#and/or a catchup summary of what's happened between the first fic and “present day”

[needlesandnilbogs]

for the ask game about fic backstory. i've only read one of your mirrorverse fics so you might have covered this somewhere, but i'm curious: how did mirror!mensah come to power?

okay so I have in fact written two fics in which some aspect of this is revealed but other than those two fics a lot of this is either in my head or scattered across discord (the timeline I was kinda keeping for a while has disappeared lol) so here goes trying to form it into a shortened-and-broad-strokes narrative:

(I can and will go into more depth about any of these parts. Just try me. also this feels very in-world-document-y but that wasn't totally on purpose) (it's long so it gets a read more)

The Alliance Period (Salvation Pre-Empire)

The Salvation Alliance was founded nearly 200 years ago, by a group of colonists escaping the Corporate Empires and the constant war. They settled on a lush planet near two already-inhabited planets in the same system, and their ship, the Salvation, became the first station.

Within a year, they had so cowed their neighbors that the rest of the system fell easily under the banner of the Salvation Alliance and the promise of peace and an end to the corporates.

One of the small group of leaders, Consuela Makeba, protested this decision, but her speech went largely ignored. It certainly did not appeal to the newly formed Salvation Council, who had her imprisoned and executed as the Alliance's first traitor.

The Salvation Council was an oligarchy, though they liked to pretend they weren't. A few seats were won, here and there, by young progressive candidates who had grand dreams of changing everything, but for hundreds of years, the status quo remained set. A place to live and food for all, just as in another universe, but contingent on the understanding that if you were not working for Salvation's benefit, you didn't deserve more than the very barest of minimums.

One of these young upstart progressives was Dr. Ayda Mensah, a charismatic and well-known exoecologist who was quickly elected to her local governing council, and a few years later to the Salvation Council.

The Coup

Dr. Mensah, it must be understood, had been planning since the instant she'd been elected to her local council, if not earlier. She wanted power, and she didn't care who stood in her way.

She was methodical about it; quiet convincing where possible, the sort of thing nobody would dare call her out on. Bribery, blackmail, siccing her good friend the up and coming prosecutor Pin-Lee on them, all those little ways of influencing votes in her favor.

Within three years after her appointment to the council, she'd amassed enough of a power base to be appointed Planetary Administrator, head of the council for the term. At this point, she and her partners had a two-year-old child and another on the way, which certainly had an impact on her re-election campaign strategies.

A few months into her second year as Planetary Administrator and fourth year on the council, she was on a survey with a handful of other members of the SalvationAux survey team, mostly flunkies and interns (and, of course, the Chief Prosecutor of the Salvation Alliance, there because of course Pin-Lee wasn't letting Mensah go alone), when things went to heck.

The only reason they survived at all was the actions of rogue EnforcerUnit Saviorbot, who saved the whole survey team. In gratitude (and because it was such a useful thing, to have a friend with guns in its arms), Mensah and Pin-Lee arranged to purchase it and free it. It followed them back to Salvation, and became Mensah's constant bodyguard and close confidant.

Within a year, several people took offense to the centralization of power and the existence of an EnforcerUnit on Salvation, and began a pitiful rebellion which announced itself with rioting at the Oakepark Factory Complex, an event which is still marked as a solemn tragedy by many. (A certain Makeba Rebellion, it and its leader named for Consuela Makeba's protest speech, celebrates this day as a sign of victory, and notes that there were zero deaths and less than a dozen casualties, which the Empire tends to brush over in favor of the tragic reduction in production capacities.)

Things continued on with a sort of stalemate for a while, Administrator Mensah continuing to ensure the council complied and the rebellion continuing to try to depose her, until Saviorbot discovered transmissions from a rebel cell linked to both the rebellion's spymaster Hope and one Councilmember Sonje.

Mensah and Pin-Lee and Saviorbot, in an attempt to centralize power even further, decided enough was enough. After a devastating rebel attack on the council, which just so happened to kill the biggest opponents to a unilateral power grab, Mensah ordered the council dissolved and all administration to run through her office.

Within a week, she was crowned as Salvation's first Empress, with her partners crowned as Queen- and Monarch-Consort and her seven-year-old eldest daughter given the title of Crown Princess Amena. In deference to the age of her children (seven and five, at the time), Mensah named Solicitor Pin-Lee, who was already the Chief Prosecutor, the next in the line of succession, and bestowed upon her the title of the Hand of the Law; in turn, Saviorbot was granted the title of Chief Enforcer and given responsibility for the security of the newly-renamed Salvation Empire.

(Side note, part of how Mensah kept control over the ex-councilmembers was by offering each of them and many other politicians a guaranteed position for them in the new administration. Some of these positions, for those with children, are now considered inherited positions, meaning it's guaranteed to be passed down to their children, and others aren't, so when people eventually retire from non inherited positions, those posts will be filled by other children of government officials who Mensah thinks will do well there. She's basically going back to nepotism and hereditary nobility as a way to keep those people from joining the rebellion. Meanwhile her strategy for dealing with the broader populace is pretty much ensuring they have everything they need, propagandizing the heck out of everything, and creating opportunities for advancement into administrative positions that can be used as rewards for the most loyal. Textbook bread and circuses plus carrots and sticks.)

The first main mirrorverse story, Preservation, picks up about eight years since that coup, which is also four years since the martyr Tradition died, and the second and third main stories take place over the next two years. At the point the fourth story starts, it's been about ten and a half years since the coup, in which time court politics have become exponentially more complicated as people vie for Mensah's favor. (She encourages this. Plotting against each other means that they aren't plotting against her.) Also, Amena's almost a legal adult by the third and fourth stories, which means she's almost old enough to actually take over if Mensah can't rule somehow.