@emptymanuscript
So we're not threadjacking that poor person's post anymore. XD
YES, in G1 Skyfire and Starscream were scientist buddies pre-War. That remains in some continuities, and is honestly the fan-favourite for the two of them in most iterations. Key word being most.
In the Aligned continuity (Which Transformers Prime is a part of, I know you're watching right now~) Megatron was a gladiator, yes. He rose to the top of the gladiatorial pits, though he was also a poet. Somewhat of the embodiment of the warrior-poet, though not as much as what is portrayed in the IDW continuity.
For Prime and other Aligned-related bits (the novels, RID 2015, Rescue Bots, etc.) he definitely has the braggadocio, and the cunning. He is moderately science-minded, in the way that all bots must be to some extent to be able to operate their own technology, but he is not a scientist, nor was he ever any kind of aristocrat. One of his biggest things is bragging about how he came from the pits and worked his way up from nothing. It's one reason he resorts so very easily to violence, despite his clear and marked intelligence. In...most cases. We are not including the idiocy that is EVERYTHING to do with Dark Energon, because then we would have no cartoon plot.
I am still mad about what they did to Cliffjumper. I know it was necessary for the plot, but the poor guy didn't even make it halfway through the season! Though, it is thematically important, both what they did and how Arcee is treated and developed. Keep an eye on it!
IDW goes much the same route with Megatron being a warrior-poet who started in the mines, got in trouble and wound up in the gladiatorial pits as punishment, and then rose to the top as a gladiator, then used that infamy to publish his works condemning the Senate. Which caught the eye of Orion Pax and Senator Shockwave, resulting in some interesting times Pre-War. Megatron, however, believed that violence was the only way to solve the corruption plaguing Cybertron, and others...disagreed. Hence you get the start of hatred, perceived betrayal, and a severe rivalry that ends up in all-out War, with some bots unfortunately getting caught in the middle of it and getting their lives destroyed even before tensions became full-fledged battle (but this is about Megatron and I will not tangent into a Shockwave rant....)
As for aristocracy and Megatron...that is straight from Transformers Animated, back in 2007. It's not part of the Aligned continuity, it's its own thing. Again, we don't actually know Megatron's backstory in that, just what we get in the show and some snippets of him leading the 'Cons in the past. We know he overthrew Megazarak, who led the Decepticons as a splinter off of the Destrons, and the claim is that Megazarak was exiled, though everyone knows Megatron straight up killed him.
From clues in the show he likes the finer things in life and has both the means and the contacts to get said finer things, and he knows how to carry himself as an aristocrat. Now whether or not that is a put-on is hard to say, but evidence points to him having actually been a Cybertronian aristocrat back in the day. Yes he is large like other Warframes, which society at large has deemed makes one automatically a Decepticon, since Autobots seem to generally be of the companion and civilian frame-types (besides Warrior classes like Optimus, Sentinel, and Ultra Magnus, but even THEY are small in comparison to Decepticons, though they are lauded as the elite of the elite in Autobot society), however, Megatron's frame shape says that he is a Warrior class, not a "Warframe". He looks as though he has modified himself to be larger, like the true Warframe Decepticons, but his shape belies the fact that he was clearly a Warrior class at some point in time. He also speaks and behaves like an aristocrat, not like one pretending at it. He doesn't like getting his hands dirty when someone else can do the dirty work for him, for instance. He seems to feel as though the world owes him a favour, and not in the way that delusions of grandeur usually manifest, as they do in Starscream. He is the elite, of course the world owes him a favour!
But again, this is all conjecture, as we're never actually given that bit of backstory. Animated ended too soon, tragically.
