Star Trek: did Picard make Gowron chancellor, then war?

Jean-Luc Picard never picked Gowron. But his rulings as Arbiter of Succession, and the blockade he proposed, are what put Gowron on the Klingon throne. That same Gowron would later walk away from the Khitomer Accords and attack a Starfleet station. In this piece I trace that thread from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), starring Patrick Stewart, through to Deep Space Nine. Picard follows every rule in this story. Watch where those rules take him.

My point is small and a little uncomfortable. The right decision can still lead you somewhere bad.

Why K'mpec chose Picard as Arbiter of Succession

It starts with K'mpec, leader of the Klingon High Council, who has been poisoned. Before he dies, he wants one person to decide who comes next, and that person is Picard. The Arbiter of Succession governs the Klingon rite of succession. The Arbiter decides who may challenge for leadership of the High Council and oversees the whole process until someone wins. It's a referee's job, except this referee decides who gets to play. In this case the referee is a man who never wanted it.

Normally a Klingon does the job. K'mpec's reason for choosing an outsider was plain: no one on the council could be trusted, and he had good reason to want someone from outside. Think about it from his side. Someone on his own council poisoned him. He doesn't know who, and the person he trusts to untangle it is the captain of a Federation starship. That says a lot about team building on the Klingon High Council.

How the ja'chuq stalled the succession and exposed Duras

Two challengers step forward, Duras and Gowron, and Picard takes his time. He calls for the ja'chuq, an ancient ritual in which each challenger's deeds are recounted, and tells everyone that honoring the old ways is his personal choice. He's really buying time to find the poisoner. His plan to catch a killer is to make everyone sit through a long ceremony, and frankly, nothing could be more Picard.

A bomb cuts the ceremony short. When his crew examines it, the detonator turns out to be Romulan, and it had been planted inside one of Duras's own men. Klingon politics, where even assassination attempts involve a foreign supplier. The trail points straight to Duras's camp and the Romulans behind him, and Picard said a man like that should never lead the Empire.

Then it gets personal. Duras kills K'Ehleyr, Worf goes to Duras's ship and kills him, and just like that there is one fewer contender. When Picard returns as Arbiter in Redemption, K'Tal tells Gowron directly: "Your enemies are destroyed. You stand alone." Remember that, because nobody actually chose Gowron. He's simply the last man left in the room.

Picard's ruling against Toral and the Duras sisters' trap

Gowron understands that math too. Early in Redemption he asks Picard to confirm his appointment outright, and Picard refuses: "I will not go beyond the traditional role of the Arbiter." Picard isn't playing favorites. He'll follow the rules, even when they get complicated, and they get complicated fast.

Lursa and B'Etor turn up with Toral, the son of Duras, and put him forward as the rightful heir. Picard joins them for a cup of Earl Grey, which is a bold thing to drink in the Duras sisters' house, and tells them he can see the trap from his chair. If he rejects Toral's claim, they'll accuse him of protecting Federation interests, and that becomes a declaration of war and a rallying cry to depose Gowron. Lursa doesn't bother denying it. If they win that war, she says, it will end the alliance with the Federation.

So when Picard walks into the Great Hall, he already knows what his ruling will set off. He rules that Gowron will lead the council. Toral asks whether the Federation decides Klingon fate or the Klingons do. Council members cross the floor to join the House of Duras, and the Empire splits right there in the chamber.

Picard followed Klingon law, but the ruling still made Gowron

The reasonable objection is that Picard didn't really choose Gowron. He applied Klingon law, and Klingon law excluded a boy who had never fought. That's true, and I want to say it clearly. Picard ruled by the rules. The problem is what the rules asked of him.

In Reunion, Picard himself described the job as choosing the next leader of the Klingon Empire, and everyone in the Great Hall heard it that way. Toral says it out loud, and Gowron was waiting to say it. Excluding Toral was a judgment call, and that judgment is what left Gowron standing as the only legitimate claimant. The most neutral way I can put it is that Picard's decision made Gowron's rule possible.

A small confession while I'm here. Last year we argued, in a piece called How Two Starfleet Captains Changed the Klingon Empire, that Picard never decided Klingon leadership. Having gone back through these episodes scene by scene, I'd put it differently now. Consider this the director's cut.

Gowron's response to Picard: you already chose

Here's how Redemption ends. Duras forces attack Gowron's ships, the Bortas among them, and Kurn. Worf's brother brings his ships in and saves them. Gowron accepts the chancellor's robes from Picard and, as part of the deal, restores the honor of Worf's family. Then, right after putting on the robes, Gowron asks the Federation for help.

Picard says no. The Federation can't interfere in what is essentially an internal Klingon matter. Gowron's answer is the heart of this whole story: you decided the rite of succession, so you're already involved. Worf resigns his post to fight for Gowron, which tells you how neutral it all felt from the inside. The Klingon civil war is on, and officially the Federation is neutral.

The Romulan blockade in Redemption II only hurt one side

Picard had his own ideas about what neutral meant. At Starbase 234 in Redemption II, he proposes to Fleet Admiral Shanthi a blockade along the Romulan border. No aggressive action, but in position to expose any Romulan supplies crossing the border. Shanthi has to get it approved by the Federation Council, but she tells him to prepare the fleet anyway.

Look at how it's built. No Federation ship fires on a Klingon, and nobody signs a paper taking sides. But everyone already knows the Romulans are supplying the House of Duras. So a net that only catches Romulan supply ships only hurts one side of the war. It's neutrality the way a referee is neutral when he only checks one team's boots.

The Romulans notice. Their commander here is Sela, daughter of Tasha Yar from a timeline that no longer exists. She comes aboard the Enterprise and asks Picard what she should tell her superiors about why 23 Federation starships are sitting on their border. Humanitarian reasons? Technically, Picard isn't lying. Stopping outside interference is the stated purpose. The problem is that only one outside power was interfering.

Then he goes a step further and tells Gowron how to use it. Launch an all-out attack now, and the Duras forces will call for supplies. The Romulans will try to run the blockade, and the Federation will be ready. Gowron attacks, the Romulans try to sneak a convoy through, and Data, in command of the Sutherland, exposes it for everyone to see. Sela calls the whole thing off: tell them they're on their own. Without Romulan help, the Duras side collapses.

The case for Picard, and what the Federation really did

From Picard's side, the counterargument is simple. Toral was the Duras sisters' puppet, and the Duras sisters were the Romulans' puppets. A Duras win would have put a Romulan loyalist on the Klingon throne, and Worf sparing Toral at the end reflects that view. That's probably right, and I won't tell you Picard backed the wrong man.

Here's the thing, and this is my analysis, not something the show says outright. On paper, the Federation never took a side in the Klingon civil war. In practice, its Arbiter disqualified one claimant, its blockade cut the other side's lifeline, and between the two, the Federation decided who won.

So Gowron got his Empire, Worf got his honor back, and the Federation got a grateful new ally. Remember that word, grateful, because it spoils about as fast as milk.

Gowron invades Cardassia in The Way of the Warrior

Years later, Gowron collected. We see it in Deep Space Nine's The Way of the Warrior, when a Klingon fleet arrives at the station. Gowron and the High Council have decided to invade Cardassia on the belief that the Dominion is behind the Cardassians' new civilian government. The Federation condemns the invasion, and Gowron responds by withdrawing the Klingon Empire from the Khitomer Accords. If you're new to Trek, that's the peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingons dating back to Kirk's era, so tearing it up is no small thing.

Sisko brings Cardassia's civilian leaders to the station and shows Gowron they aren't changelings. The entire reason for the invasion is gone. Gowron's reaction to the news is what you'd expect: it doesn't matter, because with Cardassia under Klingon control the Alpha Quadrant will be safe. That's an efficient way of admitting he wanted to do it anyway.

Then he attacks Starfleet's Deep Space Nine, with the Klingon chancellor's own ships firing. He eventually backs off, but keeps the Cardassian colonies he seized on the way in. You can't come all that way and go home empty handed.

The chain from K'mpec to Deep Space Nine

Lay it side by side. K'mpec names Picard Arbiter. Worf kills Duras and Gowron becomes the only claimant. Picard disqualifies Toral. The blockade collapses the Duras side. Gowron invades Cardassia, leaves the Khitomer Accords and shells DS9.

There are years between those last two events, and that's a fair point. Plenty happened in between that had nothing to do with Picard, and he certainly didn't give that order. But nobody else confirmed Gowron. He was still chancellor when the treaties were torn up, and he was in that seat because of that ruling and that blockade. Calling this Picard's war would go beyond what the episodes show. What the record supports is that Picard confirmed this chancellor.

And this next part is my own analysis again. Remember Lursa at the tea table, warning Picard that if Duras won, the alliance with the Federation would end. The alliance did end. The House of Duras just never got the chance, because Gowron got there first.

Was the changeling Martok to blame?

Many of you may already be typing an objection, and it deserves a hearing. The Martok standing beside Gowron in The Way of the Warrior wasn't Martok. In Apocalypse Rising, Odo exposes him as a changeling. The Dominion's man was whispering in the chancellor's ear the whole time, so the Cardassian invasion was the Founders' plan, and blaming Gowron, let alone Picard, lets the real schemer off the hook.

It's a strong argument, and the changeling was certainly steering things. But the show still puts the decision on Gowron and the High Council; Martok only delivered it. And when Sisko erased the only reason for the invasion, it was Gowron who shrugged and kept shelling. Nobody was shapeshifting during that shrug.

Apocalypse Rising settles the rest. Odo watches Gowron fight honestly and head on, and that's how he knows Gowron is the real one. The Dominion's actual plan was to get the Federation to kill him. The changeling was working with the Gowron Picard confirmed, temper and all, and it didn't need to change much.

Gowron's return to the Khitomer Accords and his end

The last fair point is that Gowron came back, and the show gives him credit for it. In By Inferno's Light, after Cardassia joins the Dominion, Gowron re-signs the Khitomer Accords with Sisko, calling it a dark day not only for the Klingon Empire but for the whole Alpha Quadrant. But notice the timing. He signs just as Cardassia has gone over to the Dominion and the Empire is about to face it alone. Funny how the alliance becomes valuable again the moment he needs it. Coming back doesn't erase the break; it tells you how much the alliance was worth to him the rest of the time.

Which brings us to the real end of Gowron's story. In Tacking Into the Wind, deep in the Dominion War, Gowron keeps sending Martok, the real one this time, on attacks that can't be won. Worf has seen enough. He challenges Gowron, kills him and hands the Empire to Martok. The Klingon appeals process is brief.

Consider who stands at either end of this. Gowron got the throne partly because Worf's brother's ships came to save him. And the one who finally takes it from him is Worf.

Picard made Gowron chancellor, and Gowron went to war with the Federation. Both are on the historical record. Picard followed the rules at every step, so how much of what came after is on him, I'll leave to you. If you had been standing in that Great Hall, would you have made the same decision?