The precedent isn't what saves you. It's the vote in the moot. The precedent is the post-facto legal framework to make it not a crime when it clearly should always be a crime. That 'old precedent' was claimed on a number of occasions albeit perhaps only recognized once... that's because it is not itself really a law - it is the tissue that the moot uses to wipe the Imperium's bum when they choose to.

For it to have happened as it did in the books, I believe these preconditions would have needed to be true:

Great unhappiness or complaint in the moot, perhaps known and underestimated or perhaps fairly sub-rosa. That unhappiness could have been from Strephon's decisions, failures to decide, or anyone getting a good look at the Imperial heirs. Or something else entirely.
Dulinor or his agents would have needed to know about this discontent and fomented more (or just plain created leverage on various nobles by being their sugar daddy or by getting incriminating info on them)
Assassinations (accidents, etc) of various Moot nobles over the years leading up might have taken out a few of the major stumbling blocks
Perhaps Strephon was more odious than we think on a day to day basis and maybe his reign, seen however it may be from the peanut gallery beyond the Court and the Moot, was actually one nobody was happy with (and some may have been very unhappy).
The Moot members may have been disgusted with the assassination of Varian (which does not have 'right of anything') and may have been willing to assume Lucan was entirely unfit for the job (so Dulinor might have been a reasonable choice - though arguably Margret might unless her conservatism was the affliction that made Strephon unpalatable enough to not regret his passing).
Dulinor could have pre-planned offers of various extra powers, rewards, titles, etc to many members of the Moot as part of his move.
With the old emperor gone, with the logical successor potentially assassinated by his brother.... and with Dulinor having some focus on problems in the Imperium Strephon may not have (which was the gist of why Dulior goes rogue), maybe those offers are swaying so as to simply get a new CEO at the helm and avoid civil war.
Imperial Intelligence must have either been involved (Windhooks' Story... hmmmm....) or maybe were subborned on some level by Illelish actors or they could have just been complacent and not very tuned in to Dulinor, Ilelish or much other than infighting or budget slicing.

One can not believe any part of the above, but something like that would have needed to exist for Dulinor to actually think he'd get the Moot on side. If you say it should have been obvious that the Ilelish Fleet could not withstand the combined force of other loyalist fleets, then Dulinor was either an idiot as were all his advisors or they had to have other strong actions pre-planned and carried out to pave the way for a chance to get the Moot onside.

I recognize many things would have to fall a certain way, but it could be they did. It could be that our perception of the 3I is coloured by our own assumptions of how stable the 3I seemed in the early depictions. They may have not reported the struggles within the government/nobles and the sentiments of various segments of the nobles who make up the moot. So, it is possible that another understanding would align more with what actually happened.

Now, they never describe a lot of this but as I say, Dulinor would have to have enough aces in his pocket to think he had a good chance of pulling this off or he was nuts. If he almost pulled it off due to actions off stage, then that aligns with what the results were. If he was just plain nuts, that never got hinted at either.

I do prefer GT's timeline, but if you are going to totally revise a setting from end to end, you need big events to unfold and some seemingly counter-to-former-depictions to be true in order to see the results that were documented.

TomB

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 11:23 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

On Thursday, June 18, 2020, 03:24:44 AM MST, Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

On 18Jun2020 1721, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> I think what no one really has stated is that, despite whatever claims
> of 'legality' (which we're are currently hearing a lot of in RL)
> Dulinor was not only a traitor but also a cold-blooded murderer.
Yes, and? At least one of the 'right of assassination' Emperors had
their actions retroactively approved by the Moot. The thing is, Dulinor
never stuck around to get the Moot's approval, not even approval at
gunpoint. Then the Moot, by not resisting Lucan's order dissolving it,
abdicated it's responsibility to approve a claim to the throne,
effectively dissolving the Imperium and making it a free-for-all.

Yes, it's contrived, etc., but look out the window. 2020's busy carving
out whole new lows for how much sense something has to make to be
'realistic' or 'reasonable'. Not there aren't plenty of other historical
examples of utter disasters happening because a whole pile of people all
decided to make stupid decisions for reason fo short-term self-interest,
ego, and general stupidity (the events leading to WWI, for example).

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I doubt that dredging up a precedent from centuries ago is going to earn someone anything more than the same treatment they meted out.

Besides, look at that earlier incident. It only happened after a consensus was arrived at, at Capital & including close Imperial relatives.
Not some self proclaimed Messiah from the other side of the 3I, hell-bent & saving the the empire.

And as to your last point, I've always maintained that it appeared as though GDW decided to shake things up by having everyone go insane & wreck everything.
Some people, esp GDW, may have thought it was genius, but I beg to differ.

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