Foundation and Empire

Smart and take-charge, Bayta is the book’s most important protagonist. Foundation-born, she marries Toran of Trader planet Haven II and moves there with him. As a graduate in history, Bayta chafes at the greedy despotism of Foundation rulers. Not prone to worship, she is one of the first to doubt psychohistory: “‘I think,’ said Bayta, concisely, ‘that a Seldon crisis is pending—and that if it isn’t, then away with the Seldon plan altogether. It is a failure’” (97).

Nevertheless, Bayta, Toran, and Ebling Mis do what they can to defeat the Mule and set aright Hari Seldon’s plan for saving the galaxy. Her name is an anagram of “at bay,” and she manages to hold back the Mule’s conquest of the galaxy.

Bayta befriends the court jester Magnifico, who tells her he has worked for the Mule. After finally realizing that Magnifico is the Mule, she frustrates his attempt to find the Second Foundation and conquer it. Bayta’s purpose in the story is twofold: She is the chief protagonist as well as an early sci-fi object lesson in feminism. Although she goes a long way toward saving the Seldon plan, she also partially disproves it with her surprising decisions that change galactic history. 

Though seen only once, Hari Seldon, creator of psychohistory and founder of the Foundation, looms over the story. His predictions about the fall of the Galactic Empire and the resurrection of civilization by the Foundation come true for 300 years, until an unforeseen variable, the Mule, breaks the expected chain of events and calls the entirety of Seldon’s work into question. In the story, Seldon represents the belief in an orderly, predictable universe. 

A brilliant general in an age of Imperial decay, Bel Riose is stationed far from the Galactic center, largely to keep his impatient, ambitious, warlike attitude away from the sleepy court. Riose forces Ducem Barr to advise him on ways to conquer the Foundation. He also allies himself with Brodrig, the emperor’s second in command. They are at the point of winning the war against the Foundation when the emperor realizes that their plans include overthrowing him, and he arrests and executes them both. Riose’s success thus becomes his undoing. This demonstrates Hari Seldon’s principle that no individual can prevent the Foundation from reaching its destiny.

Aging and in pain from a mysterious ailment, Cleon II, “Emperor of the Galaxy and the Lord of All” (32), has ruled over the shrinking Galactic Empire for 25 peaceful years. His reign is threatened by the rapid successes against the Foundation of one of his generals, Bel Riose. Well-advised by the long history of imperial assassinations, Cleon foresees trouble from Riose’s victories and the power it gives the general, and he steps in to squelch the effort. This supports Hari Seldon’s belief that the Empire is no longer able to prevent the Foundation from absorbing breakaway planetary systems. 

Cleon II’s secretary, Brodrig is despised by all factions in the Imperial court, which makes him the only person Cleon can trust. Brodrig at first frustrates Riose’s attempts to conquer the Foundation; when Lathan Devers convinces him that such a victory would hand the winner an unstoppable technology, Brodrig switches over to Riose’s cause. Their successes pile up until the emperor realizes the threat to his rule and kills them both. Brodrig is an example of the treacherous nature of politics; he proves that even the most reliable advisors can betray their employers. 

Trader Lathan Devers—tall, bearded, and jaunty—is a spy for the Foundation who lets himself be captured by Riose’s Imperial forces. He appears to the Imperium as a neutral, uninvolved merchant who knows little of Foundation activities, but privately he allies himself with Ducem Barr, and they manage to escape. Their efforts to stop Riose fail, but the general finally is defeated by his own side, which shows that the Foundation need do nothing to protect itself from outside threats, as its history is pre-ordained. Devers’s efforts, though futile, prove the power of the Foundation. 

A scholar on the distant planet Siwenna, Ducem Barr and his family have tried to keep their world free from Imperial control ever since a Galactic Viceroy ordered a massacre there. Barr, himself an Imperial official at the time, angrily killed the viceroy, and General Riose holds this over him when he forces Barr to advise him on how to conquer the Foundation. Barr joins forces with Lathan Devers, and they overpower Riose and escape. Their efforts to derail the general’s plans prove ineffective, but Riose fails anyway. With Devers, Barr is a case in point about the futility of individual efforts to help a Foundation whose future is already set. 

The book states, “In a world where science was respected, [Ebling Mis] was The Scientist—with capital letters and no smile. He was needed, and he knew it” (130). Mis realizes that the secret to defeating the Mule may lie in the archives of the Trantor University Library. The Mule, disguised as Magnifico the clown, manipulates Mis’s mind so that he becomes obsessed with locating the Second Foundation. The Mule nearly learns the location, but Bayta kills Mis before he can reveal it. Mis symbolizes the relentless brilliance of Hari Seldon; he wants to help the Foundation, but his work instead nearly hands the Mule the key to galactic domination. 

Husband of Bayta, Toran is the son of Trader Franssart and the great-grandson of a man who shared the fate of famed Trader Lathan Devers in the slave mines of a newly vicious Foundation. Toran believes in his wife’s ideals about reforming the Foundation during the next Seldon Crisis, but he is a timid soul, and he serves mainly as a foil to Bayta’s greater competence. 

Half-brother to Franssart, Randu is the quieter of the two. He’s been to the Foundation home planet and thinks deeply about its mission and how it has fallen from an inspirational galactic leader to a greedy dictatorship. A leader in planet Haven’s defense against the Mule, Randu convinces Toran and Bayta to visit planet Kalgan to learn news of a rebel general, the Mule. He later commissions them to visit Trantor in search of information that might help the Foundation defeat the Mule. He serves the plot as a rational, right-minded member of the leadership who wants to protect the Foundation’s principles.

Captain Han Pritcher, a Foundation spymaster, likes to get things done and not waste time philosophizing about it. He gets into trouble with the high command for an ongoing tendency toward insubordination, which prevents him from advancing in rank but doesn’t stop him from accomplishing what he wants to do. In fact, Pritcher is a secret member of the Foundation underground; his efforts to resist his own rulers and, later, the Mule, prove fruitless when the Mule uses his psychic power to convert Pritcher to his side. Pritcher serves the story as a demonstration of the all-encompassing, unstoppable power of the Mule, who can overcome the resistance of the independent-minded to force complete obedience to his rule. 

Mayor Indbur III descends from two previous Indburs who overthrew the democratic government ruling the Foundation and replaced it with their personal dictatorship. His name, which is an anagram of “burdin,” slyly suggests the oppressive weight of tyranny upon the Foundation, a despotism that it visits on the star systems it controls. Mayor Indbur is an officious, bureaucratic ruler who relies on ceremonial intimidation, rather than inspired leadership, to control his burgeoning dominion. He symbolizes the depths to which the Foundation has fallen, from a protector of civilization to an impersonal force of domination.