I was also thinking last night about the fun sort of bait and switch situation surrounding the Condesce’s control of her own empire… the fact that Meenah spends all her time in space and leaves the Alternian homeworld under the control of her clown enforcers could be naively taken as suggesting that whatever’s out there in space is way more important, and the clowns are just a puppet regime [with] carte blanche to carry out their idiotic whims (supposedly in the same way Alternians might hold the naive belief that their empire is a true matriarchy?). but in spite of the Condesce’s habit of delegating to her clown underlings, in this situation the one being delegated is actually Meenah herself; Lord English and his faithful understand that the homeworld is the true stage of things to come, and the assignment to conquer the galaxy is just a distraction to keep her out of the way (which we also now understand is exactly the way Meenah wants things to be, given her disdain for responsibility)
back when it all seemed a lot more important, a lot of discussion went on about how it could be possible for Gamzee to belong to a “RATHER OBSCURE CULT” if he was actually part of the empire’s theocratic enforcer class… at the time I bandied about the idea that the subjugglators were more of a behind the scenes secret society type of ruling class, and then eventually we all seemed to accept that the “obscure cult” line was just an artifact of slapdash worldbuilding, but I don’t think I ever considered that Alternia’s whole “fake matriarchy” might have been set in place for the explicit purpose of disguising the machinations of English’s followers in the background?