It was surreal to hear the Black Fleet, from a novel, be canonized. Though I'm also disappointed that Discovery did not canonize the practice of considering a corpse to be immaterial (I want to say KRAD's early 2000s novels established that?) in favor of having mummification and sarcophagi.
It's a big empire, and the Klingons themselves are presumably no less diverse on Qo'noS than Humans are on Earth. I got no problem with the idea that T'Kumva just comes from a different Klingon culture than Worf.
I admit I was skeptical at first at the idea of the Klingons only having limited contact with the Federation for approximately 100 years, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense and helps explain why the Federation still knew so little about the Empire in the 2260s if Earth and Vulcan had been in contact with them over a century earlier. To me, the only real stumbling block, in retrospect, is that it might be seen as contradicting
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country's line about the Federation-Klingon cold war beginning seventy years before that film (so circa 2223). But perhaps 2223 was the Federation's first notable contact with the Klingons post-2164ish, and established a pattern of intermittent moments of conflict broken up by long periods of no contact.
The dialogue about the Empire being in disarray and needing unity makes me wonder if there was some major Klingon civil war going on at some point. Is it possible that the High Council had failed to name a Chancellor? Maybe T'Kumva's goal was to be named Chancellor. I'm afraid I only ever read the very last
Errand of Fury novel -- did that one establish whether there was a Chancellor or a civil war circa 2250s? Or any other novels?
Memory Beta's
entry on Sturka says that he became Chancellor some time prior to 2255, and I think it says that twas
Excelsior: Forged in Fire that established this. Arguably that might contradict the idea that T'Kumva is trying to unify the Empire, but then it also says that as Chancellor, he ruled by keeping at least three major factions divided against each other so as to prevent them from unifying against him. So maybe that's what T'Kumva is reacting against? (Does anyone remember if the actual
Vanguard novels established when Sturka took office?)
Still, I find myself suspecting that we might need to be ready to consign Sturka and much of what the novels have established about mid-23rd Century Klingon politics to the status of "contradicted by canon."
