Philippa Georgiou's History
Philippa Georgiou was a female Terran who was the Emperor of the Terran Empire in the 23rd century. As Emperor, she was formally titled Her Most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo'noS, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius.
Georgiou was responsible for rendering Qo'noS uninhabitable, and, together with Sylvia Tilly, she subjugated the Betazoids and wiped out Mintaka III. She bombarded the Talosians in retaliation for trying to deceive her with their psychic illusions. In spite of the Empire’s xenophobic tendencies, Emperor Georgiou had taken titles native to the Vulcan, Klingon, and Andorian subjects of her Empire, as she was addressed as "Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo'noS," and "Regina Andor", among others, symbolic of her success at conquering and oppressing other species. As Emperor, Georgiou became aware of the prime universe through the logs of the USS Defiant which were classified at the time.
The rebellion against her rule appeared to have little information about her except that the emperor was ruthless. Her identity was not made public, being known as the faceless emperor. Her flagship, the ISS Charon, was commanded by Captain Maddox.
Captain Gabriel Lorca became one of Georgiou's closest advisors. However, Lorca thought that Georgiou was unfit to lead, letting aliens come in their borders and attempted a coup against her. Even Burnham, by then a captain of immense prestige, collaborated with Lorca to kill her and take her throne. Unknown to Burnham, The Emperor was aware of her adoptive daughter's collaboration, but nonetheless, in what appeared to be a test of loyalty, Georgiou dispatched her to apprehend Lorca. Lorca's followers destroyed Burnham's shuttle, allowing Lorca to escape; in retaliation, his ship, the ISS Buran, was destroyed.
After Michael Burnham of the prime universe posed as her counterpart returned from the dead, the Emperor was quick to assign her a new mission: destroy the Fire Wolf's base on Harlak. However, when Burnham proved too slow to carry out the order, the Emperor herself traveled halfway across the quadrant to confront Burnham. After Burnham confronted her in front of the Terran Court on board the palace ship Charon, Emperor Georgiou revealed that she was the adoptive mother of the "mirror" Burnham. At dinner with her she was initially amicable. However, she was mistrustful of her long-lost daughter: as Burnham struggled to accept the new role she was to play, the Emperor had her arrested and brought to the Lords of the Terran Empire for her execution. This order was countermanded when Burnham proved herself to be from the same universe as the Defiant. After ruthlessly murdering all of the Lords except for one, she discussed with Burnham the terms of her and her captain's liberation. However, during the discussion, her discomfort when adjusting to sudden bright light caused Burnham to realize that the Gabriel Lorca she had brought, who had claimed his own sensitivity to light was caused by eye damage, was actually his mirror universe counterpart.
Lorca then resumed his coup against Georgiou, quickly escaping from his confinement and rallying his comrades who had been condemned to the Charon's agony booths. They quickly took the ship with the assistance of the mirror Paul Stamets, who had helped them in their first coup attempt, only to sell out to Georgiou. During a confrontation in which most of the crew still loyal to her were killed, she performed an emergency site-to-site transport, hiding in her personal quarters and wearing a special bracelet that made her undetectable to the ship's sensors. Lorca then took control of the Charon and threatened to destroy the USS Discovery.
Burnham found Georgiou and proposed a plan, to exploit Lorca's desire to put her by his side once more. They pretended to surrender in exchange for letting Discovery go. When the Discovery came out of warp, Lorca was distracted by Saru and Burnham's conversation, giving her time to subdue the guards around her and Georgiou. The fight turned in their favor quickly, and when Burnham released Lorca from gunpoint, citing the Starfleet ethos, Georgiou executed him with a sword through the chest for his treason. He was then unceremoniously kicked through the "sunroof" into the super-mycelial reactor and his end. Georgiou finally warmed up to Burnham, saying that for one second, she was her daughter again, and volunteered to stay behind and give her enough time to escape as Lorca's forces surrounded them. Instead, as the transporter beam energized, Burnham unexpectedly lunged at her and took Georgiou with her to Discovery before the Charon was destroyed, along with all of Lorca's men.
With Georgiou and Burnham aboard, the Discovery engaged its spore drive and crossed back into the prime universe, having overshot their arrival time by nine months.
Saru was initially shocked at seeing Georgiou alive, believing her to be his former captain. She quickly corrected him and immediately demanded that he kneel as a slave. Burnham revealed that indeed this Kelpien was her captain. However, Georgiou was quick to remind Burnham that they had previously dined on entrails of his brethren.
Over nine months, the Federation war with the Klingons had taken its toll, with Starfleet losing one third of its fleet and over twenty percent of its territory occupied. Losses were so great, Admiral Katrina Cornwell and Ambassador Sarek wished all knowledge of Discovery's journey to the alternate universe be buried and locked down.
On meeting with Georgiou, Cornwell and Sarek found her resemblance to Captain Phillipa Georgiou to be remarkable. With Burnham's assurance that Georgiou's appearance in their universe was without motive, Cornwell admitted it remained complicated. Georgiou wished to return to the mirror universe. Burnham stated that she had escaped a violent revolution and should be granted political asylum within the Federation. Georgiou was to be held at Starbase I, until Starfleet Command determined a proper course of action, this changed when the Discovery learned that the starbase had been occupied by Klingons.
Georgiou's rule of the Terran Empire extended throughout every system in their galaxy, conquering places Starfleet hasn't dared to explore. Burnham wanted to know how Georgiou had defeated the Klingon Empire. Georgiou explained that the Klingons were like cancer cells, constantly dividing and the way to root them out was to destroy them at the source, Qo'noS.
As the Klingons were preparing to strike Sol system, the core system of the Federation, the response was to take the fight to Qo'noS. A coordinated attack against their planetary defense batteries, followed by the destruction of all military targets planet-wide. A single offensive so destructive, it would cause the Klingons to retreat back to their homeworld.
Georgiou provided Burnham with intelligence that Qo'noS is essentially a planet of caves, some large enough to house a Crossfield-class starship. The Discovery could use its spore drive to enter one of these caves and map the terrain from the inside-out, reducing the risk of detection.
Meeting with Sarek in private, Georgiou offered her help in winning the war. While she had provided Burnham with the intelligence she could handle, the Qo'noS of her universe was little more than a blackened mass of dust. Burnham's plan would prove effective, but only temporarily. Georgiou offered to bring the Klingons to their knees once and for all. If she got her freedom, she would assure victory for the Federation.
Sarek negotiated with the Federation Council and received approval of Georgiou's plan and that they had no choice but to proceed. Georgiou took the role of Captain Phillipa Georgiou to chart the Discovery's course to Qo'noS. To cover up her alternate universe origin, Cornwell claimed that although presumed long-dead, she was rescued in a highly classified raid of a Klingon prison vessel. The mission was perilous expedition and Starfleet was confident she was uniquely qualified to get the Discovery there and do what needs to be done.
The war concluded when Georgiou planted a hydro bomb within a volcano on Qo'noS. Preventing Georgiou from detonating the device, Burnham gave the detonator to L'Rell, who used the threat of detonating the device to force the leaders of the Great Houses to accept her leadership and ordered Klingon forces to halt their advance on the Federation.
Some months later, Georgiou paid a visit to Qo'noS, where she rescued L'Rell and Tyler from a coup orchestrated by Kol-Sha. Upon being addressed by her former title, Georgiou maintained her cover that she was a retired Starfleet Captain now serving as a security consultant and that she was there to ensure that L'Rell remained in power. To that end, she advised L'Rell in private to send Tyler and the baby away, as the fiercely patriarchal Klingons would continue to think her orders were actually Tyler's and would try to exploit the child. L'Rell took her advice and, after arranging to fake Tyler's execution by L'Rell, Georgiou brought Tyler and the baby to Boreth.
As the child was sent to the planet to become a monk, Georgiou mockingly invited Tyler to join Section 31; although Leland chided her for her tone and choice of words, Georgiou maintained that she was successful and Tyler was "in".
Georgiou traveled to 3189 alongside the crew of the Discovery. After the Discovery crash-landed near the Colony, Georgiou went there without authorization and saved Captain Saru and Ensign Sylvia Tilly from Zareh's band.
At Federation Headquarters, Georgiou was debriefed by Kovich and a couple of Starfleet holograms. After dismissing their claims of a biological explanation for Terran malevolence, she disabled the holograms by blinking at their harmonic rate. She then questioned Kovich about the Burn, and he informed her that the Terran Empire had fallen and that she was now alone, as no crossings from the mirror universe had been recorded since the 27th century.
Georgiou subsequently began experiencing increasingly debilitating flashbacks to her earlier life in the Terran Empire. These hampered her during an unsanctioned mission she undertook with Burnham to recover a black box from the salvage yard on Hunhau. Pretending to be a buyer of pre-2400 technology, Georgiou distracted Tolor and assisted in the mass escape of the yard's slave laborers. Afterwards, she destroyed the yard by sending several derelict starships crashing into it.
Georgiou's deteriorating condition was revealed to be the result of having traveled across both time and dimensions, in which her molecules were straining both to return to their time and the alternate universe. With the assistance of the Sphere's data, a potential cure was located on Dannus V. Michael Burnham and Georgiou traveled to Dannus V, where they met an entity named Carl guarding a wooden door. Georgiou walked through the door and transported back to the mirror universe in 2255. (DIS: "Terra Firma, Part 1") Over a period of three months, Georgiou attempted to reform the Terran Empire and bring mirror Burnham back into her fold, though it ended with Georgiou and mirror Burnham killing each other. As Georgiou laid dying in the mirror universe, she found herself waking up back on Dannus V in the prime universe's 3189, less than a minute after she passed through the door. Carl revealed his true nature as the Guardian of Forever, and that Georgiou was sent back to the mirror universe to be "weighted", to test that whether she would affect another universe/timeline negatively or otherwise. Having passed the test, Georgiou entered the Guardian's portal to be transported to a time in which the prime universe and the mirror universe were still aligned.
