I'd like to try something...new. Star Trek is something I grew up with. It wasn't like many shows on TV in that it explored what was possible. And given my recent forays into subjects such as class struggle and revolution, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the class struggles of the various peoples and factions introduced throughout each TV series and in other media, including tabletop and video games.

For this first one, given how heavily their story plays out in the Online timeline, I thought that the Romulans and Remans would be a good place to start.

The Romulan Star Empire suffered a great tragedy when the Romulan homeworld and with it, that of the Remans, was destroyed in the wake of the Hobus supernova in 2387. Millions dead, millions more displaced, struggling to find any stability they could. Even before the supernova, there was a struggle for power due to the assassination of the Romulan senate via a Thalaron Radiation device and the Battle of Bassen Rift. By 2403, Sela had the then Praetor Taris removed and reshaped the Empire into a monarchy, declaring herself empress, with the Tal Shiar being the main military force.

However, there was a group of Romulans and Remans who had decided that they couldn't continue as though nothing had changed. This newly formed Republic, led by D'Tan of the Reunificationist movement, spent many years gathering allies and searching for a new homeworld, but they were also dealing with a new enemy: The Elachi.

The Elachi, working with the Tal Shiar, led by one Colonel Hakeev, made their presence felt in the attack on Virinat, an unaligned Romulan colony. They would not be the last.

Meanwhile, a group of Remans, led by Obisek, that had also decided to leave the Empire behind had established a base within a Romulan space station known as The Vault, which they would use to deal with Sela and her goons in their own way, including developing Thalaron weapons, which in Trek's galactic law is a big no-no due to their destructive power.

With the weapons destroyed and his colony lost, he petitioned the Federation and the Empire for aid, warning them that the Tal Shiar were pawns of beings he referred to as 'Demons of Air and Darkness'. Initially denied, Obisek, along with a detachment from Starfleet and the Klingons, took down the Tal Shiar once and for all, with Sela's flagship being captured by a ship of Iconian origin.

It was at this point that the survivors of Virinat, along with the Remans led by Obisek, joined the Republic's cause, that a new homeworld needed to be established in order to establish legitimacy. This would be difficult, as the Federation and the Klingon Empire were at war. Not to mention the galaxy had quite a low opinion of the Romulan people themselves, even before the destruction of the homerowld. They eventually began settling on Dewa 3, establishing New Romulus, or Mol'Rihan in the Rihannsu tongue.

Soon after, Republic personnel began allying themselves with both the Federation and the Empire in exchange for aid in their struggle against the Elachi and the Tal Shiar and for assistance with development of their new homeworld.

As development moved along, Romulan researchers eventually discovered that the homeworld they had settled upon was one of the sites of The Sundering, in which the Vulcans who had rejected Surak's teachings had split off and eventually formed their own empire. But they also discovered something else: An Iconian Gateway, and with it, more insight into the history of their new homeworld, including the original inhabitants some 200,000 years prior.

The Gateway leads to a Dyson Sphere which is maintained by the Solanae (Previously seen in the TNG episode Schisms) in the Delta Quadrant, and suffice it to say, things get interesting. The sphere is also part of a network of spheres, including what is now referred to as the Jenolan Dyson Sphere, with another gateway big enough for a ship located in Republic space. The Empire, the Republic and the Federation would argue over who had control over the sphere and gateway, but eventually decided it was too much for anyone to control. Exploration of the sphere and its technology would be undertaken by a new task force, led by the Republic, but tensions between the three were still running high.

The hostilities eventually ceased between the Federation and the Klingons with the emergence of Species 8472 (Now referred to as the Undine) and the eventual war with the Iconians themselves. The Iconian War is...interesting, to say the least, including a subplot involving Krenim time manipulation that leads to an alternate timeline where the Borg assimilated the Romulan Star Empire. But that is a story for a future post.

The Romulans, for their part, deserve a lot of credit, at least as far as their storyline is concerned. If nothing else, their story, especially in the Star Trek Online timeline, embodies the very essence of class struggle, including discarding culture as they had known it and starting anew as Marx described in his writings (The Communist Manifesto is actually blacklisted by the Tal Shiar in STO), along reconciling with the Remans and the Vulcans, with whom they had an antagonistic relationship.

In addition to being laughed off of the galactic stage initially, the Republic also had to contend with Sela and her goons in a similar fashion to the Bolsheviks' struggles against Nicholas II the decaying (and highly anti-semitic) Romanov dynasty.

Feel free to tell me your thoughts in the comments. This should certainly be interesting.