Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Die Neue These S1E8: “The Castrop Rebellion”

This episode starts with a voiceover describing some incident in which an Imperial finance minister embezzled a huge amount of wealth from the Kaiser's treasury over the course of his career. When his unexpected death in an accident caused his theft to be revealed, he ordered for the late minister's estate to pay back everything he had stolen. However, the man's son and heir - a Maximillian von Castrop - refused to pay it back. In fact, he used that money to raise a private army in his family's region of space and openly attempt to secede.

I'd been assuming that this was an event that happened sometime over the last couple of centuries, but no! The narration then reveals that this was going on during Reinhard's promotion, and now dealing with it is going to have to be one of his first tasks as warmaster. However, with the situation with the Alliance having taken, shall we say, a turn for the worse, Reinhard's personal attention is needed on the frontier. Thus, he will have to delegate.

Reinhard's already started grooming a crop of up-and-coming officers who he believes have the vision and skill to unfuck the Imperial navy. However, for putting down this plutocratic revolt he decides to assign his old second-in-command Siegfried Kircheis. Reasonable, considering that Siegfried just got promoted to admiral himself, and thus could use a proper command to show he's up to it.

Elsewhere in the capital, the Minister of State and his secretary are having some doubts about this Reinhard guy's recent decisions. For one thing, he's being brazenly discriminatory in his promotions, filling his inner circle with lowborn and minor aristocrat officers at the expense of the proper elite. How can anyone expect to win a war with commoners leading their armies, seriously? It's almost like a fleet led by a middle class admiral didn't just steal their fucking death star from under the noses of two highborn dipshits without taking any losses. In particular, sending lowborn admiral Siegfried to bring down an errant superelite noble rebel feels like dogwhistle treason.

The Minister decides that they can use this to check Reinhard's growing influence, though. If Siegfried succeeds in his mission, then the Kaiser and cabinet can reward him richly and hopefully pull him out of Reinhard's orbit. If he fails, then Reinhard has a humiliation on his hands.

Meanwhile, Siegfried's peers in rank are just plain malding. Not even trying to minimize their displays of crippling asspain, punching walls and everything.

There's plenty of grousing throughout the admiralty, but the officers who are inclined to do something stupid here are talked down by the more levelheaded ones. The prevailing sentiment in the end is "Reinhard is doing a bad job, but as loyal officers we must respect the Kaiser's appointment of him."

Soon, Siegfried's fleet has flown forth, and is meeting the rebels at the edge of the Castrop duchy. The late finance minister must have embezzled one hell of a lot, because his son has raised a fleet twice the size of the one Reinhard gave Siegfried to subdue him with. This is looking like it might be an even more painful distraction for the Galactic Empire than they thought.

Also, Siegfried's flagship, the Barbarossa (...well there's a choice historical allusion to name a battleship -_-), painted bright red. So, that's his ship and Reinhard's doing the mating dance in the OP. I at first thought it was supposed to represent Reinhard and Wen-Li, but after the first episode or two it became clear that those were both Imperial command ships, so it didn't quite work. I thoooought it might by Reinhard and Siegfried due to how their faces are posed together in the accompanying segment, but I guess this confirms it. It's the Brunhild and the Barbarossa.

Meanwhile, the rebel fleet turns out to be led by Maximillian von Castrop himself. Selfish though he might be, the guy is at least brave enough to command his own fleet in battle. On the other hand, he also physically punches his officers in the face the instant they annoy him in even the slightest capacity, so I guess his admirable traits are still few and far between.

As a rebel against the Kaiser, he's not even trying to mask the hypocrisy.

The fleets come into shooty range and make with the shooty. It quickly becomes apparent that the loyalist fleet isn't returning fire in force, but rather just falling back away from the dissident cones of fire and moving into flanking positions. Castrop thinks that the Imperial admiral must truly be a fool, dividing his fleet like that when he's already badly outnumbered, and punches one of his officers in the face to emphasize the point. Anyway, Siegfried does some sort of tactical nonsense that results in his ships being all up in the rebels' faces in a way that merges their fleetballs into one chaotic mass, with his own flagship somehow ending up nose to nose with Castrop's.

The rebels' superior numbers are still likely to bring them victory, but with the ships mixed up like this they'll be suffering disproportionate losses to friendly fire. Then, Siegfried hails the enemy and informs them that if they turn over Maximillian von Castrop and submit once again to Imperial rule, no one else will be punished. "I was just following orders" is an acceptable legal defense in the Galactic Empire, naturally, but Siegfried still needs to give his assurance that none of those who surrender will be "killed at our pleasure."

...

Wen-Li's antiwar attitudes get harder for me to be sympathetic toward as the story continues, rather than easier.

...

Castrop orders his men to keep on fighting, they'll still win even if they take heavy losses. Before he can so much as ball his fist for the next punch though, one of his underlings poses a new philosophical premise to him. At gunpoint.

Castrop is, of course, too proud to submit. So, they're forced to send Siegfried the reply without their ex-leige.

As promised, Siegfried permits the rebel ships to stand aside as he brings his own fleet to Castrop's homeworld to occupy the administrative centers until he's sure he's caught any remaining backers of this hairbrained secession attempt and a new nobleman can be installed. He also has to specifically order him men not to rape, pillage, or loot when conducting this operation, because that's a divergence from Imperial SOP. Fucking hell, these people. Regardless of how things are typically done in this side of the galaxy though, Siegfried managed to end this major revolt with almost zero casualties on either side, which is remarkable by any standards.

When the news reaches home, the admirals all are forced to admit that yes, Reinhard knows what he's doing when it comes to recognizing talent. Some of them are probably irked by what they perceive as excessive mercy, but that's probably outweighed by the fact that Siegfried managed to avoid destroying any of the rebel ships that can now be put back to work fighting the Alliance. It's kind of hard not to appreciate that, given their circumstances. The whole operation, including travel time to and from, took less than two weeks.

He gets a high profile hero's welcome when he lands, as well as a promotion to vice admiral (meaning he spent...like, a month in his previous rank? Less? lol). During his promotion ceremony, he's told to strive to even greater loyalty to the Kaiser to pay for the new authority he's been granted. He bows and vows convincingly as always, but in his mind he's thinking of who he's really loyal to.

Reinhard. Or...Annarose. We're shown a montage of both of them, alternating one after the other. Culminating in this:

Is that Reinhard looking extra femme, or Anna looking extra masc? Is Siegfried even sure?

The takeaway here is essentially just a reminder that Siegfried isn't sure which of the Von Lohengramm siblings he wants to bone, assuming it's not both.

Just as Siegfried is moving into his shiny new office, they receive word from the Astarte Corridor. Ah, I see, that was happening at the same time as the Castrop Rebellion, they're just finding out about it now. That makes sense. Anyway, they hear that Iselohn Fortress is now in Free Planets Alliance possession, which could very well be the beginning of the end of this war. The admirals panic. At least one of the chiefs of staff hands the Kaiser his resignation.

It's heavily implied that he's doing this to take the blame that might otherwise fall on some of his underlings, with potentially much more deadly consequences for them. This guy is a bit more honorable than most of the imperial higher-ups, it seems, but his actions might not be enough. Oberstein isn't off the hook yet.

Meanwhile, Siegfried passes the bad news on to Reinhard. The latter muses aloud that they've really been too complacent in thinking of the FPA as "rebels" for so long. Which...sort of implies without outright stating that Reinhard is recognizing them as a legitimate foreign power, ie the Empire should withdraw the claims to their territory and end the war. I doubt he could say that in as many words, though. Or even indirectly as he is now, in the presence of anyone besides Siegfried.

He also asks if they happen to have learned which Alliance commander led the storming of Iserlohn, and seems unsurprised when he hears the answer.

Just then, someone comes to Reinhard's office seeking an audience. It's Oberstein, and he wants to speak with Reinhard alone. Reinhard and Siegfried are both wary of this, after what appeared to be an attempt to honeytrap Siegfried for subversive politics a while ago, but Reinhard grudgingly sends the guards away. That still isn't good enough for Oberstein, though; her says he needs to speak to Reinhard one on one, no one else in the room at all, not even his unrequited simp. Reinhard points out that anything Oberstein tells him, he's just going to relay to Siegfried as soon as the meeting is over anyway. Oberstein says that he accepts that fact, but still won't talk until he and Reinhard are alone.

Okay, this is starting to feel like an assassination attempt now.

Reinhard seems to have the same thought, based on the look on his face, but decides to risk it anyway. He sends Siegfried out of the room, and asks Oberstein what the hell is so secret. Oberstein explains that he's in a very dangerous position right now. Everyone sees him as a deserter and insubordinate, but he had good reasons for everything he did.

Reinhard replies that his court-martial is scheduled for tomorrow, so if he has a case to make for himself he should do it then instead of nagging Reinhard about it off the record. In response, Oberstein just says that they both know he won't be getting a fair trial. The military police is desperate for people to blame for what happened, and the party line seems like it's going to be that Admiral Tweedledum died a hero's death making a courageous last stand against the Alliance hijackers. Oberstein's account paints a far less flattering picture, and thanks to the flagship's disintegration he doesn't have much evidence to back it up. Appealing to Reinhard is possibly his one chance to avoid sentencing, and likely execution.

Then, he removes one of his cybernetic eyes, and repeats what he told to Siegfried at Reinhard's promotion ceremony; if Oberstein had been around during the reign of Rudolf I, he'd have been shipped straight off to the death camps. The eugenics policies might have been rolled back since then, but the prevailing attitude is the same, and everyone still worships Rudolf Goldenbaum like he was a literal god among men. Every moment of every day, Oberstein participates in the cult of a god that would have had him killed for no fault of his own. And now, because of that same culture and system, an unjust death is still about to catch up with him.

He hates it. He hates Galactic Empire. He hates its bullshit politics and delusional ideology and ruinous forever war. He wishes the old Federation had never fallen, and he wishes more than anything for every single member of the Goldenbaum dynasty to die horribly.

He also thinks he's met someone with the vision and convictions to turn this nightmare of an empire into something better. So, he's asking Reinhard to intervene on his behalf, so that he can serve him henceforth.

Huh. I think he might actually be sincere.

He might also not be, of course. In which case, there will be no way of knowing until the time comes for him to throw Reinhard under the bus. Hell, the congenital blindness story could be completely made up just to use as a ploy for baiting out dissidents, with him actually having lost his sight in an accident or something.

But, he could be for real. A dissident looking for like-minded officers and a cunning thought policeman trying to bait them both would have acted the way he did at the ceremony. The low-key villainous framing that the camera angles etc give him could be a warning, or they could be a fakeout.

Reinhard isn't going to let go of his justifiable paranoia that quickly, though.

He calls Siegfried back in, and orders him to bring Oberstein into custody at gunpoint. Oberstein just looks slightly more miserable than he normally does, and says that it seems he was mistaken. He thought he saw a reformer in Reinhard, but really he's just a slightly different flavor of bootlicker nobleman than the usual. Unfortunate, but hey, he was going to be executed anyway, so no loss. Then, he asks Siegfried to just shoot him right now and get it over with.

Siegfried doesn't. Oberstein asks him if perhaps he doesn't have it in him to kill an unarmed man in cold blood? Neither Siegfried nor Reinhard respond. Well then, Oberstein concludes, they aren't masking themselves very well at all, are they? A real imperial bootlicker would have just shot him at the first sign of resistance. They really could use a few pointers if they're going to try to pull this off, and he thinks he can help them with that.

Damn. He's good. Regardless of whether or not he's also sincere.

Reinhard says that Tweedledum must have hated Oberstein. Oberstein just coldly says that Tweedledum was not a man who inspired loyalty in his underlings, and lets Reinhard infer from that.

Next thing we know, Reinhard is appealing to the Kaiser on behalf of the chiefs of staff and the other officers currently under the gun for the Iserlohn disaster. From what his internal investigation revealed, the loss of the Iserlohn was purely the fault of the two admirals onsite, both of whom have already reaped the consequences of their negligence with one dead and the other a prisoner of the enemy.

It seems that his appeal was granted, because we then cut to the chiefs of staff being amazed that their resignations have not been accepted, and that no punishment has been decreed. Additionally, Captain Oberstein has been cleared of insubordination charges and recruited into Reinhard's new special club for special officers. Looks like Reinhard took Oberstein up on it.

The royal Minister of State later approaches Kaiser Friedrich while he's tending his rose garden. That's his hobby, I guess, he grows roses. The minister asks him if he's afraid of letting an upstart like Reinhard gain so much power so quickly, and Friedrich says that no, he isn't. Worst case scenario, Reinhard stages a coup and takes over the Empire, big deal.

When the minister is aghast at this, the king just says that the Goldenbaum regime hasn't always been around, and won't always. So, if it ends with him, whatever.

Um. Well. O...kay, then? If that's really how he feels he could just abdicate, right? Strange individual, this one.

Last scene of the episode has Siegfried asking Reinhard if he believes Oberstein's story. Reinhard explains that no, he doesn't believe more than two consecutive words of it, but he doesn't think Oberstein is anyone's mole either. He's a self-interested political climber who will tell anyone whatever they want to hear in order to get ahead and keep himself out of danger. He seems to be smart though, and good at what he does, so he could be useful to have around so long as they don't have to put too much trust in him. And hey, if Reinhard is going to try taking over the Empire, he's going to need to learn how to deal with political schemer types, so this is good practice.

As Reinhard speaks, he starts stroking Siegfried's hair.

Huh. Maybe not so unrequited after all, then? New development, or were they always like this?

Anyway, end episode.


Empire-focused episodes seem to be head and shoulders better than FPA ones so far. Decent little political drama, with the uncertainty about Oberstein being particularly intriguing. Reinhard could be right about him, but he could also be totally misjudging him. And, if he is right about him, he may or may not be overestimating his ability to keep him onside and under control.

The Castrop subplot was also entertaining. Nice to see Siegfried getting to step out of Reinhard's shadow and put not only his style of tactics, but also his style of mercy into better practice than he himself ever did.

I still don't think this is a very good show overall, but the Reinhard episodes are definitely the best part of it.