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It seems that, in your old age, you just aren't as clever as you used to be...
You really did hope that, somewhere in the four models, you would find the method to truly fix the problems in the Hegemony. To improve and secure the future of the succession of the Supreme Ruler to future generations. However, it seems like <span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">none of your suggestions are really that good when held to scrutiny!</span></span>. Stable, reliable, equal? Sure- but not great. Not perfect; not even good. Problems abound when you think on them harder, things you didn't consider at first, and for every one problem solved, another two may crop up.
Of course, all of the solutions on their own seem valid enough. But the Hegemony formed itself out of certain ideals and practices for a reason. The old saying of what isn't broke, shouldn't be fixed seems to apply here.
But how? How can you mend this system of neurotic supreme ruler candidates, raised from birth to become great rulers, with the expansion of your empire and all the problems that comes with it?
The closest answer you've come to is the selection via the <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">Aristocracy</span></span>. Since the strongest bloodlines in the Hegemony already take rule, your own included, it is simply more efficient to select from that smaller, more intimate pool of candidates. Even changing Jaxt itself, your homeworld, into a sort of elite planet, filled with the greatest intuitions and teachers- but coddling a bunch of noble elites and their flighty tempers does not sound like something you want your successor to be doing!
<span class="mu-s">You are Eoba Garastra II and you absolutely refuse to leave the fate of this Empire up to chance!</span>
Just look at Kimnan II's son. The Oles boy is a born racer, tall and handsome, unbeatable on a hoverbike- and absolutely braindead. You'd never put in charge of a starship. Of course, his genes hinted at this, but who would think that the son of a Supreme Ruler candidate, even one grown in a vat, would be so unsuitable for the throne.
Vantix's message to the future Supreme Ruler rings in your head again. You feel like that's a recurring message you've felt throughout your life. You were born to be a ruler, but you still chose that path. That seems to be what Vantix is talking about. <span class="mu-i">”What they are, instead of who they are.”</span>. If he feared that future, then shouldn't you make a society where people are judged by <span class="mu-i">”Who they are, instead of what they are?”</span>
...Wait. Vantix, did you really mean... that? It seems so very simple. Could it be that all of your posturing, all of your methods and ethics and philosophy... all of it was based on something flawed to begin with?
