dear vector prime, with the convoy concil rudling the maximals, has cybertron fallen into a caste system again with the convoys on top?
Dear Commander Concerned,
I see you’ve stumbled upon a topic of some debate in the centuries following the Great Transformation! Let me share the facts with you, and you may arrive at your own conclusions.
To be clear, the military and political rank of Convoy was not assigned by birth. Anyone could apply themselves at one of Cybertron’s great houses of learning to prepare for state exams to become a Convoy. Emergency battlefield promotions were also permissible, as when Big Junior was dubbed Big Convoy by his dying father. Not every Convoy was a member of the ruling Convoy Council, and not every legislator, public representative or leader was a Convoy either. Conversely, some born Convoy-types did not pursue leadership—such as Nyx, the pilot.
However, you are right in that societal bias existed in favour of Convoy-type Transformers. A majority of the Convoy Council had been born as Convoy-types, with shared physical traits among them seen as desirable by much of the public. For example, while the young tactician Longrack came from a long line of Convoys, none in his family had been born Convoy-types, and so it had become tradition for them to wear large forehead crests similar to those naturally forged on Convoy-types.
In truth, I cannot say that all of the Council had earned their place through merit. For example, serial fraudster Q-V Convoy was embroiled in a major scandal involving the falsification of records using a cortical psychic patch in order to be selected for the rank of Great Convoy, a particularly damaging scandal which in part propagated the debate that would result in the cessation of the Convoy system.
An expert techno-organic mnemosurgeon trained in cityspeaking, Q-V Convoy had spent his entire life brainwashing his superiors and the environment around him to create an assumed legal person of great renown. His ascension was only stopped by the timely intervention of Big Convoy and Heinrad; Heinrad was able to confirm that none of Q-V Convoy’s accomplishments had taken place, and Big Convoy was too hard-headed for his “Shadowplay Aura” to affect him.
The successor Prime Leader system was not without its flaws, though it did coincide with several major reforms. The naming decision itself was intended to move away from the implied “great ‘bot” narrative of the Convoy name in favour of a heightened focus on meritocracy, ensuring each leader would be the “prime” one for the job.
Going beyond the historical record, it should be known that Vector Sigma had created the Convoy-types as a strategy to ensure a new warrior would arise to defeat Unicron after breaking free from the Triple Z Point. Becoming perhaps overly straightforward in her divine old age, Vector Sigma knew that the rank of Supreme Commander had produced some of her greatest allies in the war against darkness and had purposely weighted a certain portion of her new creations towards the Convoy-types to ensure a higher “hit rate” so to speak. As is sometimes the case, what is good for destroying Unicron is perhaps not good for fair and open governance. Whether this was all worth it is up to the reader, but I personally feel that the Convoys who truly distinguished themselves did so not by the circumstances of their birth, but by the good work they did in service of their people.
