"Even you, Mr. Garibaldi, are cute, in an annoying sort of way. Everybody's cute. Everybody's cute! Ha ha! Even I am cute. But in purple, I'm STUNNING!" - L. Mollari, just before passing out atop the banquet table.

My first two thoughts on seeing the (now dead) original writeup were, in order, "Aigh! That's it?" and "Why the hell is this softlinked to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles?" Heh. Can't do anything about the second (nor would I want to) but I can (I hope) work on the first.

The character of Londo Mollari from the television series Babylon 5 is, as the prior writeup states, a Centauri Noble, assigned to be Ambassador to Babylon 5 by the Centauri court. He is definitely old-school Centauri; he is extremely romantic in the philosophical sense, longing for the days when honor and glory ruled the doings of his beloved Centauri Empire.

At the beginning of the series, Londo is seen as a mostly tragicomic figure. A heavy drinker and gambler, he is portrayed by Peter Jurasik as a sad relic of a forgotten time, trying to live out his days in adherence to a code of behavior which is both responsible for his current lowered standing as well as his remaining strength of character.

The beginning of Narn aggression against the Centauri in the series' opening episode gives Londo a new purpose: the defense of his people against Narn encroachment and predation. While this can be seen to be strengthening him, it also leaves him very vulnerable to the blandishments of the Shadows and their agent Morden. His acceptance of their assistance becomes a more and more obviously Faustian bargain that threatens to consume not only him and even the Centauri Empire, but eventually the whole of known space as the Centauri/Narn war morphs into the opening skirmishes of The Second Shadow War around the third year of the series.

Londo's character, beginning the series searching for meaning, ends it in a quest for redemption. Originally mourning the loss of Centauri power, he finally can be seen fighting for the recovery of Centauri's soul against that power, and in several points we are given hints that his struggle was, in the end, successful, although the price was heavy.

On a lighter note, Londo is by turns a smuggler, a cardsharp, a carouser, a duelist, a schemer, a politician, a patsy, a mentor, a lover, and a father. He manages, despite his eventual descent into wrack and ruin, to imbue his young aide-in-training Vir Cotto with those qualities which made his younger self so formidable and respectable, and even - despite Vir's timidity - those which made him great.

Final humorous note: Londo, in an incident immortalized on the B5 netnews newsgroups as "The incident of Londo's D*ck" (which eventually meme-morphed into the catchphrase of Sinclair's Duck), was caught cheating at cards in the Zocalo when an ice water pitcher was inadvertently placed atop a mysterious tentacle reaching for the deck on the other side of the table. When Londo, across the way, begins to show signs of extreme agitation (shivering, sweating, wincing) the tentacle is discovered, and when the pitcher is removed, it vanishes to Londo's groan of relief. Back in quarters, Londo's cardplaying companion Lennier asks what in fact that had been; Londo's reply is to explain to Lennier (while caressing a Kali-esque statue of a Centauri God) that said god represents all that is biologically sexual about the Centauri - both female, and (as he indicates the waving tentacles emerging from the midsection)- male.

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