The Council of Thirteen

[super_sonic]

In #54, what was the deal with the Council of 13? Why didn't they try to Earth, busting caps and splitting wigs to come to Esplin 9466's (Visser Three/One) rescue? What happened to them after the war?

[Terenia]

Evidently after Earth was lost the Council split up and the entire government crumbled. Which never really made sense to me. I can see the government being weakened, but dissipating entirely? It seems like one of the loose ends that wasn't entirely tied up.

[Sub Visser]

I would assume since they saw that Earth was lost they would abandon it and focus somewhere else.  Because apparently only 1 in 100 Yeerks has a host so there must have been plenty remaining.

[Terenia]

They did lose Leera and, more recently, the Anati system. But I don't see how losing Earth would weaken their holds on the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxon worlds. In my mind, after losing Earth the Yeerks should have been severely weakened, but not destroyed.

[Adrian Malacoda]

Why would the Council rescue Esplin 9466? He had failed the Empire.

[Shark Akhrrana]

If i was on the council i wouldn't have helped Esplin I would have left him on Earth as a distraction for the Andalites . Earth was lost anyway. I would after that concentrate somewhere else while the "Mighty Andalites" are attacking the decoy target.

[Terenia]

Remember what happened to the former Visser One? There was another system with the possibility of another Class Five species.

That was the Anati system, and Visser One lost that planet, adding to the total Yeerk defeat.

[Azguard]

it seemed like at the beginning of the series that the Yeerk Empire seemed a lot bigger or more powerful than what it really was. I mean, the Yeerks boasted of conquering several species, enslaved several more, never bothered with some, and knew a lot about the different alien races around the galaxy.

However, it seemed like towards the end, the Yeerks didn't seem as strong, their Empire wasn't as big, and their forces seemed stretched thin, with most of it centered on Earth. At least that was the impression that i got. That a majority of Yeerk forces were focused on Earth so that once Earth was lost, the Empire's back was broken.

[Terenia]

I'll let you know. We're getting up there on the group re-reads (Visser is the next book). When I come across it I'll post the quote. I THINK it is from #45 though.

[Terenia]

I'm almost positive that it says that the system was lost somewhere. I could be wrong though. I'll let you know if I come across it.

[Myitt]

I think it's assumed that Visser One lost the Anati world, since in the book Visser the Council says if she does lose it, her death sentence will still stand.

[JFalcon]

It always confused me really that losing at earth crippled the Yeerks.

For one it was a very minor loss for their fleet, they lost only two vessels. The series sort of states that each Visser had their own Blade Ship and so likely also their own Pool Ship, there were forty seven or so Vissers which amounts to a fleet of nearly a hundred ships spread over only two known garrison worlds and maybe five major invasion points.

Furthermore the Andalites had just dispatched a major task force to Anati and then to Earth if that wasn't a seperate task force, that would mean that unless the Andalite fleet was much larger than the Yeerk fleet (and therefore begs the question of why these kinds of task forces weren't sent to the Hork-Bajir or Taxxon worlds) a major offensive could have been launched at any militarized Andalite world, be it their homeworld or the Yeerk's own world which, the liberation of would have sent a major increase of morale through the ranks.

But no, instead this minor loss of a major resource causes the complete end of the war? More likely (to me) what really ended the war was either a crippling defeat at Anati or the loss of support from the Taxxons coupled with a majority of Yeerks wanting their own bodies, Earth just kind of happened to end at the same time.

As for the Yeerk government crumbling, I can kind of see that. They weren't the legitimate Yeerk government, HBC leads us to believe that remained on the Yeerk homeworld. These were rebels who wanted to see the stars in a way far removed from what the Andalites had offered. They built their government around conquest i.e. Vissers have power, when Vissers rise up enough they join the council, there doesnt actually seem to be a civilian caste, and so on. When conquest and having a large agressive military are no longer an option it isn't that unbelievable that a relatively young government based entirely around it would fall.

[Adrian Malacoda]

As for the Yeerk government crumbling, I can kind of see that. They weren't the legitimate Yeerk government, HBC leads us to believe that remained on the Yeerk homeworld. These were rebels who wanted to see the stars in a way far removed from what the Andalites had offered. They built their government around conquest i.e. Vissers have power, when Vissers rise up enough they join the council, there doesnt actually seem to be a civilian caste, and so on. When conquest and having a large agressive military are no longer an option it isn't that unbelievable that a relatively young government based entirely around it would fall.

But doesn't HBC actually state that the council was the Yeerk government on planet Yeerk? Seerow says "the Yeerk leaders. . . They have been my friends. They cannot know about this! The Council of Thirteen must not have known" when he learns that the Yeerks were rebelling. Seerow thinks that the imperialistic Yeerks are outliers because he doesn't want to believe that the Yeerks he had spent so much time teaching were seriously biting back.

[JFalcon]

I wasn't trying to imply that no government existed before HBC, just that the Council of Thirteen as we know them was too militaristic to survive an enviroment where there was no longer a military for the Yeerks.

and I hadn't forgotten that line, I just never really considered it to mean the same council. I always took Seerow to be decently correct and that the council, or at least part of it, didn't know about the uprising before it happened, that it was indeed a group of rebels. The fact that the Andalites never try to contact the Council (Alloran scoffs at the very idea and the Andalites just sort of start blockading the world) also means that we can't know if the council was stranded on the planet. If you don't call you'll never know if you might get an answer or the machine.

I always assumed the rebel Yeerks having a Council of Thirteen was just a way of establishing legitimate leadership, like in Three Kingdoms when each kingdom declares itself its own empire. Not one of the three is totally legitimate in this declaration, but they each had a big army, a fortified base and they could stick up a big sign for the other two empires saying "come get some" and thus no one can argue with their claim of being emperor except one of the other two emperors, thus the council we know didn't have to be the legitimate council and Seerow's words always led me to believe that they infact weren't.

Still we don't know that thirteen ringleaders of the rebel Yeerks didn't form a new council and I grant you that we don't know for sure that they did, though I feel that Seerow's words are not exactly evidence against the Yeerks. There were other things in the book that led me to assume they were a new council, but I don't remember them, I'll have to reread it when I finish my current book, nevertheless I never got the impression that these Yeerks were the proper council, at least not all of them.

Think about it, the Yeerks had government before they had a real military, that's fact because Seerow was in contact with them. However the government we see is entirely based in/on the military, there is, again, no civilian caste, even hostless Yeerks are trained to fight, there might be a seperate scientist caste but their science is totally devoted to the military. Everything in the Yeerk Empire is militaristic, something Seerow couldn't have missed over his time spent with them even if he were the idiot Alloran makes him out to be. How did Yeerks advance in rank before Vissers? HBC also pretty much says there were no Vissers before they rebelled against the Andalites. If the council had existed before in exactly the same way it should have had different traditions and traditions aren't just cast aside because you get a new car, this council we know just reeks of a new government assembled hastily to keep control of a budding military power, they're a dictatorship, not a dynasty.

At least that's my take on it 

[Yarin]

Think about it, the Yeerks had government before they had a real military, that's fact because Seerow was in contact with them. However the government we see is entirely based in/on the military, there is, again, no civilian caste, even hostless Yeerks are trained to fight, there might be a seperate scientist caste but their science is totally devoted to the military. Everything in the Yeerk Empire is militaristic, something Seerow couldn't have missed over his time spent with them even if he were the idiot Alloran makes him out to be. How did Yeerks advance in rank before Vissers? HBC also pretty much says there were no Vissers before they rebelled against the Andalites. If the council had existed before in exactly the same way it should have had different traditions and traditions aren't just cast aside because you get a new car, this council we know just reeks of a new government assembled hastily to keep control of a budding military power, they're a dictatorship, not a dynasty.

that is so true