>>95977266
The problem is that the novels do not care about the history of interstellar society. They’re space opera built around individual personalities. it doesn’t really matter if Katherine is a conniving bitch that much for purposes of the former; we’d have to think of the reasons (economically, culturally, etc) why populations of hundreds of planets would support her. Likewise, these teeming billions will have no clue about the true nature of Victor’s personality — what must have been his policies or, at any rate, for what policies was his public persona the symbol?