Zeon had a plan.
A movement.
It was working toward something great.
Zeon Deikun was a visionary. He knew that mankind was meant to leave the Earth and live in space. He knew that the Earth Federation was holding the colonies back, that the colonies can and should be self-sufficient and independent of the Federation.
With his sudden death, his true philosophy died with him. For the next two decades, “Zeon” would be co-opted by power-hungry leader after power-hungry leader. Countless atrocities would be committed and entire populations would be exterminated in his name, while the new figureheads of his movement would attempt to hunt down and silence the rest of his family in secret.
Degwin Sodo Zabi was the first to claim that Zeon Deikun had, on his deathbead, named Degwin his successor as leader of the Side 3 colonies.
Immediately afterward, Degwin’s son Gihren led a purge of those still loyal to Zeon, plunging Side 3 into chaos as the Zabi family consolidated power.
The Zabis themselves were each men and women of their own ambitions, and in the end, they were not above killing even each other to gain power, or even just to exact petty revenge. When the ashes of the One Year War settled, their thirst for power had undone them all and left the Principality of Zeon a shell of its former self. Only Dozle Zabi’s infant daughter Mineva survived as successor to the legacy they usurped from Zeon Deikun, as their crippled fleets either fled to the asteroid belt or roamed the Earth Sphere as pirates.
The enraged and defeated Zeon military turned to Haman Karn as their leader. Acting as regent to Mineva until the young Zabi heir came of age, Haman used her as a political tool, becoming a usurper to the usurper.
Now resembling little, if any of Zeon Deikun’s original philosophy, Neo Zeon returned to the Earth Sphere, determined to force the Earth Federation into submission.
Once again, however, infighting from within weakened their forces and their resolve, leading to their defeat and the reduction of Zeon’s forces to pirates and refugees.
Zeon’s name would be used by at least three more groups trying to take revenge upon the Earth Federation. Indeed, Zeon Deikun’s own son would be radicalized against the people of Earth. He would resort to hurling asteroids at the planet to force evacuations into space, despoiling his father’s sacred Earth in a vain attempt to accelerate his philosophical goals.
Two decades after Zeon Deikun’s death, his name had lost its connection to his philosophy of space migration and self-sufficiency, and became associated only with the raging desire for revenge against the Earth Federation for Zeon’s defeat in the One Year War.
A “movement,” formal or informal, is a delicate thing. This is especially true when a part of the movement involves uniting against a common opposition.
It’s even truer when that movement gains a significant following and has potential to shift the status quo.
Movements like these attract those who deal in influence.
Perhaps they’re thought leaders of less successful movements.
Perhaps they’re saboteurs from the opposition.
Perhaps they’re simply power-hungry grifters.
Whatever form they take, they will find their way into movements with potential, especially when there’s conflict, and use them for their own gain. It’s very easy to motivate and mobilize people against a common opponent. And it’s very easy to gain influence as someone who stokes that conflict.
The problem is that conflict isn’t always productive. Oftentimes, conflict can be a distraction from real work that needs to be done. And if it goes on long enough, conflict can ultimately prove counterproductive to whatever real change the movement is trying to bring about.
Indeed, by the time Full Frontal proposed the concept of the Side Co-Prosperity Sphere in U.C. 0096, the Neo Zeon movement entirely lacked both the military influence to enforce such a boycott against Earth, and the economic influence to encourage the participation of the other colonies. They had been severely weakened by two decades of brutal war. By then, Neo Zeon was in its third iteration and was little more than an insurgent group with no nation and dwindling support. They couldn’t even call Side 3, the Republic of Zeon, home anymore.
Such a plan could have worked in 0079. However, instead of building toward Deikun’s vision, the name “Zeon” instead came to be used by the Zabis, Haman, and every subsequent leader as a weapon against people who stood in the way of their thirst for power.
The plan, the mission, the vision, and the movement all took a back seat to the conflict. Two decades of war, fought by increasingly exhausted forces with increasingly outdated equipment. Forces abandoned and left to roam after each lost war, only to be rallied by the next power-hungry madman promising Zeon’s philosophy, but delivering only petty, destructive revenge against the Earth.
Meanwhile, zero progress made toward Deikun’s philosophy.
Beware those who attack when it’s time to build. There is a time to keep the opposition at bay, but there is also a time to build what comes next.
Constant conflict will wear your people down until there is no energy left to actually create the change they wanted to see. And there are people who don’t care or who want this to happen.
If the change you want to see means anything to you at all, beware the people who revel in the conflict that arises, and especially beware those who seek influence through that.
Beware the Zabis.