Who's running the Court?

[todd]

I've been wondering lately just who's in charge of the Court at the very top, the "Inner Circle".

So far, all the authority figures we've seen there answer to someone else. The highest-ranking people we've met were the Headmaster and Aata. Aata's been depicted as falling out of favor, however, so even if he was one of the "Inner Circle" once, he isn't any longer. The Headmaster also can't be in it, judging from the way he was talking about Janet's absence at the meeting.

Since the evidence is pointing to this being the final phase of the story (events like Paz's recent departure have made that all the clearer), it seems late to be introducing entirely new characters to represent the Court's leadership, the people at the very top of the pyramid. Thus, they'd have to be people who've already appeared in the story.

While it'd be tempting to have them turn out to be the original leaders (such as Sir Young and Steadman), who've somehow managed to cheat death and survive in some weird state, I think it unlikely. Their passings have already been confirmed, and though the story could take the approach of "They somehow managed to dupe the Realm of the Dead", it seems a bit far-fetched.

The other possibility is that they're people who've already appeared in the comic, but in an "easily-overlooked" manner, or with roles that made them seem unlikely (Doctor Disaster, say - since the readers would have seen him as merely part of a "let's take a break from the story for one chapter and do a sci-fi parody instead" feature).

Or it could be that the "Inner Circle" is meant to be a mystery, will never be revealed in the story.

[imaginaryfriend]

I get the impression that nobody's running the Court. Sure, there's people in charge of specific things like the school, the Shadow Men, probably each major branch of research and other needed functions, but I think they aren't appointed by some central authority. I think we're looking at potentates who run their own fiefdoms where office politics writ large appears to rule the day. As long as they don't offend the other oligarchs and keep the faith of their subordinates, or go too far off-mission and offend the backers, they can do pretty much whatever they want. I expect it's framed as a meritocracy where everyone's considered equal. In a sense that's true, because a subordinate who gets too competent and successful could eventually elbow their way to the top of their particular bailiwick and displace whoever was in charge before, but given human nature I suspect that actually doesn't happen except in cases of old age where replacement is undeniably needed. The people at the top likely make sure that their subordinates don't have a chance to outshine them, either by taking credit for what they do one way or another or by side-tracking them into less important areas. When they get older and start thinking of retiring they probably groom a particular follower to replace them who is politically reliable (to them) and competent enough (but not too competent). Everyone's equal but some people will always be more equal than others.

I don't think we'll see the other oligarchs because they don't figure prominently in the story and memory of them is going to be erased anyway; in Antimony Carver's recollection they probably just appear as shapes in the background vaguely shaped like people.

[Runningflame]

May 7, 2023 12:49:50 GMT todd said:

The other possibility is that they're people who've already appeared in the comic, but in an "easily-overlooked" manner, or with roles that made them seem unlikely (Doctor Disaster, say - since the readers would have seen him as merely part of a "let's take a break from the story for one chapter and do a sci-fi parody instead" feature).

If Doctor Disaster turns out to have been running the Court this whole time... It'd be one heck of a distant callback, but we have had those before.

[drmemory]

I feel like there is probably still an inner circle or something running things. The Court is a bureaucracy and when there is a vacancy in a bureaucracy, it doesn't go unfilled - someone fills it.

Consider Aata. He was the leader of the shadow men, but somebody with power over them was able to give him the boot and appoint Llanwellyn the new leader of that org. I imagine someone else was then appointed to be the new headmaster of the school. We haven't heard who that is yet, or even whether the school is meant to continue on even when the "pure humans" have left.  I suppose it's possible the school was disbanded but you'd think they would have mentioned that to Jones and the Protector and his trainee and others that really should know!  Like the students, and the parents, for example.  No, no, there is still a school organization, even if it is in disarray, and someone is still in charge.

Bureaucracies are darned hard to kill.

I don't know who is in charge of the court, but my best guess is that it is someone we haven't met yet. We've seen a few teachers and a few administrators and a clump of shadow men but we've never really seen who the school and the shadow men sub-orgs report to. It could well be a committee but even so, someone will have the big chair and really be in charge.

An observation - the court leadership is shy. He/she/they go to great measures to avoid being seen by the hoi polloi.  Consider this - when Coyote and Ysengrin came to the school way back in Chapter 14, the headmaster of the school was the obvious leader of the meeting on the Court side!  A God, known to the Court, and with whom they have treaties or agreements or whatever it is, showed up, and the Court let the principal of the school meet with him. You would have thought that someone higher in the Court hierarchy would have been sitting in the throne, or at least have been present, but it really seems like they weren't.

[imaginaryfriend]

We've absolutely got bureaucracy but I think if the Court was a bureaucracy under one authority, even a single policy-making council, it would have degenerated by now in one direction or another and we'd have seen some more evidence of that central authority operating/disfunctioning. I'm picturing the Court as a collection of bureaucracies flying in a formation (at least some of the time) that looks like one big administrative entity from a distance. It's probably ridiculously hard for anyone to navigate who didn't come up inside the Court.

That said, sure, there's almost certainly a collection of grand pooh-bahs who actually run things... but I don't think they have rank or explicit authority as such. They have pull within their own organizations and probably some technical competence, political savvy, and charisma to go with that, along with ambition... but not too much of any of those things.

[pyradonis]

May 7, 2023 12:49:50 GMT todd said:

I've been wondering lately just who's in charge of the Court at the very top, the "Inner Circle".

So far, all the authority figures we've seen there answer to someone else. The highest-ranking people we've met were the Headmaster and Aata. Aata's been depicted as falling out of favor, however, so even if he was one of the "Inner Circle" once, he isn't any longer. The Headmaster also can't be in it, judging from the way he was talking about Janet's absence at the meeting.

Since the evidence is pointing to this being the final phase of the story (events like Paz's recent departure have made that all the clearer), it seems late to be introducing entirely new characters to represent the Court's leadership, the people at the very top of the pyramid. Thus, they'd have to be people who've already appeared in the story.

While it'd be tempting to have them turn out to be the original leaders (such as Sir Young and Steadman), who've somehow managed to cheat death and survive in some weird state, I think it unlikely. Their passings have already been confirmed, and though the story could take the approach of "They somehow managed to dupe the Realm of the Dead", it seems a bit far-fetched.

The other possibility is that they're people who've already appeared in the comic, but in an "easily-overlooked" manner, or with roles that made them seem unlikely (Doctor Disaster, say - since the readers would have seen him as merely part of a "let's take a break from the story for one chapter and do a sci-fi parody instead" feature).

Or it could be that the "Inner Circle" is meant to be a mystery, will never be revealed in the story.

Maybe they were in the story but we don't remember them thanks to that memory-erasing technology.

[aline]

May 7, 2023 12:49:50 GMT todd said:

it seems late to be introducing entirely new characters to represent the Court's leadership, the people at the very top of the pyramid. 

I think whoever's sitting on the Court council isn't going to be important at this point. I think in the last act the villains will be bigger than that, puppetmasters who manipulate people and events, including the Court officials.



We have Omega, whatever that means. We have evil-alternate-reality-Kat, who may or may not be Omega. We have this-reality-Kat who has good intentions but is causing a lot of ripple effects that may or may not end up being terrible. We have Robot who is managing his own cult/army and is at best morally grey when it comes to anyone who isn't Shadow, Kat or a robot. And we have Coyote. He's dead but whatever hand he played is still unfolding.

Through Aata we know what the Court has been planning, they're on their way out and I think the only thing that will truly matter from now on is what they've unleashed in their attempt to "become gods".

[drmemory]

May 8, 2023 12:36:24 GMT pyradonis said:

May 7, 2023 12:49:50 GMT todd said:

I've been wondering lately just who's in charge of the Court at the very top, the "Inner Circle".

So far, all the authority figures we've seen there answer to someone else. The highest-ranking people we've met were the Headmaster and Aata. Aata's been depicted as falling out of favor, however, so even if he was one of the "Inner Circle" once, he isn't any longer. The Headmaster also can't be in it, judging from the way he was talking about Janet's absence at the meeting.

Since the evidence is pointing to this being the final phase of the story (events like Paz's recent departure have made that all the clearer), it seems late to be introducing entirely new characters to represent the Court's leadership, the people at the very top of the pyramid. Thus, they'd have to be people who've already appeared in the story.

While it'd be tempting to have them turn out to be the original leaders (such as Sir Young and Steadman), who've somehow managed to cheat death and survive in some weird state, I think it unlikely. Their passings have already been confirmed, and though the story could take the approach of "They somehow managed to dupe the Realm of the Dead", it seems a bit far-fetched.

The other possibility is that they're people who've already appeared in the comic, but in an "easily-overlooked" manner, or with roles that made them seem unlikely (Doctor Disaster, say - since the readers would have seen him as merely part of a "let's take a break from the story for one chapter and do a sci-fi parody instead" feature).

Or it could be that the "Inner Circle" is meant to be a mystery, will never be revealed in the story.

Maybe they were in the story but we don't remember them thanks to that memory-erasing technology.

Or maybe it's the people in panels 7 and 8 here,

[mturtle7]

One of the overarching themes of the comic (in my interpretation, at least) is that the Court - and, analogously, most real-world giant political entities - isn't a literal court of a few scheming nobles and/or a single, all-powerful ruler, but rather a bureaucratic, scientific, architectural, and social system, which is the way it is because countless numbers of people across multiple generations have enacted their own incremental changes upon it in whatever ways they individually thought was right. To put it another way, the Court is not a who, either singular or plural, but an it, a thing in which individual people are interchangeable and expendable. We see this in the ridiculous parody of a throne room the Court keeps as an audience room, where the school headmaster hardly even bothers putting up a facade of true command. We see it in the conspiracy to kill Jeanne, where a little inventor creates a scheme at the request of a military man and with the reluctant approval of a nameless crowd of others, in order to create a critical piece of infrastructure which subsequent generations simply forget about. We see it in Paz's first little pep talk to Kat about the fallacy of seeing the Court as any kind of monolith. In general, whenever "the Court" is visually depicted, it often appears as a crowd of faceless people in no particular order, a metaphor which is taken up to 11 when the person who introduces their plan for exodus is literally featureless, a person who could be practically anyone without any tangible impact on their role in the story, even while they literally explain in detail the Court's entire end game.

As todd themself has pointed out, over and over again, we've been introduced to people with real, tangible, power in the Court - e.g. Donny, Tony, Juliette & Arthur, the Headmaster, Aata - and over and over again, we are shown the massive limits of their authority (I find the image of Llanwellyn raging and being held back by yet another faceless person a particularly poignant instance of this). I think it's rather missing the point to assume that every time that happens, it's just because we haven't gone far enough, we haven't reached the real "inner circle" whose members know all the important things in the Court and get to do whatever they want! On the contrary, I've taken it to mean that there is no "inner circle" - or rather, even the innermost circle within the hierarchy of power in the Court is so wide that no individual member of it has all that much power.

Granted, it could be argued that there's one more level of hierarchical power beyond that innermost circle...but, I'm pretty sure that even when the identity of the Omega Device (like a lot of people here, I'm pretty sure it's/they're a person) is revealed, it won't be framed as the reveal of the Secret Mastermind who's been controlling everything this whole time. Omega probably just sees themself as another tiny cog in the system, trying to provide accurate predictions according to their superiors' demands.

[imaginaryfriend]

This forum isn't the place for social critiques so I'll try to tread lightly and avoid buzz-words but I do think the Court and Gillite Wood do inarguably represent two extremes. With regard to the Court, I think we have an extremity of the pursuit of rationality and the social results thereof. In fact I would suggest that the flight to a new ether-less really-real world represents the ultimate form of the iron cage for the individual that might result from the consequences, intended and not, from a hyper-organized (bureaucratic) rational society. As such it never surprised me to see that the potentates of this society have had serious limitations, to the extent that they've been seen at all.