alas i've been filled with thoughts about Irving Braxiatel for the past few days so here's an.... essay i guess? if anyone's interested. everything's under the cut because i sure did write a lot! also about halfway through i start to talk specifically about my fanfic version of him so like. feel free to jump ship if you don't have any clue what i'm talking about.
to me, Braxiatel has always been a character obsessed with aesthetics. not in that he's a superficial character or that his art interest is only driven by collecting beautiful things, but that Braxiatel is very aware of how things look, how he himself looks, and he knows the aesthetics of power incredibly well.
when he founds his Collection, it is genuinely with the goal of creating a collection of all the knowledge and art in the universe accessible to anyone but art collection in itself involves engaging with and moving within certain hierarchies that are all rooted, deep down, in imperialism and classism. for Braxiatel – to be an art collector (at least on Earth) is to invest in those aesthetics of power. it's a classic trope that a character might not come from money and be broke as shit but as long as they maintain the appearance and aesthetics of wealth and power, they're acceptable. so Braxiatel chooses a first name associated with theatrics and class, he wears tailored suits, he never loses his carefully chosen demeanor, he lives in the goddamn palace of Versailles in an effort to cultivate his appearance and others' perceptions of him. it's even implicit that Braxiatel keeps the same face for multiple regenerations to keep that personal aesthetic he established.
but aesthetics aren't apolitical or amoral. inhabiting the aesthetics of power (at least based in upper class Europe) also means inhabiting those structures of power and over the course of the series you can see Braxiatel get caught up in those trappings particularly in his use of the Collection as a political (and imperial) force post-occupation.
[also just a wider side note for a second – i'm not trying to say that the use of certain aesthetics is inherently immoral, i think that sort of argument is a bit ridiculous and reactionary, but you do have to recognize the political and moral dimensions of aesthetic choices. like irl, it's pretty easy to see how quickly cute ~cottagecore~ aesthetics turned into a pipeline for tradwives and a rise in anti-feminism. same goes for most ~traditional~ aesthetics and whatnot.]
genuinely, i do think that Braxiatel's Whole Deal is a performance and a mask but he's worn the mask for so long that he's embodied its spirit (which, generally speaking, is the cultural role of masks). interestingly, you could say the same for the Doctor as their identity was never (in my view) inherent but something gathered over time because they kept being thrust into the role of 'hero'.
while i started writing this based mostly on thoughts of Braxiatel's role in the Benny series, this also applies to him in Gallifrey. it's really hard to get a sense of his character in Gallifrey because 1) he's still relatively young and hasn't gone through the Everything yet and 2) he's so deeply entrenched in Gallifreyan power structures that he never (or rarely) lets his genuine self through.
his role on Gallifrey is largely based in:
schemes and machinations to carry out various ends usually involving saving Romana: his early season appearances play this straight with him embodying that hero role he set himself up to inhabit, quite literally in the case of him taking the Chancellorship & Presidency which are two things that he personally does not want but is more than willing to cast himself in those roles of power for what he sees as the greater good. in later appearances (Soldier Obscura, Beyond) that illusion of him as the heroic hero crumbles as he doesn't have those power structures (or the aesthetics of power) to rely on.
his "love" of Romana: others may disagree (and no fault to them) but i don't ever see his love of Romana as genuinely romantic but rather him falling in love with the literal embodiment of power (and the embodiment of Gallifrey which in turn represents imperial power). all of his interactions with her are horribly insincere and all based around this constructed hierarchy of the President and her advisor even when that hierarchy isn't real and is only maintained through both of the characters demeanor and aesthetics (the way Romana is consistently referred as President throughout s4 despite in no way holding any rank).
Pandora: this is pretty obvious, i mean Pandora as an entity is power at its very core and it's important to remember that Braxiatel is infected with her throughout almost all of his appearances though it's ambiguous how much she's influencing his behavior. and it's important to remember that Braxiatel is specifically infected with the past and present aspects of Pandora which OH BOY definitely feeds into Braxiatel's worship of the past and how he keeps re-writing the past over and over again without being able to reach a future. but specifically, as i've said before, all of Braxiatel's aesthetics of power come from the past and how he wields history, in the academic & personal sense, as a weapon to control others.
but Braxiatel's investment in aesthetics as a means of power & control has another side too. for a lot of his appearances, Braxiatel is a good or at least a benign person who fights for the greater good. but because most of his identity is constructed, it becomes easier, when necessary, to twist himself into the role of the villain because it's just putting on a new mask, adopting a new aesthetic. at times in the Collection arc, he does become a bit of a mustache twirling Evil Guy but it makes sense to me because he's just leaning further into the imperialist white British man aesthetic (for lack of a more accurate description) that he's already cultivated throughout the years.
and he starts creating these roles, manipulating aesthetics, for other people too. Bev comes to the Collection as an art thief with no intention of staying but Braxiatel manipulates her to work for him and changes her aesthetic (having her dress differently, wear glasses) to be treated as a serious academic and not a thief (which is great until she gains the agency of a leader in Braxiatel's absence). and Braxiatel's manipulation of Jason is probably the most obvious with him editing his history and memories and everything about his life to keep him as a roguish, kind-of-an-idiot guy who's easier to understand and control. when Jason fights back because he is more than some archetype, Braxiatel has him killed in a horrible way to keep asserting power over those he thinks of as family.
it happens to Ace and Danna in Soldier Obscura too! Braxiatel arranges the whole scene as he would have in an early Gallifrey episode to assert power with Danna acting as a brave, self-sacrificial old soldier and Ace as his dutiful student but when neither of them act the way Braxiatel expects them to behave, he kills Danna and erases Ace's memory.
his worship of aesthetics as power and archetypes as identity went so far that when others don't behave as their archetype, their role, dictates, Braxiatel doesn't know what to do so he leaves them in one way or another. it's horribly tragic but it is the end point of a life built around cultivating appearances, managing aesthetics, and devising masks for himself.
[at this point, normal people might want to stop reading, everything after that is specifically about my fanfic And They Became Monsters (the fall of great men) including some big spoilers]
a lot of these thoughts fed into my writing of Braxiatel in ATBM and specifically the way i designed the two different versions of Braxiatel i wrote – the Braxiatel from Act 1 who lived his life without interference from the future and the Braxiatel from Act 2 who led his life being advised by his future self.
Braxiatel 1 played the game with aesthetics and power structures a fair bit – he tried to fit in with other Time Lords by pretending he was one of them and he embodied the 'wealthy patron of the arts' role very well and very purposefully during the St Oscar's years but he was never lost in this difference between the person he presented and the person he was. the only real moment of pretense in the fic is in chapter 9 when he meets the Oracle for the first time and refuses to accept that he has no greater role than to be Irving Braxiatel. so the Oracle instead tells him, (“You are an artist and you paint upon the universe as if it were your canvas. Time is but a medium to her master and you crush her underfoot. You will face war with a book of art. You will preserve history in a bottle. You will write the greatest tragedy in the universe.") which... it is true but only because Braxiatel makes it so, because he refuses to accept being himself and nothing more. and when Braxiatel asks how he will win, the Oracle only says that he must accept his fate. by the end of the story, we know this means Braxiatel can only escape this cycle he made for himself, he can only win, but accepting that he isn't the hero and was never meant to be anyone's savior. he can only win by asking for help. but Braxiatel in the moment takes this to mean that he is a hero and he keeps behaving like one.
Braxiatel 2 on the other hand, was a creation. he was told at age 8 that his whole identity hinged around stopping this ever elusive War and he was explicitly directed to focus all his energy, relationships, skills on reaching this goal. he became a mask. but more than that – he based his notions of power and control on the one person who seemed to have infinite power over him: himself. he becomes interested in art not because of any noble goal but because he knows Braxiatel loves art. he knows that Braxiatel wants to save Gallifrey so he does as well. he's not developing an identity, he's only imitating what he sees and hears about his other self.
and this is reflected (no pun intended) through the mirrors. the mirrors were introduced as a pair with the subtlest difference between them but as the story unraveled, we learned there was only ever one mirror sent down a cycle, reflecting the past and future. as Braxiatel 2 came to learn the truth about the mirror, he came to understand Braxiatel 1 as a liar and an abuser and he himself became villainous because his identity is nothing but a reflection. and in turn he manipulates and controls people the same way he was manipulated by Braxiatel 1. (at least until Act 3 when he starts to be able to break the cycle.)
i also chose to involve Faction Paradox (sort of...) in the fic because 1) it was a convenient way to wave away some of the time travel and paradox mechanisms (yeah sorry the story leans much more towards fantasy than science fiction), 2) the family symbolism worked so well, and 3) because their entire Thing is based in aesthetics. and the truth is (spoiler) Faction Paradox was never involved in the Braxiatel's life or in the creation of his paradox. the Godfather who initiated Braxiatel 1 was Braxiatel 2. they never went to the Eleven Day Empire, they went to a room that Braxiatel 2 and John dressed up to look like the Empire because all that matters is for Braxiatel 1 to believe the ruse and all that really takes is the aesthetics of the occult given how aesthetics have shaped his life. John is probably a member of Faction Paradox but his involvement in all of this is family business for the brother he never knew, not Family business. and when Braxiatel 2 takes off that literal mask (the mask of the man he never was), he is finally free to find his own identity and not live in the footsteps of someone else.
the other thing i wanted to talk about in relation to Braxiatel's sense of identity and relation to power is the title of the fic. the And They Became Monsters part was always pretty set in stone because it really is a lovely summary of how the story goes. but i added the subtitle (the fall of great men) pretty close to when i ended up publishing the fic because i kept thinking that And They Became Monsters is really only part of the story and Braxiatel doesn't end up as a monster, part of the point of the story is proving that dehumanizing someone as "a monster" as a way to explain their cruel actions only ends up causing them to commit more cruelty. it's easier for Braxiatel to play the role of the monster, aesthetics and all, than to be his own person. he may not earn redemption or forgiveness but that doesn't mean he can't do good.
(the fall of great men) is about the end of the story (Act 3 onward). "falling" is used as a repeated motif throughout the whole fic whenever Braxiatel starts to lose control of himself or the situation at hand. "great men" is specifically in reference to the idea of "great man theory", the lens of historical analysis from the 19th century that argues history is shaped by a few Great Men rather than the prevailing historical theories today that focuses on materialism, social environments, and people across classes. (as you would expect, today great men theory is usually peddled by white supremacists, fascists, and imperialists.)
Braxiatel viewed himself as a Great Man; he wanted to be a Great Man more than anything else to prove that he was extraordinary and important whether his ambitions were focused on Gallifrey or Venice or St Oscars or the Collection. and he had the accompanying aesthetics – a love of all things high art, a clean & carefully picked over demeanor, an acceptance of power in whatever form he could find. he literally rewrote history so he could be the Great Man Hero.
and it didn't work, it never worked, because great man theory isn't real and there was nothing Braxiatel could do to make it real and he knows that by the end of the story. he doesn't stop the war, he doesn't even stop himself, he asks for help and that's the only way to win.
And They Became Monsters is a version of great men history by putting Braxiatel at the center of everything, (the fall of great men) is saying that narrative is inherently flawed and not based in reality. great men will always fall because they aren't real, they're a dream for those who buy into simplistic individualistic stories and i'm sure Benny would agree that it's poor historical analysis. speaking of Benny, she literally comes in during the last chapter to say that none of this was Braxiatel's story, the narrative belongs to everyone and i love ending his story/beginning hers with the same "it's the biggest story every told" line from Crystal of Cantus where the line "and they became monsters" also originates. i'm just :) pleased with how i tied it together.
oh and i have (the fall of great men) in parentheticals because 1) i wanted to clarify that it's a subtitle and 2) it keeps up the notation that the Oracle uses whenever she speaks or adds in prose as a part of the narration as she's the only one who knew the narrative from the beginning (and part of a reason she's my screen-name/url at the moment).
anyways, this was incredibly long and rambly so thanks to whoever read any of it tbh but it was fun to actually write some of these thoughts down!