I'm sure Ulric would be glad the invasion failed, but he also tried to make sure that if the invasion succeeded the Wolves would "win" it.
Yes, that was his "Plan B" in case he failed in halting the invasion. It's stated outright in the BoK trilogy from what I remember- Phelan questions why Natasha and Ulric are participating. The answer is "
IF the Clans win, it should be us".
I.e, Plan A - Stop the Invasion. Plan B - If Terra falls, it's to Clan Wolf instead of, say, Clan Jade Falcon.
Impartial? :o ??? No ilkhan in the history of the clans, could ever be accused of being impartial, not even St.Nick.
Ulric acted as a Khan of Clan Wolf on Turkayyid, assuming direct control. There's favoritism, there's bias...and then there's what Ulric pulled.
The only other Clan he assumed direct control of on Turkayyid was some Jaguar forces, and that was under the pretense of 'saving them' from killing more
ComGuards.A. "Ulric continued to act against the Grand Council's decision even after he had been proven wrong under the law.". Nope, not really. Under Ulric leadership the wolves were the most successful of the invading clans, which troubled the crusaders to no end, since the wolves were mere weeks from Terra; which is why ilkhan Showers shadowed Ulric and tried his best to slow the wolves with gratuitous "impartiality".
Ulric put the Vipers in the Falcon corridor and the Nova Cats in the Jaguar's corridor. He 'groomed' Phelan, who remarks on this fact several points throughout the trilogy- that Ulric is preparing and testing him for something. This continues long after Ulric was promoted to ilKhan- then there's the actual defeat of the Clans by Focht on Turkayyid of course.
In addition, he manipulated the other Clans into bidding low on Turkayyid, and essentially ensured Focht would win.
B. So it's OK for the crusader council and ilkhan to set the wolves up to fail, but when Ulric returns the favor it's suddenly "treason". Are you still claiming the crusaders weren't bias?
My point exactly. The other Clans'
Khans made him
ilKhan so he would not be
directly leading Clan Wolf anymore, and instead would be busy leading all the Clans. The net result? At worst, Clan Wolf slows down without Ulric's attention and at best the other Clans' progress speeds up.
I.e, They gave him a
job to keep him from leading Clan Wolf- and he led Clan Wolf
anyway. To add insult to injury, he then abused the job to cripple the other Clans.
Yeah, he was a great ilKhan!
Objection! Baseless conjecture. Especially since victory at Tukayyid would've echieved warden supremacy with the Wolves as ilclan and Ulric as the supreme leader of the clans, with the crusaders unable to oppose him.
??? Ulric did not want Clan Wolf to have Terra because that conflicts with his ideology. Clan Wolf is supposed to protect Terra from the other Clans, not invade it.
Reread the end of the third
Blood of Kerensky trilogy. Focht calls him on it. From memory, it was something to the effect of "If you had wanted the Clans to win here today Ulric, they would have"
You know, where Focht basically thanks Ulric from halting the invasion?
Again, politics is not a crime.
Again, baseless conjecture... There's nothing, absolutely nothing to imply the destruction of clan wolf was at any point Ulric's goal; saying so is ridiculous as the charges of genocide. The one thread between Ulric actions is the goal of wolf supremacy.
Again, read the novels. The "
Falcon and the Wolf" and other sourcebooks also have a good summary.
Basically:
1) Ulric intentionally setups a
de facto Trial of Absorption between the Jade Falcons and Clan Wolf. This is in the novels-
Natural Selection IIRC. In any case, when Chistu (may have been Crichell) calls Natasha to hear Clan Wolf's bid for the Trial of Refusal, Ulric is present. Natasha says Ulric will make the bid- he bids
the entire Clan which horrifies the Falcon Khan. He outright
says that bid would turn the Trial into one of Absorption. Ulric smiles that 'magnificent bastard' smile of his he mocks the Falcon with a 'No, no! It's a Trial of Refusal...'
That's Ulric springing the trap on the Falcons, locking both Clans into a battle to the death.
2) Ulric then sends Clan Wolf best and
most Warden forces (with Phelan) to the Inner Sphere on Arc Royal to keep them safe. While in transit, Phelan plays a recording left by Ulric where he reveals that a) Phelan and his wolves are to remain permanently in the Inner Sphere and
Ulric had the path home erased from the computers to prevent them from *ever* returning. In addition, because Ulric knew moving the charges to the Grand Council would mean losing his ilKhanship, he's using the recording to create a new Bloodname for Phelan
in advance as his last act as ilKhan.
Now consider that. Ulric created the Kell Bloodname while he was *still* ilKhan, which means it was before the Grand Council found him guilty. It's
also before he bid the entire Clan Wolf against the Falcons... and it's also before he sent Phelan and the Warden wolves on a one way trip to never return to the Clan Homeworlds.
That means Ulric knew that while he was still ilKhan that he was going to be sending Phelan to the Inner Sphere, and that he was going to bid the entire Clan Wolf against the Falcons. This was all planned out. All of it.
3) The sourcebooks especially make it clear that Ulric's intention was to cripple the Falcons as best he could. Again, check out
Falcon and the Wolf for an example. While the Falcons expected him to draw the Refusal War out as long as he could in the Wolf occupation zone, to delay a resumed invasion, he instead declared the Falcon invasion corridor as the place for the Trial and threw Wolf forces into the corridor. There's notes of the extreme speed and casualties, as well as the bidding away of Aerospace forces. The man racked up as many dead Mechwarriors as he could- recall that Natasha was in a Direwolf B when she fought Joanna? That was because Widowmaker was out of service from damage.
It's noted that Wolf
Crusader forces took the brunt of the action throughout the war. I'm at work, and busy tonight, so it'll take me a couple days to check books... but again, if you look yourself you'll see that Ulric
intentionally took the bright eyed, busy tailed, young Crusader Wolves and shoved them into a meat grinder to kill off as many Falcons and Wolves as he could.
A quick Google search turns up the following on a fansite. I'm almost
positive it's a copy and paste from the
Falcon and Wolf scenario book:
"By virtually destroying the Jade Falcons and the Wolf Clan Crusaders, Ulric hoped to tear out the heart of the Crusader faction and protect the Inner Sphere, as he believed the Clans had been created to do."
4) In
Malicious Intent, Vlad is with Ulric on Wotan (which is how Vlad was able to acquire footage of Chistu's murder of Ulric). Ulric reveals to Vlad that he's engineered the whole thing: He points out that he (Ulric) is going to die on Wotan that day. With that, Clan Wolf will be found guilty of Genocide and be killed by the rest of the Clans. He gives Vlad a choice, either let Clan Wolf die as a traitor, guilty of genocide...or rally as many of the surviving Wolf Crusaders and lead them to Arc Royal to serve under Phelan, in exile.
Ulric had thought he gave Vlad no way out- that faced with certain death, Vlad would lead the survivors to Arc Royal and help them defend the Inner Sphere against the Clans (as Vlad and the others are now marked for death). Vlad says he'll find another way... which disappoints Ulric.
Vlad did, eventually, find a way out by Refuting the Absorption. It's the only part of Ulric's plan that didn't work out... seems Ulric groomed Vlad a little
too wellThis argument falls short.
I. The exiles were a contingency, to make sure that what ever happen in the refusal war, the wolf clan would live on.
II. It's hard to claim that Ulric set the wolves up to die and be annihilated, when the wolves almost won... Ulric didn't "send them to their death" like some back room general; he led them from the front all the way to the falcon capital where he challenged the falcon khan to single combat (which the flacon agreed but instead brought a ton LRM boats to what can only be described as an "assassination"). Even in death, Ulric score a huge victory; while the falcons were the "technical" winners, victory only came by their khan essentially admitting by his actions the falcons can't beat the wolves in a straight fight. Even the falcons were disgusted by themselves by the end of it, and it's why none of the clans made a fuss about the "jade wolves" going back to original flavor...
They died defending the honor of their clan and their khan, while killing falcon scums and proving Wolf superiority over CJF. For a clanner, it doesn't get any better than this.
I. No, they were the endgame- as evidenced by Ulric's recording to Phelan and his ensuring that Phelan and the others would
never be able to return, as well as Ulric's conversation with Vlad on Wotan.
II. Ulric intended to die on Wotan. His death is what would ensure that Vlad could not rally the survivors and remain in the Clan Homeworlds- their only chance was to join Phelan as Exiles. Ulric's 'victory' was not showing that the Falcons are unable to defeat the Wolves. His victory was destroying both the Wolf Crusaders
and crippling the Falcons to ensure that the Clans would not be able to invade the Inner Sphere.
Recall that Clan Wolf was mostly Crusader by '57. Vlad was leading the 'Wolf Supremacists' who were young, extremely loyal to Clan Wolf, and Crusaders. They were building up pressure and aggression against Natasha and Phelan due to various reasons:
- The main reason was Clan Wolf's success on Turkayyid meant very few positions were open for advancement within the Clan (due to low casualties).
- No chance at glory without being able to either climb the ladder or invade the Inner Sphere, and with Phelan and Natasha against a renewed invasion (being Wardens) they were seen as aiding in preventing the younger Wolves from glory
- The Inner Sphere tactics and 'mechs that were being introduced into the Clan, such as Natasha's Wolf Spiders. This has been expanded recently in the TRO Update series- check the Linebacker entry in the new TROU for example.
Ulric's solution was to engineer a war between the Jade Falcons (the largest threat to the Inner Sphere in his eyes) and his own Clan- where a majority of his Clan were joining the Crusader camp...and likely to overthrow Phelan and Natasha.
He sent Phelan and the Wardens to the Inner Sphere to ensure their safety, then he and Natasha led the Crusader Wolves into meat grinder after meat grinder, destroying the Falcons and Crusader Wolves as best they could.
The endgame was a crippled Jade Falcon Clan, and the ratio of Warden:Crusader greatly reduced in the Warden's favor. In addition, his death would ensure that the Crusader Wolves had no choice but to flee to the Inner Sphere and join up with Phelan, as they were branded traitors within Clan space.
If Ulric couldn't convince the young Wolves to be Wardens... he'd force them by branding them as traitors in the eyes of their Clan brethren.