Senate
- The Senate is a pre-war governing body of Cybertron from the IDW comics portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
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 later replaced by the New Senate.
Known senators from this era include:
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 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. However, 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 creates 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 to the murders. Once this would have led to an increase in registrations, an arranged bombing would be blamed on the Decepticons as proof of their "true colors" and all registrants would have been rounded up. 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 providing Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology as a shelter for 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
A short while later, by the time Sentinel had become Prime, 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. Sentinel Prime appeared well aware that the Senate was out for itself and held a rather low opinion of them as a whole, even though they were basically his senate. Megatron Origin #1
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, and their own boss Soundwave in wiping out the entire damn Senate (bar Ratbat) in one swoop. Megatron Origin #4 Only Soundwave's involvement would be known to the police (or at least strongly suspected) since every eyewitness was either a Decepticon or dead. The Hunt for Soundwave
With the rise of Zeta Prime, a new Senate (literally called the New Senate because Zeta loved calling everything "new") was introduced, though understandably they had a lot to prove to make up for the old one. Omega's Conundrum Remembrance Day They were apparently a bit more sensible though, 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
Millions of years later, Prowl mentioned that the Decepticons' could not legitimately portray themselves as freedom fighters as they'd won their war on the Senate and continued fighting and murdering despite that. Dinobot Hunt
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.
