Early History and Structure
Founded by Valen 1,000 years before the Shadow War, the Grey Council comprised three representatives from each of the three castes - Worker, Warrior, and Religious - for a total of nine individuals. From time to time, the council had an additional member, a leader who served as a guide for the council. It is not known if this person had a vote or not; nor is the scope of their authority known. Dukhat, who served in this role, indicated that he could override the Council, but it is not clear if this power arose from his personal authority or qua the leader of the council.
For about 1,000 years, the Grey Council ruled over nearly every aspect of Minbari life, choosing its own membership and meeting in space aboard a Sharlin class Minbari cruiser. Its name is interconnected with its purpose through a sacrament repeated by its members: "I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star. We are Grey. We stand between the darkness and the light."
The title of Satai is used exclusively for members of the council. Ambassador Delenn is satai, but wishes her title to remain secret on the Babylon 5 station (the reasons for this are given to the viewers very early in the plot, in the movie Babylon 5: In the Beginning). Commander Jeffrey Sinclair first learns about Delenn's title (and, inferentially, membership of the council) in the second episode of season 1, Soul Hunter.
Read more about this topic: Grey Council
Famous quotes containing the words early, history and/or structure:
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)