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Why wasn't Sisko replaced?

Before she became Kai, she was referred to as a minority sect... not a minority of one. Kira even said she supported Winn.
 
Winn also rose through the ranks of her order, which precludes her being an order of one.
 
Yeah, Winn was a one-person show, very ambitious, manipulative and greedy for power. I always found it very hypocritical that she thought she should be the spiritual leader of the Bajoran people even though she acknowledged that she had never actually had a connection with the Prophets (see "Strange Bedfellows").

Kor
She showed her true colors when she was talking to Kira and said how the people in the resistance had their weapons during the occupation but all that she had was her faith.
That should have sent a red flag up to Kira.
 
Regarding the Prophets and Sarah...

Since they live outside linear time, it is quite possible for them to do this after Sisko teaches them about time. It is also quite possible there was a single Prophet at work here, and knew ahead of time this was needed, so that Prophet, without telling the others, set things in motion by inhabiting Sarah.
 
It wasn't only Sisko teaching the prophets about linear time, but also the prophets teaching Sisko how to let go over the past and embrace his new life. The whole thing was ordained by the wormhole aliens all along, through Sarah giving birth to him. Most Star Trek shys away from spirituality/religion, but Deep Space was the only show to give us a literal Jesus. ;)
 
Before she became Kai, she was referred to as a minority sect... not a minority of one. Kira even said she supported Winn.

What they said was that she was from an (somewhat unpopular) orthodox order, not that she was the clear and undisputed leader of her order who could tell them all what to do and what to believe. She had some support at some point, obviously, or her name would never have been in the running for Kai, but given her general MO I would strongly suspect her support was equal parts political horse-trading and bald-faced lies told to people willing to believe what they wanted to hear. Certainly her public persona was a complete and total fabrication.

Winn herself may never have fully accepted Sisko, but I don't recall ever seeing any reason to believe her order would have shared her opinion of him in any way. In fact, as far as I can recall, she was always extremely careful to keep her low opinion of him hidden in every public interaction, which would strongly suggest that she knew full well any perceived rift between her and him would be bad for her. As such, the suggestion that she was the head of an entire faction which would be highly skeptical of him seems very dubious to me.
 
Yeah, Winn was a one-person show, very ambitious, manipulative and greedy for power. I always found it very hypocritical that she thought she should be the spiritual leader of the Bajoran people even though she acknowledged that she had never actually had a connection with the Prophets (see "Strange Bedfellows").

Kor
A lot of real-life religious leaders are the same. If you want to make money in some societies start a church.
 
DS9 was a Bajoran station, Starfleet was simply there to administrate, so had HQ decided to replace Sisko then they may have been asked to leave (maybe even prohibited from entering Bajoran space). Opaka's voice carried a lot of weight and after finding the Emissary, all she would need to do would be to speak with the Vedek Assembly and Chamber of Ministers to keep him where he needs to be.
 
Avery Brooks signed a 20 year contract with Viacom/CBS/Paramount/Desilu/NBC or whomever, so they couldn't just replace him.
An early season two draft had Garak becoming the new Emissary, but that plan was scrapped.
I would love to watch that. Garak is the king of trolls. It would have been hilarious.
 
Winn also rose through the ranks of her order, which precludes her being an order of one.
She rose through the ranks for her own purposes rather than for the good of the order she was nominally a member of.

Kor
 
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The thing about Winn is that she truly believed in the prophets, if it was just a ploy to get power she wouldn't have been so pissed that the prophets rejected her, she would have thought "I'm the kai, who cares that I don't get stupid visions while looking at an orb?". Sisko as the emissary would have just been an adversary to overcome and not a personal affront to her, her truely believing was also what made it easy for Dukat to manipulate her, first by posing as a farmer send to her by the prophets and after her faith was shattered by preying on her lust for power and revenge.
Her stabbing Dukat instead of Solbor would have made her a hero, the kai risking her own life to protect a faithful servant, killing Gul Dukat wouldmhave probably played really well withnthe public while Sisko would be forced to make a statement how Dukat was able to slip past station security because plastic surgery to look like another species is something every doctor seems to be able to do in an afternoon, so it's really not something they should miss in the middle of the war.
 
Winn believed in the Prophets but in the same way for profit mega churches really believe in God. She believed the Prophets personally entitled her to be in power. She didn’t care what they taught so much as how their words could be used to inspire people to give her power. Like a Bajoran Pat Robertson.

Winn believed he was the Emissary eventually but early on she only saw his status as a threat to hers, and a competitor to the reverence owed to her. She loved the opportunity to replace him with an ancient poet.

In the premiere you get a not so subtle hint that Picard doesn’t think much of Sisko at the time and he was given the command because pre-wormhole it was an unimportant assignment. He thought more of Sisko at the end when he gained his drive back.
 
The funny thing about Winn, she hated him, but she did believe the he was indeed the Emissary.
It was written she hated him because the writers had to change her from a 3 dimensional character into a 1 dimensional character as the Kai. Winn originally was perplexed Sisko was so resistant as to who he was since his pah was very strong. Although she accepted Sisko as the Emissary, I don't think she appreciated Starfleet's or the Federation's presence there, and I thought she hated, at first, the Federation than him. Louise Fletcher gave me some thought on how influential Winn was during the occupation, I thought a story which should've been told during the 1st 3 seasons about her backstory to support what the actress was delivering. She was a far better character than those 1 dimensional supervillains the changelings and the Jem'Hadar.
 
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