Imperialism in Cybertron
What intrigued me about some transformers continuities (at least, the ones who has the Thirteen Primes as part of its lore) was at its core, a lot of it was actually about Imperialism, and how past Cybertronian characters did with it and how current Cybertronian characters react to it
Aligned continuity (the novels at least) - attempted to go Imperialist, experienced consequences, did NOT even try to do right by its citizens by continuing the caste system, war happens.
IDW1 - imperialism VERY much succeeded, citizens both suffered and reaped benefits from it simultaneously, war happens, attempted to redeem and atone from Cybertron's colonial past by allowing Cybertron to be destroyed when the past actions catches up to them
IDW2 - attempted to go Imperialist 2 electric boogalo, experienced consequences for it, decided imperialism may be a bad idea, went to the other end of that scale instead but people didn't like it, war happens Transformers One is super intriguing because its heavily implied its a continuity where Cybertronians never bothered to go to space or expand their territory. They only have one city, and it's underground. The surface is not developed, considered wild territory, compared to other Cybertron iterations whose surface is teeming with cities. The few we do see, we see the earth deformed and scarred as if it was the aftermath of a warzone. There's clear attempts to establish a civilization on it, but it was abandoned. The Primes were implied to have never resorted into going into conflict with one another, and are still around even in modern Cybertron era. It's a Cybertron that never went imperialist and largely kept to itself. And that's an insanely fascinating thing to ponder about tfone as a continuity - because of its implications.
