Is there some symbolic reason behind Londo being absolutely covered in scarabs? (Or whatever the Centauri equivalent of scarabs are.) He has at least 16 of them on his coat. They’re on his epaulets, his collar, all down the front of his coat, and even on the back. That is an awful lot to have on oneself.
Are they a symbol of his house? Is there some traditional Centauri meaning behind them? Does Londo just really, really like bugs?
What gets me the most about them is that they appear to be specifically inspired by Egyptian scarabs, because they have the set of feathered wings that was often used as a motif of protection in Ancient Egyptian art (usually representing Isis or Horus), they’re just missing the sun disc part.
(This beetle is specifically Tutankamun’s. It actually very cleverly spells one of his names while just looking compositionally nice and decorative, because the Egyptians were fucking stars at that. But it’s good for illustrating the visual similarities.)
The beetle as it’s properly shown is an aspect of the sun deity and in this form is usually Khepri. This particular beetle came to be that way because it rolls balls of dung filled with eggs around, so this looked very much like rebirth when live young beetles came out of balls of dung, and the sun is reborn everyday out of blackness after travelling across the sky, etc, etc, you are following me, I’m sure. The deity/symbol version of this is rolling not a ball of dung, but the sun. So it’s funny that this part is sort of the crucial bit, but it’s been left out of these little decorations. I’m sure that’s just a crappy bead store mock up scarab beetle, since pseudo-Egyptian is a thing that happens often, and obviously they wouldn’t really want Londo to have accurate-to-Earth anything on him, but that’s still funny to me.
Which doesn’t explain a lot in the context of the show, admittedly, and I know that’s what’s really being discussed. Why would Londo be covered in beetles with (what should be) falcon wings? What are the odds they came up with the same mythological combo on his world? What if it’s NOT mythological on his world? It’s interesting that his world is set up to be a kind of Roman Republic (complete with Emperor), but he’s got fake-y Egypt all over his 1700′s/1800′s Frenchish court dress.
Though maybe it does say something that he’s covered in creatures that steer a lot of shit around but are ultimately a cause for and symbol of new starts.
