Meanwhile Dukat's running around messing with Bajoran gods because he has to get revenge on them and Sisko. Whatever pretense he had about helping his own kind is completely gone at this point.
Indeed, and more than that. Not only is the pretence of serving Cardassia's needs gone, but Cardassia itself doesn't even seem to register as a meaningful concept. In the finale, when Winn discusses Sisko, she says at one point, "assuming he survives the invasion of Cardassia", to which Dukat assures her "he'll survive". The whole "invasion of Cardassia" reference gets no response at all, not even an acknowledgement that it's no longer important. He isn't sacrificing or discarding anything, or showing any transition in his concerns, he simply isn't responding to it. Winn could have said "assuming he survives his trip to the local co-op store" and it would get the exact same response; complete disinterest. Which I suppose shows that Dukat's concern for Cardassia wasn't truly there to begin with, or at least hadn't been for some time.
To me, Dukat's motive has always been selfish, and while something external can be worn over that selfishness like a cloak - even for a long while if everything goes to plan - the cloak itself doesn't really matter. I see Dukat as a willing slave to himself; he needs and craves his own self-enforcing sense of importance and nobility (as far as his own child-like sense of the noble can carry him). And he surrounds himself with people to reinforce his fantasy - Ziyal the blindly loving "pet" daughter, Damar the lieutenant who is loyal but non-threatening (too unimaginative to take Dukat's place, yet ultimately also more than the "typical" Cardassian military thug - intelligent enough to
appreciate Dukat), comfort women who will respond to his "
generosity" if only because they know they're trapped and it could be far worse. I think Cardassia itself was just the same, a piece in his fantasy, where all that really mattered was him. If daughters and comfort women and lieutenants fulfilled his need to be the noble, benevolent master (again, to the extent that he understands "noble", which is through the prism of a child-like selfishness), then Cardassia fulfilled his need to be the servant. In his own mind, he's a good son to Cardassia, just as he's a good patriarch to his extended Cardassian/Bajoran community-family. Ultimately, though, he's every bit as disloyal a son as he is an abusive patriarch - both roles are ultimately to fuel his own need to experience a sense of his great worth. The tragedy of Dukat, as I see it, is that he never,
ever grasps an opportunity to actually become a better person - and he had many. He always chooses to pretend to himself that's he's great rather than trying to
become great. It's as if I wanted to be an athlete but couldn't bring myself to actually train, so I sit back and daydream about it and lie to myself. And Dukat's completely trapped in his own lie. His mind is yoked to his runaway ego.
I’m thinking of how he and Weyoun were always played as "equals"; they're quite similar. But where Weyoun had the Founders, Dukat is his
own Founder.
So, I think "concern" for Cardassia
was, on the surface, a big part of his thinking while it was useful to Dukat's self-serving (self-consuming
) motives, but it was completely discarded afterwards - because he never had any true loyalty to it. Even "the invasion of Cardassia" is just speech, nothing more.
I wonder what went wrong (assuming here that my reading is accepted) to make Dukat so completely obsessive with reinforcing an internalized sense of worth. I sometimes think of him as a rather traumatized little boy in a man's body - he never grew out of the young child's self-centred worldview (too frightened? Sheltering from a harsh world and dedicating himself to inward self-reinforcement to the extent that he shuts out all the stimuli that offer opportunities for growth and so, spiritually speaking, never leaves infanthood? Everything made to conform to his internalized need to reinforce that worth - every value of his culture, good and bad, warped by it, taken on in a completely selfish way that makes him a twisted, delusional idea of a "good Cardassian" who doesn't actually respect or understand the values he's adapting?). And the traumatized selfish little boy in that man's body grows up like so many traumatized selfish little boys to lead war fleets and take power, to make the universe acknowledge his worth - him, at the apex and the centre, his selfish ego stoked by his power and simultaneously his fear sated by the control. For Dukat in Season Six, everything is fully safe and controlled with him at the centre, until the universe crashes down when he loses Terok Nor again, along with Ziyal and (in a way) Damar (the loyal lieutenant
can't shoot the pet daughter and I
can't lose my war and my empire,
that just can't happen!) And Dukat ends up obsessed with taking down Sisko, who is the eldritch abomination that just
won't fit and is making the Dukat-verse
wrong. Sisko's in Dukat's office, he's got Kira's respect, the Bajorans' respect, a strong, noble military leader, a loving father, victorious in battle - the little boy has encountered, of all things, a rival. And this universe isn't big enough for both of them. And I think ultimately Dukat knows too that he'll lose - because he's just a selfish little boy and Sisko...Sisko is a man. Dukat can only play at those qualities I listed - Sisko truly embodies them. And of course Dukat goes down into the flames, his selfish, immature ego destroying himself in impotent rage as Sisko ascends.
Well, forgive me there, but that's how I see it...
