#neroon

B5 text posts part 3

They are effectively three different cultures under one umbrella, and although they do have some things in common (most of them imposed by Valen; thank u for your service Jeff) I think it's reasonable to assume that nearly every cultural thing we see Delenn doing on the show, ranging from the marriage ceremony in season one to all of the various courtship rituals and religious stuff, is religious caste Minbari culture. We really have no idea what the warrior caste does. I think it's safe to say that watching their prospective spouse sleep for three days is not really their kind of thing; they probably have to defeat them in staff combat three days running or something like that. IIRC, it's even canon (extracanonical canon, perhaps) that the language we hear spoken in the series is religious Minbari, and the other two castes have their own languages or at least dialects.

The way that Delenn spends the entire series using the religious Minbari culture as a synecdoche for Minbari culture as a whole is very her and very typical of the Minbari in general - the fact that each caste thinks of themselves as the "true" Minbari seems very them. (And tbf, the humans are doing the same thing, since despite B5's various nods to decent-for-its-period diversity, Babylon 5 in general is an extremely narrow slice of the human cultural experience ...)

Marcus says this to Neroon from his hospital bed, and Neroon ... Neroon laughs.

Neroon laughs, and will not in fact choose a more comfortable way next time.

Because next time, he will take Delenn's place in the Starfire Wheel, trans his caste belonging, and be vaporized in her place, because he has had a revelation. A revelation that almost involved Delenn dying. A revelation that involved Lennier almost dying, to get them there.