Londo Mollari of the House Mollari
Feb. 9th, 2004 03:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabAt the Melrose Ave. piercing-supply-slash-head-shop where they sell Om and Yin Yang and dragon's head pendants in pewter for eight bucks, I picked me up an amulet of dubious imagined origin -- some sort of fake spiritual symbol, I assume -- which purported to represent The Summoning of Power!
So anyway, I now have the ability to summon power, on a cheap silver chain around my neck. Mostly I bought it because I like saying it aloud in a booming voice while my sister got fitted for a new earring for her tragus pierce (and it all comes 'round again, Run), but, you know. Fear me! I can summon power now. I'll admit, I'm afraid to use it.
But here I go, summoning power that this Macintosh will not foil me while I get out all this business about Londo Mollari.
I've been thinking about Londo for weeks now. The DVDs came so I'm rewatching B5 seasons 3 and 4, and the A stories are so familiar to me I find myself scanning past them, emotionally, looking for things hiding in the fabric I hadn't seen before. And while I've always loved Londo -- as far as individual alien-centric eps go, you know, the requisite seasonal Ep About Narns or Ep About Minbari, the Centauri ones were always my favorite -- this time I took notes because there's something about him I've never been able to put into words. Not sure if I can now either, beyond the fact that he's tragic, heartbreaking, more complex, I think, than any other character in any of my fandoms. But I wanna try. Plus I made an icon for just this purpose.
(And it was a tough icon to make; several drafts preceded this one as anyone who's visited my user pics page can attest. It's such a seminal scene for Londo and such a key scene for the series; it's one of the Great Babylon 5 mental images and I wanted to do it justice, you know, really feel it.
This will probably not be the last icon draft, is all I'm saying. *g*)
Normally when I obsess about a character I want to write him into a fic, but I find Londo un-fic-able and I wanted to figure out why. It's not for lack of chemistry (Londo/G'Kar just *cries out* and Londo/Vir's not a bad fallback position) or for an inability to find his voice; I swear, sometimes I talk to myself in that Franco-Russian accent of his.
But Londo, it turns out, is a victim of circumstance. Is most interesting when the world is thrust upon him, when each decision he makes is to cover for or try and repair all the decisions prior. When the results of his actions spiral out of control and he's trapped -- as he is for most of his life -- by the world he's built around myself.
Since JMS and Peter Jurasik did a damned good job of creating a world on Londo's shoulders, there's no room for me to do it and I wouldn't want to. And excising him from that world -- giving him an adventure, a romantic interlude or even some inextricable angry sex with G'Kar -- takes away what it is I like the most about Londo to begin with. I don't want to see him making new decisions, good or bad, separate from the fate he's got in the series. And because he's buried there so deep I can hardly imagine space in his brain to get him there anyway.
Londo's the epitome of old-school, conservative, reactionary, a member of a regime that's seen its best days. The Centauri Republic and its Emperor are old models of a dying paradigm and Londo's stuck there like somebody's dad, shaking his head and wondering what happened to the good old days.
G'Kar tells Londo his heart is empty, but I don't agree. I think Londo has the heart of a boy who grew up in the shadows of the royal court in its heyday, with -- probably in keeping with the timeless and prophetic nature of Centauri as a race -- ancestral memories of honor, valor, order and respect. Everything Londo does he does for the Centauri, he does as a Centauri, as a member of this dying breed that even the other members of the royal court no longer aspire to be part of.
He's given his title of Ambassador to Babylon 5 as a joke, almost. It's a write-off assignment that no one else wanted, but for Londo it's the first step toward the royal court, it's a title, responsibility, the mantle of the Empire that he grew up honoring above all else. He's hungry for power, reckless for it but not out of greed, exactly -- more out of an understanding that That's What Centauri Do.
His first fatal mistake -- the one that would inform all the other fatal mistakes to come -- is his grudging alliance with Mr. Morden. The one good thing in Londo's life -- the Lady Adira -- has been taken from him by Lord Refa, and, enraged, Londo needs to show the Centarum that he's better than Refa, needs to hurt Refa in the only way that makes sense, stripping him of respect and power.
Londo cuts his Faustian bargain with Morden and his relationship with the Shadows -- the one that will, over the next twenty years, destroy him -- begins.
Morden and the Shadows align with Londo for their own purposes, and intellectually he knows it, knows Vir's right when Vir tells him not to take the deal. I think even then he sees his own fate (again with the Centauri and their prophetic dreams), but as far as Londo's concerned he has no other choice. No other choice -- with this decision, or any of the decisions to follow.
For Londo, the Shadows attack the Narn. Londo wants it to be over then but he knows it can't be. Londo could have killed one Narn, gotten a medal for it and gone on with his life but that's not the way of the Great Centauri -- they live big, they do big, they conquer. It's the way he was raised -- the way things Are. So the Shadows destroy one Narn base and then another, and Londo watches it spin out of control, hoping against hope (and he doesn't really hope, I think, he never really thought he'd get his life back after that) that it would end after just one more. But Morden's ruthless and the Shadows have their own plans ("Why don't you destroy the entire Narn homeworld, while you're at it?") and it's too late.
Every decision Londo makes -- every single personal, emotional, or professional decision for the duration of the series and the rest of his life -- comes from trying to untangle what he'd done when he aligned with the Shadows and started the war against Narn.
And he doesn't -- he doesn't feel evil. He doesn't think he's evil, just a victim of impulse and circumstance. He never wanted the Narns killed. Never wanted G'Kar to hate him and doesn't quite understand why G'Kar does -- why G'Kar can't see that Londo had only the best intentions and only ever wanted to do right by his people, for the good of that dying Centauri republic.
But as G'Kar said, he shook Londo's hand, and 24 hours later they were at war.
Still, I don't think Londo ever considers G'Kar his enemy. He has the opportunity to kill G'Kar ("And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place") and he has Lord Refa killed instead.
When the Centauri telepath comes to the station Londo asks her to tell him his fate -- rather, to confirm that the fate he knows is spooling out for him is unavoidable. "You will be Emperor," she tells him, and with that he knows he's doomed.
He closes his eyes and everything about his life ahead of him is awful -- he gets the vision of the Shadows landing on Centauri Prime (see: icon) long before he's even heard of the creatures, gets the vision of himself as an aging Emperor infected by his Drahk keeper, gets the vision of dying at G'Kar's hands. And even knowing his horrible, awful fate he does nothing to avoid it, because he does what he does for the Centauri, and he knows he's doomed to suffer but god damn it he won't let his people down.
You think about it -- Sheridan does much the same thing and he's cheered as a hero. Londo goes down unpitied and unmourned, having lived every single moment in service of an Empire that doesn't really exist anymore.
Even when the crazed Cartagia was Emperor, making a mockery of the court and all it stands for, Londo still makes sure his dress jacket is clean and pressed before entering Cartagia's throne room. Even when the crazed Cartagia sells out Centauri Prime to the Shadows and nearly gets the entire world destroyed, Londo stands on ceremony and respects the office. That respect, that tradition of service to the throne and the people, is all Londo has. Which is why if you try to tell him the Centauri regime is outmoded and dying he can't hear you, he won't hear you because without it he is absolutely nothing.
Kosh shows himself in the garden saving Sheridan, and to all the other races, the Vorlon appears as an angelic being of light, something straight out of their bibles and myths. Londo, with no mythology other than that of the Republic, doesn't see anything.
Peter Jurasik is just a phenomenally brilliant actor, I think. Because here's a character primarily defined by conquest, by getting in bed with the dark side and emerging heartless, but somehow Londo is more than just pathetic or piteous -- he's a hero, a nobleman, an old-school martyr. Beyond the hair and the makeup it's all in that face -- he's gonna take a deep breath and go down for his people because that's what's been asked of him. And it hurts like hell but he might as well be waiting there at Gethsemane (Brother Thomas would agree). And while he might in a moment of weakness ask that this cup pass from him, he knows it can't, and he doesn't run, and to the moment where he dies at G'Kar's hands he takes it like a man. Like a Centauri.
I fucking love this guy. I've got pages of notes here, all the little moments that make Londo what he is: he's trapped in the elevator with G'Kar and he just doesn't understand why G'Kar won't help him try to escape, why G'Kar can't see that in this, like in so much else, they're in this together, they're both whipping boys, they're both doomed.
When he's given his keeper and crowned Emperor, both to protect his people from the explosive devices the Drakh have planted all over Centauri Prime, he sends Sheridan and the others home rather than inviting them to his coronation. Not because he doesn't wish beyond hope that he could shrug it all off and side with them, but because he doesn't want them to be part of this, doesn't want them entangled in what he has to do. He keeps both Vir and G'Kar at arm's length for the same reason, and so he's considered arrogant, hostile. And really, he's just an instrument.
I wish I could write Londo, and maybe now that I've gotten all this out of my system I can. But I swear, in all my fannish pursuits (including a tendency to be drawn to the villains, Dukat, Scorpius, CSM, to try and see their stories, their points of view), I really don't think there's a character out there as complicated -- while being somehow also incredibly simple in his priorities and his purpose -- as Londo.
What a great fucking show.
How many Centauri does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Just one. But in the great old days of the Republic, hundreds of servants would change thousands of bulbs at our slightest whim.
-- Londo, "Convictions"
So anyway, I now have the ability to summon power, on a cheap silver chain around my neck. Mostly I bought it because I like saying it aloud in a booming voice while my sister got fitted for a new earring for her tragus pierce (and it all comes 'round again, Run), but, you know. Fear me! I can summon power now. I'll admit, I'm afraid to use it.
But here I go, summoning power that this Macintosh will not foil me while I get out all this business about Londo Mollari.
I've been thinking about Londo for weeks now. The DVDs came so I'm rewatching B5 seasons 3 and 4, and the A stories are so familiar to me I find myself scanning past them, emotionally, looking for things hiding in the fabric I hadn't seen before. And while I've always loved Londo -- as far as individual alien-centric eps go, you know, the requisite seasonal Ep About Narns or Ep About Minbari, the Centauri ones were always my favorite -- this time I took notes because there's something about him I've never been able to put into words. Not sure if I can now either, beyond the fact that he's tragic, heartbreaking, more complex, I think, than any other character in any of my fandoms. But I wanna try. Plus I made an icon for just this purpose.
(And it was a tough icon to make; several drafts preceded this one as anyone who's visited my user pics page can attest. It's such a seminal scene for Londo and such a key scene for the series; it's one of the Great Babylon 5 mental images and I wanted to do it justice, you know, really feel it.
This will probably not be the last icon draft, is all I'm saying. *g*)
Normally when I obsess about a character I want to write him into a fic, but I find Londo un-fic-able and I wanted to figure out why. It's not for lack of chemistry (Londo/G'Kar just *cries out* and Londo/Vir's not a bad fallback position) or for an inability to find his voice; I swear, sometimes I talk to myself in that Franco-Russian accent of his.
But Londo, it turns out, is a victim of circumstance. Is most interesting when the world is thrust upon him, when each decision he makes is to cover for or try and repair all the decisions prior. When the results of his actions spiral out of control and he's trapped -- as he is for most of his life -- by the world he's built around myself.
Since JMS and Peter Jurasik did a damned good job of creating a world on Londo's shoulders, there's no room for me to do it and I wouldn't want to. And excising him from that world -- giving him an adventure, a romantic interlude or even some inextricable angry sex with G'Kar -- takes away what it is I like the most about Londo to begin with. I don't want to see him making new decisions, good or bad, separate from the fate he's got in the series. And because he's buried there so deep I can hardly imagine space in his brain to get him there anyway.
Londo's the epitome of old-school, conservative, reactionary, a member of a regime that's seen its best days. The Centauri Republic and its Emperor are old models of a dying paradigm and Londo's stuck there like somebody's dad, shaking his head and wondering what happened to the good old days.
G'Kar tells Londo his heart is empty, but I don't agree. I think Londo has the heart of a boy who grew up in the shadows of the royal court in its heyday, with -- probably in keeping with the timeless and prophetic nature of Centauri as a race -- ancestral memories of honor, valor, order and respect. Everything Londo does he does for the Centauri, he does as a Centauri, as a member of this dying breed that even the other members of the royal court no longer aspire to be part of.
He's given his title of Ambassador to Babylon 5 as a joke, almost. It's a write-off assignment that no one else wanted, but for Londo it's the first step toward the royal court, it's a title, responsibility, the mantle of the Empire that he grew up honoring above all else. He's hungry for power, reckless for it but not out of greed, exactly -- more out of an understanding that That's What Centauri Do.
His first fatal mistake -- the one that would inform all the other fatal mistakes to come -- is his grudging alliance with Mr. Morden. The one good thing in Londo's life -- the Lady Adira -- has been taken from him by Lord Refa, and, enraged, Londo needs to show the Centarum that he's better than Refa, needs to hurt Refa in the only way that makes sense, stripping him of respect and power.
Londo cuts his Faustian bargain with Morden and his relationship with the Shadows -- the one that will, over the next twenty years, destroy him -- begins.
Morden and the Shadows align with Londo for their own purposes, and intellectually he knows it, knows Vir's right when Vir tells him not to take the deal. I think even then he sees his own fate (again with the Centauri and their prophetic dreams), but as far as Londo's concerned he has no other choice. No other choice -- with this decision, or any of the decisions to follow.
For Londo, the Shadows attack the Narn. Londo wants it to be over then but he knows it can't be. Londo could have killed one Narn, gotten a medal for it and gone on with his life but that's not the way of the Great Centauri -- they live big, they do big, they conquer. It's the way he was raised -- the way things Are. So the Shadows destroy one Narn base and then another, and Londo watches it spin out of control, hoping against hope (and he doesn't really hope, I think, he never really thought he'd get his life back after that) that it would end after just one more. But Morden's ruthless and the Shadows have their own plans ("Why don't you destroy the entire Narn homeworld, while you're at it?") and it's too late.
Every decision Londo makes -- every single personal, emotional, or professional decision for the duration of the series and the rest of his life -- comes from trying to untangle what he'd done when he aligned with the Shadows and started the war against Narn.
And he doesn't -- he doesn't feel evil. He doesn't think he's evil, just a victim of impulse and circumstance. He never wanted the Narns killed. Never wanted G'Kar to hate him and doesn't quite understand why G'Kar does -- why G'Kar can't see that Londo had only the best intentions and only ever wanted to do right by his people, for the good of that dying Centauri republic.
But as G'Kar said, he shook Londo's hand, and 24 hours later they were at war.
Still, I don't think Londo ever considers G'Kar his enemy. He has the opportunity to kill G'Kar ("And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place") and he has Lord Refa killed instead.
When the Centauri telepath comes to the station Londo asks her to tell him his fate -- rather, to confirm that the fate he knows is spooling out for him is unavoidable. "You will be Emperor," she tells him, and with that he knows he's doomed.
He closes his eyes and everything about his life ahead of him is awful -- he gets the vision of the Shadows landing on Centauri Prime (see: icon) long before he's even heard of the creatures, gets the vision of himself as an aging Emperor infected by his Drahk keeper, gets the vision of dying at G'Kar's hands. And even knowing his horrible, awful fate he does nothing to avoid it, because he does what he does for the Centauri, and he knows he's doomed to suffer but god damn it he won't let his people down.
You think about it -- Sheridan does much the same thing and he's cheered as a hero. Londo goes down unpitied and unmourned, having lived every single moment in service of an Empire that doesn't really exist anymore.
Even when the crazed Cartagia was Emperor, making a mockery of the court and all it stands for, Londo still makes sure his dress jacket is clean and pressed before entering Cartagia's throne room. Even when the crazed Cartagia sells out Centauri Prime to the Shadows and nearly gets the entire world destroyed, Londo stands on ceremony and respects the office. That respect, that tradition of service to the throne and the people, is all Londo has. Which is why if you try to tell him the Centauri regime is outmoded and dying he can't hear you, he won't hear you because without it he is absolutely nothing.
Kosh shows himself in the garden saving Sheridan, and to all the other races, the Vorlon appears as an angelic being of light, something straight out of their bibles and myths. Londo, with no mythology other than that of the Republic, doesn't see anything.
Peter Jurasik is just a phenomenally brilliant actor, I think. Because here's a character primarily defined by conquest, by getting in bed with the dark side and emerging heartless, but somehow Londo is more than just pathetic or piteous -- he's a hero, a nobleman, an old-school martyr. Beyond the hair and the makeup it's all in that face -- he's gonna take a deep breath and go down for his people because that's what's been asked of him. And it hurts like hell but he might as well be waiting there at Gethsemane (Brother Thomas would agree). And while he might in a moment of weakness ask that this cup pass from him, he knows it can't, and he doesn't run, and to the moment where he dies at G'Kar's hands he takes it like a man. Like a Centauri.
I fucking love this guy. I've got pages of notes here, all the little moments that make Londo what he is: he's trapped in the elevator with G'Kar and he just doesn't understand why G'Kar won't help him try to escape, why G'Kar can't see that in this, like in so much else, they're in this together, they're both whipping boys, they're both doomed.
When he's given his keeper and crowned Emperor, both to protect his people from the explosive devices the Drakh have planted all over Centauri Prime, he sends Sheridan and the others home rather than inviting them to his coronation. Not because he doesn't wish beyond hope that he could shrug it all off and side with them, but because he doesn't want them to be part of this, doesn't want them entangled in what he has to do. He keeps both Vir and G'Kar at arm's length for the same reason, and so he's considered arrogant, hostile. And really, he's just an instrument.
I wish I could write Londo, and maybe now that I've gotten all this out of my system I can. But I swear, in all my fannish pursuits (including a tendency to be drawn to the villains, Dukat, Scorpius, CSM, to try and see their stories, their points of view), I really don't think there's a character out there as complicated -- while being somehow also incredibly simple in his priorities and his purpose -- as Londo.
What a great fucking show.
How many Centauri does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Just one. But in the great old days of the Republic, hundreds of servants would change thousands of bulbs at our slightest whim.
-- Londo, "Convictions"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 04:14 am (UTC)If you want to read a lot of other essays and analyses, you might check out
Re:
Date: 2004-02-09 04:17 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-09 07:40 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-09 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 07:35 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-09 07:38 pm (UTC)He's -- I'm in a state of utter gogglestrapped awe at JMS and PJ for this character. Londo, man. No one else even comes close.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 10:43 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-09 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-09 11:37 am (UTC)he played me like a fiddle!
Date: 2004-02-09 06:51 pm (UTC)Because Adira's death -- and Londo's vengeance against Refa -- was up until that point the one thing Londo did for himself, outside the parameters of the Shadows' careful manipulation. Except, of course, it wasn't, and they took even that from him.
Tell me -- what was the first time Londo met Morden? Morden comes aboard the station...eavesdrops to find out what Londo's up to? Pretends to -- organize a party? My season one memory is all a big blur of baldness, I swear. *g* But what happened there, again?
Re: he played me like a fiddle!
Date: 2004-02-11 11:23 am (UTC)They met in Signs and Portents, season 1. Morden comes on the station and asks Delenn, G'Kar and Londo what they want. Delenn doesn't answer; G'Kar and Londo both do. (And it's important that they both reply - it could have gone either way, and I think G'Kar later knows that, which is one of the reasons why he does become Londo's friend in the end.) Morden chooses Londo. Their replies are worth quoting in full:
G'Kar and Morden:
What do I want? The Centauri stripped my world. I want justice."
"What do you want?"
"To suck the marrow from their bones. To grind their skulls to powder!"
"What do you want?"
"To tear down their cities, blacken their sky, sow their ground with salt! To completely, utterly erase them!"
"And then what?"
"I don't know! As long as my homeworld's safety is guaranteed, I don't know that it matters."
Londo and Morden:
"All right. Fine! You really want to know what I want? You really want to know the truth? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy! I want to see the Centauri stretch forth their hand again and command the stars! I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power! I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or to look forward! I want us to be what we used to be! I want - I want it all back the way that it was! Does that answer your question?"
During that episode, Morden is able to help Londo out in a difficult situation, and that is where their alliance starts.
Incidentally, here's a good website with essays and fanfic for Centauriphiles:
http://centauridelegation.homestead.com/
Re: he played me like a fiddle!
Date: 2004-02-11 12:08 pm (UTC)And that's what Morden preys upon -- that kind of vulnerability and weakness which G'Kar didn't show. G'Kar was ready to pick up a sword and fight for his people and that's too active for the Shadows. They need reactive, need lost souls who will accept them for a promise and won't fight.
Note that G'Kar's answer is all about what he would do for his people, while Londo's is a heartbreaking plea for a world that can no longer be -- and no evidence that Londo has the strength, or the interest, to fight for progress or change.
Re: he played me like a fiddle!
Date: 2004-02-11 09:49 pm (UTC)IMO, the reasons why Morden did not pick him was because G'Kar's aggressive notions were focused only on the Centauri. What Londo wanted was much more vague, and could be exploited beyond the Narn-Centauri conflict.
Though I'll grant you that Londo longed for the past, and G'Kar for the future. I'm just balking at calling genocide progressive action for Narn.
Re: he played me like a PUPPET!
Date: 2004-02-12 11:57 am (UTC)You think he wouldn't have done that if the Shadows had picked him? G'Kar as he was pre-enlightenment?
No, absolutely. You're so right. And, again, my S1 knowledge is spotty at best and will be till the damned DVDs get here.
IMO, the reasons why Morden did not pick him was because G'Kar's aggressive notions were focused only on the Centauri. What Londo wanted was much more vague, and could be exploited beyond the Narn-Centauri conflict.
I'm not sure about this though.
I think Morden saw in Londo someone willing to sell out to him, someone malleable, a political figurehead with no inherent power who'd be a good vessel to carry out the Shadows' will. Whereas G'Kar had too much self-motivation, was too strong, had too much focussed anger (which I guess is what you're saying when you point out his anger's directed exclusively on the Centauri -- I agree) and too much sword-wielding strength.
The Shadows didn't want someone who would WIELD a sword -- they wanted someone who would BE a sword, for them. Which is what they get from Londo and what they wouldn't have gotten from G'Kar.
Re: he played me like a PUPPET!
Date: 2004-02-12 02:19 pm (UTC)Ah. I so enjoyed rewatching season 1 when I got the DVDs. Yes, there's the occasional doozy, but that's in every season, and 1 is so essential to everyone's arcs but in particularily for Londo and G'Kar. I think one of the quintessential crimes one can commit as B5 is to introduce a newbie via season 2. Yes, season 2 is rounder and has more action, but you really have to meet Londo as the wistful romantic who falls for Adira and as the cynical, desperate man who is clearly on the losing side in the intergalactic powerstruggle to understand why he accepts Morden's offer, and you have to meet G'Kar as a ruthless bastard who does what he can to sabotage the Babylon project in the pilot to understand how far he comes, and how amazing his development is.
Speaking of Londo, I was startled to realise just how much of his arc is forshadowed here. It's not just that this is the first time he recounts his vision of his death, but a number of other things that he says. "On the question of galactic peace I am long part innocence, and fast approaching apathy. It is all a game" he tells us, and it's that cynicism that will later prove his downfall. (...)
Speaking of G'Kar and foreshadowing, I'd forgotten how closely events here mirror The Coming of Shadows, and boy, does he run up the negative karma here. At least Londo has the grace to feel horribly guilty when he knows that his people are about to attack the Narn homeworld - G'Kar is hypocrite enough to express insincere sympathy while he's pretending that he knows nothing while the Narn attack Ragesh III. Always good to remember that first season G'Kar was an utter bastard most of the time. But of course, just when the audience might be inclined to write him off as a villain, he's allowed a chance to remind us that he has every reason to want revenge against the Centauri.
The entire review plus ensuing discussion is here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/andrastewhite/122706.html
Re: he played me like a PUPPET!
Date: 2004-02-12 08:15 pm (UTC)I agree -- also, to some degree, it's important for Delenn and the whole "humans are the other half of our soul" narrative.
Still, I like her better with hair. *g*
Londo debate - I'm so there!
Date: 2004-02-11 11:16 am (UTC)Some individual points, though, I dispute.
1) Fanfic. Well, obviously.*g* Though admittedly it took me ten years to dare and write about Londo, G'Kar and Vir.
2) And he doesn't -- he doesn't feel evil. He doesn't think he's evil, just a victim of impulse and circumstance.
Here I disagree, or rather, I'd rephrase it. I think that Londo does believe he has well and truly damned himself from the bombing of Narn onwards. My major canon evidence would be The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari, because, lest we forget, Londo isn't really talking to G'Kar, Vir, Sheridan and Delenn there. He's talking to himself. They simply embody different aspects of himself. So when Londo's inner G'Kar tells him "you were a witness, you had an obligation to speak out" or "and that's why you don't deserve to be Emperor, and that's why you don't deserve to live", it is really a self accusation.
Also, think of In the Beginning: "I know my sins, dear woman, and the price I will eventually pay for them." Or In the Fire: "Still, there will be a reckoning" (for himself).
3.) Even when the crazed Cartagia was Emperor, making a mockery of the court and all it stands for, Londo still makes sure his dress jacket is clean and pressed before entering Cartagia's throne room.
Not so much a contradiction here as an addendum: But Londo doesn't need more than two minutes in Cartagia's presence to realize he must remove him for the sake of the Centauri. He starts to plan for Cartagia's assassination immediately after that first meeting, and never wavers. Of course, that is the traditional Centauri style - coup d'etat by poison. Londo would have never considered a revolution against the Emperor, or letting G'Kar kill him. Instead, he sets up Cartagia's murder in a Centauri way.
4) I think he does get why G'Kar hates him (as long as G'Kar does). After Dust to Dust at the latest, though I'd argue that even in The Coming of Shadows, when G'Kar offers that drink, the horrified look on Londo's face says it all, because Londo knows what G'Kar does not. That is also why Londo never asks G'Kar to forgive him. When G'Kar eventually does and says it, it comes as a complete surprise.
Re: Londo debate - I'm so there!
Date: 2004-02-11 12:03 pm (UTC)Yes, definitely. But also, I think, Londo uses G'Kar as a way out. I mean, very literally, at the end, he has to ask G'Kar to kill him, to strangle him so they die at each others' hands.
But here too -- G'Kar says "that's why you don't deserve to be Emperor, and that's why you don't deserve to live" -- I think that's wishful thinking on Londo's part. Because he KNOWS, he knows the truth is closer to: "that's why you're DOOMED to be Emperor; that's why you're DOOMED to live."
Yet another reason why Londo needs G'Kar so badly -- G'Kar is the only one with the power, the understanding, and the will to put him out of his misery. And if/when G'Kar kills him it will be honest, and Londo will have atoned for his sins.
Not so much a contradiction here as an addendum: But Londo doesn't need more than two minutes in Cartagia's presence to realize he must remove him for the sake of the Centauri. He starts to plan for Cartagia's assassination immediately after that first meeting, and never wavers. Of course, that is the traditional Centauri style - coup d'etat by poison. Londo would have never considered a revolution against the Emperor, or letting G'Kar kill him. Instead, he sets up Cartagia's murder in a Centauri way.
Word. Exactly. Always within the bounds of the Centauri tradition, always well-dressed, and -- were it not for circumstances and timing that demanded Vir make the kill shot -- Cartagia would die at Londo's own hands. Straight-up coup in the Centauri way, indeed.
a way out (1)
Date: 2004-02-12 12:56 pm (UTC)Have you read The Shadow of his Thoughts, the short story JMS wrote about Londo for Amazing Stories? It's set a few days after his coronation, and your remark reminded me of it. In case you haven't, here are the relevant excerpts:
1) Beginning of the story:
"The dream was the same. It was always the same. The chakat lay on the ground before him, its four legs bound by ropes, horns scratching the dry ground beneath its head. The sun was hot overhead. A voice, always the same voice, whispered from behind Londo. You know what you have to do. What you have always done. Londo stared at the creature, and its gaze met his own. The eyes that looked back at him were fierce, proud, unbowed. And somehow familiar. In the dream it said to him, soundlessly and wordlessly but with absolute clarity, It is duty. You cannot fight duty.
I can't do it, Londo thought back, and looked down. The sword was in his hand. Yes, you can, it thought at him, and it struggled to raise its head, exposing its throat. Waiting for the death blow. Sobbing, Londo brought down the sword, and watched the life fade away in the creatures eyes."
In the course of the story, Londo meets a young seer, Shiri, and her ambitious and greedy mentor, Delasi.
2)"'And how long have you been a prophetess?' Londo asked. The countryside passed slowly outside the carriage.
'She has been able to see since she was barely a child of three seasons,' Delasi said.
'An advanced case, to be sure,' Londo said. 'You would almost think that a child who could see at three could be allowed to speak at sixteen.'
Delasi's lips pursed in a way Londo found most satisfying. With her silence won, for the moment at least, he looked back to Shiri.
'What can you tell me of my future, child?' he asked. (...)
Shiri considered her words carefully. 'I see little joy, and much sorrow,' she said at last. 'I see fire and death and pain. I see you betrayed by almost everyone you have ever trusted.'
'Almost everyone?'
'Your greatest enemy is also your greatest friend, and the trust you place in him is rewarded at the end of days. He is your freedom, and you are his. And in the end...' She hesitated, then forced herself to continue. 'In the end, you die in the arms of your friend, and he dies in yours, that a world might live.'
For a moment, Londo felt the world slide out from under him. The image she had described was a dream that had always been with him, the dream of his own death, in which he and G'kar of Narn ended their long and strange relationship by strangling one another to death. (...) Until this moment, he had always believed that the dream pointed to a final act of vengeance by one against the other. But now, in her words, for the first time he allowed himself the possibility of hope. That a world might live, she had said. But which world? Narn or Centauri Prime?"
a way out (2)
Date: 2004-02-12 12:59 pm (UTC)"Upon arriving back at the royal palace, after his briefing from minister Vole, Londo returned to his suite, where he found a letter waiting for him. Though he had not seen her handwriting before, he knew even before opening it that it came from Shiri. Thank you, the note read. There is no gift that I can give you that would be the equal to the one you have given me: my freedom, and the restoration of my father's House. So I give you the only thing I have to give, the last prophecy I intend to make. One day, Emperor, you will be free of your burden. One day you will save our people, and all the sacrifices you make will not have been in vain.
Londo set the note down again and looked out at his dear city, framed by scaffolding, climbing its way back from the horrors of war, and was surprised to find tears running down his face.
The dream was the same. It was always the same. The chakat lay on the ground before him, its four legs bound by ropes, horns scratching the dry ground beneath its head. The sun was hot overhead. A voice, always the same voice, whispered from behind Londo. You know what you have to do. What you have always done.
Londo stared at the creature, and its gaze met his own. The eyes that looked back at him were fierce, proud, unbowed. And in the dream, the eyes that looked back at him were the eyes of Shiri, frightened and alone... they were the eyes of his people as he passed them on the streets... and then, at the last, he recognized them for what they were - his own eyes, looking up at him. It is duty, a voice whispered. You cannot fight duty.
Londo looked down. The sword was in his hand.
Yes, I can, he thought back, and brought down the sword, severing the ropes that bound the creature's feet.
It staggered upright and met his gaze for one last time. Then, with a power and a freedom he had never experienced before, he watched it race away, disappearing into the distance, into the woods, into the future.
The dream never came to him again."
Re: a way out (2)
Date: 2004-02-12 08:12 pm (UTC)I did read that Centauri trilogy of the official novels and quite liked it, though this fascination for Technomages always eluded me, or I missed the boat on that one. Despite the fact I've seen all the episodes of Crusade.
Wasn't there some sort of Technomage movie, too?
Yeah, I missed the boat on them.
Thanks for the head's up about this, and also about Andraste's LJ.
(And of course the answer is, with all this analysis there's gotta be a fic somewhere. Which is to say, after all that, I'll probably write Londo. *g*)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-12 06:49 pm (UTC)As a long-time Londo lover, I can only say thank you for a great, concise breakdown of a character who I've always thought was wrongly received. There is such depth and character to Londo which is so easily written off in fan fiction. Londo is a gift from the fannish gods for us angst and tragedy lovers.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-12 08:13 pm (UTC)Could not agree more. Mmmm.
Welcome!