The Klingon Empire

Overview

The Federation and the Klingon Empire have been formal allies since the Khitomer Accords of 2293, an alliance sealed in blood at Narendra III in 2344, when the USS Enterprise-C died defending a Klingon outpost from Romulan warbirds. The alliance broke once, in 2372, and was restored a year later when the Dominion gave both powers the same enemy. That history is not abstract on this border: Narendra lies within memory and near reach of the Rubicon’s patrol region, and the Klingons have neither forgotten what the Romulans did there nor forgiven it.

This makes the Klingons, in 2393, allies who are genuinely on the Federation’s side and genuinely difficult to work with. A Klingon captain near the Zone shares the Rubicon’s adversary but not its methods. Where Starfleet sees a treaty to be upheld and an incident to be defused, a Klingon commander often sees an enemy to be answered and honor to be reclaimed, and has little patience for being told to stand down. Klingon “assistance” on this border is real, valuable, and prone to starting exactly the war the Rubicon exists to prevent. Managing the ally can be harder than managing the adversary.

The Empire in 2393

Chancellor Martok has led the High Council since the last months of the Dominion War, longer than most Klingons now serving have been in uniform. His Empire is the one that fought the Dominion to the end and paid for it in ships and warriors, then spent the years after rebuilding its fleets and its pride. Eighteen years on, the great houses are already thinking about what comes after him, and the question shapes much of what happens in the Great Hall. See The High Council and the Chancellor and The Great Houses.

On the Romulan border the Empire’s face is the Narendra Command, a Defense Force border command built at Narendra III where the outpost the Enterprise-C defended once stood. Its general, Kortaq of the House of Vreth, belongs to a house that wants a harder line with the Romulans; other houses on the Council, House Tarkesh foremost among them, want the alliance with the Federation kept steady. Between about 2382 and 2390 the sons of lesser houses raided Romulan border holdings while the Romulans were turned inward, and the High Council neither sanctioned the raids nor stopped them. The Romulans have not forgotten that either. See Klingons and Romulans and The Klingon Frontier in 2393.

Reading this section

These articles are written from what the Federation knows of its ally, which is a good deal more than it knows of the Romulans and still less than Klingons assume. Where a fact is assessed rather than confirmed, the article says so. For the Romulans across the line, see The Romulan Star Empire; for the line itself, see The Neutral Zone (2393) and Starbase 234 and the Patrol Region.