The High Council and the Chancellor

1. Overview

The Klingon Empire is ruled by a council of its great houses, led by a Chancellor, meeting in the Great Hall of the First City on Qo’noS. That is the whole of the formal structure, and it is simpler than the Federation’s or the Romulans’. What makes it hard for outsiders to read is everything around it: the houses and their feuds, the weight of honour in every decision, and a law of succession in which the right to lead can be won in combat.

This article describes the offices and customs of Klingon government as the Federation has seen them, the long chancellorship of Martok, the question of who will follow him, the two great houses most watched on the High Council in 2393, and how the Council dealt with the Klingon raids into Romulan space in the 2380s. For the houses in more detail see The Great Houses. For the Empire’s history see History of the Klingon Empire, and for dates see Klingon Timeline.

2. The Chancellor

The Chancellor leads the High Council and, through it, the Empire. The office is the highest in Klingon government. The Chancellor speaks for the Empire to foreign powers, presides over the Council, and in war is the Empire’s supreme leader. A Chancellor can take personal command of the Empire’s forces, as Gowron did in 2375.

The Chancellor rules with the Council, not over it. A Chancellor who loses the confidence of the great houses rules with difficulty, and one who is seen to act without honour can be challenged. Klingon history shows Chancellors who led by persuasion, by fear and by the respect of the warriors who served them, and the Federation has learned that the third kind lasts longest.

The Chancellors on Federation record are few. Gorkon sought peace with the Federation in 2293 and was murdered for it. His daughter Azetbur succeeded him and made the peace at Khitomer. K’mpec held the office for many years before his death by poison in 2367. Gowron held it from 2367 until he was killed in challenge in 2375. Martok has held it since. Who held the office between Azetbur and K’mpec is not on the Federation’s record. See Klingon Timeline.

3. The Emperor

The Empire was founded by Kahless the Unforgettable, and for much of its history it had Emperors. The line ended long ago, and by 2369 the throne had been empty for some three hundred years. Power passed to the High Council and its Chancellor.

In 2369 the clerics of Boreth presented a clone of Kahless, grown from blood they had kept as a relic. Rather than let the Empire divide over him, the High Council agreed that he would be Emperor, with a spiritual role and no power over the Council. The arrangement gave the Empire a living symbol of Kahless’s teaching without changing who governs. The Federation has no record of a change since. The Emperor does not sit in the Council or take part in its decisions. See Honour, Faith and Custom.

4. The High Council

The High Council is the governing body of the Empire. Its members are drawn from the great houses, and a seat on the Council is held by a house as much as by the warrior who fills it. The Federation does not know the exact number of seats, and it is not clear that the number has been fixed at all times.

A seat can be lost. In 2372 Chancellor Gowron removed the House of Mogh from the Council and seized its lands, because its members would not support his war against the Federation. Seats are gained by the rise of a house, through service, marriage, wealth or the fall of rivals. A house on the Council has a voice in every great question of the Empire. A house off it must work through allies.

The Council decides matters of state, war and succession. Its proceedings are not published to outsiders, and the Federation learns of most of its decisions only by their results. When it acts together, as it did in the discommendation of 2366, it can be formidable. When it divides, the Empire divides with it, as the civil war of 2367 to 2368 showed.

5. The Great Hall

The Great Hall stands in the First City on Qo’noS. It is the seat of the High Council and the heart of Klingon government. The Council meets there, Chancellors are confirmed there, and challenges for the leadership have been fought there: Gowron died in the Hall in 2375.

The Hall is also a place of memory. It was plundered by the Hur’q in an earlier age, and the loss of the Sword of Kahless from it is still spoken of. To Klingons the Hall is the Empire made visible. See Qo'noS and the Empire's Worlds.

6. The Houses

The great houses are the real fabric of Klingon politics. A house is a family line with its lands, its warriors, its ships, its allies and its enemies, and its honour is shared by every member. A Klingon is known by his house. A house’s standing rises with the deeds of its members and falls with their disgrace, and it can be carried down for generations by a single act of treason, as the House of Duras learned when Ja’rod’s betrayal at Khitomer came to light.

Below the great houses stand many lesser ones. They hold smaller lands, fewer ships and no seats on the Council, and they look to the great houses for patronage and protection. Their sons are often the Empire’s most eager warriors, because a lesser house has the most to gain from glory. That fact matters to the story of the 2380s, told below. For individual houses see The Great Houses.

7. Succession

7.1 The Arbiter of Succession

When a Chancellor dies, the choice of a successor is overseen by an Arbiter of Succession. The Arbiter is normally named by the Chancellor before death. The Arbiter’s task is to see the rite carried out according to Klingon law, to decide which challengers may stand, and to keep the process from being turned into a war.

The Arbiter need not be Klingon. In 2367 Chancellor K’mpec, dying of poison and unable to trust any Klingon with the task, named the Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard. Picard rejected the later claim of Toral, son of Duras, as without merit, and the House of Duras rose in civil war against that ruling. The case shows both the Arbiter’s power and its limit: the Arbiter can rule, but cannot make the houses obey.

7.2 The rite of succession

The rite begins with the Sonchi, a ceremony confirming that the Chancellor is truly dead. Then the challengers come forward, and the Arbiter decides whose claims may be heard. Klingon law also knows an older ceremony, the ja’chuq, in which each challenger recites his deeds before the Council. It had long fallen out of use when it was called for in 2367. If more than one challenger remains, the contest may be decided by combat. In 2367 it was decided by death outside the rite: Duras was killed by the right of vengeance before the rite was complete, and Gowron was left as the only challenger.

7.3 The right of challenge

Klingon custom allows the leadership to change hands without a death in office from natural causes. A warrior may challenge the Chancellor in combat, and by custom the right to lead passes to the victor. In 2375 Worf, of the House of Martok, challenged Gowron for leading the Empire in a way that served his standing more than the Empire, and killed him. Worf did not take the office. He gave it to Martok, and the Council accepted him. A challenge is an extreme step, and a warrior who makes one without cause risks his honour and his house.

8. Discommendation

The gravest sentence the Council can pass on a Klingon, short of death, is discommendation. It is a formal shunning. The members of the Council cross their arms and turn their backs on the one discommended, and from that moment he is treated as though he does not exist. His house shares the shame.

The best-known case is Worf’s, in 2366. The House of Duras had accused his father, Mogh, of betraying Khitomer to the Romulans. The Council knew the truth, but it feared that exposing the House of Duras would bring civil war. Worf accepted discommendation to spare the Empire. It is the clearest example on Federation record of the Council choosing stability over justice, and it was undone: Gowron restored the honour of the House of Mogh during the civil war.

9. Law and Justice

Klingon law rests on Kahless’s teaching, on custom, and on the authority of the Council and the houses. It is not codified in a way the Federation would recognise, and much of it is learned by example.

Courts. The Empire has courts and tribunals, and they try outsiders as well as Klingons. In 2152 a Klingon tribunal on Narendra III tried the captain of Earth’s Enterprise, with an advocate speaking in his defence. In 2293 a Klingon court tried two Starfleet officers for the murder of Chancellor Gorkon, again with an advocate for the defence, and convicted them wrongly. Both trials were shaped by the politics of their day.

Rura Penthe. The prison asteroid of Rura Penthe has held the Empire’s prisoners, outsiders among them, since at least the 2150s. Both the 2152 and the 2293 sentences sent prisoners there.

Vengeance. Klingon law recognises the right of vengeance. In 2367 Worf killed Duras for the murder of K’Ehleyr, and the Empire treated it as within his rights. Starfleet, which held him to its own code, took a different view. The difference is one Starfleet officers working with Klingons need to understand.

Lands and houses. The Council can take a house’s lands and seat, as it did to the House of Mogh in 2372, and can restore them. A house’s holdings depend on its honour and its standing with the Council.

Foreign demands. The Empire expects its law to reach those who wrong it. In 2286 its ambassador demanded that the Federation hand over the Starfleet officer held responsible for the death of a Klingon commander over the Genesis Device. The Federation refused.

10. Martok’s Long Chancellorship

Martok became Chancellor in 2375, in the last months of the Dominion War, and he has held the office ever since. Eighteen years is a long chancellorship by any measure. It has covered the Empire’s recovery from the war, the closest years of the alliance with the Federation, the joint recovery initiative of 2377, the Romulan Silence and the raids of the 2380s, and the Romulans’ return to the line.

The Federation’s view of these years is from outside. It knows the Council’s decisions by their results: the alliance has held, the officer exchange has continued, and a Klingon Defense Force contingent trained with Starfleet on Mars in fighter tactics after 2383. What passed in the Great Hall to bring these things about is not on the Federation’s record. See The Alliance with the Federation.

11. The Succession Question in 2393

A long chancellorship leaves a question behind it. Martok is an old warrior, and the great houses have begun to think about who comes next. Nothing in Klingon law names an heir. The office does not pass by blood. When it falls empty, the rite of succession begins again, with an Arbiter, challengers and the Council.

No house has declared itself, and none would while the Chancellor lives and rules; to do so would be an insult. The question is visible instead in the positions the houses take on the Council, in the alliances they make, and in the warriors whose deeds they make sure are spoken of. Who would serve as Arbiter at the next succession has not been announced.

For the Federation the question matters because the next Chancellor will decide how the Empire faces the Romulans. The two houses most often named in Federation assessments stand for the two answers.

12. Houses Vreth and Tarkesh

The House of Vreth is an old house with a seat on the High Council. It is border-minded and has many ship captains among its sons. It wants a harder line with the Romulans. Its standing on the frontier is high: General Kortaq, of the House of Vreth, commands the Narendra Command, the Klingon Defense Force’s border command at Narendra III, facing the Romulan Zone in the Nevrha stretch. For Vreth, Narendra III is not only a memory but a post it holds. See The Klingon Frontier in 2393.

The House of Tarkesh also sits on the High Council. It is rich, with shipbuilding and mining interests in the outer colonies. It wants the alliance with the Federation kept steady. Its wealth depends on trade and peace in the outer colonies, and on the Empire’s ships being built rather than lost.

Neither house is the Federation’s friend or enemy. Both are Klingon, and both would fight the Romulans if the Council chose war. The difference is in what each would risk to provoke or avoid it.

13. The Council and the Raids of the 2380s

From about 2382 to 2390, young warriors of lesser houses and some ship captains crossed into Romulan space and raided Romulan border holdings. Many of the raids were led by sons of the House of Gharvel. Their motives were old grievances, glory and plunder: Narendra III, Khitomer and the Romulan support for the House of Duras were all remembered.

The High Council neither sanctioned the raids nor stopped them. That is the plainest description the record allows. The Federation does not know of any Council vote on the matter. In Klingon practice, a raid by the sons of a lesser house is first that house’s affair, and the Council can leave it there if it chooses. The Romulans, in the Silence, had no Senate to protest to the Council, and no formal Romulan protest from those years is on the Federation’s record. Many on the Council, then and since, saw little reason to restrain warriors striking at the Empire’s oldest enemy.

The raids were ended not by the Council but by the Romulans. Romulan patrols came back to the line from 2387 and in strength from 2389, and the raids grew costly and tapered off after 2390. At the tri-border talks of 2390, General T’Sok, speaking for the Empire, accused the Federation of violating Klingon borders with sensor sweeps, said the Klingon Empire can protect its own borders, and left saying the Federation has no honour. The Romulans have not forgotten the raids, and the Council’s silence about them is part of what they remember. See Klingons and Romulans.

14. Working with the Council

The Federation keeps diplomatic staff on Qo’noS, and the officer exchange gives Starfleet a working link with the Defense Force. Starfleet officers who deal with the Empire learn three things early. The Council speaks with one voice only when it chooses to. Houses matter as much as offices. And a Klingon who believes his honour has been questioned will answer that first, and the question second. See The Alliance with the Federation and The Klingon Defense Force.

15. See Also

The Klingon Empire · History of the Klingon Empire · Klingon Timeline · The Great Houses · Honour, Faith and Custom · The Alliance with the Federation · Klingons and Romulans · The Klingon Frontier in 2393 · Government of the Empire