Arbiter

Arbiter is a Sangheili title of honor with immense cultural, military and religious importance to the entire Covenant. Originating in the Sanghelios' pre-spacefaring past, the first Arbiters were seen as global leaders and mediators between contentious states. These were the "judge-kings" of old, which provided the template for the role of the Arbiter for centuries to come. The passage of time and the formation of the Covenant would see the role of the Arbiter transformed considerably. In the Covenant's early days, the Arbiters were the Sangheili's prime champions and spokespersons to the Prophets as well as military leaders. Over time, the role would be increasingly dissociated from its roots and tied to the Covenant's bureaucracy, with Arbiters losing much of the power and sovereignty they once had held and becoming little more than mere figureheads. This in turn led to conflicts as various groups attempted to reform the institution and various pretender Arbiters emerging. Coupled with various scandals involving dissident Arbiters, the office — though still greatly respected — eventually became one entirely controlled by the Hierarchs and associated with martyrdom. Following the onset of the Great Schism, the incumbent Arbiter, Thel 'Vadam, has sought to reform the institution and restore the independence and some of the ancient traditions of governance it was once associated with.

Origins
The Arbiter had historically been a cultural leader who commanded loyalty through the sheer historical weight of the institution to the Sangheili, and it was the title's gradual uprooting from its cultural context that resulted in its downfall. In its original, localized form, the role of Arbiter was born in a time of interregnum and unrest following the fall of one of Sanghelios' old continental empires. In times of great crisis, he would forsake loyalties to clan and state and restore order with both diplomacy and iron fist alike. At first, the Arbiter's rule was only as strong as the number of clans that acknowledged him. But over time, the system became formalized, and it required a certain number of clans to formally appoint an Arbiter and concede power to him. An Arbiter's rule was not absolute, and his purview was fairly well delineated by both tradition and law. It was generally expected that an Arbiter would only intercede in large conflicts or undertake missions of global importance, while not directly involving himself in the day-to-day affairs of states or clans. If an Arbiter overstepped his boundaries, neglected his duties or became heavily partisan in his policies and actions, coalitions would rise to oust him from power.

By the advent of their starfaring age, most states on Sanghelios recognized the Arbiter's authority, even if begrudgingly. This was largely thanks to the deeds of notable Arbiters during the dark ages and unification wars that followed the Skyfall: the disastrous result of the Sangheili's first spacefaring culture's attempts to reverse-engineer Forerunner technology, and the event that both galvanized upon their entire species the taboo on tampering with Forerunner relics, and, in time, codified the predominant cultural and technological paradigm that would larger define their species.

The Covenant
When the Covenant was formed, the key to winning most of the Sangheili's loyalty was to get the Arbiter on the side of the alliance. Symbolically, the Arbiter's title retained its luster of old, for he was seen as the Sangheili's chief champion to the Prophets. Yet many acknowledged that in practice, his power was limited. Still, it was left to the Sangheili themselves to appoint Arbiters at any given time, as the Prophets saw fit not to tamper with the Sangheili's own culture, least of all their most sacred institutions. However, over time Covenant politics still entered the picture to an increasing extent, as not even the Sangheili electors who chose Arbiters could escape their fundamentally different context they now operated in.

There was also a nagging, fundamental problem the heart of the Sangheili's old beliefs about the role of the Arbiter and the philosophical underpinnings of leadership in their meta-culture. Specifically the concept of a "Sovereign King" (also translated as High King). The Arbiter could not be a lackey to anyone, for a Sovereign King - i.e. one who channels that metaphysical archetype - was to be a complete master of one's own destiny, and the destiny of his people; only one who is able to impose his will on the world as he wishes yet not be consumed by his supreme power. He is sovereign because he is not ruled over by anything; he is stoic and only governed by his own will, not of the laws of the world. And only such an individual would be worthy of stepping above all clans and old feuds, and arbitrating their disputes. The very arrangement that made the Covenant work was a negation of this philosophy; the Arbiter may be a powerful servant, but he was a servant nonetheless.

More crises were to follow. In the Covenant's High Antiquity, expansion was ambitious but travel and communication relatively slow. As many of the Covenant's governing institutions and power structures had yet to take shape, Sangheili governor-kings stepped up to rule over base worlds with the surrounding colonies in their vassalage. The idea of these vassal-kings was that they would carry out further colonization from their own sectors with minimal central surveillance, sans periodic reports, sometimes going decades on end without major contact. This practice would later fall out of favor with several of the king-governors engaged in internecine wars or rising up against the Covenant after decades of isolation. The tipping point, however, was when some of these colony-clusters began to appoint homegrown "Arbiters". Many had grown distant from Sanghelios, and contested the Arbiter's absolute rule. Who was he to dictate their regional matters? The Prophets would have accepted several Arbiters, for they still saw fit not to intervene in the Elites' native practices for the most part, but the Sangheili from Sanghelios and the worlds in its cultural sphere found these upstarts to be absurd, even sacrilegious. There were endless debates and schisms, and several conflicts were fought over just who had the right to appoint Arbiters, or if there should be one or more, most notorious of these being known as the War of Arbiters.

Eventually, perhaps ironically, it was a Prophet who arbitrated the conflict as an impartial outsider and came up with a solution: from now on, the Prophets would appoint new Arbiters. While the Sangheili would never have accepted such a proposition before, the majority - though still not all - of them now welcomed it as the only reasonable option. A compromise was eventually reached with the homegrown Arbiters, giving rise to the Conciliator: a kind of downgrade of the Arbiter role that enjoyed limited jurisdiction within a specified domain. In time, the Conciliators would enjoy great fame and honor, though by the later ages of the Covenant that role, too, had either disappeared or been diluted to irrelevance in most regions, partly due to the later creation of the law-enforcement and judicial institution of the Prefects.

In the ages that followed the Prophets' edict, the Arbiter enjoyed a resurgence in importance. But the prior issues lingered. To many, the Arbiter was the leader of a culture not their own, and as such could only be a unifying figure to some Sangheili. Many an Arbiter from this time was but a ceremonial figurehead, and at worst, a mouthpiece for the Prophets. And the Sangheili took note. Some even on Sanghelios saw the title as a relic of a bygone time, irrelevant now that it no longer had the honor and authority it once did. The most radical voices even called for no more Arbiters to be appointed, for the institution had become but a mockery of itself, and by extension a mockery of the once-mighty past Arbiters.

By the time of Fal 'Chavamee, the Arbiter was little more than a ceremonial office, though he still enjoyed some loyalty on Sanghelios and many of the Crimson Realms. But it was not his rebellion that made his sigil the Mark of Shame, for that would come much later. Instead, Fal's rebellion marked the end of the Arbiter title as such. For some time, no more Arbiters would be appointed, and with the rise of new generations the past of the role faded into the annals of history; yet due to Fal's blasphemy, a long shadow was cast on the institution. As the Arbiters grew more distant in the past, the Sangheili's relationship with the title grew conflicted; and though songs were still sung of the great deeds of past Arbiters, many songs also assumed darker tones of dishonor.

This lasted until a particular crisis presented itself, and the Prophets were faced with what to do with a powerful yet dishonored Sangheili commander whose conventional punishment might prove inconvenient. It was that lingering dysfunctional relationship with the title in the Sangheili's collective psyche that they tapped into when they announced the rebirth of the Arbiter as a means of regaining lost honor, as well as a champion of all Covenant. The Arbiter's transition from a preindustrial cultural leader to the symbol for an entire interstellar empire was complete, and ironically it required for the institution to die, be buried, and be born anew.