: The clear feudal Japanese/Klingon warrior culture parallels were really only
: first introduced with The Cole Protocol , but I think Halo has been
: far more successful than Star Trek has ever been with the Klingons, in
: terms of making the Elites feel like a real group of aliens.

: Broken Circle also gives
: us a lot more with how Elite society evolved (although its focus on the
: Ussans is of questionable lore merit at this point, until more connections
: are made.)

Broken Circle is rather worthless in this regard, because there's maybe five or six main characters walking about in a world of cardboard cutouts. The Covenant and the Sangheili culture shown in the novel wasn't even approximately a functioning culture.

Think about the War of Beginnings. It was a stalemate that the Sangheili lost. They fought hard enough that the Prophets were brought to the negotiating table. They forced the Prophets to sign a truce that united the Prophets and the Elites into a new government, where each had separate but equal positions of power. But the Elites had to accept a different kind of defeat in order to get this far. They abandoned their traditional beliefs and took apart sacred Forerunner artefacts to build better weapons. They committed one of the worst sacrileges to save their own skins.

What would this engender among the Sangheili? Resentment? Guilt? Something like that, I'd imagine. It would not result in a massive cultural shift that turns the leaders into true believers of the Prophet's faith overnight.

Why is Ussa 'Xellus the only Sangheili who feels that the truce was a defeat? Why are the representatives of Sanghelios groveling at the feet of the Prophets and denouncing dissenters as not true Sangheili? Why did the other Sangheili choose such obsequious zealots to represent them at the negotiating table? Why are the results of a truce so one-sided that the Sangheili are spying on dissenters for the Prophets, who don't seem to be offering similar concessions? Why is this cultural revolution so widespread that a well-connected war hero like Ussa 'Xellus can't find a state to quietly support him, even in the far-flung Sangheili colonies?

It's all just cardboard cutouts.

: While a tad overused, I don't think a lot of "stupid Karen
: Traviss!" readers realized that the whole thematic point of a lot of
: the K5 trilogy, especially Glasslands , was that the Elites were
: realizing if they wanted to steer their people away from ruin (in
: whichever direction that seemed to run in—the Servants of Abiding Truth
: vs. The Arbiter's forces are certainly different attitudes to take) they
: needed to act "human"—both in the more positive aspects of
: resourcefulness, and even negatively with guile, stealth and duplicity.

To be honest, I don't think I've ever heard people complaining about thematic points. When people complain about the Kilo 5 Trilogy, it's about the facts used to back up that thematic point. Like how Sangheili apparently don't have their own colloquialisms, but must borrow them from the Humans. Or how Jul's triumph over ONI wasn't due to cleverness, resourcefulness, or any other admirable trait that ends in -ness. Or how Humanity's success is due to never-before-seen superweapons that can intercept plasma torpedoes. Superweapons so terrifying, they can leave MAC craters on the face of Sangheilios without fear of provoking a massive retaliation.

Maybe people are simply dissatisfied because the Sangheili have been reduced from a galactic power to something that the UNSC can fight, all in the span of a few months of offscreen civil war that never got touched upon.

Or maybe it's something else. I know a guy who could debate you for days on end on this subject. Hell, I'd love to hear you two do a podcast!

The collapse of the Covenant Empire and the search for a new way forward has so much story potential, it saddens me that we haven't had a good book series that explored it. We need an author who realizes that faith doesn't make you an idiot, and the Sangheili can't be exclusively a warrior culture. The Covenant has been around for 3,500 years. What were they fighting all that time? Perhaps they have other pursuits, and the war with the UNSC brought the warrior culture to the fore?