“In the annals of the known galaxy no villain stands out as vividly as Black Eugene, the notorious politician and fleet admiral of the thirtieth century who sacked Duke Reblin and removed the defensive fleet guarding the home world of the Republic of Solar Pacification (so named for its conquest of Earth). Left defenseless on Eugene’s insistence, the home planet was almost entirely cleansed of life by the berserker fleet of the cyborg R. Kane, who killed an estimated 10 billion human beings on the ill-fated planet. The extermination was so thorough that debris from wrecked orbital habitats and other man-made satellites was strewn across a 30-million-mile area of the Regulus 252 system. Historians have debated whether Black Eugene intentionally caused the destruction of his own home planet. Some historians have argued that he was blinded by pride and ambition. Others say he took a perverse pleasure in watching the planet die. A famous cabaret song, made popular during the Republic’s interwar period, kept the memory of his infamy alive in the popular imagination long after his death.
Interstellar Political Encyclopedia
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“Life is a cabaret, old chum, so come to the cabaret.”
Cabaret, 1972 film
Marx once observed, while quoting Hegel, that history repeats: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Rather than a long essay, a short song better serves.
Black Eugen
A Brief Historical Note
History is never entirely fair to politicians who possess the traits of a Black Eugene. Some will argue that Eugene should be credited with his real accomplishments. Yet his blemishes, his blunders and misjudgments make a shambles of his record. By a great and foolish strategic decision, he destroyed all the good he might have done. It was, as we know, a character flaw that led to his one unforgivable strategic mistake. His decisions were whimsical, ill-conceived, and invested with egotism. The good he did was indeed eclipsed by homicidal incompetence, by blaming and slandering others when the fault was his, and by a braggadocio that hid his defects from the public even as his actions brought dire consequences. A leader is judged by the whole of his character, and his deeds are sometimes subsumed in his misdeeds. Good objects and ideas are caught up in the general condemnation of something that is seen in the aftermath as evil and deleterious. A portion of something good is indeed lost in a betrayal that plays out, in part, as a self-betrayal. Thus, the villain is to blame for this as well; for if he had been a better man, his part of the better cause would have been upheld rather than sullied. Being false by nature, he tainted and discredited every good thing he touched. Black Eugene was a man of the people. At least, he claimed to be, and his political associates formed the greatest majority the Republic saw before the aristocracy tightened its grip. Yet the Duke and Prime Minister Edward Le Baron were able to trample down popular dissent across the Committee’s surviving worlds because, they said, Eugene had been a dangerous demagogue. Many of his political associates were arrested in the purge that followed. The freedom that might have existed under the popular party was not afterwards possible, thanks to him. Yet there will always be diehards and believers in politicians who fall out of favor, even if their bungling cost 10 billion lives.
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