Primalism

Primalism is the common name for a political and cultural trend fashionable in the Covenant at its most prominent around the 23rd Age of Doubt and the 9th Age of Reclamation.

Most popular among high-ranked San'Shyuum, Primalism was a form of "noble savage" romanticism centered on the Jiralhanae. The Covenant's higher aristocracy had long been an academic cultural interest in the Jiralhanae, a longtime fringe and auxiliary species which had raided and settled on the marches of the Holy Ecumene's spinward side for around a millennium. Influenced by earlier writings, the Primalists took this interest further, asserting that the Jiralhanae were more pure, uncorrupted by complex civilization and the evils of sophistry, and once converted to the Path, also pure in their faith. The Jiralhanae, in the Primalist view, had vigor, earnestness and strength and no pretensions of nobility. This was contrasted with the haughty and quarrelsome Sangheili provincial nobles or High Charity's bloated and decadent upper classes who cared more about stability and their own power and wealth than the Great Journey. Most notably, Primalism relied heavily on simplification and fictitious flourish, feeding the idea of the Jiralhanae as a singular culture of barbarians, as opposed to a collection of numerous tribal societies at varying levels of technological advancement and socio-cultural complexity — the latter of which in particular was heavily downplayed in the popular Primalist image of the Jiralhanae.

This underlying dissatisfaction was largely influenced by the so-called "Ages of Complacency", a period of several consecutive ages culminating in the 23rd Age of Doubt when little real progress was made on the search for the Sacred Rings or other major relics. The Covenant public's faith was wavering even as internal conflicts such as the 14th Unggoy Uprising periodically rattled the Covenant from the inside. The grand expeditions and expansions of the Covenant were far in the past, and even the consolidation of High Charity's power in the Second Illumination began to show signs of waning once again, which if left unattended, might usher in a new interregnum or Feudal Period in the future.

The core tenets of Primalism were not new at all, but rather based on much older beliefs that had their origins among the Sangheili nobles. Many Sangheili aristocrats and scholars, themselves living in urban or space-based environments, often saw their own forms of habitation as decidedly inferior to historical or contemporary groups of Sangheili leading a harsher existence out in the marches of the Holy Ecumene, or in pastoral or rural communities. Such communities were often idealized for their virtues, simplicity, and military prowess, contrasted with the decadence and sloth supposedly created by more complex societies and comfortable forms of habitation. Very early on, there were even some Sangheili scholars writing favorably about the Jiralhanae in the Primalist manner, though this trend would virtually die out by the 23rd Age of Doubt and the Brutes' rapid integration into the Covenant hierarchy, which inflamed the two species' rivalry. Notably, much of this romanticism was less based on reality and more on those aristocratic scholars' idealized outside perspectives, which often omitted much of the drawbacks and cultural nuances of the very cultural groups they were admiring while injecting them with a heavy dose of imagination or misinterpretation.

In its latest form, Primalism most notably manifested itself in scholarly writings and the intellectual and religious elite of High Charity. The Prophet of Truth was notably influenced by Primalism and admired the Jiralhanae. Truth was a San'Shyuum supremacist first and foremost, but he also saw the Jiralhanae — united under Tartarus and thus under a controlled hierarchy with Truth at its apex — as useful tools, much less finicky and far easier to control than the Sangheili. To Truth, the Writ of Union had been a bothersome compromise, and even as select Covenant administrations would periodically reestablish High Charity's power over the Sangheili nobles, the very existence of this cycle of waxing and waning was evidence of a broken system. A Covenant remade in Truth's image would be no equal union between the San'Shyuum and the warrior caste, but a strict hierarchy in which the warriors unquestionably followed the Prophets' bidding. Had the Prophet of Regret and the unexpected developments of the late Human-Covenant War not lay waste to his plan, Truth may have accomplished this over his lifetime — a rejuvenated Covenant with no counterbalance to San'Shyuum ascendancy.