On "Legend of the Galactic Heroes"
_ From _ The Sol Journal, Issue 176 _ , published on Heinessen, March 153 N.I.C. _
For the years it has been airing, it has surprised me that so many people could be interested in a lightly fictionalized television show about history, when it’s always been firmly established who lives and who dies. No matter what personal dramas _ Legend of the Galactic Heroes _ may choose to present on your screen, the historical record is firmly fixed, and everyone who graduated high school, no matter what planet of the galaxy they did so on, should be well aware of the main movements of the story. This is what I thought, anyway, and I let the show pass me by for two seasons, despite its critical acclaim. Unlike my daughter, I have little interest in swooning over actors chosen for their youth and beauty, as they struggle to portray intelligence.
However, after I found my daughter in tears at the end of one of the more recent episodes, I finally had to ask what exactly she saw in the show. I expected that she was sobbing over some young heartthrob meeting his doom, but this was not the case. I should have known that my daughter (a sensitive, kind, and intelligent young woman) is not so swayed by a pretty face that she can cheer while watching one of the most unforgivable atrocities of that age play out on screen.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that a program partially funded through the Arts and Culture Office on Phezzan chooses the people of Terran faith to be constant scapegoats in its historical narrative. Our Church has been banned in the Neue Reich since the days of Kaiser Lohengramm, and any believers who remain must practice their faith quietly, as individuals. For a faith such as ours that is built on spiritual community, this is a punishment that I cannot imagine enduring, let alone for over a hundred years. It is circular, of course: with no official way to protest mistreatment, the narrative that the Terran believers are a traitorous, hidden influence inside the Reich can flourish, which leads to further suppression of the Terran faith, and entrenches the idea that the Reich’s actions are justified, no matter what they are.
I sat down and watched the entire third season of _ Legend of the Galactic Heroes _ in about a day. I couldn’t put it down. It’s a slick show— gripping and well made. Chocolate covered poison.
One of the season’s secondary plots involves one of Kaiser Reinhard’s first military ventures as Kaiser. As a show of his power over the outlying regions of the Neue Reich— those poor planets settled by those rejected by the old Goldenbaum authority, most exile colonies, some without even a local lord— and as a demonstration of his willingness to stifle dissent, Kaiser Reinhard sends a fleet to eliminate the Terran religion on Earth. At least, this is the justification that historians generally agree upon. In the show, the fleet is sent as retribution for an assassination attempt. Although this has always been the party line, people understand that this demonstration of authority accomplished more than one goal. In any event, I forgive the show for narrowing that particular scope in its plot. The show is propaganda, after all. How could it not walk the party line?
The speech Kaiser Reinhard gives to his admiralty in the show is a truncated version of the one he gave in history, but it retains the salient details. Admiral Wahlen is to travel to Earth with his fleet and allow every member of the Terran faith to die as martyrs for their beliefs. It’s stressed several times that Kaiser Reinhard does not want to harm the non-believers, but that of course there are no non-believers on the planet, which has a population of ten million.
I knew from the beginning that this show was one meant to improve Kaiser Reinhard’s legacy. I remembered hearing that the first season caused something of an uproar when Kaiser Reinhard’s failure to prevent a holocaust at Westerland was written in _ Legend of the Galactic Heroes _ as being the responsibility of the Kaiser’s scheming right hand man, who tricked him into allowing it to happen, leaving Kaiser Reinhard blameless yet guilt-stricken. I wondered just how, exactly, the show would attempt to rescue Kaiser Reinhard’s reputation when faced with him ordering the slaughter of ten million.
That question has an easy answer: the slaughter of ten million is presented as right, and just. Not a single one of the heroes of the drama questions it.
The scenes that follow later in the season of the destruction inside the Terran church headquarters— presented as only taking place inside the one complex, rather than across the whole planet— are difficult to watch. No expense was spared in special effects, in the blood spilling across the floors. Terrans defending their homes from invasion are portrayed as crazed, drug-addled, brainwashed beasts. When they aren’t killed by the Imperial soldiers, they kill themselves, to take whatever secrets they’re supposedly guarding to their graves.
One of the protagonists of the Alliance side of the story, Julian Mintz, Yang Wenli’s adopted son, is present in the Terran headquarters at the time, trying to expose some devious plot. His motivations in the show are poorly drawn at best, and this is almost certainly due to the relative lack of detail about these events in Mintz’s memoirs, written some fifty years later. His memoirs place him on Earth, but he doesn’t go into detail about why or where. I think that it is notable that a man who wrote unflinchingly about his life and participation in the war should hesitate when writing about what he witnessed on Earth. Perhaps the horrors were too terrible to recall and put to paper, or perhaps he felt guilty that there was nothing he could do to stop the massacre.
In fact, there is only a single person who protests the deaths of these ten million on screen. _ Legend of the Galactic Heroes _ does not tell us his name, but his name is known to the historical record. We know much about him. In fact, there’s a video of him being put to death, which you can find without difficulty if you look for it. I’ve seen it.
Marcus Gebauer was a young enlisted man, twenty-two years old, in the second year of his compulsory service in the Reichsflotte. Most of his shifts were spent in the kitchens of Admiral Wahlen’s flagship, preparing meals for the crew. During the journey to Earth, Marcus wondered if there was any way to avert the order that had been given to the fleet. If there was anything that he could do to prevent millions of deaths. I think that he knew there was nothing he could do. I think that knowledge must have sat heavily with him.
Perhaps— perhaps— if the commander was lost right before the landing began, there would be confusion, and delay, and time for someone to come to their senses. It seemed like the only possibility that he could grasp.
As an enlisted man, he would not have carried a sidearm unless one was specifically given to him. It was a kitchen knife that he attacked Admiral Wahlen with. There wasn’t any poison on the blade other than bacteria from the kitchens, which did later cause the admiral to lose the arm.
Marcus was tortured to extract a confession about who within the Earth Church was giving him orders. He refused to name anyone, claiming that no one had given him instructions. In the show, this is presented as the deranged ravings of a cultist, brainwashed into betraying his military superiors for secret religious orders.
But one thing that is known about Marcus Gebauer, a twenty-two year old enlisted man who worked in the kitchens, is that he was not a member of the Terran faith. He had a tattoo of the Odin rune above his heart. He made sacrifices at his local temple to the gods before he was called up to his service. When his mother finally received his ashes, she buried them with the rites of the Imperial pagan religion.
They tortured him, and then they killed him. He was a young man who sacrificed his life in an ultimately futile attempt to save strangers— people he would never lay eyes on, on a planet whose soil he would never touch, who practiced a faith he did not believe in. He did this because it was the only thing that he could do, and because he understood the humanity of strangers and the value of their lives. _ Legend of the Galactic Heroes _ portrays him as an ugly, senseless lunatic who flails desperately at a cast of beautiful, rational men, part of a conspiracy to destroy the perfect leadership of the Reich.
Our faith does not have saints. We do not even venerate martyrs, because we are a Church that believes in the fullness of life, and it’s a terrible tragedy for anyone to lose theirs before their time. But I am a man, as well as a believer in Mother Earth, and as a man I have heroes. I do not doubt that Kaiser Reinhard, Marshal Yang Wenli, and all the other members of this drama were intelligent people, and I understand well how they shaped the history of the galaxy. But they are not my heroes.
There is one nameless, forgotten man on screen that my eyes fix on. And as I watch him try, despite everything— even though I know how the story ends, and I know who is telling it— when he steps out of the shadows and says “I cannot allow this”, there’s a part of me that is still clenching my own fist and hoping the blade strikes home. Against all hope, I want it to be a story with different heroes, and a different ending.