Tanja wrote:
The amount of scheming and backstabbing that goes on is very Roman
to me (as
in I Claudius, most of whose characters would fit beeeutifully into Servalan's world IMO),
Absolutely. Livia would have ruled the Federation behind the scenes, setting up someone a bit more stable than Travis to do the military work for her. Bercol & Rontane would probably have been her sidekicks. Since she was much more patient than Servalan, and since her plots usually suceeded, she'd have gotten hold of Blake & Co. very early on and we would never have gotten the show.
Talking of whitewashes, I'd better put in a word for the historical Livia, who may quite possibly have been a loyal wife and not a murdering type at all. Tacitus's take on the Augustus/Livia/Tiberius death-and-succession thing seems to be coloured by the slightly better attested Claudius/Agrippina/Nero case.
Servalan, of course, was a hardworking and principled administrator, too.