more plots against neighbouring realms than he is the subject of (those just happen to be far more successful), so it is easy to call him a villain.
However it is his characterisation that makes him so, from the moment we see him at the end of ‘Warrior: Coupe’ he pretty much screams card carrying villain of the Bondian style. Every picture we see of him, even in the relatively recent ‘Historical: Brush Wars’ one could easily imagine him with a cat on his lap if the image was just large enough to let us see.
He doesn’t care about his people, he doesn’t even seem to care much about his family and more (outwardly) loyal underlings, he only seems to care about his own ambitions to become First Lord.
This taints what good he has done, which was a reversal of fortunes for the Capellan Confederation. Historically he is noted for bringing the nation back from the brink and making it a serious competitor on the international stage.
Two problems: first off this is historical, not seen, unlike the massive losses he presided over which do stick in the mind. Secondly it’s a function of the setting. He is the first Capellan Chancellor we see because all the faction leaders are the first one we see, that’s when the timeline of the game started, and a small, withered, useless nation isn’t much of a credible faction. One that was small and withered but on the rebound is, even if it is a long stretch away from fulfilling its leader’s grand dreams.
Was that First Lord ambition ever realistic? His ambition seemed to be largely based on being preferable to the other four Successor Lords to any two or three of the others.
Technically his grandson Sun-Tzu proved the concept of the compromise candidate quite well, but that was an entirely different game of politics. Ultimately Max would have to have relied upon each Successor Lord placing him ahead of anyone they actively hated (mostly Takashi or Hanse), combined with apathy towards achieving that station themselves (Katrina who just wanted peace and nominally broken Janos) while still allowing him enough leeway to have actual clout with the position.
Something of a tall order, but ambitions like this don’t bend to reality and the painful truth is it’s as good a plan as simply trying to stomp over the rest of the Inner Sphere which seems to have been the collective plan of the Successor Lords for two centuries.
The trouble is Max is delusional when we first see him in writing, so all of his plans come across as tainted by this.
Let’s cast a critical eye towards his schemes. Provoking/fuelling the Marik Civil War, the benefits would have been either an ally along one border, or a vassal along one border, or a distracted foe along one border for a few years, or border with a nation state so tied up in its internal arguments as to be a neutral border, at the cost of losing the direct services of Wolf’s Dragoons a few years early. He attempts the same thing with the same goals a few years later with Michael Hasek-Davion.
Operation: Doppelganger was going to be the complete subversion of a head of state at the cost of one heavily brainwashed individual, the benefits being largely the same as above but with more emphasis on creating a vassal state.
These are gross oversimplifications, but they show a trend, that Max believed in following only the all win scenario.
Nowhere is there mention or consideration of negative consequences, Marik retaliation, Hanse Davion’s reaction, these aren’t discussed as factors.
True he had an accurate read of Janos Marik as a tired old man too tied up in the internal political squabbles of his realm to do much in terms of retaliation, but any other character with plots and schemes as their hat would have at least considered the consequences, judged them and possibly made contingency plans.
Max’s plots don’t really have a central goal instead they list all the possible beneficial outcomes. In other words they all try to revolve around winning something, however marginal, from any given situation.
To be blunt these are all low risk, mixed gain ploys. They make sense for the smallest, poorest resourced, least well-armed of the Successor States, particularly from a defensive standpoint. Unfortunately these ploys are not going to be rewarded by the setting, which by its nature encourages if not requires high risk, high reward actions.
They’re exciting, daring, excuse a lot of plots and combat, and however sensible Max’s actions may be they make him look like a sneak by comparison.
It’s poor for a leader, but great for someone you want to consider a scheming villain, it means they never have to worry about looking good, they won’t stop, and more importantly it offers a writer multiple degrees of success, meaning a massive plot can be foiled but the villain has just enough success to justified their continued plotting.
Nonetheless Maximilian Liao is a fully realised character. He has plans (advance Maximilian), dreams (Maximilian victorious) and goals (all hail Maximilian) and takes steps to achieve these, adding colour and flair to the setting, as well as capturing player attention, holding it well enough to cement his place as a founding character, if not a terribly good Chancellor, for the Confederation at least.
Next week: Romano Liao.
