5: Mother Knows Best
The Klingon Empire and the end of T’Kuvma’s War
“What does peace mean to the Klingon Empire? Nothing. It is a concept they have no use for, or real understanding of – even all their words for it were conquered from the languages of their subjects.” – Ambassador Robert Fox, 2265
“Destroying an Empire to win a war is no victory, and ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat.” – Kahless the Unforgettable
The People of Kahless
It is safe to say that very few people understood the Klingon Empire at the end of the 2250s. The reasons why are much harder to summarise. For a start, the Klingon Empire before the 2260s was not a great believer in ‘interstellar diplomacy’ (or diplomacy of any kind, for that matter.) They did not send out ambassadors. They sent no missions to other worlds. Their methods of governing were so much at odds with how the Federation believes an Interstellar Society should operate that to even begin a discussion of how the Klingon Empire operates is difficult.
Federation historians have always known very little about the Klingon Empire. Much of what is known even now, in the post-Khitomer environment, is thanks to painstaking work by historians both in the UFP and the Empire to create a proper narrative of history. Most details are still unknown to us. It is not because, as some more derisory commentators have put it, the Klingon people have no interest in their history or do not believe in the historical record. It is merely that the level of information gathering, storing, and archiving that is the natural part of most Federation cultures is not a part of how the Klingons practise history. There will be a time, in the future, when we will marry the methods of our two cultures to create a unified narrative, but for now, we must rely on the myths and archaeology that was passed down by the Klingon people for over 1500 years, and the methods of storytelling, that have been passed down from one generation to next, along with family texts and annals. It may seem impossibly arcane to a society that can draw any text it wants from Memory Alpha, but to the Klingon, it is the best way for knowledge to be preserved.
There are some principles, however, we all understand about Klingons. They are an honour-bound culture, that centres on the family – whether the blood family or the ‘national’ family – above all. It is often called a warrior culture. The concept of the ‘battle’ at the heart of society extends beyond the military to the “warriors of the working day” – the farmer, who battles starvation; the doctor, who battles disease; the merchant and bureaucrat, who battle want and need in their own ways.[1] For the Klingon people, the struggle is not just part of their lives, but their entire society, past, present and future – it is their history. They are a people whose ascent to space was over the bodies of their attempted conquerors, the semi-mythical Hur’q, whose near destruction of the First Klingon empire in 922 CE had helped begin the Klingon expansion into the galaxy. With their homeworld devastated, the need to gather new resources – and new subjects – to ease the burden of the Klingon people became paramount. This struggle has lasted longer than humanity has had warp drive. While Colonel Green and the Eastern Coalition battled the UN for control of post-atomic Earth, the Klingons fought interstellar wars with the Romulans. While United Earth was passing through its growing pains in the 2110s and 20s, they were already spread out across hundreds of worlds, with many colonies and many more subject worlds.
The knowledge of the Klingon Empire from the first era of regular contact between 2151 and 2173 was incomplete, and the conclusions drawn were far too expansive considering the limited information available. While the first mission of the NX-01 had been to Qo’noS, the return of Klaang was not an opening to a period of peace. Instead, Archer’s mission was merely the starting gun on over a decade of Klingon instability that had been brewing since the early 2140s. Within this chaos, it was difficult for the United Earth Starfleet anld their allies to learn more than what could be gathered from the myriad of hostile encounters across this period. It was well understood that the Empire was governed based on the High Council of the Great Houses, who elected a Chancellor to lead them, but beyond that, the internal workings of the Klingon Empire were simply not known. It was not even verified until the mid-2240s that there was no living Klingon Emperor in this period.
Attempts at contact with the Empire across the 2160s and 70s ebbed away much as Klingon society began to disintegrate from the centre. Despite attempts at consolidation during the 2150s, the “crisis of the Quch’ha” tore right through the core of Klingon politics and society, as those who tried to hold the Empire together fought against those who wished to ‘cleanse’ it of disease – both medical and cultural.[2] The exodus of several of the Great Houses to the fringe of their empire in the late 2170s further exacerbated the disintegration of central authority, which remained extremely weak until the 2220s. Sources are limited in this time – Klingon record-keeping culture is nowhere near as strong as its Federation counterpart, but even by their standards, historical knowledge from this period is limited.[3] Despite this collapse in central authority – sometimes compared to the “Anarchy” of 12th century England on Earth or the “Decades of Blood” on Andoria - Klingon expansionism in this period grew, instead of contracting. The disunity amongst the great houses meant that many of the minor houses – whose allegiance to the main 24 was as much based on coercion as real loyalty used the opportunity to escape their ties to Qo’noS and escape to the frontier, followed by many younger children of great houses escaping honourless lives in state bureaucracy or monasteries.
The ‘exodus’ of a significant number of Klingons to colony worlds in the western parts of the Beta Quadrant and Alpha Quadrant meant these new societies – clustered around collections of habitable stars, or following the galactic seams of minerals like the Penthe curve (Dilithium Belt) were able to develop in their own right, without the assertive influence of the High Council. It was not that they were disloyal to Qo’noS – merely that, given the chaos within the core empire, there was very little to lose by stepping away from the centres of power and carving out your section of the galaxy to call your own. Much of the expansion was into the deep core of the Beta Quadrant, with new fiefdoms being founded and new subject peoples conquered in their dozens. It was, as they say, the best of times, and the worst of times: while the Empire was weak, its people were, in their way, stronger on their own, which was no comfort to the Great Houses who still battled each other for control of the Empire on Qo’noS and the surrounding worlds.
It was in this period, in the decades after the breaking of the Warp 7 barrier and the first great ‘settler rush’ out of the core, that Federation settlers and society first came into semi-constant contact with the Klingons. While the Klingons were much closer to home than the Federation settlers, technologically and political they were all in the same isolated boat, relying much more on themselves and their immediate neighbours than their governments on distant home worlds. Despite initial hesitancy, and a great deal of violence, across the 2220s and 30s a limited level of interaction became the norm as a trade for basic and luxury goods flowed between Federation and Klingon worlds, out of sight and mind of Admirals and Politicians on both sides.[4]
Contact with Klingon fringe colonies provided some concept of the Klingon world – the farmers, traders and soldiers of the frontier presenting a hostile, but still comprehensible image of civil society that could be digested by sociologists and xenoanthropologists. [5] Their conclusions, are summarised in John Gill’s infamous statement that the Empire was “a late feudal society frozen in time and projected across the galaxy, with all the savagery, disregard for life and lack of liberty that comes with such a system of government”, while appearing to be a correct assessment on the surface, is at best reductive.[6]
Federation fringe colonists came to realise, on their terms, that Klingons were complicated, nuanced, and not a reflection of the warriors and soldiers who were (and still are) considered archetypal representations of their society. It may be true that, at least according to Klingon histories, their empire became an interstellar society at a point when it was far more stratified and extractive than almost all Federation member societies. However, to say that their political system was “frozen in time”, and one unable to reform, change, or re-align itself as it expanded across the Beta Quadrant is an act of extreme Neo-Whiggery that we must somewhat expect from the political environment of the 2160s and 70s – less so from John Gill. To a Federation society that had forged an interstellar democracy on a scale that had never been seen before, the Klingon Empire seemed to be stuck in a past that they had all long since left behind.
The truth, however, was far from that. Klingon society was always changing - reacting to wars won and lost, to rising houses and changing concepts of honour. The fact that the Klingon colonies and governed worlds were easily understood as ‘feudal realms’ and ‘petty kingdoms’ did not mean that they still functioned the same way that they had done when the first Klingon Houses emerged. The Klingon colonies of the fringe were, in this time, agrarian societies, hierarchical but still fiercely protective of their autonomy and right to make their own decisions, and only paid their taxes when they were staring down the barrel of a disruptor. The dominance of the military elite from the 2150s only cemented the autonomous desire of the fringe colonies, who found more in common with the hardy federation settler than the haughty warrior elite that lorded over them.
In places like Archanis IV, regular trade with the Klingon Empire was a fact of life for much of the colony’s early existence, and even after its devastation in 2246. Within the Borderland, the colonies of both powers acted together to fend off Orion pirates and rescue each other’s stricken ships from danger. For a short period, it seemed like some form of an amicable system of cohabitation in space was possible, perhaps even appealing. This, however, was not to be. By the time that colonies in this area were well-established enough to begin forming more coherent, long-term bonds of trade, exchange and cultural connection, the High Council’s long civil war had ended. Their immediate concern was with re-establishing their sovereignty and control over worlds that had for too long refused to send their tributes of minerals, taxes and slaves back to the Homeworld – so as to protect the Empire against the terrifyingly quick expansion of the ‘Human Empire’, as the UFP was dubbed in many Klingon sources.[7] Compared with the long and seemingly unending war with the distant and unknown Kinshaya, Federation aggression was sinister, underhand and worse, peaceful.[8]
Friendship with the ‘earther’ settlers on the fringe encouraged feudal subjects to break their bonds of service; to purchase and trade outside of vaunted house monopolies and internal tariffs. Worst of all, it was a continuous reminder that the Imperial system – autocratic, arbitrary and increasingly non-functional – was not the only way to organise an Interstellar society. Federation colonies prided themselves on their total self-governance, to the point that until the 2250s Starfleet could not enter orbit of many without formal permission. To the Klingon farmer who, by the 2240s, saw nearly half his harvest disappear to tariffs, taxes and military seizure, this was an incredible revelation. To the aristocracy, it was a nightmare.
There is an argument to be made that the increasingly rapid state of Federation expansion in the 2220s and 30s was one of the core catalysts from the reformation of the High Council in 2232-33. Beyond the threat to internal security posed by the presence of Federation settlers and Starfleet ships within “Imperial borders”, there was also the more elusive fear of cultural contamination and infection that began to seep into the minds of many Klingons in this period. Their disdain for democracy is well known – the only period of truly representative government in their history is still known as “the Dark Time” despite acknowledging that the reforms of this era helped ensure the Empire’s survival. Their perception of democracy does tend to flip between fear and derision, depending on who was talking and the situation. However, the knowledge that an interstellar democracy of unparalleled size and strength was expanding in their direction was concerning. Unless central authority could be brought over fringe worlds, and the Federation checked and sent back, the Empire would be in danger.
The 16 of 24 Houses that reunited in the 2230s were determined to prevent a new breakdown of order and staked everything on a decisive engagement with the Federation to establish their rule. The new Chancellor, Durak, pursued with a single-minded efficiency rapid reassertion of control. In this period, many of the now-vaunted organs of the Klingon Government were established, including the Imperial Security Bureau and Imperial Intelligence.[9] Beyond this, his Chancellorship also saw the first reorganisation of Klingon Space in over 200 years, with new sectors, governorships and tributary states formalised within space that had once been open, unorganised territory. With formalisation came state presence, in the shape of Klingon Warships. Federation settlers soon discovered that longstanding trading partners were no longer open for commerce, or worse, found themselves staring down the end of Klingon disruptor banks.
Starfleet, still strained by its inability to pass the Warp Eight barrier, lacked the ships to confront the Empire and police its borders properly – an advantage the Klingons took, pushing deep into Federation territory to stake a direct challenge to their authority. Even in the 2230s, the annexation of Krios and Valt into the Empire by the House of D’Ghor caused little more than a few raised eyebrows in Federation Central. It was not until 2241 that the alarm bells finally started ringing within the UFP. Durak’s power base was strengthening but remained fragile. A good war would secure his position and vindicate his reforms. More importantly, a decisive victory that would keep the still overstretched Starfleet on the far side of Rigel.
From 2241, the Imperial Navy began to wage a limited but fierce campaign against Federation assets along the line of contact between the Hriomi Cluster and the Briar Patch. Between 2241 and 2245, the ‘Klingon Fringe’ would suffer its first of several periods of conflict. Colonies such as Archanis IV and Melrose II strung out far from Federation Starbases were annexed or levelled by Klingon Warships. It wasn’t until 2245 that a direct, aggressive confrontation occurred within the Dilithium Belt. With the aid of the larger Imperial Navy, warships from Houses Duras and Kor attempted to push Federation colonists out of several mineral-rich systems, unaware of the large Starfleet presence in the area. With such a large area to cover, Starfleet was forced to put many ships out on their own to try and protect their assets, leaving them vulnerable to attack. The hammer finally fell in the Donatu system – extremely rich in dilithium and magnesite, it was a centre of mining operations by Federation prospectors and an extremely tempting target for the Klingon force that moved in to seize it. Seizing Donatu was a massive gamble by the Imperial Navy, that would both sever a vital source of dilithium and unhinge Starfleet’s defensive posture in the Archanis sector. There was no option but to respond in kind.
Matt Decker, then a young Lieutenant Commander, found himself in command of the USS Omar Bradley, an ageing Patton-class light cruiser. She should on paper have stood no chance against the D-6 and D-7 class ships her captain was facing in the system.[10] “We hadn’t fought the Klingons properly before this – we had to learn how to fight them right then, right there. I think I managed alright.”[11] Decker did more than that, fighting 3 D-6 cruisers within the planet’s atmosphere alone before Captain Komack could arrive with his squadron and relieve him, protecting the APA (Asteroid Prospector’s Association) outposts from several attack runs by the Klingon squadron. Despite the technological inferiority of their ships, the Starfleet task force stalled the Klingons at Donatu V in a bloody, indecisive engagement that lasted several days. When the smoke cleared, however, it was clear that the Klingon Empire had failed in this circumstance to hold their enemies at bay – and who to blame for that was clear.
The destruction of the fleets of Houses Kor and Duras, along with significant elements of the Imperial Navy, destroyed any belief in the fragile central government that had attempted to maintain order in the 2230s and 40s. “How could we put our faith in leaders who are unable to seize a single system from the Humans?” Gar’Vey, son of Kol-Ren wrote. “We have become feeble, and we only have ourselves to blame.”[12] Despite the work that Durak and others had done towards centralising the Empire, the defeat at Donatu V (combined with other stalemates with Starfleet across the combat area) was laid at their feet. Resentment at the accused “Terranisation” of the Empire through civil service reform and state professionalisation spiralled into a view that he had ‘betrayed’ the empire by destroying its core values.[13] Within days of the news of Donatu V reaching the First City, Durak was killed on the floor of the Council Chambers. The Empire soon fractured to a level even beyond that of the late 2180s and 90s, with even the most traditional houses abandoning their loyalty to the High Council.
Extremely little is known about the decade of Klingon history between Donatu V and the Battle of Binary Stars. It is safe to say the Imperial State ceased to function on anything more than a cursory level. This was not to say that bureaucracy did not exist. The same bureaucrats and functionaries Durak had appointed as regional governors stayed in position – they were just simply ignored by everyone around them. “The problem with [Durak’s] government,” pointed out Ekor, son of Rellen (one of the few great Klingon Historians of the mid-23rd Century) “was that despite his honourable intentions and well-planned reforms, he failed to connect the Honour of the Empire with the Honour of the Great Houses. When the Empire was dishonoured, the houses saw it as an Imperial problem – one they could disconnect themselves from.”[14] Family honour came first in those 11 years of anarchy, and with that came internal conflict and war that was more bitter than anything before and since.
Beyond a few local alliances to hold back the Romulans in the early 2250s, the Great Houses were much more interested in carving out and protecting their fiefdoms against each other, letting many independent groups, traders and pirates of all kinds move underneath and around them. The instability in this period allowed the growth of the Orion Syndicate to levels not seen since the 2160s, while opening room for pirates, principally Nausicaan and Mazarite, whose activity had been curtailed by Starfleet since the 2220s. If the period of instability had lasted much longer, the collapse of authority on the borders of the Federation, Romulan and Tholian Empires would have been inevitable.
Then T’Kuvma was martyred, almost as soon as he arrived.
The Battle of Binary Stars has been discussed in detail throughout the last 60 years – with a clear focus on how Starfleet failed to see T’Kuvma coming. What is clear, however, with the benefit of hindsight (and Klingon accounts) is that no one saw him coming. So little is known about this person – who came from humble, scarred backgrounds and fought his way out of poverty, becoming radicalised against ‘modernism’ and ‘Human imperialism’ that one cannot say with confidence where he came from. In the arc of most Klingon histories and legends, T’Kuvma died at his moment of inception, not his highest peak: most Klingon operas about him focus more on his place as a semi-divine inspiration to L’Rell and his acolytes, as opposed to his life itself, for example. What is certain is that he represented a growing feeling in Klingon political society that their culture and identity was being slowly but steadily eroded by outside ‘poison’ cultures, whether they were Romulan, Orion, or more pointedly, Terran. Since Donatu V, human contact and colonisation had only seemed to get more aggressive. Federation expansion, aided and increased by the spread of the Marvick-class warp drive along with more long-range starships like the Constitution class meant that the Klingon colonies were encountering Federation people, politics, and ideas on a far more regular basis than beforehand, and without the watchful eyes of the Great Houses and the Imperial Navy to protect them, the Klingon colony worlds learnt about life outside of the dominance of the house system.
This is not to say that Federation cultural contact created a sense of “class consciousness” within the Klingon Empire. Feelings of resentment and ire against the Klingon aristocracy were legitimised by more regular contact with worlds where even the lowest farmer had a say in the running of their lives, from day-to-day worker co-operatives to planetary and Federation-wide elections. As W.M. Nguyen concluded, “while Klingon politics may have never taken the Post-Class society of the Federation seriously, the concept that the labouring classes – the warriors of the working day, so to speak – could ask for more than simply the pittance of respect and noblesse oblige the Great Houses gave them was revolutionary enough.”[15] That was enough to send alarm bells ringing in the halls of power, and even before the Beacon was lit at the Binary Stars, discussions about how to manage the ‘Human problem’ were leading towards some form of unitary action across the Empire.
The uniting of all 24 houses by a religious cult leader who proceeded to die at his moment of victory was both a blessing and a disaster for the Klingon Empire. Driven by a semi-zealotic fury, the Empire found itself (momentarily) united behind a crusade against the Terran Scourge. The war that was fought in those 15 months was not a united effort – it was a war of the Houses, each competing against each other for the most glorious conquests, the most righteous battles, and the most honourable victories over the ‘human’ foe. It was a war to the death, to “remain Klingon”, but it was not a war of conquest. Starbases were wrecked and Starships were destroyed, but no attempt to establish forward bases was made. The massacres at Corvan II, DeCandido III and New Accra were horrific, but no move was made to occupy the planets or establish Klingon rule on the worlds that were swept up in the rout. This was a war of the bat’leth, not of the bureaucrat and the Thought Admiral.[16] The Great Houses may have scored countless victories against the Humans and their thralls, but there was no thought to territory gained. Too much was made of the fact that for the first time since the 2160s Klingon society was united behind a single goal: victory.
What limited unity existed was behind Kol of house Kor, but it evaporated after his death at the Battle of Pahvo, and from then on, any concept of a Klingon ‘war effort’ or ‘war plan’ evaporated. Military historians like Chik Gogrun and Lena S. Revell have considered the Klingon War to be more of a ‘hyperactive insurgency’, closer in nature to the chevauchee of Earth’s medieval era or the more recent ‘Pincer fleets’ of the Andorian-Vulcan conflicts of the 21st-22nd Centuries.[17] Starfleet fell quickly to constant hammer blows from the disorganised by highly motivated mass of Klingon warships which pressed ever closer to Earth and the core worlds of the Federation. Only a coup on the Homeworld itself turned the Birds of Prey around, much to the surprise of everyone in the Empire – everyone except L’Rell, that is.
After T’Kuvma
Very little is known about L’Rell before her coup. It is well accepted (at least now, with the benefit of 60 years between the fall of Sturka and the present) that she laid much of the groundwork for the highly centralised, ruthlessly effective Imperial system that Sturka and Kesh wielded with cold efficiency. Sturka’s twisting of records in his Chancellorship has destroyed much of our official knowledge of L’Rell, which has been pieced back together through other sources since the late 2280s. However, it is all but certain that her successor’s attempt to present all her successes as his caused irreparable damage to the historical record for decades to come.
L’Rell claimed allegiance with both the House of Mo’kai and House of T’Kuvma – an unusual act for Klingons, even more so in a time when the houses were so divided. It is known that she had been an acolyte of T’Kuvma for several years before the Battle at the Binary Stars and that her wartime experiences had seen her cast out and left to die by the house of Kor. It is unknown how exactly she found her way to Qo’noS with the support she did, but her seizure of power as the ‘successor’ to T’Kuvma shocked Klingon Society to the core. It was well-timed, as well – the unity of the houses, sustained by the inertia of war since May 2256, was beginning to fracture by mid-2257. Her intervention most likely saved the Empire (and the Federation) from further chaos, but the circumstance surrounding it remain shrouded in mystery. Susan Torres, the best Federation biographer of L’Rell, summed the circumstances up well: “The Klingon War had come from nowhere, and what better way for it to end than for someone the Great Houses had cast out to die to return from nowhere to rule them all.”[18]
The remaining Klingon sources, almost to a tee, merely mention a great upswell of support for the new chancellor from the High Council. Some talk of a powerful weapon she used to hold them to ransom, but most historians view these stories more as parables, or worse as bitter lies told by her opponents after her downfall. What is certain is that L’Rell was able to seize control of the Klingon Empire just at a point when it needed a leader, and one with both honour and decisiveness: and she was the right person for the job. Even in this early period, it was clear to those who were paying attention, such as the Orion Trader N’gairrez of Rigel VII, that the new Chancellor was much more in tune with the Klingon warrior in the bars of the Kling than much of the Aristocracy who scorned her.
N’gairrez diaries, published in 2286, are one of the most valuable sources of information about life in the Empire across the mid-23rd century. As a successful merchant in both high value finished goods like computer parts and wholesale commodities like Pergium, his travels sent him to much of the Disputed Area (both Federation and Klingon sides) during his career. In 2257, however, his trade brought him Qo’noS, where he was an eyewitness to the official announcement of the new Chancellor’s reign – the first in over 20 years.
“Part of me wondered whether the Klingon people really wanted this but listening to their cheers and roars as the announcement came over the loudspeakers and watch the crowd outside the council chambers grow and grow with every minute, I realised that the Klingon people were revelling in this change of course. For the first time in decades, they had the leadership they felt they needed: strong, decisive, and able to stand up to the petty, guileless Great Houses who cared little for what the real Empire thought. That they had been outsmarted by a woman, and one of a House they all despised, made it even better to many. One Klingon, a trader by the name of Ko’Poc, told me proudly that ‘now we can say we are the children of Kahless again, with good leaders and honourable battles to be won.’ All I could think about then was whether those battles would be with other Klingons, Humans or Orion.”[19]
The confidence that N’gairrez had detected in Kling was infectious, and as he made his journey across the Empire towards the Tandaran Autocracy in late 2257 and early 2258 the change in the wind was palpable. The Orion trader had travelled much in the Empire before the fall of Durak and during the second ‘anarchy’. He had learnt in this time to wait and see what the locals thought about their neighbours and the central government of the empire before telling his patrons where he had last come from. This time, however, was different.
“All my customers wanted to know was if he had come from Qo’noS, and if I had, had I seen L’Rell? They didn’t seem that disappointed that I hadn’t seen the Chancellor myself – it was enough that I had been on the Homeworld in person when her reign had begun – I had been there when the Great Houses has finally been put in their place. All talk was about a return to honourable leadership – about proving the Empire was strong – not just within our borders, but in the whole Quadrant. It wasn’t that L’Rell had said anything like that, merely that she was standing up to the ‘weaklings’ who kept the empire separate. That was enough. I think I sold more goods on Iosia on the basis that I had come from the Qo’noS than anything else. I am not going to complain about that.”
Despite the intense popularity of the new chancellor amongst the people, her position was nowhere as strong as it was believed. Bringing the Great Houses together and to order – even at the barrel of a gun, as some believed – is no easy feat, especially when the 24 houses had so much to lose with the centralisation of authority behind a new Chancellor. Initially, their support was gained through the universally accepted principle that without unity, everything gained during the war would be lost. However, once it became clear that there were not that many gains from the hostilities to be distributed, there were questions about what exactly a new government could provide. L’Rell’s Chancellorship was extremely new, but its mere existence was considered a threat to the accumulated power of the senior houses, especially the “big three” of Kor, Duras and Mo’Kai. It was clear that whatever L’Rell was planning, it was going to come at the expense of their autonomy. Even a mere three months into the ‘new era’, the leaders of these houses were discussing how exactly the status quo could be preserved, and their powers protected.[20]
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how ridiculous opposition to a centralised Empire was. It cannot be denied that the Empire had expanded greatly during the period of House primacy – however, the gains that were made were flimsy and insecure, and the Imperial support that had solidified new conquests in the past was lacking. Military presence, in the form of marine battalions and modern warships, was extremely lacking. Dockyards lay empty, and ships unmanned. By the mid-2250s, planets like Krios and Valt had slipped from the grasp of the Empire, the ancient house fleets lacking the size and strength to hold worlds in sway.
While during the war they had made up for their limitations with aggression and fury (along with distinct technological advantages in sensor and cloaking technology), the Great Houses simply lacked the infrastructure to effectively extract resources and maintain order. Despite their immense victory over Starfleet in the field, their expansion had brought no rewards beyond glory: no new planets, no new lands, no expansion of Imperial territory to speak of. The Great Houses spoke proudly of the honourable battles they had fought but failed to impress much of the Imperial population with their gusto. “From what I could work out, most people scorned their boasts,” N’gairrez wrote of their announcements. “What had the average Klingon gained from the war? Nothing at all. If anything, they’d lost out.”
The Reinvention of the Klingon Empire
Zym, Son of T’ai, one of L’Rell’s closest aids throughout her reign and an early supporter of the Chancellor on Qo’noS, had little sympathy for the Great Houses. Zym’s recollections, as one of the few survivors of the fall of L’Rell, tell us much about what the vision for the Empire was at the end of 2257 – thankfully so, considering he is one of the only consistent sources on the Chancellor’s intentions at this point. They are also incredibly scathing of the Great Houses. “[The Duras], despite all their boasting of glory and conquests of human worlds during the war, were unable to hold any of the worlds they had raised their house banner on. They grovelled and made excuses, but we all knew why. They didn’t know what ‘governing’ looked like. They knew how to win glory in war, but nothing about glory in peace. Mother knew how to win glory in peace.”[21]
Zym’s disgust at the Duras and Kor families was shared by most of the “middle houses” who formed the backbone of the Empire, serving in the bureaucracy and military and fulfilling vital but less “glorious” roles within Klingon society. They were also the hidden key to L’Rell’s cementation of power across her first year of rule. There were few proclamations in the first few months of leadership, but what rulings there were signalled that this was not going to be business as usual. It was clear to many of the Klingon people that the Empire was going to be different, and that change of any kind would be welcomed, but what that change would be remained elusive for many.
There has been significant discussion, mostly by historians far more qualified for this than me, about the nature of what exactly this new Klingon identity represented. It was to some extent rooted in the radical traditionalism of T’Kuvma, focusing on the way that Klingon society had fragmented since the 2160s. There was, however, something more radical to the vision proposed by L’Rell. One factor, that seems to have been heavily influenced by the thinking of both Zym and others, was the Klingon Identity could not be protected by the Empire as it existed. The failure at Donatu V had proven that the Klingon state was incapable of challenging its enemies and succeeding. Even the success of the recent conflict had almost all been undone; effective Imperial authority barely extended beyond where it had reached during the 2230s. What was needed was an effective state that could project power to distant systems while enforcing discipline and loyalty on both the Great Houses and the myriad of subject worlds.
Beyond cultural protectionism and reactionism, the “new Empire” would place the state at the centre of society, both as a centre of service and as an institution that would provide for the people directly. As we have discussed, Klingon central “government”, if it could be called that, was an institution that mostly dealt with the other houses instead of the people themselves. While loyalty to the Empire and Kahless was an important factor, most people were not particularly familiar with the workings of the state. Admittedly, this was less so amongst the Klingon middling classes of scientists, clerks, and merchants whose livelihoods were more tied in with the central government, especially since Durak’s attempted reforms two decades beforehand. Beyond these professional groups, however, the central government gave them nothing and took away much in taxation and conscription. L’Rell wanted to change that, and with support from strong figures like Zym, she was well placed to garner their support. Amongst the numerous middling bureaucrats, Generals and Captains who came to the fore in this period were a name that would come to cast a long shadow over the Klingon Empire for the rest of the century: Sturka.
Before the war Sturka, son of Kevek, was just a middling Officer in the Imperial Navy; one of the few whose ships had not abandoned the Imperial banner for House fleets since the fall of Durak. He was known as a quiet, but effective leader whose apparent disdain for traditional honour codes and power structures was made up by his ruthless efficiency in achieving his goals; and his total disregard for any authority he did not personally respect. While we know exactly what Zym thought at the time, what Sturka – future chancellor and feared leader of the Klingon Empire – thought is shrouded in the layers upon layers of propaganda that surrounded him for his entire life. From what we know, Sturka had always been disgusted by Klingon traditionalism, even more than Zym was. He viewed much of the ancient ways and beliefs of the empire as being at best “useless” or at worst “crippling”. He was once quoted as saying “I’d flush the whole High Council out an airlock if they’d all simply have the guts to be in the same place at the same time.” His disgust for their traditionalism led him in more radical directions. Despite his loathing for the Federation, he greatly admired their commitment to progress (of a kind) and efficiency.
By the start of the war, he had already garnered the sinister, coldly efficient nickname of “the Boss” for his brutal, unemotional treatment of business and pleasure. To the Boss, honour was to be found in the total, complete victory over your enemies. Nothing else mattered to him. Kor, son of Rynar who had served under him in the early 2250s, had been shocked at how little respect his new commander had for his family status, referring to the future Dahar master as nothing more than “Specialist” or “Lieutenant” despite his official titles.[22] Despite this, and much brutal treatment at the hands of his commander, Sturka’s effectiveness impressed Kor, whose loyalty to Sturka would be unshaken right until the end. Many others were equally impressed though, as time would show, he would control more through fear than respect.
During T’Kuvma’s War, Sturka commanded the Klingon Home Fleet – the largest formation in the Imperial Navy, and the only one that matched any of the House fleets at the time. They would see minor action against Starfleet during the war, but most of their battles were against other Houses, picking fights over scraps left behind. They won almost all these engagements. It is unclear where L’Rell first encountered Sturka – his official account says that it was he, aboard his ship the IKS Glory of Boreth, that liberated the chancellor from her exile amongst the shipwrecks on the Binary Stars. What is certain, however, is that Sturka was there in the late days of 2257 when L’Rell was putting together her ‘new’ Klingon Empire. With him, he brought much, if not all, the small professional Officer Corps of the Imperial Navy – a vital asset for protecting and securing the Chancellor’s authority at a time when she was re-inventing what it meant to be Klingon.
While it is unclear as to whether L’Rell was on board with the wholesale destruction of House autonomy Zym and Sturka believed in, she was never going to draw her power base from the same place as previous leaders, relying on the whims of the Klingon aristocracy for support. It is clear, both from Zym’s memoirs and much of the material recovered from the High Council’s archives since Khitomer that even as early as then, L’Rell was thinking political in terms closer to that of a Statesperson than a Warlord: she was a leader of an Empire, not of Great Houses. L’Rell’s “Adulation to the Emperor” from late November 2257 presents a vivid image of the Empire that she wanted to create, focusing on reclaiming the Imperial State and expanding its powers to directly intervene and manage the economy. [23] More critically, it included a large number of administrative reforms that went unnoticed by many at the time but would come to be resented by many of the Great Houses, most notably the right to asset seizure and ‘Imperial Possession’ due to security needs. “The Interests of the Empire”, Zym wrote, “required that the state take full control of our destiny. We could not forge a Klingon Identity if we could not forge a direction in even the smallest of bureaucratic matters.”
2258 saw a lot of changes to the running of the Klingon government. While Barreuco tried and failed to hang onto power on Earth, L’Rell was consolidating and strengthening the hold she had over the Empire. Much of her programme – and the clear intention towards the centralisation of the Empire – was mostly ignored by the great houses until their first meeting in early 2258. The critical announcement that a new warship construction programme – a new generation of Klodode (D7K) warships would be built by the state as opposed to through House contracts was a shock to many on the High Council, especially those who had for many years used such contracts to line their own pockets.[24] Other state contracts, like the much-despised levy system (comparable with Old Earth tax farms), were soon subject to reduction as L’Rell used the still-existing bureaucracy created by Durak to press her reforms through. These changes, beyond the obvious advantages of increasing Imperial revenue, also drew power away from the central houses which had always dominated the bidding wars for such work.
The further announcement, in mid-April 2258 that the full three-year fleet expansion programme, which would see the construction of over 300 vessels of all types would be conducted through state shipyards (many of which had just been seized from the Great Houses). Alongside this massive fleet expansion came a new ordinance that forbade the Great Houses from operating any ship built in an Imperial Shipyard. The significance of such an act – essentially shutting the Great Houses out of new ship designs and spaceframes – was not lost on the Houses, especially House Duras, who had traditionally had one of the largest familial fleets in the Empire. They were at least ameliorated by their significant role in the restructuring of the Imperial Navy.
While (at least on paper) all the House fleets were officially part of the “Klingon Imperial Navy”, a core fleet that held loyalty only to the Emperor (and thus, the state itself) had always existed as a separate force. These ships tended to be more professional and organised than the house fleets, which were closer in form somewhat to feudal levies than a professional navy in some respects. This relationship, like much of the Imperial bureaucracy, had been beneficial in the early centuries of spaceflight, but by the mid-23rd century, it merely resulted in a large amount of the Klingon fleet strength being unreliably trained and unready for anything behind heavy raiding. This was proved by the conduct of the house fleets in the Klingon war, who remained unable to do anything but fly around Federation space blowing up whatever ship or colony they found in their way. A professional fleet with full, total control was needed.
Sturka would lead the way on this, working with cold efficiency to remove captains and admirals who stood in his way with the full authority of the Chancellor. By late 2258, almost 45% of the House Fleets of Kor, D’Ghor and Mo’Kai (including almost all their D7 commanders) had pledged full and unilateral obedience to the Emperor. The house of Duras offered their entire house fleet as “a gift to the Chancellor”, in exchange for several positions in the newly formed Ministry of War and Imperial High Command – two innovations that Sturka borrowed from non-Klingon political societies. While there were plenty of Captains with reservations about the new arrangement, there were also plenty of First Officers who knew which way the wind was blowing, and what to do when their superior officer turned their back. Many of the reforms “the Boss” required would take time – his plans for a proper system of advance bases, fortresses and logistical supply lines would not begin in earnest until 2260 at the very least – but what had been established was that the Imperial Navy would not be an amateur institution and one that put the glory of the state about the glory of the individual.
The double shock of a reduction of House contracts as well as the creation of a new, centralised fleet was concerning enough, but it was just the start of several blows to many of the ancient “rituals of state” that had diluted central government. The longstanding systems of “house contracts” had originally been created in the late 20th and early 21st century to manage the more difficult parts of the Imperial system, but had evolved across the 200 years since to cover almost all of the bureaucratic functions of the Empire, from tax collection and ship construction to the more contentious work of law enforcement and the dreaded “yIvotlh SuvwI'” (better known as the press gang).[25] There may have been a time when such work was more efficient than attempting to create an interstellar bureaucracy of any kind, but by the 2250s it was nothing more than a way for the Great Houses to fill their over treasuries at the expense of the Imperial government. L’Rell knew this could not remain if the Empire was to be strengthened, even if it meant changes at the top.
In many other political societies, there would be a myriad of ways in which reform could be pushed through. In Klingon politics, there is only one clear path: victory or death. For L’Rell’s opponents, it was either to fall in line and share her victory or suffer the consequences. Their choices would have a significant impact on the future of the Empire, and their houses, for decades to come. The choice of the Duras to oppose the Chancellor to protect their interests was fateful: the death in combat of their leader, PerVat, along with all his brothers, crippled the house for much of the 2260s, which was forced (along with several of their client houses) to hand assets over to the state as ‘forfeiture’ for their dishonour. House Kor was likely to be the next target, however, the death of Kol-Sha while preventing an assassination attempt on L’Rell’s life somewhat saved them from a similar fate to the Duras.[26] Other houses expressed their dissent, but after Sturka (now carrying the new title of “Minister of War”) shot two members of House D’Ghor dead on the council chamber floor they tended to keep their thoughts to themselves.
While Zym was not exactly approving of the support of House Kor, he recognised that crushing all the houses underfoot would not be advisable at this point, even if it was his ultimate ambition as a politician. “We cannot continue into the next 100 years as a bickering rabble. We must become one people. Yes, we must Remain Klingon; but do so, we must become a new kind of Klingon.”[27] Zym was also keenly aware that the houses were also just as afraid of the Federation as they were of losing their power. “They may have beaten the Earthers, but they knew that the Earthers would come back. If Starfleet returned to the border, they would not do so in the weak state they had before. They would come in strength, and united, and each House would not be able to challenge them. They had already lost so much since the fall of Durak. Would they risk throwing it all away now? Even if it meant losing a little bit of power in the short run, most of them were not stupid enough to stand against the immense advantages that something like the De' QI'yaH programme offered them.”[28]
The De' QI'yaH, or Unification programme, remains the largest expansion of the Klingon state within living memory. While the full extent of the changes would not be completed until well into the 2270s, the groundwork that took place even within the four years of L’Rell’s Chancellorship fundamentally changed the nature of Klingon society. Some less favourable observers have likened the changes to Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” or Colonel Green’s “United Victory Plan” (for reasons we will get to). While the economic effects of these plans (and their implications on society) may be comparable, they ignore the fact that (at least according to Zym) the key aim of the reform was social, not industrial unity. The Imperial Broadcast Service, long redundant, saw immense funding and expansion across 2258, with its broadcasts linked into subspace networks for the first time. N’Gairrez was in a tavern on D’Rakar, a Klingon colony world near Donatu V, at the end of 2258 when he saw the face of a Klingon broadcaster on a battered viewscreen above him.
“I realised, with a mix of both shock and admiration, that the person on that screen was on Qo’noS, reading a news roundup from the first city. I couldn’t hear them over the din of yelling warriors, but soon the images switched to footage of D7s rolling out of shipyards, and then to Klingon Soldiers parading, and on and on. It was nothing, really, but the fact that that could be seen even this far out from the Homeworld made it sink in how much things had changed in the last year. This would not be the same Empire I’d worked in for the last two decades.”
On D’Rakar, he would also have his first brush with two members of the Imperial Security Bureau, whose powers and reach had been greatly expanded in the year it had fallen under Sturka’s control. By the late 2260s, their tendrils would soon find an ISB agent in every Great Household and loitering on every street corner – at least if the propaganda is to be believed. In 2258, however, the new and improved ISB was approved of by almost all the Great Houses, who were keen to use its new powers to crush personal rivals and dissenters in their lands.
Other social changes, like the introduction of full educational access to full-blooded Klingons and the state funding of emigration to new colony worlds, would help cement the growth of a controlled and ‘pure’ Klingon identity. Despite the significance of the social programmes in the decade to come, the immense scale of some of L’Rell’s economic plans overawed many in the Empire in her first year of rule. Beyond the expansion of energy extraction facilities on Praxis (which would only be increasing exponentially across the rest of the century) and the creation of the Imperial Fleet Yards at Kargenth (which, until Utopia Planitia reached full operational status in 2291, would be the largest Shipyard in the known galaxy) was orientated towards the creation of an imperial war economy, but L’Rell’s other projects, while less flashy, were much more important. Industrial expansion plans went far beyond the creation of new weapons factories to the opening of a myriad of domestic consumer goods facilities. While Klingon society values luxury much less than Federation society, that did not mean that everyone wanted to live, as Zym put it, “In a hunter’s cave living off of targ scraps and sewing skins together for clothes”.
Going from building 6 D7s a year to 35 was one thing: doing that while expanding the size of almost every shipyard and modernising a massive swathe of the Klingon Economy was an immense project. It was popular with the ruling classes, though. The imagery of the Klingon ‘warrior baron’, each with their estate, household, and personal income was incredibly lucrative. The problem with building a ‘welfare’ state and a war economy at the same time, of course, is manpower. If L’Rell’s “New Klingons” were to live their lives of glory and luxury, they could not do so in the factories and mines. Klingon resource extraction technology and techniques were decades, if not centuries, behind that of even the Romulan Empire, let alone the Federation, whose scientific communities had been triumphing labour-saving devices of all kinds since the 21st century, if not earlier.
The Klingon economy had not advanced much since the early 2000s, for a myriad of reasons, most notably that Klingon society was not particularly interested in that sort of technological advance. Industrial labour was considered menial, dishonourable work, for criminals, inferior species other undesirables. As such, the work was usually difficult, menial, and deadly. The efficiency of extraction was never paramount on anyone’s mind beyond how brutally the workers could be pushed. Mechanisation, thus, was extremely limited. Much of the mining of deuterium and dilithium on Praxis, for example, was still done using hand-operated tools – in 2262 (the first year when records are available) only 15% of Dilithium mining facilities in the Klingon Empire used any form of automated mining technology, compared to nearly 78% of Federation facilities.[29] Duranium casting facilities in the Praxis Orbital centre were still reliant on manual operation for most, if not the entire 23rd century. If the costs of the new Klingon military – and the consumer goods that formed the ‘carrot’ alongside the ‘stick’ of the D7 – then an immense amount of manpower and resources would have to be brought into the Imperial economy, especially if high living standards were to be maintained for the population. As new foundries and factories, seized from the Great Houses were expanded, the possibility of a major labour crisis was apparent.
The fledgling Klingon bureaucracy saw few solutions. The technological (sometimes derisively referred to as the ‘Earther’ solution) was not achievable within a realistic timeframe. Even with the diffusion of technological advances through the disputed area and the Triangle, Klingon scientists at the Ministry of Development were not optimistic about whether they could keep up with the expansion of Industry capacity L’Rell was demanding. A myriad of other suggestions, including the laughable idea that every Klingon family cast duranium in their own homes, were seen as unrealistic or unachievable. L’Rell was not about to promise glory to every Klingon and send them to work in some of the most dangerous jobs in the galaxy.
There was, of course, an external solution – one of the oldest, and most infamous solutions to this issue. Slavery.
[1] There is no proper translation of the Klingon word for ‘battle’ into Federation Standard – needless to say, it is a concept that is much more detached from military combat than it would appear to be on the surface. Some linguists have preferred to use ‘struggle’ instead of ‘battle’, but the latter tends to be preferred by Klingons when using Federation Standard.
[2] The exact nature of the “Crisis of the Unclean” remains unknown to Federation Sources, though most evidence suggests it is related to the Kidnapping of NX-01 Enterprise’s CMO Dr. Phlox, and the emergence of the QuchHa’ subgroup in this period. Klingon sources (and Klingons themselves) refuse to discuss it.
[3] The Imperial Archives are in the process of gathering records and copies from House archives to build a clearer narrative of events, but it is likely this process will take several decades.
[4] It is often stated that the Federation had no contact with the Klingon Empire for a century before the Battle of the Binary Stars. This has been disproven time and again, but the myth persists, mainly due to a hyper focus on Starfleet recordkeeping.
[5] T. A. Agathon, So Say We All: A Cultural History of the Klingon Fringe (Brasilia: Federation Cultural Press, 2298)
[6] John Gill, A Collected History of the Known Galaxy, (New York: Federation Historical Press, 2258)
[7] Agathon, So Say We All.
[8] Very little is known about the Kinshaya except that they are a Theocratic society which have been at war with the Klingon Empire since the turn of the 23rd century. Minimal contact with Starfleet has been hostile.
[9] The ISB was an internal security body, while Imperial Intelligence functioned as an external intelligence gathering organisation.
[10] D-6 and D-7 are the Starfleet Command designations for the Brakul and Klolode/K’Tinga Battlecruisers.
[11] Matt Decker in B.H. Davenport, Donatu V: The Eyewitness Accounts (San Francisco: Starfleet Academy Press, 2265)
[12] House of Kor Archive, Qo’onS, Klingon Empire. 2245
[13], Evek, Daughter of Kol, The Death of Durak, 2260, from House of Kor Archive
[14] Ekor, son of Rellen, Annals of our Century: Durak to Kesh. Translated by Curzon Dax, (Paris: Memory Alpha), 2306
[15] W.M. Nguyen, "'What is to be Done?' Post-Class Politics in the Disputed Area, 2260-2275" (San Francisco: Starfleet Historical Press, 2312)
[16] The title of Thought Admiral was an honorific bestowed by the Klingon High Council to admirals of the Klingon Imperial Fleet for victories against enemies of the Klingon Empire attained through masterful strategy. It was also applied to strategic planners for the entire Navy.
[17] Chik Gogrun, “Klingon Tactics and Strategy in T’Kuvma’s War”, (San Francisco: Starfleet Tactical Press, 2276)
[18] Suzie P. Torres, The Mother: the lost life of Chancellor L'Rell (Harper-Collin-Ch'Rell, 2312)
[19] N’gairrez of Rigel VII, The Merchant of Worlds (Botchtok Interplanetary Press, 2278, then Paris, Memory Alpha, 2295)
[20] Rumours of their plotting are recorded on three separate occasions by Nagirrez, including a boast by a senior aid that the house of Kor apparently ‘knew where L’Rell and her human lover were keeping their secret child’.
[21] Zym, Son of T’ai, Recollections, (Kling, 2276, republished Khartoum, Interstellar Annals,2299)
[22] Author’s Interview with Kor, Son of Rynar, recorded 12th August 2312.
[23] The Adulation to the Emperor is a political presentation of the Chancellor’s plans for the Empire, supposed to happen annually. It is comparable with the Old British King’s Speech, or the President’s annual address to the Federation Council.
[24] The new Generation of Klodode-Class Warships are known to Starfleet by the Designation D7-K, to differentiate between the older D7 classes and the D7-M “K’Tinga” of the late 2260s onwards.
[25] While the direct translation of yIvotlh SuvwI' is closer to “Honour Debt”, it is almost identical in form to the old earth press gang.
[26] Allegations that Kol-Sha was attempting to overthrow L’Rell with the help of Houses Mo’Kai and Makok have never been proven.
[27] Zym, Recollections
[28] Zym, Recollections
[29] The 22% of Federation facilities includes mining colonies like Corvan II where the nature of the planetary geology prohibits the use of automated mining technology, as well as several newer colonies in the Dilithium belt who had not received modernise d equipment.
“Destroying an Empire to win a war is no victory, and ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat.” – Kahless the Unforgettable
The People of Kahless
It is safe to say that very few people understood the Klingon Empire at the end of the 2250s. The reasons why are much harder to summarise. For a start, the Klingon Empire before the 2260s was not a great believer in ‘interstellar diplomacy’ (or diplomacy of any kind, for that matter.) They did not send out ambassadors. They sent no missions to other worlds. Their methods of governing were so much at odds with how the Federation believes an Interstellar Society should operate that to even begin a discussion of how the Klingon Empire operates is difficult.
Federation historians have always known very little about the Klingon Empire. Much of what is known even now, in the post-Khitomer environment, is thanks to painstaking work by historians both in the UFP and the Empire to create a proper narrative of history. Most details are still unknown to us. It is not because, as some more derisory commentators have put it, the Klingon people have no interest in their history or do not believe in the historical record. It is merely that the level of information gathering, storing, and archiving that is the natural part of most Federation cultures is not a part of how the Klingons practise history. There will be a time, in the future, when we will marry the methods of our two cultures to create a unified narrative, but for now, we must rely on the myths and archaeology that was passed down by the Klingon people for over 1500 years, and the methods of storytelling, that have been passed down from one generation to next, along with family texts and annals. It may seem impossibly arcane to a society that can draw any text it wants from Memory Alpha, but to the Klingon, it is the best way for knowledge to be preserved.
There are some principles, however, we all understand about Klingons. They are an honour-bound culture, that centres on the family – whether the blood family or the ‘national’ family – above all. It is often called a warrior culture. The concept of the ‘battle’ at the heart of society extends beyond the military to the “warriors of the working day” – the farmer, who battles starvation; the doctor, who battles disease; the merchant and bureaucrat, who battle want and need in their own ways.[1] For the Klingon people, the struggle is not just part of their lives, but their entire society, past, present and future – it is their history. They are a people whose ascent to space was over the bodies of their attempted conquerors, the semi-mythical Hur’q, whose near destruction of the First Klingon empire in 922 CE had helped begin the Klingon expansion into the galaxy. With their homeworld devastated, the need to gather new resources – and new subjects – to ease the burden of the Klingon people became paramount. This struggle has lasted longer than humanity has had warp drive. While Colonel Green and the Eastern Coalition battled the UN for control of post-atomic Earth, the Klingons fought interstellar wars with the Romulans. While United Earth was passing through its growing pains in the 2110s and 20s, they were already spread out across hundreds of worlds, with many colonies and many more subject worlds.
The knowledge of the Klingon Empire from the first era of regular contact between 2151 and 2173 was incomplete, and the conclusions drawn were far too expansive considering the limited information available. While the first mission of the NX-01 had been to Qo’noS, the return of Klaang was not an opening to a period of peace. Instead, Archer’s mission was merely the starting gun on over a decade of Klingon instability that had been brewing since the early 2140s. Within this chaos, it was difficult for the United Earth Starfleet anld their allies to learn more than what could be gathered from the myriad of hostile encounters across this period. It was well understood that the Empire was governed based on the High Council of the Great Houses, who elected a Chancellor to lead them, but beyond that, the internal workings of the Klingon Empire were simply not known. It was not even verified until the mid-2240s that there was no living Klingon Emperor in this period.
Attempts at contact with the Empire across the 2160s and 70s ebbed away much as Klingon society began to disintegrate from the centre. Despite attempts at consolidation during the 2150s, the “crisis of the Quch’ha” tore right through the core of Klingon politics and society, as those who tried to hold the Empire together fought against those who wished to ‘cleanse’ it of disease – both medical and cultural.[2] The exodus of several of the Great Houses to the fringe of their empire in the late 2170s further exacerbated the disintegration of central authority, which remained extremely weak until the 2220s. Sources are limited in this time – Klingon record-keeping culture is nowhere near as strong as its Federation counterpart, but even by their standards, historical knowledge from this period is limited.[3] Despite this collapse in central authority – sometimes compared to the “Anarchy” of 12th century England on Earth or the “Decades of Blood” on Andoria - Klingon expansionism in this period grew, instead of contracting. The disunity amongst the great houses meant that many of the minor houses – whose allegiance to the main 24 was as much based on coercion as real loyalty used the opportunity to escape their ties to Qo’noS and escape to the frontier, followed by many younger children of great houses escaping honourless lives in state bureaucracy or monasteries.
The ‘exodus’ of a significant number of Klingons to colony worlds in the western parts of the Beta Quadrant and Alpha Quadrant meant these new societies – clustered around collections of habitable stars, or following the galactic seams of minerals like the Penthe curve (Dilithium Belt) were able to develop in their own right, without the assertive influence of the High Council. It was not that they were disloyal to Qo’noS – merely that, given the chaos within the core empire, there was very little to lose by stepping away from the centres of power and carving out your section of the galaxy to call your own. Much of the expansion was into the deep core of the Beta Quadrant, with new fiefdoms being founded and new subject peoples conquered in their dozens. It was, as they say, the best of times, and the worst of times: while the Empire was weak, its people were, in their way, stronger on their own, which was no comfort to the Great Houses who still battled each other for control of the Empire on Qo’noS and the surrounding worlds.
It was in this period, in the decades after the breaking of the Warp 7 barrier and the first great ‘settler rush’ out of the core, that Federation settlers and society first came into semi-constant contact with the Klingons. While the Klingons were much closer to home than the Federation settlers, technologically and political they were all in the same isolated boat, relying much more on themselves and their immediate neighbours than their governments on distant home worlds. Despite initial hesitancy, and a great deal of violence, across the 2220s and 30s a limited level of interaction became the norm as a trade for basic and luxury goods flowed between Federation and Klingon worlds, out of sight and mind of Admirals and Politicians on both sides.[4]
Contact with Klingon fringe colonies provided some concept of the Klingon world – the farmers, traders and soldiers of the frontier presenting a hostile, but still comprehensible image of civil society that could be digested by sociologists and xenoanthropologists. [5] Their conclusions, are summarised in John Gill’s infamous statement that the Empire was “a late feudal society frozen in time and projected across the galaxy, with all the savagery, disregard for life and lack of liberty that comes with such a system of government”, while appearing to be a correct assessment on the surface, is at best reductive.[6]
Federation fringe colonists came to realise, on their terms, that Klingons were complicated, nuanced, and not a reflection of the warriors and soldiers who were (and still are) considered archetypal representations of their society. It may be true that, at least according to Klingon histories, their empire became an interstellar society at a point when it was far more stratified and extractive than almost all Federation member societies. However, to say that their political system was “frozen in time”, and one unable to reform, change, or re-align itself as it expanded across the Beta Quadrant is an act of extreme Neo-Whiggery that we must somewhat expect from the political environment of the 2160s and 70s – less so from John Gill. To a Federation society that had forged an interstellar democracy on a scale that had never been seen before, the Klingon Empire seemed to be stuck in a past that they had all long since left behind.
The truth, however, was far from that. Klingon society was always changing - reacting to wars won and lost, to rising houses and changing concepts of honour. The fact that the Klingon colonies and governed worlds were easily understood as ‘feudal realms’ and ‘petty kingdoms’ did not mean that they still functioned the same way that they had done when the first Klingon Houses emerged. The Klingon colonies of the fringe were, in this time, agrarian societies, hierarchical but still fiercely protective of their autonomy and right to make their own decisions, and only paid their taxes when they were staring down the barrel of a disruptor. The dominance of the military elite from the 2150s only cemented the autonomous desire of the fringe colonies, who found more in common with the hardy federation settler than the haughty warrior elite that lorded over them.
In places like Archanis IV, regular trade with the Klingon Empire was a fact of life for much of the colony’s early existence, and even after its devastation in 2246. Within the Borderland, the colonies of both powers acted together to fend off Orion pirates and rescue each other’s stricken ships from danger. For a short period, it seemed like some form of an amicable system of cohabitation in space was possible, perhaps even appealing. This, however, was not to be. By the time that colonies in this area were well-established enough to begin forming more coherent, long-term bonds of trade, exchange and cultural connection, the High Council’s long civil war had ended. Their immediate concern was with re-establishing their sovereignty and control over worlds that had for too long refused to send their tributes of minerals, taxes and slaves back to the Homeworld – so as to protect the Empire against the terrifyingly quick expansion of the ‘Human Empire’, as the UFP was dubbed in many Klingon sources.[7] Compared with the long and seemingly unending war with the distant and unknown Kinshaya, Federation aggression was sinister, underhand and worse, peaceful.[8]
Friendship with the ‘earther’ settlers on the fringe encouraged feudal subjects to break their bonds of service; to purchase and trade outside of vaunted house monopolies and internal tariffs. Worst of all, it was a continuous reminder that the Imperial system – autocratic, arbitrary and increasingly non-functional – was not the only way to organise an Interstellar society. Federation colonies prided themselves on their total self-governance, to the point that until the 2250s Starfleet could not enter orbit of many without formal permission. To the Klingon farmer who, by the 2240s, saw nearly half his harvest disappear to tariffs, taxes and military seizure, this was an incredible revelation. To the aristocracy, it was a nightmare.
There is an argument to be made that the increasingly rapid state of Federation expansion in the 2220s and 30s was one of the core catalysts from the reformation of the High Council in 2232-33. Beyond the threat to internal security posed by the presence of Federation settlers and Starfleet ships within “Imperial borders”, there was also the more elusive fear of cultural contamination and infection that began to seep into the minds of many Klingons in this period. Their disdain for democracy is well known – the only period of truly representative government in their history is still known as “the Dark Time” despite acknowledging that the reforms of this era helped ensure the Empire’s survival. Their perception of democracy does tend to flip between fear and derision, depending on who was talking and the situation. However, the knowledge that an interstellar democracy of unparalleled size and strength was expanding in their direction was concerning. Unless central authority could be brought over fringe worlds, and the Federation checked and sent back, the Empire would be in danger.
The 16 of 24 Houses that reunited in the 2230s were determined to prevent a new breakdown of order and staked everything on a decisive engagement with the Federation to establish their rule. The new Chancellor, Durak, pursued with a single-minded efficiency rapid reassertion of control. In this period, many of the now-vaunted organs of the Klingon Government were established, including the Imperial Security Bureau and Imperial Intelligence.[9] Beyond this, his Chancellorship also saw the first reorganisation of Klingon Space in over 200 years, with new sectors, governorships and tributary states formalised within space that had once been open, unorganised territory. With formalisation came state presence, in the shape of Klingon Warships. Federation settlers soon discovered that longstanding trading partners were no longer open for commerce, or worse, found themselves staring down the end of Klingon disruptor banks.
Starfleet, still strained by its inability to pass the Warp Eight barrier, lacked the ships to confront the Empire and police its borders properly – an advantage the Klingons took, pushing deep into Federation territory to stake a direct challenge to their authority. Even in the 2230s, the annexation of Krios and Valt into the Empire by the House of D’Ghor caused little more than a few raised eyebrows in Federation Central. It was not until 2241 that the alarm bells finally started ringing within the UFP. Durak’s power base was strengthening but remained fragile. A good war would secure his position and vindicate his reforms. More importantly, a decisive victory that would keep the still overstretched Starfleet on the far side of Rigel.
From 2241, the Imperial Navy began to wage a limited but fierce campaign against Federation assets along the line of contact between the Hriomi Cluster and the Briar Patch. Between 2241 and 2245, the ‘Klingon Fringe’ would suffer its first of several periods of conflict. Colonies such as Archanis IV and Melrose II strung out far from Federation Starbases were annexed or levelled by Klingon Warships. It wasn’t until 2245 that a direct, aggressive confrontation occurred within the Dilithium Belt. With the aid of the larger Imperial Navy, warships from Houses Duras and Kor attempted to push Federation colonists out of several mineral-rich systems, unaware of the large Starfleet presence in the area. With such a large area to cover, Starfleet was forced to put many ships out on their own to try and protect their assets, leaving them vulnerable to attack. The hammer finally fell in the Donatu system – extremely rich in dilithium and magnesite, it was a centre of mining operations by Federation prospectors and an extremely tempting target for the Klingon force that moved in to seize it. Seizing Donatu was a massive gamble by the Imperial Navy, that would both sever a vital source of dilithium and unhinge Starfleet’s defensive posture in the Archanis sector. There was no option but to respond in kind.
Matt Decker, then a young Lieutenant Commander, found himself in command of the USS Omar Bradley, an ageing Patton-class light cruiser. She should on paper have stood no chance against the D-6 and D-7 class ships her captain was facing in the system.[10] “We hadn’t fought the Klingons properly before this – we had to learn how to fight them right then, right there. I think I managed alright.”[11] Decker did more than that, fighting 3 D-6 cruisers within the planet’s atmosphere alone before Captain Komack could arrive with his squadron and relieve him, protecting the APA (Asteroid Prospector’s Association) outposts from several attack runs by the Klingon squadron. Despite the technological inferiority of their ships, the Starfleet task force stalled the Klingons at Donatu V in a bloody, indecisive engagement that lasted several days. When the smoke cleared, however, it was clear that the Klingon Empire had failed in this circumstance to hold their enemies at bay – and who to blame for that was clear.
The destruction of the fleets of Houses Kor and Duras, along with significant elements of the Imperial Navy, destroyed any belief in the fragile central government that had attempted to maintain order in the 2230s and 40s. “How could we put our faith in leaders who are unable to seize a single system from the Humans?” Gar’Vey, son of Kol-Ren wrote. “We have become feeble, and we only have ourselves to blame.”[12] Despite the work that Durak and others had done towards centralising the Empire, the defeat at Donatu V (combined with other stalemates with Starfleet across the combat area) was laid at their feet. Resentment at the accused “Terranisation” of the Empire through civil service reform and state professionalisation spiralled into a view that he had ‘betrayed’ the empire by destroying its core values.[13] Within days of the news of Donatu V reaching the First City, Durak was killed on the floor of the Council Chambers. The Empire soon fractured to a level even beyond that of the late 2180s and 90s, with even the most traditional houses abandoning their loyalty to the High Council.
Extremely little is known about the decade of Klingon history between Donatu V and the Battle of Binary Stars. It is safe to say the Imperial State ceased to function on anything more than a cursory level. This was not to say that bureaucracy did not exist. The same bureaucrats and functionaries Durak had appointed as regional governors stayed in position – they were just simply ignored by everyone around them. “The problem with [Durak’s] government,” pointed out Ekor, son of Rellen (one of the few great Klingon Historians of the mid-23rd Century) “was that despite his honourable intentions and well-planned reforms, he failed to connect the Honour of the Empire with the Honour of the Great Houses. When the Empire was dishonoured, the houses saw it as an Imperial problem – one they could disconnect themselves from.”[14] Family honour came first in those 11 years of anarchy, and with that came internal conflict and war that was more bitter than anything before and since.
Beyond a few local alliances to hold back the Romulans in the early 2250s, the Great Houses were much more interested in carving out and protecting their fiefdoms against each other, letting many independent groups, traders and pirates of all kinds move underneath and around them. The instability in this period allowed the growth of the Orion Syndicate to levels not seen since the 2160s, while opening room for pirates, principally Nausicaan and Mazarite, whose activity had been curtailed by Starfleet since the 2220s. If the period of instability had lasted much longer, the collapse of authority on the borders of the Federation, Romulan and Tholian Empires would have been inevitable.
Then T’Kuvma was martyred, almost as soon as he arrived.
The Battle of Binary Stars has been discussed in detail throughout the last 60 years – with a clear focus on how Starfleet failed to see T’Kuvma coming. What is clear, however, with the benefit of hindsight (and Klingon accounts) is that no one saw him coming. So little is known about this person – who came from humble, scarred backgrounds and fought his way out of poverty, becoming radicalised against ‘modernism’ and ‘Human imperialism’ that one cannot say with confidence where he came from. In the arc of most Klingon histories and legends, T’Kuvma died at his moment of inception, not his highest peak: most Klingon operas about him focus more on his place as a semi-divine inspiration to L’Rell and his acolytes, as opposed to his life itself, for example. What is certain is that he represented a growing feeling in Klingon political society that their culture and identity was being slowly but steadily eroded by outside ‘poison’ cultures, whether they were Romulan, Orion, or more pointedly, Terran. Since Donatu V, human contact and colonisation had only seemed to get more aggressive. Federation expansion, aided and increased by the spread of the Marvick-class warp drive along with more long-range starships like the Constitution class meant that the Klingon colonies were encountering Federation people, politics, and ideas on a far more regular basis than beforehand, and without the watchful eyes of the Great Houses and the Imperial Navy to protect them, the Klingon colony worlds learnt about life outside of the dominance of the house system.
This is not to say that Federation cultural contact created a sense of “class consciousness” within the Klingon Empire. Feelings of resentment and ire against the Klingon aristocracy were legitimised by more regular contact with worlds where even the lowest farmer had a say in the running of their lives, from day-to-day worker co-operatives to planetary and Federation-wide elections. As W.M. Nguyen concluded, “while Klingon politics may have never taken the Post-Class society of the Federation seriously, the concept that the labouring classes – the warriors of the working day, so to speak – could ask for more than simply the pittance of respect and noblesse oblige the Great Houses gave them was revolutionary enough.”[15] That was enough to send alarm bells ringing in the halls of power, and even before the Beacon was lit at the Binary Stars, discussions about how to manage the ‘Human problem’ were leading towards some form of unitary action across the Empire.
The uniting of all 24 houses by a religious cult leader who proceeded to die at his moment of victory was both a blessing and a disaster for the Klingon Empire. Driven by a semi-zealotic fury, the Empire found itself (momentarily) united behind a crusade against the Terran Scourge. The war that was fought in those 15 months was not a united effort – it was a war of the Houses, each competing against each other for the most glorious conquests, the most righteous battles, and the most honourable victories over the ‘human’ foe. It was a war to the death, to “remain Klingon”, but it was not a war of conquest. Starbases were wrecked and Starships were destroyed, but no attempt to establish forward bases was made. The massacres at Corvan II, DeCandido III and New Accra were horrific, but no move was made to occupy the planets or establish Klingon rule on the worlds that were swept up in the rout. This was a war of the bat’leth, not of the bureaucrat and the Thought Admiral.[16] The Great Houses may have scored countless victories against the Humans and their thralls, but there was no thought to territory gained. Too much was made of the fact that for the first time since the 2160s Klingon society was united behind a single goal: victory.
What limited unity existed was behind Kol of house Kor, but it evaporated after his death at the Battle of Pahvo, and from then on, any concept of a Klingon ‘war effort’ or ‘war plan’ evaporated. Military historians like Chik Gogrun and Lena S. Revell have considered the Klingon War to be more of a ‘hyperactive insurgency’, closer in nature to the chevauchee of Earth’s medieval era or the more recent ‘Pincer fleets’ of the Andorian-Vulcan conflicts of the 21st-22nd Centuries.[17] Starfleet fell quickly to constant hammer blows from the disorganised by highly motivated mass of Klingon warships which pressed ever closer to Earth and the core worlds of the Federation. Only a coup on the Homeworld itself turned the Birds of Prey around, much to the surprise of everyone in the Empire – everyone except L’Rell, that is.
After T’Kuvma
Very little is known about L’Rell before her coup. It is well accepted (at least now, with the benefit of 60 years between the fall of Sturka and the present) that she laid much of the groundwork for the highly centralised, ruthlessly effective Imperial system that Sturka and Kesh wielded with cold efficiency. Sturka’s twisting of records in his Chancellorship has destroyed much of our official knowledge of L’Rell, which has been pieced back together through other sources since the late 2280s. However, it is all but certain that her successor’s attempt to present all her successes as his caused irreparable damage to the historical record for decades to come.
L’Rell claimed allegiance with both the House of Mo’kai and House of T’Kuvma – an unusual act for Klingons, even more so in a time when the houses were so divided. It is known that she had been an acolyte of T’Kuvma for several years before the Battle at the Binary Stars and that her wartime experiences had seen her cast out and left to die by the house of Kor. It is unknown how exactly she found her way to Qo’noS with the support she did, but her seizure of power as the ‘successor’ to T’Kuvma shocked Klingon Society to the core. It was well-timed, as well – the unity of the houses, sustained by the inertia of war since May 2256, was beginning to fracture by mid-2257. Her intervention most likely saved the Empire (and the Federation) from further chaos, but the circumstance surrounding it remain shrouded in mystery. Susan Torres, the best Federation biographer of L’Rell, summed the circumstances up well: “The Klingon War had come from nowhere, and what better way for it to end than for someone the Great Houses had cast out to die to return from nowhere to rule them all.”[18]
The remaining Klingon sources, almost to a tee, merely mention a great upswell of support for the new chancellor from the High Council. Some talk of a powerful weapon she used to hold them to ransom, but most historians view these stories more as parables, or worse as bitter lies told by her opponents after her downfall. What is certain is that L’Rell was able to seize control of the Klingon Empire just at a point when it needed a leader, and one with both honour and decisiveness: and she was the right person for the job. Even in this early period, it was clear to those who were paying attention, such as the Orion Trader N’gairrez of Rigel VII, that the new Chancellor was much more in tune with the Klingon warrior in the bars of the Kling than much of the Aristocracy who scorned her.
N’gairrez diaries, published in 2286, are one of the most valuable sources of information about life in the Empire across the mid-23rd century. As a successful merchant in both high value finished goods like computer parts and wholesale commodities like Pergium, his travels sent him to much of the Disputed Area (both Federation and Klingon sides) during his career. In 2257, however, his trade brought him Qo’noS, where he was an eyewitness to the official announcement of the new Chancellor’s reign – the first in over 20 years.
“Part of me wondered whether the Klingon people really wanted this but listening to their cheers and roars as the announcement came over the loudspeakers and watch the crowd outside the council chambers grow and grow with every minute, I realised that the Klingon people were revelling in this change of course. For the first time in decades, they had the leadership they felt they needed: strong, decisive, and able to stand up to the petty, guileless Great Houses who cared little for what the real Empire thought. That they had been outsmarted by a woman, and one of a House they all despised, made it even better to many. One Klingon, a trader by the name of Ko’Poc, told me proudly that ‘now we can say we are the children of Kahless again, with good leaders and honourable battles to be won.’ All I could think about then was whether those battles would be with other Klingons, Humans or Orion.”[19]
The confidence that N’gairrez had detected in Kling was infectious, and as he made his journey across the Empire towards the Tandaran Autocracy in late 2257 and early 2258 the change in the wind was palpable. The Orion trader had travelled much in the Empire before the fall of Durak and during the second ‘anarchy’. He had learnt in this time to wait and see what the locals thought about their neighbours and the central government of the empire before telling his patrons where he had last come from. This time, however, was different.
“All my customers wanted to know was if he had come from Qo’noS, and if I had, had I seen L’Rell? They didn’t seem that disappointed that I hadn’t seen the Chancellor myself – it was enough that I had been on the Homeworld in person when her reign had begun – I had been there when the Great Houses has finally been put in their place. All talk was about a return to honourable leadership – about proving the Empire was strong – not just within our borders, but in the whole Quadrant. It wasn’t that L’Rell had said anything like that, merely that she was standing up to the ‘weaklings’ who kept the empire separate. That was enough. I think I sold more goods on Iosia on the basis that I had come from the Qo’noS than anything else. I am not going to complain about that.”
Despite the intense popularity of the new chancellor amongst the people, her position was nowhere as strong as it was believed. Bringing the Great Houses together and to order – even at the barrel of a gun, as some believed – is no easy feat, especially when the 24 houses had so much to lose with the centralisation of authority behind a new Chancellor. Initially, their support was gained through the universally accepted principle that without unity, everything gained during the war would be lost. However, once it became clear that there were not that many gains from the hostilities to be distributed, there were questions about what exactly a new government could provide. L’Rell’s Chancellorship was extremely new, but its mere existence was considered a threat to the accumulated power of the senior houses, especially the “big three” of Kor, Duras and Mo’Kai. It was clear that whatever L’Rell was planning, it was going to come at the expense of their autonomy. Even a mere three months into the ‘new era’, the leaders of these houses were discussing how exactly the status quo could be preserved, and their powers protected.[20]
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how ridiculous opposition to a centralised Empire was. It cannot be denied that the Empire had expanded greatly during the period of House primacy – however, the gains that were made were flimsy and insecure, and the Imperial support that had solidified new conquests in the past was lacking. Military presence, in the form of marine battalions and modern warships, was extremely lacking. Dockyards lay empty, and ships unmanned. By the mid-2250s, planets like Krios and Valt had slipped from the grasp of the Empire, the ancient house fleets lacking the size and strength to hold worlds in sway.
While during the war they had made up for their limitations with aggression and fury (along with distinct technological advantages in sensor and cloaking technology), the Great Houses simply lacked the infrastructure to effectively extract resources and maintain order. Despite their immense victory over Starfleet in the field, their expansion had brought no rewards beyond glory: no new planets, no new lands, no expansion of Imperial territory to speak of. The Great Houses spoke proudly of the honourable battles they had fought but failed to impress much of the Imperial population with their gusto. “From what I could work out, most people scorned their boasts,” N’gairrez wrote of their announcements. “What had the average Klingon gained from the war? Nothing at all. If anything, they’d lost out.”
The Reinvention of the Klingon Empire
Zym, Son of T’ai, one of L’Rell’s closest aids throughout her reign and an early supporter of the Chancellor on Qo’noS, had little sympathy for the Great Houses. Zym’s recollections, as one of the few survivors of the fall of L’Rell, tell us much about what the vision for the Empire was at the end of 2257 – thankfully so, considering he is one of the only consistent sources on the Chancellor’s intentions at this point. They are also incredibly scathing of the Great Houses. “[The Duras], despite all their boasting of glory and conquests of human worlds during the war, were unable to hold any of the worlds they had raised their house banner on. They grovelled and made excuses, but we all knew why. They didn’t know what ‘governing’ looked like. They knew how to win glory in war, but nothing about glory in peace. Mother knew how to win glory in peace.”[21]
Zym’s disgust at the Duras and Kor families was shared by most of the “middle houses” who formed the backbone of the Empire, serving in the bureaucracy and military and fulfilling vital but less “glorious” roles within Klingon society. They were also the hidden key to L’Rell’s cementation of power across her first year of rule. There were few proclamations in the first few months of leadership, but what rulings there were signalled that this was not going to be business as usual. It was clear to many of the Klingon people that the Empire was going to be different, and that change of any kind would be welcomed, but what that change would be remained elusive for many.
There has been significant discussion, mostly by historians far more qualified for this than me, about the nature of what exactly this new Klingon identity represented. It was to some extent rooted in the radical traditionalism of T’Kuvma, focusing on the way that Klingon society had fragmented since the 2160s. There was, however, something more radical to the vision proposed by L’Rell. One factor, that seems to have been heavily influenced by the thinking of both Zym and others, was the Klingon Identity could not be protected by the Empire as it existed. The failure at Donatu V had proven that the Klingon state was incapable of challenging its enemies and succeeding. Even the success of the recent conflict had almost all been undone; effective Imperial authority barely extended beyond where it had reached during the 2230s. What was needed was an effective state that could project power to distant systems while enforcing discipline and loyalty on both the Great Houses and the myriad of subject worlds.
Beyond cultural protectionism and reactionism, the “new Empire” would place the state at the centre of society, both as a centre of service and as an institution that would provide for the people directly. As we have discussed, Klingon central “government”, if it could be called that, was an institution that mostly dealt with the other houses instead of the people themselves. While loyalty to the Empire and Kahless was an important factor, most people were not particularly familiar with the workings of the state. Admittedly, this was less so amongst the Klingon middling classes of scientists, clerks, and merchants whose livelihoods were more tied in with the central government, especially since Durak’s attempted reforms two decades beforehand. Beyond these professional groups, however, the central government gave them nothing and took away much in taxation and conscription. L’Rell wanted to change that, and with support from strong figures like Zym, she was well placed to garner their support. Amongst the numerous middling bureaucrats, Generals and Captains who came to the fore in this period were a name that would come to cast a long shadow over the Klingon Empire for the rest of the century: Sturka.
Before the war Sturka, son of Kevek, was just a middling Officer in the Imperial Navy; one of the few whose ships had not abandoned the Imperial banner for House fleets since the fall of Durak. He was known as a quiet, but effective leader whose apparent disdain for traditional honour codes and power structures was made up by his ruthless efficiency in achieving his goals; and his total disregard for any authority he did not personally respect. While we know exactly what Zym thought at the time, what Sturka – future chancellor and feared leader of the Klingon Empire – thought is shrouded in the layers upon layers of propaganda that surrounded him for his entire life. From what we know, Sturka had always been disgusted by Klingon traditionalism, even more than Zym was. He viewed much of the ancient ways and beliefs of the empire as being at best “useless” or at worst “crippling”. He was once quoted as saying “I’d flush the whole High Council out an airlock if they’d all simply have the guts to be in the same place at the same time.” His disgust for their traditionalism led him in more radical directions. Despite his loathing for the Federation, he greatly admired their commitment to progress (of a kind) and efficiency.
By the start of the war, he had already garnered the sinister, coldly efficient nickname of “the Boss” for his brutal, unemotional treatment of business and pleasure. To the Boss, honour was to be found in the total, complete victory over your enemies. Nothing else mattered to him. Kor, son of Rynar who had served under him in the early 2250s, had been shocked at how little respect his new commander had for his family status, referring to the future Dahar master as nothing more than “Specialist” or “Lieutenant” despite his official titles.[22] Despite this, and much brutal treatment at the hands of his commander, Sturka’s effectiveness impressed Kor, whose loyalty to Sturka would be unshaken right until the end. Many others were equally impressed though, as time would show, he would control more through fear than respect.
During T’Kuvma’s War, Sturka commanded the Klingon Home Fleet – the largest formation in the Imperial Navy, and the only one that matched any of the House fleets at the time. They would see minor action against Starfleet during the war, but most of their battles were against other Houses, picking fights over scraps left behind. They won almost all these engagements. It is unclear where L’Rell first encountered Sturka – his official account says that it was he, aboard his ship the IKS Glory of Boreth, that liberated the chancellor from her exile amongst the shipwrecks on the Binary Stars. What is certain, however, is that Sturka was there in the late days of 2257 when L’Rell was putting together her ‘new’ Klingon Empire. With him, he brought much, if not all, the small professional Officer Corps of the Imperial Navy – a vital asset for protecting and securing the Chancellor’s authority at a time when she was re-inventing what it meant to be Klingon.
While it is unclear as to whether L’Rell was on board with the wholesale destruction of House autonomy Zym and Sturka believed in, she was never going to draw her power base from the same place as previous leaders, relying on the whims of the Klingon aristocracy for support. It is clear, both from Zym’s memoirs and much of the material recovered from the High Council’s archives since Khitomer that even as early as then, L’Rell was thinking political in terms closer to that of a Statesperson than a Warlord: she was a leader of an Empire, not of Great Houses. L’Rell’s “Adulation to the Emperor” from late November 2257 presents a vivid image of the Empire that she wanted to create, focusing on reclaiming the Imperial State and expanding its powers to directly intervene and manage the economy. [23] More critically, it included a large number of administrative reforms that went unnoticed by many at the time but would come to be resented by many of the Great Houses, most notably the right to asset seizure and ‘Imperial Possession’ due to security needs. “The Interests of the Empire”, Zym wrote, “required that the state take full control of our destiny. We could not forge a Klingon Identity if we could not forge a direction in even the smallest of bureaucratic matters.”
2258 saw a lot of changes to the running of the Klingon government. While Barreuco tried and failed to hang onto power on Earth, L’Rell was consolidating and strengthening the hold she had over the Empire. Much of her programme – and the clear intention towards the centralisation of the Empire – was mostly ignored by the great houses until their first meeting in early 2258. The critical announcement that a new warship construction programme – a new generation of Klodode (D7K) warships would be built by the state as opposed to through House contracts was a shock to many on the High Council, especially those who had for many years used such contracts to line their own pockets.[24] Other state contracts, like the much-despised levy system (comparable with Old Earth tax farms), were soon subject to reduction as L’Rell used the still-existing bureaucracy created by Durak to press her reforms through. These changes, beyond the obvious advantages of increasing Imperial revenue, also drew power away from the central houses which had always dominated the bidding wars for such work.
The further announcement, in mid-April 2258 that the full three-year fleet expansion programme, which would see the construction of over 300 vessels of all types would be conducted through state shipyards (many of which had just been seized from the Great Houses). Alongside this massive fleet expansion came a new ordinance that forbade the Great Houses from operating any ship built in an Imperial Shipyard. The significance of such an act – essentially shutting the Great Houses out of new ship designs and spaceframes – was not lost on the Houses, especially House Duras, who had traditionally had one of the largest familial fleets in the Empire. They were at least ameliorated by their significant role in the restructuring of the Imperial Navy.
While (at least on paper) all the House fleets were officially part of the “Klingon Imperial Navy”, a core fleet that held loyalty only to the Emperor (and thus, the state itself) had always existed as a separate force. These ships tended to be more professional and organised than the house fleets, which were closer in form somewhat to feudal levies than a professional navy in some respects. This relationship, like much of the Imperial bureaucracy, had been beneficial in the early centuries of spaceflight, but by the mid-23rd century, it merely resulted in a large amount of the Klingon fleet strength being unreliably trained and unready for anything behind heavy raiding. This was proved by the conduct of the house fleets in the Klingon war, who remained unable to do anything but fly around Federation space blowing up whatever ship or colony they found in their way. A professional fleet with full, total control was needed.
Sturka would lead the way on this, working with cold efficiency to remove captains and admirals who stood in his way with the full authority of the Chancellor. By late 2258, almost 45% of the House Fleets of Kor, D’Ghor and Mo’Kai (including almost all their D7 commanders) had pledged full and unilateral obedience to the Emperor. The house of Duras offered their entire house fleet as “a gift to the Chancellor”, in exchange for several positions in the newly formed Ministry of War and Imperial High Command – two innovations that Sturka borrowed from non-Klingon political societies. While there were plenty of Captains with reservations about the new arrangement, there were also plenty of First Officers who knew which way the wind was blowing, and what to do when their superior officer turned their back. Many of the reforms “the Boss” required would take time – his plans for a proper system of advance bases, fortresses and logistical supply lines would not begin in earnest until 2260 at the very least – but what had been established was that the Imperial Navy would not be an amateur institution and one that put the glory of the state about the glory of the individual.
The double shock of a reduction of House contracts as well as the creation of a new, centralised fleet was concerning enough, but it was just the start of several blows to many of the ancient “rituals of state” that had diluted central government. The longstanding systems of “house contracts” had originally been created in the late 20th and early 21st century to manage the more difficult parts of the Imperial system, but had evolved across the 200 years since to cover almost all of the bureaucratic functions of the Empire, from tax collection and ship construction to the more contentious work of law enforcement and the dreaded “yIvotlh SuvwI'” (better known as the press gang).[25] There may have been a time when such work was more efficient than attempting to create an interstellar bureaucracy of any kind, but by the 2250s it was nothing more than a way for the Great Houses to fill their over treasuries at the expense of the Imperial government. L’Rell knew this could not remain if the Empire was to be strengthened, even if it meant changes at the top.
In many other political societies, there would be a myriad of ways in which reform could be pushed through. In Klingon politics, there is only one clear path: victory or death. For L’Rell’s opponents, it was either to fall in line and share her victory or suffer the consequences. Their choices would have a significant impact on the future of the Empire, and their houses, for decades to come. The choice of the Duras to oppose the Chancellor to protect their interests was fateful: the death in combat of their leader, PerVat, along with all his brothers, crippled the house for much of the 2260s, which was forced (along with several of their client houses) to hand assets over to the state as ‘forfeiture’ for their dishonour. House Kor was likely to be the next target, however, the death of Kol-Sha while preventing an assassination attempt on L’Rell’s life somewhat saved them from a similar fate to the Duras.[26] Other houses expressed their dissent, but after Sturka (now carrying the new title of “Minister of War”) shot two members of House D’Ghor dead on the council chamber floor they tended to keep their thoughts to themselves.
While Zym was not exactly approving of the support of House Kor, he recognised that crushing all the houses underfoot would not be advisable at this point, even if it was his ultimate ambition as a politician. “We cannot continue into the next 100 years as a bickering rabble. We must become one people. Yes, we must Remain Klingon; but do so, we must become a new kind of Klingon.”[27] Zym was also keenly aware that the houses were also just as afraid of the Federation as they were of losing their power. “They may have beaten the Earthers, but they knew that the Earthers would come back. If Starfleet returned to the border, they would not do so in the weak state they had before. They would come in strength, and united, and each House would not be able to challenge them. They had already lost so much since the fall of Durak. Would they risk throwing it all away now? Even if it meant losing a little bit of power in the short run, most of them were not stupid enough to stand against the immense advantages that something like the De' QI'yaH programme offered them.”[28]
The De' QI'yaH, or Unification programme, remains the largest expansion of the Klingon state within living memory. While the full extent of the changes would not be completed until well into the 2270s, the groundwork that took place even within the four years of L’Rell’s Chancellorship fundamentally changed the nature of Klingon society. Some less favourable observers have likened the changes to Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” or Colonel Green’s “United Victory Plan” (for reasons we will get to). While the economic effects of these plans (and their implications on society) may be comparable, they ignore the fact that (at least according to Zym) the key aim of the reform was social, not industrial unity. The Imperial Broadcast Service, long redundant, saw immense funding and expansion across 2258, with its broadcasts linked into subspace networks for the first time. N’Gairrez was in a tavern on D’Rakar, a Klingon colony world near Donatu V, at the end of 2258 when he saw the face of a Klingon broadcaster on a battered viewscreen above him.
“I realised, with a mix of both shock and admiration, that the person on that screen was on Qo’noS, reading a news roundup from the first city. I couldn’t hear them over the din of yelling warriors, but soon the images switched to footage of D7s rolling out of shipyards, and then to Klingon Soldiers parading, and on and on. It was nothing, really, but the fact that that could be seen even this far out from the Homeworld made it sink in how much things had changed in the last year. This would not be the same Empire I’d worked in for the last two decades.”
On D’Rakar, he would also have his first brush with two members of the Imperial Security Bureau, whose powers and reach had been greatly expanded in the year it had fallen under Sturka’s control. By the late 2260s, their tendrils would soon find an ISB agent in every Great Household and loitering on every street corner – at least if the propaganda is to be believed. In 2258, however, the new and improved ISB was approved of by almost all the Great Houses, who were keen to use its new powers to crush personal rivals and dissenters in their lands.
Other social changes, like the introduction of full educational access to full-blooded Klingons and the state funding of emigration to new colony worlds, would help cement the growth of a controlled and ‘pure’ Klingon identity. Despite the significance of the social programmes in the decade to come, the immense scale of some of L’Rell’s economic plans overawed many in the Empire in her first year of rule. Beyond the expansion of energy extraction facilities on Praxis (which would only be increasing exponentially across the rest of the century) and the creation of the Imperial Fleet Yards at Kargenth (which, until Utopia Planitia reached full operational status in 2291, would be the largest Shipyard in the known galaxy) was orientated towards the creation of an imperial war economy, but L’Rell’s other projects, while less flashy, were much more important. Industrial expansion plans went far beyond the creation of new weapons factories to the opening of a myriad of domestic consumer goods facilities. While Klingon society values luxury much less than Federation society, that did not mean that everyone wanted to live, as Zym put it, “In a hunter’s cave living off of targ scraps and sewing skins together for clothes”.
Going from building 6 D7s a year to 35 was one thing: doing that while expanding the size of almost every shipyard and modernising a massive swathe of the Klingon Economy was an immense project. It was popular with the ruling classes, though. The imagery of the Klingon ‘warrior baron’, each with their estate, household, and personal income was incredibly lucrative. The problem with building a ‘welfare’ state and a war economy at the same time, of course, is manpower. If L’Rell’s “New Klingons” were to live their lives of glory and luxury, they could not do so in the factories and mines. Klingon resource extraction technology and techniques were decades, if not centuries, behind that of even the Romulan Empire, let alone the Federation, whose scientific communities had been triumphing labour-saving devices of all kinds since the 21st century, if not earlier.
The Klingon economy had not advanced much since the early 2000s, for a myriad of reasons, most notably that Klingon society was not particularly interested in that sort of technological advance. Industrial labour was considered menial, dishonourable work, for criminals, inferior species other undesirables. As such, the work was usually difficult, menial, and deadly. The efficiency of extraction was never paramount on anyone’s mind beyond how brutally the workers could be pushed. Mechanisation, thus, was extremely limited. Much of the mining of deuterium and dilithium on Praxis, for example, was still done using hand-operated tools – in 2262 (the first year when records are available) only 15% of Dilithium mining facilities in the Klingon Empire used any form of automated mining technology, compared to nearly 78% of Federation facilities.[29] Duranium casting facilities in the Praxis Orbital centre were still reliant on manual operation for most, if not the entire 23rd century. If the costs of the new Klingon military – and the consumer goods that formed the ‘carrot’ alongside the ‘stick’ of the D7 – then an immense amount of manpower and resources would have to be brought into the Imperial economy, especially if high living standards were to be maintained for the population. As new foundries and factories, seized from the Great Houses were expanded, the possibility of a major labour crisis was apparent.
The fledgling Klingon bureaucracy saw few solutions. The technological (sometimes derisively referred to as the ‘Earther’ solution) was not achievable within a realistic timeframe. Even with the diffusion of technological advances through the disputed area and the Triangle, Klingon scientists at the Ministry of Development were not optimistic about whether they could keep up with the expansion of Industry capacity L’Rell was demanding. A myriad of other suggestions, including the laughable idea that every Klingon family cast duranium in their own homes, were seen as unrealistic or unachievable. L’Rell was not about to promise glory to every Klingon and send them to work in some of the most dangerous jobs in the galaxy.
There was, of course, an external solution – one of the oldest, and most infamous solutions to this issue. Slavery.
[1] There is no proper translation of the Klingon word for ‘battle’ into Federation Standard – needless to say, it is a concept that is much more detached from military combat than it would appear to be on the surface. Some linguists have preferred to use ‘struggle’ instead of ‘battle’, but the latter tends to be preferred by Klingons when using Federation Standard.
[2] The exact nature of the “Crisis of the Unclean” remains unknown to Federation Sources, though most evidence suggests it is related to the Kidnapping of NX-01 Enterprise’s CMO Dr. Phlox, and the emergence of the QuchHa’ subgroup in this period. Klingon sources (and Klingons themselves) refuse to discuss it.
[3] The Imperial Archives are in the process of gathering records and copies from House archives to build a clearer narrative of events, but it is likely this process will take several decades.
[4] It is often stated that the Federation had no contact with the Klingon Empire for a century before the Battle of the Binary Stars. This has been disproven time and again, but the myth persists, mainly due to a hyper focus on Starfleet recordkeeping.
[5] T. A. Agathon, So Say We All: A Cultural History of the Klingon Fringe (Brasilia: Federation Cultural Press, 2298)
[6] John Gill, A Collected History of the Known Galaxy, (New York: Federation Historical Press, 2258)
[7] Agathon, So Say We All.
[8] Very little is known about the Kinshaya except that they are a Theocratic society which have been at war with the Klingon Empire since the turn of the 23rd century. Minimal contact with Starfleet has been hostile.
[9] The ISB was an internal security body, while Imperial Intelligence functioned as an external intelligence gathering organisation.
[10] D-6 and D-7 are the Starfleet Command designations for the Brakul and Klolode/K’Tinga Battlecruisers.
[11] Matt Decker in B.H. Davenport, Donatu V: The Eyewitness Accounts (San Francisco: Starfleet Academy Press, 2265)
[12] House of Kor Archive, Qo’onS, Klingon Empire. 2245
[13], Evek, Daughter of Kol, The Death of Durak, 2260, from House of Kor Archive
[14] Ekor, son of Rellen, Annals of our Century: Durak to Kesh. Translated by Curzon Dax, (Paris: Memory Alpha), 2306
[15] W.M. Nguyen, "'What is to be Done?' Post-Class Politics in the Disputed Area, 2260-2275" (San Francisco: Starfleet Historical Press, 2312)
[16] The title of Thought Admiral was an honorific bestowed by the Klingon High Council to admirals of the Klingon Imperial Fleet for victories against enemies of the Klingon Empire attained through masterful strategy. It was also applied to strategic planners for the entire Navy.
[17] Chik Gogrun, “Klingon Tactics and Strategy in T’Kuvma’s War”, (San Francisco: Starfleet Tactical Press, 2276)
[18] Suzie P. Torres, The Mother: the lost life of Chancellor L'Rell (Harper-Collin-Ch'Rell, 2312)
[19] N’gairrez of Rigel VII, The Merchant of Worlds (Botchtok Interplanetary Press, 2278, then Paris, Memory Alpha, 2295)
[20] Rumours of their plotting are recorded on three separate occasions by Nagirrez, including a boast by a senior aid that the house of Kor apparently ‘knew where L’Rell and her human lover were keeping their secret child’.
[21] Zym, Son of T’ai, Recollections, (Kling, 2276, republished Khartoum, Interstellar Annals,2299)
[22] Author’s Interview with Kor, Son of Rynar, recorded 12th August 2312.
[23] The Adulation to the Emperor is a political presentation of the Chancellor’s plans for the Empire, supposed to happen annually. It is comparable with the Old British King’s Speech, or the President’s annual address to the Federation Council.
[24] The new Generation of Klodode-Class Warships are known to Starfleet by the Designation D7-K, to differentiate between the older D7 classes and the D7-M “K’Tinga” of the late 2260s onwards.
[25] While the direct translation of yIvotlh SuvwI' is closer to “Honour Debt”, it is almost identical in form to the old earth press gang.
[26] Allegations that Kol-Sha was attempting to overthrow L’Rell with the help of Houses Mo’Kai and Makok have never been proven.
[27] Zym, Recollections
[28] Zym, Recollections
[29] The 22% of Federation facilities includes mining colonies like Corvan II where the nature of the planetary geology prohibits the use of automated mining technology, as well as several newer colonies in the Dilithium belt who had not received modernise d equipment.