Senate

The Senate is a pre-war governing body of Cybertron from the IDW comics portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

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.

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.

City-states like Kaon have their own senates.

Known senators from this era include:

• Decimus
• Proteus
• Ratbat

Fiction

IDW continuity

The esteemed members of the Senate were held to be the honorable descendants of the progenitors and custodians of the sacred Primal lienage. 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 assassination by terrorists. They decided that head of security, Sentinel Prime 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. However, the outraged Senate had Sentinel Prime place the officer under arrest and removed from the Grand Imperium. One Senator, however, prevented Pax from being sent to prison and confessed to him that a faction within the Senate was responsible for Nominus Prime's death and were seeking to control the Creation Matrix for their own motivations. Chaos Theory #2

Just prior to the Great War, the Senate had grown rich and corrupt, making only conciliatory gestures to their constituents while hoarding energon and manipulating the commerce of Cybertron to their advantage. One of the main projects that had resulted from this was the increased automation of the asteroid energon mines. Sentinel Prime appeared well aware that the Senate was out for itself, and held a rather low opinion of them as a whole. As part of Megatron's takeover for Kaon, the Kaon Senate's guards were subverted and assisted Starscream, who claimed to be snitching to the Senators, in wiping out the entire body (bar Ratchet) in one swoop. Megatron Origin

The Senate's status following the devastation of Cybertron is unknown, but things did not look good for them.

Notes

• As Megatron Origin was based on the decline of the Roman Empire, the Senate was most likely based on the Roman Senate. This tells us nothing of how the Senators were elected, however, as Roman Senators were former Roman magistrates, and since Primes appear to be lifetime appointments, it's unlikely that it's made of former Primes.