User blog:Janus100/Commander

I'm new to Wikia, so I didn't know about Blog posts. So this was originally posted as comment on Lexa.

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"Watch the Thrones" has made me question the entire Grounder governing structure.

— Challenging a Commander?

We know from "Survival of the Fittest", that Grounders believe that a dead Commander's spirit picks the next Commander. Clarke called it reincarnation. We're told in "Watch the Thrones" that the first Commander was a Nightblood. So, it can be inferred, that Commanders having to be Nightbloods is part of their reincarnation belief. But the commander can be of any clan – we know this because children of all clans are sent to the Capital and because Ontari of Ice Nation could vie to be the next Commander.

In "Watch the Thrones", we learn that a Commander can be removed by death or by a unanimous vote of no confidence. Since we know the next Commander is selected by the previous Commander's spirit, what happens in the case of a successful vote of no confidence? Can a new Commander be selected while the previous one is alive?

After the unsuccessful vote of no confidence, Lexa allows Nia to challenge her directly. If Lexa chose someone to fight on her behalf and that person lost, what would that mean? Since Nia can't be the Commander (since she's not a Nightblood), is Nia winning the challenge the same as a successful vote of no confidence?

We can infer that Titus doesn't fully believe in "Lexa's spirit choosing the next Commander" since he's quite troubled at learning that Ontari is a Nightblood. (Lexa wouldn't select Ontari, but apparently her spirit could?) So what's the real process of selecting a new Commander?

— Commander: leader of the twelve clans?

We know Titus advised four Commanders before Lexa. From "Watch the Thrones", we learn that Nightblood children from all the clans are sent to train at the capitol. We can infer that this is a fairly old policy – if it was recent, then they wouldn't be surprised in clans having Nightblood adults like Ontari. Yet we also have "Lexa is the first Commander of the 12 Clans, unifying them all into a Coalition" — which doesn't make sense. Commander isn't a new title since there have been at least four before Lexa.

Was the Commander just the title of the Trikru leader before the Coalition? But then the policy of sending Nightblood children of all clans to the capitol would be fairly new. The existence of Nightbloods like Ontari wouldn't be surprising. Also, it seems to be agreed upon within the Coalition that the Commander should be a Nightblood. Why would other clans agree to that if leaders of other clans (e.g. Ice Nation) aren't Nightblood? Why would they follow a Trikru tradition?

It seems to me that the title of Commander of the twelve clans precedes Lexa. For all the clans to agree on the Nightblood tradition, the first Commander was the first Commander for all the clans and not just for Trikru.

— Woods Clan

So, in Woods Clan, we had Anya, Indra, and Lexa. What was Anya's rank in comparison to Indra's? Who is the overall leader of the Trikru? Since it seems that the Commander isn't necessarily Trikru, is there a separate leader of the Trikru? (Lexa was Anya's second when she was "called" to become the Commander, so who was the Trikru leader at the time?) Is there a Trikru royal family like there is in the Ice Nation?

Looking at Ice Nation, it seems clan leaders don't have to Nightblood but the Commander does. Also clan leadership may follow bloodline, since Roan was immediately declared king as soon as Nia died. As far as we know Ontari is not in line for Ice Nation leadership yet she can become Commander due to being a Nightblood. So back to Trikru, is there a non-Nightblood line of leadership there?