Jono my friend, there will always be a glut of, and there will always be a need for, prostitutes. Not hat you can singularly define a slave as a prostitute, since they don't really have a choice in what they are doing, whether it is painting, soldiering or fucking. Were the pleasure girls slaves? Does slave wages make a slave? Then I'm mostly assuming that they were using political prisoners/terrorists as their "slave labour" Kira complained about, but that's little different than a chain gain working on a road or picking up litter. Okay a lot different. But where they rounding up civilians en mass, or using political dissidence as a reason to strip civil rights completely?
The Alliance on the other hand, without a drip of doublespeak, totally believes in slaves like it's so boss.
Cardassia I've tried to explain, in the regular Universe did not beleive in slavery, or believed they did not believe in slavery because they were massively in denial.
It's splitting hairs what they did on Bajor to the Bajorans, but Cardassians believed they were a benevolent people helping out a less fortunate neighbour who just needed a little help to polish up, and in return they deserved adequate compensation from a "little" strip mining. I mean it's not like the Bajorans actually knew what all their resources were for, so it's not like they'd notice a few missing billion tons of irridium.
You heard Dukat.
"I'm a good man because I didn't kill them all."
Without an ethical or legal code of regular Universe Cardassia to restrain him, without having to work via an illusion of being a peacemaker and benevolent Philanthropist, as the beloved stepfather to an ungrateful nation of bastard bratty boys and girls... I don't think the resistance would have stood a chance especially if the Alliance multiplied Cardassia back homes resources, that any war of attrition waged by the tribal savage monkeys from Bajor wouldn't have made a chink in the Alliances supply lines. Not to mention the Alliance wouldn't balk at atomizing continents to pacify the aborigines spirit to say any thing more than "Yes master, as you wish".
No Bajoran Resistance, and a compelling love of slavery?
That just reinforces my original supposition.
Cardassia would have Elizadoolittled Bajor until it was fit smart to join the Alliance and the rights inherit to a member world of the Alliance, and no one (Short of the Romulans) had the power to stop them.
Meru would have been Queen.
(If the wife back home wasn't looking or caring.)
Dukat in the regular universe only wanted Kira because she smelled like her mother, and he desperately wanted to know if she tasted like Meru if only a little... And if that didn't work out, maybe Meru's grandchildren would make more perfect lovers just like nana(Pun SO intended! (Double pun?))?
(Too creepy?)
But that makes Zial her sister?
No wonder he was comfortable leaving his flesh with a terrorist who wanted to kill him.
I always thought he wanted to test run Kira's maternal instinct before he had Kira father more of his children?
But they were siblings.
