Something I'd bee wondering about Dukat...

[DS9 Gal AZ]

What kind of relationship do you think he had with his wife? I know he was married to a Cardassian woman. They had seven children together, so they must have had a healthy sex life ... yet he still had multiple Bajoran mistresses during his time at Terok Nor. Were they apart for a long time during the Occupation? Is this something Cardassian women had to learn to accept/ignore, their husbands taking Bajoran mistresses? Was the 'last straw' for her not his illicit affairs, but the fact that one of the affairs produced a child that he brought back to Cardassia? How do his seven children feel about him? We heard Dukat talk about at least one of his sons at one point...

Anyone know if the books explore this?

 

[Cepstrum]

What kind of relationship do you think he had with his wife? I know he was married to a Cardassian woman. They had seven children together, so they must have had a healthy sex life ... yet he still had multiple Bajoran mistresses during his time at Terok Nor. Were they apart for a long time during the Occupation? Is this something Cardassian women had to learn to accept/ignore, their husbands taking Bajoran mistresses? Was the 'last straw' for her not his illicit affairs, but the fact that one of the affairs produced a child that he brought back to Cardassia? How do his seven children feel about him? We heard Dukat talk about at least one of his sons at one point...

Anyone know if the books explore this?

Based on what little we've seen of Cardassian society, I'd bet she was well taken care of and a member of an elite bunch while Dukat as a powerful Gul. There probably wasn't a lot of love -- she stayed on Cardassia enjoying a privileged life while he felt fulfilled via self-aggrandizement.

But once the occupation ended poorly, it lowered Dukat's status. Then, when Zylal was uncovered, he became a disgraced pariah. His wife probably left him then not just for his infidelity, which I'm sure she expected, but for the loss of face, status, privilege, and her lifestyle if she stuck with/supported him. My guess is that she had some powerful friends who step in and provide well for her and her family -- that is, as long as she left and denounced Dukat.


Sorry all I could provide was speculation. But, then again, so are the books!

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

I'm just saying, if they had seven kids, there was some sort of lovin' goin' on, if ya know what I mean.


Of course, it might have been more about Dukat being a horndog and his wife submitting passively/dutifully to her "duty" to please her husband, and also produce children. Or they might have had genuine passion for each other. We don't know.

On a larger scale, I wonder if infidelity is something that is passively accepted in Cardassian society - at least, when it's the man's infidelity. Dukat was married but had at least two Bajoran mistresses (Ziyal's mother and Kira's mother). Damar was married with at least one child, but he also had at least one mistress (though she was Cardassian, as Damar did not seem to share Dukat's weakness/fondness for Bajoran women). And when Kira goes into the past to find out if her mother and Dukat were truly lovers, we see that attractive Bajoran ladies were regularly rounded up to be "comfort women" to the Cardassian military men on Terak Nor. Not to mention that Garak is probably the result of an illicit affair between Tain and some woman (probably Mila). I guess if you're a Cardie woman you just have to resign yourself to "sharing" your man. Ick.

 

[DevilEyes]

^ I presumed that Tain was never married, since we never saw or heard of any wife or children, and that Tain was a 'He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune' kind of guy... though I may be wrong. But at least Andrew Robinson seems to have gotten the same impression (as seen in A Stitch in Time).

I don't think that cheating is widely accepted on Cardassia, judging by Garak's scolding of Dukat in "Civil Defense": "You, a married man!" Soldiers away from home with their 'comfort women' might be be an aberration from the usual behavior on Cardassia. Damar was a screwed-up alcoholic whose marriage was less than happy, judging by some of his lines.


It's impossible to make any kind of generalizations about Cardassian attitudes to infidelity based only on that, no more than we could derive the conclusion that cheating on one's wife is a perfectly accepted practice in contemporary Western society, based on a bunch of politicians and other celebrities known to have been unfaithful to their wives.
There are plenty of marriages like Dukat's in real life, especially between people from powerful and rich backgrounds. Look at the Kennedys: Joseph Kennedy and his sons were all infamous womanizers but their wives never tried to divorce them. Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald had 9 children and their marriage lasted despite his infidelities including a well-known affair with Gloria Swanson. And while JFK had just 2 kids with Jackie, Bobby Kennedy had 11 children with his wife Ethel, while managing to have a bunch of mistresses (just like his brother Jack) at the same time.

As to what kind of relationship Dukat had with his wife, that's also impossible to guess from the little information we have. People don't exactly have to be madly in love with each other, or even incredibly attracted to each other, in order to have regular sex in a marriage, which, without birth control this often results in a bunch of children. Or they may not even have regular sex, but they want to have a bunch of children and are actively trying to conceive them. In any case, plenty of arranged marriages between royalty and aristocracy throughout history, including those where partners are known not to have particularly cared for each other, prove that you don't need love or passion to conceive several children over the years. And bear in mind that having lots of children may very well be a matter of status on Cardassia - she may want to have as many children as possible because it shows her worth as a Cardassian mother. As to whether it is a case of "Dukat being a horndog and his wife submitting passively/dutifully to her "duty" to please her husband, and also produce children. Or they might have had genuine passion for each other." - I'm not sure why it has to be either/or. It's also conceivable that she liked having sex with him and was OK with him being around but wasn't exactly madly, deeply in love with him. Considering the fact that she left him only when he was disgraced, I suspect that their marriage had been more based on status and social standing than anything, for quite some time, at least. It may have been a political marriage between members of prominent families from the start, or they may have been really in love with each other once, but it had cooled down with time. Anything is possible. Dukat's jealousy over his former wife being courted by another gul doesn't have to mean he has any passion for her, as it was more about his pride and sense of possession, and most of all, his frustration over the loss of his powerful position in Cardassian society (i.e. the fact that this guy now dares court his ex-wife shows how much his position has changed - he never would have dared while Dukat was in power).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

What kind of relationship do you think he had with his wife? I know he was married to a Cardassian woman. They had seven children together, so they must have had a healthy sex life ... yet he still had multiple Bajoran mistresses during his time at Terok Nor. Were they apart for a long time during the Occupation? Is this something Cardassian women had to learn to accept/ignore, their husbands taking Bajoran mistresses? Was the 'last straw' for her not his illicit affairs, but the fact that one of the affairs produced a child that he brought back to Cardassia? How do his seven children feel about him? We heard Dukat talk about at least one of his sons at one point...

Anyone know if the books explore this?

I suspect somehow it was a political marriage--not unlike Bill and Hillary Clinton. But unlike with Bill Clinton, who had a PR disaster but still kept his status, Dukat was much more severely shamed by the public because of what he did, Dukat's wife now had no status to maintain the illusion of a marriage for.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

DevilEyes, you make a lot of sense. Nerys Ghemor, great analogy!

 

[Cepstrum]

^^^
I agree. I might add that for many thousands of years human couples have had many children together despite not having the concept of "love" that we've recently developed. A lot of marriages were arranged. People had children for practical reasons. Many people still have many children for cultural reasons. It could be a cultural thing on Cardassia. (Though I agree that drawing conclusions based on such limited information is risky.)

And Dukat was certainly not a nice man, but he was very clever. His wife may not have known about his infidelity. Or perhaps she knew but didn't care much. Consider historical novels such as Anna Karenina in which infidelity, especially among the elite and military officers, was commonplace and swept under the rug by most.

Finally, Cardassians are just not humans. We don't know their views on monogamy. We mostly know they have a militaristic/fascist government, are extremely ruthless opponents, and their morality system differs significantly from that of 24th century humanity and the UFP.

On Earth even in the past 100 years we've had multiple genocides that killed upwards of 100 million people (if you include the estimates from Stalin's indirect campaign against Ukrainians and others). Even in the 1990s we had concentration camps and mass killings in the supposedly enlightened Europe, even.

But that seems to have all changed once humans and their Federation allies gained FTL travel and learned to have greater intra-species and inter-species tolerance. I think one of the biggest uniting factors is the discovery of many other advanced alien species living close by. That would provide a big incentive for tolerance.

The Cardassians, OTOH, despite possessing FTL travel, contact with many different species, and (I suspect) many M-class planets in their vicinity they could have exploited, instead chose to enslave and commit mass murder against the Bajorans. I think that that goes beyond just their military leadership and sheds light into the Cardassian psyche. They seem to see themselves as superior and regard other races as animals to be abused. I doubt the Occupation or the UFP-CU war would have lasted so long if it hadn't the support of ordinary Cardassians.

Sure, there are examples of nice Cardassians, such as Ghemor, Maritzza, and those in the dissident movement. Even Garak turned out to be ok, though he frighteningly was quick to be willing to torture Odo and killed several others ruthlessly (eg, the Romulan shuttle occupants, the guy who made the fake data rod, the whole supposedly drug induced killing spree on Empok Nor, and killing two other Cardassians, one who was trying to arrest Ghemor, and the other who was trying to arrest the fleeing dissidents.)

Just saying that Cardassians are very different from humans -- especially 24th century ones (though they do seem to have far laxer standards regarding sex than we do today).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Nerys Ghemor, great analogy!

Thanks!

I just thought about it, and it fits even more, when you consider that with both the Clintons and the Dukats, the daughter in each marriage is a much, much more likeable individual than the father.

 

[T'Mar]

I'm just saying, if they had seven kids, there was some sort of lovin' goin' on, if ya know what I mean.


Of course, it might have been more about Dukat being a horndog and his wife submitting passively/dutifully to her "duty" to please her husband, and also produce children. Or they might have had genuine passion for each other. We don't know.

On a larger scale, I wonder if infidelity is something that is passively accepted in Cardassian society - at least, when it's the man's infidelity. Dukat was married but had at least two Bajoran mistresses (Ziyal's mother and Kira's mother). Damar was married with at least one child, but he also had at least one mistress (though she was Cardassian, as Damar did not seem to share Dukat's weakness/fondness for Bajoran women). And when Kira goes into the past to find out if her mother and Dukat were truly lovers, we see that attractive Bajoran ladies were regularly rounded up to be "comfort women" to the Cardassian military men on Terak Nor. Not to mention that Garak is probably the result of an illicit affair between Tain and some woman (probably Mila). I guess if you're a Cardie woman you just have to resign yourself to "sharing" your man. Ick.

My memory of it (though this may be from a book/fan fiction as opposed to something canon) is that when Cardassians say "family is the most important thing" they mean it very different than humans do -- basically they mean that having many many children who are raised properly and serve Cardassia is very important, not that having a happy family unit that plays board games together is important.

Because of that, Dukat's wife would probably be just as interested as he would in having a lot of children, since it would be a status symbol. She wouldn't necessarily have to be passively submitting just because there was no passion -- she could be just as eager as her was, but their eagerness would be interpreted differently than in human relationships.

I would say when Dukat's wife left him, and his mother disowned him, it was probably a critical mass of all his failures after the occupation, and bringing home and embracing a half-Bajoran child as his daughter was the last straw. It probably wasn't the fact that he was adulterous, or that he had an out-of-wedlock child, but the fact that she was half-Bajoran that was so shameful. (I can think of some sort of contemporary -- last 200 years or so -- examples similar to this, where the shame came not in the fact that the man had an illegitimate child, but the fact that the child was something "unfavorable" in the society of the day, like being a different race or religion than the status quo)

I get the sense that many marriages in Cardassia are made for political reasons -- they are of the same social status and therefore it is appropriate that they marry -- as opposed to romantic reasons. (In that case, it makes sense that the weirdly romantic Dukat would turn to the more emotionally open Bajorans to get his romantic kicks). Considering that, a husband's duty would be to provide for his wife and have a job that gives her good social standing, not necessarily to be faithful. As long as you're not causing gossip amongst the women whose circle you run in, you probably don't care what he's doing.

....Honestly, I have no idea why this is the view I have of Cardassian society, or if it is in any way canon. Also, I can't believe I've thought enough about it to write a post this long. lame lame lame.

 

[Anwar]

I have to wonder though, why Dukat was so close to Ziyal but never bothered looking up his wife or OTHER children ever again after he became ruler of Cardassia. Why was she so much more precious to him than any of the others?

 

[Marie1]

I figured she was the only one naive enough to have anything to do with him.

I think that Cardassians, when committing adultery, are supposed to not be caught if they do- that seems to be even worse than the adultery itself... or maybe it just seems that way. Dukat also tried to kill Ziyal, so having children due to adultery also seems a faux pas- but again, maybe to keep them out of inheritance or using the family bloodline for political influence. But since Dukat couldn't do it- maybe family/children are even stronger a tie than we realize about Cardassian culture? After all, we're talking about Dukat, he had little to gain by accepting Ziyal, and maybe his family would've taken him back if he had killed her later. Wasn't there something about that in... that last novel by Una McCormack?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I have to wonder though, why Dukat was so close to Ziyal but never bothered looking up his wife or OTHER children ever again after he became ruler of Cardassia. Why was she so much more precious to him than any of the others?

First, because Ziyal gave him unquestioning love. No one else had done that--not even his mistresses. He didn't know how to reciprocate in the same way, though sometimes he got close...that part of him was long since gone. So I think in some ways it was like having a pet, although a very intelligent one capable of speaking back.

But secondly...and this is where I go off into personal theory, and it's no more than my intuition backing this up...I think Dukat saw something in her. I actually believe (and this may be crazy) that of all of his children, she was the most like him. Not the "him" that we actually saw on the show, but what Dukat could have been if he had made better choices. I think that the reason Dukat sealed himself off from the rest of the world to where he could only feel self-absorbed emotions was because he was afraid of who he would have been otherwise. I actually think that when you look at how sensitive and how open Ziyal is, that could have been what Dukat might've been in another life.

We hear Dukat talk, when he is in his most delusional in "Waltz," about an incident where three men died aboard his ship and he had to clean up, and how the incident haunted him so horribly that he couldn't sleep for three days. We see flashes of a different kind of emotion when he sees Ziyal, too, where just for a moment it ALMOST seems like his guard is going to come down.

I think that for a man to be that emotionally "open" in Cardassian society is something that could very easily be deadly. We've seen individuals like Tekeny Ghemor manage it, but even then it was quite dangerous. I don't think this justifies Dukat's choices in the SLIGHTEST, but if he had the potential to be at all like that, to be like Ziyal, I think he became so terrified of himself that you could say he froze his own soul.

And when Ziyal died, I believe he snapped because he lost the very last connection to that part of himself that he had almost killed--a part that had become so weak that it could no longer live on its own, but only lived because of her (and even then was still too weak for him to really and truly change himself). Ziyal was what Dukat could have and should have been...if only he had made better choices, and faced himself without fear.

Mind you I also think Dukat had an underlying mental illness as well, but I want to make very clear that with better choices, especially in the Trekiverse with better treatment a person with a mental illness can lead a FAR better life than what Dukat did, and can be a truly good person. Chemical imbalance and spiritual imbalance I see as two entirely separate things.

(All of this is the theory I used to write an AU Dukat--and I can say that in that universe, people really MEAN it when they say that universe's Ziyal is very much her father's daughter.)

 

[T'Mar]

<snip>

(All of this is the theory I used to write an AU Dukat--and I can say that in that universe, people really MEAN it when they say that universe's Ziyal is very much her father's daughter.)

Alright, Nerys, I haven't been reading your AU fiction, because it looks long and I have the attention span of a flea, but every time you mention something about it, I get more and more interested. You're convincing me that I NEED to dive in to this fan fiction.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Totally up to you, and sorry about the ramble!

(Edit: There are MANY great writers worth checking out, in the fanfic forum...I can't even name all of the ones I like! )

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Nery Ghemor, very interesting stuff.

Frankly, I always thought it might have been more compelling in Dukat's wife and/or 7 children had been killed - by say, the Klingons. He could've almost gone off the deep end at that, but then Ziyal could have "saved" him. It would have made his mind snapping at the end all the more undstandable. As it was, someone watching who was unaware of his history would have thought Ziyal was his only child: "You're all I have, all I care about," he said to her just before she died. Now, I can buy that he didn't love his wife, that it was an arranged marriage or more of a political alliance and not a love match, whatever, but those other seven kids, I can't believe he didn't love them. Wasn't there a moment during all the Maquis stuff where he and Sisko were actually relating to each other when discussing their sons?

Do any of the books take on the subject of his other children?

Oh, and as for Dukat having a mental illness - I don't know. Is megalomania considered a mental disorder?

 

[T'Mar]

We know from some earlier episode (Return to Grace?) that his oldest son was now under the wing of some other Cardassian poobah. We know from how he reacted to Ziyal refusing to come with him when he sided with the Dominion that he takes perceived betrayal VERY badly. It could be that he perceived that his wife and children on Cardassia had betrayed him and therefore no longer deserved his love/protection.

...Or it could be that the writers were so focused on Ziyal they kind of forgot about that whole OTHER family they'd created for him.

 

[Anwar]

It doesn't make much sense he'd have thought his kids betrayed him along with his wife. His wife, sure. But the kids would've HAD to have gone with her or his grandparents, seeing how they'd still be teenagers at the most (Cardassians age slower, since Dukat looked exactly the same when he slept with Kira's mom). He couldn't blame them going with the mother as a betrayal.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Anwar--Cardassians definitely age slower. Still, there are subtle differences in the makeup of older and younger Dukat. If you're interested, let me know and I can post screencaps.

 

[T'Mar]

Anwar--Cardassians definitely age slower. Still, there are subtle differences in the makeup of older and younger Dukat. If you're interested, let me know and I can post screencaps.

Totally never noticed this. Screencaps, screencaps!

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

OK, here we go!

These are both screencaps from "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night"--as you can see, there is different makeup shown in the same episode. Unfortunately we see the older Dukat on a viewscreen, but still, there's enough evidence to be sure.

Older Dukat:
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x17/deathornight_072.jpg
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x17/deathornight_079.jpg

Younger Dukat:
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x17/deathornight_334.jpg (Similar pose here)
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x17/deathornight_343.jpg

The ridges are SO different here...it seems pretty blatant.