The first Grand Nagus

[JirinPanthosa]

What, there were no conspiratorial and/or paranoid Romans?

Did you not see Unification how the street vendor was terrified of being perceived as disloyal or Face of the Enemy where we heard stories of people being dragged off and accused of treason?

We clearly have a paranoid government that views all dissent as treason and saw conspiracies everywhere.

 

[Timo]

I trust Rome was like that often enough, too.

But how is this TNG Romulus different from the TOS one? Underlings held power over their superiors in "Balance of Terror" already, through favoritism games with even higher powers; conspiracies were everywhere, with the two "good" Romulans sabotaging the mission by committing suicide at the moment of triumph. It doesn't paint a flattering image of the civilization if death is preferable to obeying orders...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Silvercrest]

What, there were no conspiratorial and/or paranoid Romans?

Brutus?

 

[MAGolding]

The Forge mentioned "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings, those who wanted to return to the savage ways." Fandom assumed this referred to proto-Romulans.

Kor

Do you know who else "marched beneath the raptor's wings"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquila_(Roman)#/media/File:Roman_aquila.jpg

https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/roman-legionary-aquila/

https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/roman-legionary-aquila/

https://grimfrost.com/products/raven-banner

http://www.flagheritagefoundation.org/news/austrian-flag-donation/

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/de-pr^.html#10ir

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ru^1803.html

http://www.mohicanpress.com/battles/ba04006.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Abe#/media/File:WIS-8th@Viclsburg.jpg

https://ftleonardwoodpresscenter.com/1-58th-unfurls-colors-at-fort-leonard-wood/

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-was-nazi-germany-called-the-third-reich

So you see that on Earth many groups have "marched beneath the raptor's wings", some of those groups sometimes being enemies of other such groups.

And it is perfectly possible that if Vulcan has flying raptors - which the statement from "The Forge" seems to prove - many different groups on Vulcan sometimes literally "marched beneath the raptor's wings" like the Earth groups above, and others sometimes figuratively "marched beneath the raptor's wings". And it is certainly possible that some of those groups opposed the reforms of Surak.

But it is a big leap of imagination to suppose that a group of Vulcans who "marched beneath the raptor's wings" in the time of Surak left Vulcan, settled on Romulus, and became the first Romulans.

"The Forge" was first broadcast on 19 November 2004. "Gambit Part 1" was first broadcast on 9 October 1993, and established that at about the time that "The Forge" says those who marched beneath the raptor's wings opposed Surak, the Debrune had already achieved interstellar travel, and that those Debrune were an offshoot of the Romulans, who thus should have left Vulcan millennia before the time of Surak.

So any fans who believed that "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings" were the ancestors of the Romulans had a lot more imagination than memory or logic.

...In any case, we don't have to worry much about contradictions, as little of the Romulan history has been discussed onscreen. The official truth might be that S'Task's folks left in a huff, or perhaps that their colony world severed communications with Vulcan, possibly due to actions relating to Surak's faction even if not to Surak himself. But that truth has not been stated by a character yet, so it need not be accepted - but not challenged, either...Timo Saloniemi

I think that enough of the Romulan history is shown to make it seem chronologically extremely improbable that any hypothetical Vulcans who left at the time of Surak were the founders of Romulus and of Romulan society.

 

[Kor]

Do you know who else "marched beneath the raptor's wings"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquila_(Roman)#/media/File:Roman_aquila.jpg

https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/roman-legionary-aquila/

https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/roman-legionary-aquila/

https://grimfrost.com/products/raven-banner

http://www.flagheritagefoundation.org/news/austrian-flag-donation/

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/de-pr^.html#10ir

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ru^1803.html

http://www.mohicanpress.com/battles/ba04006.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Abe#/media/File:WIS-8th@Viclsburg.jpg

https://ftleonardwoodpresscenter.com/1-58th-unfurls-colors-at-fort-leonard-wood/

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-was-nazi-germany-called-the-third-reich

So you see that on Earth many groups have "marched beneath the raptor's wings", some of those groups sometimes being enemies of other such groups.

And it is perfectly possible that if Vulcan has flying raptors - which the statement from "The Forge" seems to prove - many different groups on Vulcan sometimes literally "marched beneath the raptor's wings" like the Earth groups above, and others sometimes figuratively "marched beneath the raptor's wings". And it is certainly possible that some of those groups opposed the reforms of Surak.

But it is a big leap of imagination to suppose that a group of Vulcans who "marched beneath the raptor's wings" in the time of Surak left Vulcan, settled on Romulus, and became the first Romulans.

"The Forge" was first broadcast on 19 November 2004. "Gambit Part 1" was first broadcast on 9 October 1993, and established that at about the time that "The Forge" says those who marched beneath the raptor's wings opposed Surak, the Debrune had already achieved interstellar travel, and that those Debrune were an offshoot of the Romulans, who thus should have left Vulcan millennia before the time of Surak.

So any fans who believed that "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings" were the ancestors of the Romulans had a lot more imagination than memory or logic.

The Debrune outpost dated to the 4th century. Surak lived in the 4th century.

Kor

 

[Prax]

The writer's intent was that it was a reference to the Romulans. It seems to make sense. Romulans are Vulcans. I believe it's said a few times that they are identical in every way

 

[The Old Mixer]

Do you know who else "marched beneath the raptor's wings"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquila_(Roman)#/media/File:Roman_aquila.jpg

https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/roman-legionary-aquila/

https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/roman-legionary-aquila/

https://grimfrost.com/products/raven-banner

http://www.flagheritagefoundation.org/news/austrian-flag-donation/

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/de-pr^.html#10ir

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ru^1803.html

http://www.mohicanpress.com/battles/ba04006.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Abe#/media/File:WIS-8th@Viclsburg.jpg

https://ftleonardwoodpresscenter.com/1-58th-unfurls-colors-at-fort-leonard-wood/

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-was-nazi-germany-called-the-third-reich

So you see that on Earth many groups have "marched beneath the raptor's wings", some of those groups sometimes being enemies of other such groups.

And it is perfectly possible that if Vulcan has flying raptors - which the statement from "The Forge" seems to prove - many different groups on Vulcan sometimes literally "marched beneath the raptor's wings" like the Earth groups above, and others sometimes figuratively "marched beneath the raptor's wings". And it is certainly possible that some of those groups opposed the reforms of Surak.

But it is a big leap of imagination to suppose that a group of Vulcans who "marched beneath the raptor's wings" in the time of Surak left Vulcan, settled on Romulus, and became the first Romulans.

"The Forge" was first broadcast on 19 November 2004. "Gambit Part 1" was first broadcast on 9 October 1993, and established that at about the time that "The Forge" says those who marched beneath the raptor's wings opposed Surak, the Debrune had already achieved interstellar travel, and that those Debrune were an offshoot of the Romulans, who thus should have left Vulcan millennia before the time of Surak.

So any fans who believed that "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings" were the ancestors of the Romulans had a lot more imagination than memory or logic.

Occam's Razor, dude. The writers put that reference in for a reason. If bits and pieces of continuity established in other episodes don't line up, that's because they weren't counting on you.

Brutus?

Him, and the ones who brought us Easter.

 

[Tim Thomason]

The writer's intent was that it was a reference to the Romulans. It seems to make sense. Romulans are Vulcans. I believe it's said a few times that they are identical in every way

Timo and, I think, MAGolding hold a view that writers intent is irrelevant, and we have to judge the work on its own merit, especially since the writers and creators of Star Trek number in the dozens and is a very collaborative work spanning decades and numerous semi-reboots or reimaginations ignoring earlier apparent intents.

I hold a bit of a more nuanced view regarding intent, using it to fill in blanks such as these. But I understand the allure of a Barthesian homicidal rampage from time-to-time.

 

[Timo]

I gather a big issue here is our lack of a storyline exclusively dedicated to the Romulans and their intriguing past. Like Flintheart Glomgold to ol' Scrooge in Carl Barks' stories, the Romulans were extremely generic throwaway villains for most Trek writers, changing characteristics (and appearance!) from story to story - but mistaken afterwards for well-defined arch-enemies. If totalitarian worked better than meritocratian-aristocratian, then totalitarian it was. Klingons were originally the same, but then TNG happened...

Klingon history can now be parsed together from Klingon-centric stories, which benefit from Klingon principal characters and guest stars. Romulan history is basically "Gambit II" pasted onto a background of fan assumptions and early novels, though. And as MAGolding points out, while the writer intent seems to have been to do that very pasting, everybody having read their Diane Duane and all, it went sorta bass-ackward, with "Gambit II" containing some dubious timeline references and the rest then trying to patch that up without acknowledging the "Gambit II" choices in full.

How dubious is dubious, though? The Romulan story goes back whole millennia, rather than the centuries involved in Klingon or Cardassian history - so a reference to 2,000 years may mean anything from 1,500 to 2,499 years for the careful speaker (Data or Spock), and anything from, say, 1,300 to 2,700 years for the average speaker.

An interstellar empire collapsing into a single planet may take all of two days. A single planet spawning an interstellar empire may happen quickly as well, though, as we have seen how trivially easy it is to build warpships once the secret is uncovered. If S'Task had a well-equipped garage, he might have built a fleet of ships in a year and founded Romulus over a weekend, simply by pitching some tents over suitable wetlands on a hospitable Class M planet.

The rest is interpretation of disjointed tidbits. Romulans and Vulcan colonization go together - but that doesn't mean Romulans were a Vulcan colony. Rather, Romulans might have been the first to carry the old Vulcan conquistador spirit to the stars, fighting brutally among themselves and everybody else just like the ruthless colonizers of Vulcan's Slightly Moist Mountains and Great Almost Livable Canyon had once done...

Timo Saloniemi