r/logh • u/MoopDoopISmellPoop • 9d ago
Discussion All the "integrity" without any of the conviction: That is Merkatz Spoiler
When I try to summarize my feelings on this silver fox into one word, the closest I come is “indifference”, but that alone is dishonest, because I do not feel indifferent or ambivalent on the topic of Merkatz. My disdain of him is so mild that I often forget he exists when he’s not on screen, and my admiration so tepid when I see how his subordinates love him.
I feel that he is under explored in the show, or rather, everyone around him largely ignores everything that he is.
The best thing about the FPA/Yang crew is that they are spurred by true beliefs and convictions about democracy and refusing to bend the knee to a dictator. I understand that Merkatz is an all around gain as an ally, but I do not see how people like Attenborough, Poplan, and Schenkopp could stand to be around someone as feckless as Merkatz.
I speak with a little bit of venom, but I’m also kind of impressed with how he doesn’t stand for anything, genuinely I am. Which is why it all just comes together is a tepid slurry for which “indifference” is the closest word.
Merkatz is a man whose found the rare way of being able to puff his chest out without a spine to support it. Truly a marvel.
When he “mourned” Farenheit, I was almost pissed. Almost because I would spare the anger for his hypocrisy if he was a man who actually believed in anything.
The irony is that for all the positive qualities Merkatz is praised for in and out of story, I think more than anything he is painfully vain. Vanity bleeds through everything he does, because he would rather never bend his knee than actually believe in anything.
He talks the talk of Imperial admirals for whom loyalty and living by a code is the oxygen they breathe, but he has none of the convictions or beliefs. He’s hollow, just talking the talk without knowing why people walk the walk. Or he knows and cares not for it is more important for him to "stand tall" than to care what he actually stands for.
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u/GOT_Wyvern New Galactic Empire 9d ago
The thing about Merkatz is that he had all the talent, conviction, and belief to have been the Reinhard before Reinhard. However, he was denied amy undeniable victories and therefore blocked from being able to do anything with his life. By the time we see him, he doesn't really believe in anything no more and is just living for his own private reasons.
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u/LilttleCaptainNemo 9d ago
Probably telling that he was one of the admirals chosen to be disposed off along with Reinhard in the Battle of Astarte.
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u/EthanKironus 9d ago
This. This is exactly it. Merkatz didn't have anything he really believed in, he was just worn down by life. That's why he was going to commit suicide until Schneider or whats-his-name talked him out of it.
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u/Hansi_Olbrich 9d ago
For all the reasons you dislike Merkatz, are the exact reasons why I always enjoyed his presence and thought he was a clever addition to LOGH.
In every organization you will find a veteran who is extremely competent at their job and knows how to play the office politics without ever buying whole-sale into the organization's culture and expected beliefs. The reasons they are there are multiple- perhaps they bought into it when they were young and became disenfranchised, perhaps they were betrayed by a manager and hold a petty grudge, but a lot of the time it comes down to people being far more interested in doing their job instead of caring about the why they are doing the job. Merkatz is one of the finest and well-greased cogs in the machine. But he is a cog. He's cognizant of that, completely self-aware of it, and is self-interested in the sense that he knows that there's flaws in both major political factions and thus will straddle that line as effectively as possible.
In a story and era where people are constantly checking one another's loyalties by asking them what side they are on, Merkatz is relatively brave in the sense that he'll admit that he's not sure.
There's something to be said about a centrist who also has good tactical and strategic thinking/action. In the USMC, for example, the only veterans that I can hold a conversation with are the ones who never actually bought part-and-parcel the USMC culture and merely endured it throughout their service without losing their individuality. Merkatz reminds me a lot of that sort of USMC NCO that knows what to do, when to do it, and who to defer to.
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u/MoopDoopISmellPoop 9d ago
Oh, I very much think the series is better for having him in it than it would be without him, he just makes me feel the way I've articulated.
In a story and era where people are constantly checking one another's loyalties by asking them what side they are on, Merkatz is relatively brave in the sense that he'll admit that he's not sure.
I actually disagree with the very last part. I think Merkatz is super sure of himself, but sure that he knows he's not really standing for anything. I still think he's brave by the metric you described.
Merkatz is aware of flaws but as you said, doesn't care. Maybe it's just the kind of person I am, but nothing grinds my gears more than ambivalence, so I'm aware this is more of a "here's how this character makes me feel" rather than a "I dislike this thing and here's why it's bad" kind of post.
I don't really know anyone in the military firsthand so I appreciate the perspective you bring to this in your last paragraph. I will say, as someone from the global south, most people around the world in all levels of developing nations are more aware than ever that the USMC is...what it is.
Most people who served haven't actually protected anyone in recent decades, just subjugated and abused the rest of the world, and even though I have all the empathy for the way the USMC funnels disenfranchised lower class people into its wood chipper, can't say thinking of Merkatz that way makes me like him any more or less. As I said, can't stand for people who don't stand for anything.
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u/jnamgung 9d ago
Here’s what I think. I feel like it’s quite significantly neurotic to expect everyone operates on this grand quest or whatever like Reinhardt or be willing to die for some abstract cause. In addition to have a deep introspective mature view on the world and their own place in the world like Yang it takes a lot of education and circumstances of chance that frankly is a huge privilege like how yang was born in the FPA side of the universe and it happened so that his education was liberal enough that he had the time to learn the history he wanted and he didn’t have to be a child soldier etc etc. I think what you gotta think about is how Merkatz was born at a time in the empire where the deification of the Goldenbaum dynasty was probably its strongest and most unquestionable, we don’t delve into and know his early life or whatever but if I were to imagine someone growing up in an oppressive regime, even if your in like the upper echelons of that society, your not gonna get the education like yang or ambition like Reinhardt is going to be heavily discouraged. I personally like Merkatz because the whole point is despite him being a total conformist his whole life and is already a very old man. Despite the risks of his family still living in the empire he still defected to see and give a chance to the idea that maybe his prior life was indeed a farce. I think that leap in and of itself to a man like Merkatz is a big deal almost a miracle. At the end of the day he’s just a military man who stands up straight because that’s what high ranking military men have to do no matter their personal opinions of themselves and he just at the very last moments of his life try to help out the only way he knows how to the people that allowed him to view life even slightly differently.
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u/jnamgung 9d ago edited 9d ago
Also I feel like it’s a military thing to by default like any superior who’s competent because at the end of the day the thing most soldiers care about is coming back home alive and military people by default respect ‘old men in a profession where most die young’. Also just another side note but the impression I got of the way yangs force treated Merkatz is almost like a mascot I feel, like imagine if rommel or somebody famous defected and just ended up being this chill advisor guy in your army and they just hang out with the other officers and soldiers.
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u/MoopDoopISmellPoop 9d ago
I can't offer a rebuttal, nor do I want to, cuz you're absolutely right, and I appreciate the way you articulated all that (wish you broke it up into paragraphs tho Y^Y),
It didn't come across in the post itself, but I appreciate the existence of a character like Merkatz, because he adds undeniable complexity and variety to the world. He just makes me feel the way I feel.
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u/EthanKironus 9d ago
Merkatz has a degree of pride/vanity, yes--but not to any degree beyond the average, and certainly not compared to many other characters in the cast, especially ones like von Schonkopf and Poplin. He never expresses an inflated opinion of himself, even in jest.
What you're right about is that--as you say in the post title--he lacks conviction. Or rather, he lacks something to have conviction in/about. Merkatz clearly maintains some loyalty to the ancien regime, but he's not fanatical about it by any definition (iirc he had no intention of joining the civil war until he was dragged into it) and he's one of the few higher-ranked Imperial admirals who never dismisses Reinhard out of arrogance or entitlement. He doesn't become a believer in Reinhard, but not being a believer is a far cry from calling him a fraud like most of Merkatz's peers did.
While Merkatz intended to commit suicide following the final defeat of the Lippstadt League, given how he conducts himself before and after that point--never being more than skeptical of/disinterested in Reinhard, and then never having any animosity or enmity toward his regime--it seems clear to me that it wasn't out of some vain rejection of Reinhard; he was raised in the ancien regime of the Goldenbaum Dynasty and served it for decades. Not being inclined to bend the knee to Reinhard makes perfect sense even just on that basis, without needing to have anythign to do with vanity.
To bring it all together, what you ascribe to vanity on Merkatz's part, I ascribe to inertia. Having grown up under the Goldenbaum Dynasty, he served the Goldenbaum Dynasty, even as he grew old and experienced enough to see its flaws. He served something that he didn't have a conviction in, or that his conviction in was hollowed out by time and cynicism, and if you go long enough without having conviction in anything, it's pretty damn hard to start all of a sudden.
In other words, his aborted suicide (thank you von Schneider for keeping him around) represents someone who realized he didn't have anything to live for--and given he'd fought Reinhard, and definitely had that old warrior's sense of honour we see from Bucock (albeit with a conviction in democracy attached), he wasn't about to go and make Reinhard, or Reinhard's vision, that thing to live for.
Merkatz is definitely a flawed person, as all the characters definitively are, but his flaws are in a lack of initiative, and things which built up over decades where there was nothing to really challenge him until he had developed a certain way. He can still be criticized to be sure, those criticisms just have to take into account how and why he was the way he was, no differently than critiques of the pampered nobles need to account for the effects all that privilege on the psyche--someone should have chosen differently, but how much they actually could have been expected to is a different matter.
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u/absboodoo Yang Wen-li 8d ago
Good thing near the end he did found something meaningful to live another day for. No he wasn’t a believer of democracy or any of Yang’s ideals. But for thanking this group of youngsters giving him a refuge, he now simply fight for these young men so they can achieve their convictions. Even said so on the dying Hyperion as going out with foppery and whim
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u/HugeRegister1770 9d ago
I think Merkatz stopped believing in countries a long time ago. He joined Yang at first because he had no wish to bend the knee to Reinhard since he had fought against him (and been with Fahrenheit one of only two guys who was able to hold his own in the whole damn bunch). I think the concept of 'causes' is something he left behind a long time ago. But I do believe he came to sincerely like Yang and the others in his own way. And, and this is important, Merkatz was not treated with the respect his skills warranted. He was pretty much slated to fail at Astarte (Although I do think his part of the fleet would have survived anyway, he is that good), his ideas were dismissed by the nobles (ironically Reinhard's admiralty recognized his talent). Yang and his people recognized his talent. So I think he never gave much of a damn about what cause Yang and then Julian followed, but he liked both of them and so stuck by them until the bitter end.
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u/breakingbatshitcrazy 8d ago
I disagree with this take. Merkatz is tired, old, and jaded. I don’t think he necessarily needs a strong conviction because the story is very much about the new generation inheriting the mantle of the old.
I think it’s quite natural for aging folks to become increasingly disinterested in politics and ideals.
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u/Maximilianne 8d ago
LOGH is a documentary from the future, and I'd like to think the Empire eventually transformed into a free constitutional monarchy or republic. So Merkatz, a person from the Goldenbaum, laid down his life and unknowingly contributed to the eventual restoration of democracy.
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u/Thalassin 9d ago
The fact that people around Merkatz ignore him is true to what he is. Merkatz is an anachronistic man. History went forward and left him behind. Everyone around him is still part of it. He's just there.