: I still find the cause of the civil war silly and convoluted, even after
: reading this. Yes Truth wanted absolute power, but had he just left things
: as they were the rings would be activated and he would have
: "ascended" as planned in a few days. What does he care who is
: the military arm of the Covenant. I really don't understand why this
: storyline was created for H2 or why it's held in high regard.

Ah, this is a good question- and where the lore contradicts itself.

Did you read Contact Harvest?

In contact Harvest, the three prophets we know from Halo 2 and 3 rise to power by usurping it from the previous prophets.

PoTruth specifically, learned from Mendicant Bias that Humans are the 'descendants' or inheritors of all they left behind. He learned this because humans kept showing up on their scanners as forerunner relics, and when Mendicant told him this, he actually attempted to disconnect the Dreadnought to go reveal himself to the humans, but Truth stopped it, and told no one.

So at this point, Truth now knows the the Covenant and everything they've worked for is based on a terrible mistake, a lie. If the Elites learned that everything they had been told by the prophets was wrong, a lie, the Covenant would fall apart and the Prophets would likely be slaughtered.

Essentially, they would have to reveal that there is no great Journey, and their "gods" were actually the present Humans.

So he kept the truth to himself, and replaced the guard with Brutes who would not question him.

This goes against Truth's motivations in the games of Halo 2 and 3. It's never clear that he knows what he's doing with the rings.

The games indicate he still believes in the great Journey, and that's why he wants to activate the rings, where as, given what we know form Contact Harvest, he knows the Journey is a lie, and is just activating the rings because....

(Perhaps he wanted to do it from the Ark with his followers and start Fresh in the Galaxy with him)

I'll point out that Joe Staten wrote Contact Harvest, while he was still at Bungie. So the inconsistencies here are not due to 343.

Truths motivations for using the rings and the civil war differ between the books and the games, much like the fall of Reach differed from Reach the game.