The Zexen Council (ゼクセン評議会; Zekusen Hyougikai) appears in Suikoden III.
Description[]
The Zexen Council is the chief governing body of the Zexen Confederacy. The Zexen Council consists of major guild leaders in the nation, harking back to Zexen's foundation as a mercantile state.
As such, the Zexen Council fostered a great amount of trade, making the nation extremely prosperous. However, a side-affect of this was that the council did not feel it served the people of Zexen but rather existed to serve its own interests which it could enforce with impunity as the military branch of Zexen, the Zexen Knights, traditionally pledged loyalty directly to the council, not the people of Zexen or the nation itself.
History[]
By 475, the Zexen Council was a heavily corrupt body, lacking in concern for the nation and caring little for anything but its own machinations. The council advocated several wars with the Grasslands tribes for reasons of territorial expansion and then degraded the tribes as barbarians in order to avoid any public opposition.
Following the invasion of the Grassland by the Holy Kingdom of Harmonia in 475, many council members had formed a secret agreement with the Holy Kingdom, even those who would have been considered moderate by Zexen political standards.
The council's plan was to send out the Zexen Knights into battle where they would be flanked by both Harmonia and the Grassland tribes. Once this had happened, there supplies would be intentionally cut off and the knights destroyed. From that, the Zexen Council would have been clear to capitulate to Harmonia in exchange for their own personal gain.
Salome Harras of the Zexen Knights figured this plot out and despite the fact that the Zexen Knights loyalty was pledged directly to the council, decided that the Knights existed to serve the Zexen people whom the council planned to sell out.
The Zexen Knights eventually preformed a coup of the council in order to prevent this from happening and later, the Zexen Confederacy would serve in the Second Fire Bringer War against the Harmonians and later, the Destroyers.
Whether the Zexen Council was ever reestablished (after all corrupt members had been purged) or replaced with a different governing body is unknown.
Location[]
The Zexen Council have its headquarters located in Vinay del Zexay, known as the Guild Hall. Inside the building, among the administrative services, there is a church, a shopping mall and a training ground.