Senate

The Senate is a pre-war governing body of Cybertron from the Generation 1 and Cyberverse continuity families.

This symbol denotes official Senate dealings on documents and also adorns many buildings and members of Senators' personal staff. Basically, if someone has this, then they're better than you. And will act like it.

The Senate is the legislative body of pre-war Cybertron. While the Prime and the Autobot Security Services may hold military and police powers, the Senate creates the laws they enforce. It was briefly replaced by the New Senate and when that didn't wash, was done away with and replaced with the Grand Convocation.

Known senators from this era include:

• Crosscut
• Dai Atlas
• Decimus
• Momus
• Proteus
• Ratbat
• Sherma
• Shockwave
• Starscream

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

The esteemed members of the Senate were held to be the honorable descendants of the progenitors and custodians of the sacred Primal lineage. By the time of Nominus Prime, however, the Senate had become grossly corrupt and oppressive, overseeing a caste-ridden dictatorship with themselves on top. A few honest Senators remained but kept quiet.

In Cybertron's early age, the 113th Cybertronian Senate went into a private session at the Grand Imperium in order to address the matter of Nominus Prime's attempted assassination by terrorists. They decided that the head of security, Sentinel, was to find the perpetrators of this attack and decided to forgo the rights of the citizens by initiating a Clampdown. Their session was interrupted by the arrival of a security officer known as Orion Pax who spoke out against the corruption, but the outraged Senate had Sentinel place the officer under arrest and remove him from the Grand Imperium. Shockwave, however, prevented Pax from being sent to prison and confessed to him that a faction within the Senate was responsible for the assassination, as they were seeking to discover how the Creation Matrix created life for their own motivations. Chaos Theory #2 Once they found that Nominus's Matrix was fake, they had him killed and released cover stories claiming he died from rust and that their very own Sentinel was suddenly showing signs of being a Prime. Post Hoc

The Clampdown only served to increase discontent among Cybertronian citizens, causing the newly emerged Decepticon movement to grow in popularity. Seeking to put stop to this growing threat to the Senate's stability, Senator Proteus instated a Decepticon Registration Act along with a false promise that if 10,000 Decepticons registered the Senate would be recognize them as legitimate political party. In fact, he and Sentinel were only collecting names of Decepticons so that they could send them all to the Institute to be "cured" of their rebellious nature. As part of this plan, agents were hired to assassinate Senators Sherma and Momus, themselves Decepticon sympathizers, so that Proteus could subsequently display how he wasn't biased against Decepticons by proving them innocent of the senators' murders. This would lead to an increase in registrations, followed by an arranged bombing that would be blamed on the Decepticons as proof of their "true colors" and the rounding up of all registrants. Patternism However, this plan was sabotaged by Shockwave and Orion Pax (with a tip-off from Whirl), who replaced the bomb with another fake Matrix.

The senate was quite unhappy with Shockwave, who had been using the Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology to shelter outliers from persecution by the functionists. As a result, the academy was burnt by 'accident', and Shockwave was sent to the Institute. An Intimate Beheading

Believe it or not, the Decepticons are the good guys here.

By the time Sentinel had become Prime a short while later, individual Senators like Ratbat had started to manipulate (and damage) the planet's economy for their own benefit, while the Senate as a whole automated the energon mines at the expense of the mining caste. They made only conciliatory gestures to the miners while hoarding energon for themselves. Megatron Origin #1 Sentinel Prime himself found he didn't set policies and the Senate was telling him what to do rather than doing what he wanted; he held a rather low opinion of them, and dumped Senator Decimus' mauling on Prowl rather than deal with people who don't give him "what I need". Megatron Origin #1Megatron Origin #3

When a great number of Decepticons were captured in Kaon, including their founder Megatron, Kaon's Senator Ratbat called for an emergency session to discuss what should be done about them. Soundwaves However, this was all part of Megatron's master plan: once the Senate was all gathered in one place, Starscream claimed to be snitching on Megatron and was allowed access to the council chamber, where he and Soundwave outright murdered the entire Senate. Megatron Origin #4 The only Senators to survive were Shockwave, who had already defected to the Decepticons; Dai Atlas, who couldn't attend the emergency session; Shockwaves and Ratbat, who was forced to defect to the Decepticons. Megatron Origin #4 Because of Soundwave's ability to block out communications the perpetrators of the crime would remain unknown, Soundwaves though his own involvement became known (or at least strongly suspected) by the police. The Hunt for Soundwave

A new Senate was very quickly established by the rising Zeta Prime (who would literally call it the New Senate because Zeta loved calling everything "new") and their first acts were to organize Sentinel's funeral, oversee the passing of the Matrix to Zeta, and generally reassure the planet that they had this "Decepticon" thing in hand. As with the old Senate, the New knew that the "Matrix" held by Zeta Prime was a fake. The Last Autobot Understandably, the new body had a lot to prove to make up for the old one. Omega's Conundrum Remembrance Day

At some point during the Senate or New Senate, Crosscut became famous as a senator who took a stand and liberated Petrex "with wise words and a shovel". The Dead Are Not Enough

The New Senate were apparently a bit more sensible than the old one, as they thought Zeta's plan to use vamparc ribbons on civilians was a bit nutty. One of the more vocal senators was even adamant that they and the Prime were meant to serve the people, not oppress them. Unfortunately, Zeta Prime didn't give a monkey's, knowing that nobody trusted even the New Senate. Around this time, Starscream was considered a "delegate" to the Senate and not known to be a Decepticon. Parasites In spite of their misgivings, the Senate still helped Zeta stockpile outlawed weapons. Endgame Zeta was assuring the worried Senate that his tactics were working, at the exact moment when Orion Pax and a squad of Autobots violently turned on him. Overthrown

Megatron became the new dictator of Cybertron following his murder of Zeta Prime and when Optimus Prime retook Iacon, the Senate were spoken of in the past tense. Transformation Endgame Optimus replaced them with the Grand Convocation, a more democratic body, Derelicts and later with the Conclave of Representatives and the Stratocracy. Towards Peace Primacy #1

Millions of years later, Prowl mentioned that the Decepticons could not legitimately portray themselves as freedom fighters as they had won their war on the Senate and continued fighting and murdering despite that. Dinobot Hunt At Megatron's trial, his war on the Senate was the first charge that was brought up. Towards Peace

After receiving a life sentence, Starscream defended his reign to Bumblebee by stating that, unlike the Senate, he hadn't suppressed the population for eons. Surfeit of Primes

The Functionist Universe

In another timeline, the Senate had been "unseated" by the Functionist Council and Cybertron had become a dictatorship beyond even Proteus's dreams. The Custom-Made Now

Cyberverse cartoon

The Senate met in the Grand Imperium. After the launching of the AllSpark had caused Cybertron's condition to deteriorate, Optimus Prime took Bumblebee to the Grand Imperium to reflect on the bygone age of peace and the damage the Great War had done to Cybertron. Matrix of Leadership

2019 IDW continuity

Senator Orion Pax oversaw Security Operations and functioned as Sentinel Prime's second-in-command. The World In Your Eyes Part Three Senators Megatron and Soundwave had joined the Ascenticon movement, the former becoming its leader in the place of the absent Termagax. The World In Your Eyes Part One The World In Your Eyes Part Five

Notes

• As Megatron Origin was based on the decline of the Roman Empire, the Senate was most likely based on the Roman Senate. Unlike that Senate, according to Optimus, they're not made up of former magistrates but of the descendants of the progenitors, i.e. they inherit their seats.
• Origin presented the Senate as meeting in Kaon, and in the same bloody prison building the Decepticons are in.
• The thinking by James Roberts is that by Nominus Prime's time, the Primes had become a less powerful force absorbed into the Senate, rather like the British Royal Family. The Senate itself, as partly established in flashback stories, is increasingly factionalised body with groups fighting each other out and shifting their allegiances. (AKA, a senate)
• Chris Metzen's intention was that nobody knew precisely who killed the old Senate as the Decepticons had suppressed the footage and Starscream wasn't known to be a Decepticon, hence him appearing as a delegate. This was proven even further in Optimus Prime #3 when Soundwave noted that there existed no recorded evidence to prove exactly who was responsible for the Senate's death.