It's funny, because of the way that I initially learned Battletech lore--cultural osmosis followed by a few 'mech-specific vids from Tex Talks Battletech, and then the HBS videogame--I initially had the same view of things as the average kid from the post-Succession Wars Inner Sphere probably would; I thought of Star League as the Golden Age, devoid of any conflict worthy of note and started for and by entirely just and noble purposes; and of the Amaris/Star League Civil War as an unforeseen tragedy triggered by the ambitions of a single evil man.
But then, like that kid going to university for a history degree, I learned some shit.
I learned about how the oh-so-nobly named "Reunification War"--when the newly formed Star League dragged the independent Periphery states kicking and screaming (and then beaten to a pulp) under its control--was the single bloodiest conflict in all human history since World War II, and was not matched until the collapse of the Star League itself.
I learned about the Hidden Wars, when founding members of the League fought each other by way of "rogue" units they disavowed, mercenaries who were hired by "rogue" officials, or "mercenaries" whose slapdash paintjobs barely concealed the House colors underneath, and "independent" mechwarriors wandering up to military bases and challenging the best pilots of the garrisons to duels.
I learned about how the civilian death toll among the Periphery States was in the tens of millions, and how even literally hundreds of years after the fall of the League some are still not back to where they were economically or militarily prior to the League grinding them down through war and taxation, with the latter being squeezed out of them primarily to fund the Star League Defense Force's continued expansion as a bulwark against rebellion, rather than the half-hearted attempts at reconstruction in the Periphery.
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