OK, so I'm getting the digest now and the 'write' section of my e-mail doesn't like it. I'll get the hang of it sooner or later.
Leylan's character: I think he represents the full tragedy of what the Federation can do to the good - or potentially good - people under its control. He _knows_ what's right and he's willing to make some gestures towards it, but with a great sense of futility.
He gives Jenna some protection when he tells Raiker to be discreet. I gather Raiker wasn't big on _asking_ or, at any rate, listening when he was told no. But stop him entirely? This is the way the system works. This is what men like Raiker expect. What use is it to fight it?
He gives Raiker authority when they're under attack. Perhaps he was caving into fear or just desperate for a plan. I _don't_ think he'd thought it through to the logical end. I did think he accepted responsibility for the consequences. But that was part of the same attitude. It's not the full scale, heated outrage we might expect from someone who had no reason to expect a sane officer would do this (or who knows that no sane officer serving under him would think he could do this and get away with it). It's more the resignation of a man who knows he should have seen it because it was what Raiker would do - and who knows the only option to hold Raiker responsible is to admit his own complicity and be punished right along with him.
Then, when the chance comes to send the merry trio over, I think he OKs it partly because it's the only way he can avoid executing them (and this is the _captain_).
At the end, I think he was planning to take as much of the blame as he could to help spare the younger officer. Arguing that he did his best and lost (all true) doesn't cross his mind, not as a potentially winning argument.
So, I see him as a potentially good man who may not like the evils he sees but considers himself powerless to oppose them in more than very small ways. He may not like the status quo or the corruption but he sees himself as powerless to do anything about it - an attitude so strong it persists even when he has a postition of power where he _could_ do something.
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