Thinking about “The Die Is Cast” and Garak’s moment of “The fault is not in our stars, dear Tain” where he quotes Shakespeare
And at the start of “Improbable Cause,” he argued to Bashir that Julius Caesar wasn’t a good tragedy. Not just because he could see the end coming, but because Caesar should have expected he’d be betrayed. In Garak’s mind, any good leader would.
When he quotes to Tain, I’d always thought it was a moment that symbolized his acceptance of his connection to the Federation, that he wasn’t going to leave Bashir behind. But I somehow missed the more obvious, literal moment- Lovok has betrayed Tain, and Tain never saw it coming. Garak is watching the moment of Caesar play out and recognizing that it is relevant, and tragic.
The original quote is from early in the play when Cassius (the mastermind behind the assassination) is trying to convince Brutus to join in. He has a long speech discussing how, despite what the cult of personality pretends, Caesar is human and as such as human flaws. He has epilepsy, he can’t swim and is afraid to drown, he is greedy for power even if he won’t admit it.
Cassius says: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” He’s saying that it was not fate but them that allowed Caesar to rise so high above- and it is also in their power to lay him low.
When Garak quotes it, does he mean it in the sense of, “the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves [because we fucked up],” or is he seeing Tain as fallible and flawed, perhaps for the first time? No longer a mighty or mythic figure, but an inherently flawed man overreaching in his quest for power. Does Garak realize that the fault was not in his fate, but in himself, that he allowed Tain to control him?
(Even if he does, he is still loyal to the end. Brutus felt guilt and regret about the killing of Caesar, after all.)