The king-men have deposed Pahoran, who is writing from Gideon, and are withholding troop support for the same pro-Lamanite reasons they had earlier refused to support the Nephite cause. (See commentary accompanying Alma 51:13.) Pahoran’s retreat to Gideon may be related to its people’s faithfulness, as well as being relatively close to Zarahemla. When Alma began his missionary journeys around the land of Zarahemla, Gideon was one of the few places in which he commended the people (Alma 7:3–6). They, like the faithful Ammonites, also rejected Korihor’s message (Alma 30:21).
The successful rebels assumed that the Lamanites’ arrival would overthrow the Nephite political order and establish a more Lamanite version in which they presumably could achieve an elite status. To a modern reader, it seems odd that king-men would prefer to be conquered rather than free. However, Mesoamerican warfare typically allowed the conquered city to continue to function. It would not be destroyed if it surrendered. Furthermore, the new overlords would typically allow some of the local elite, though not the ruling line, to form a new government. An interesting example of how this process may have worked is the glyphic evidence of Siyaj K’ak’ (“Fire Born”) of Tikal. Siyaj K’ak’ appears to have been a Teotihuacan general who seized control of Tikal and its surrounding area in A.D. 378. In spite of his political dominance, however, he never became its king but eventually seated the son of a local noblewoman on the throne, thus providing a local elite to continue the government.
In practice, then, the king-men—a group of incipient Nephite elites-turned-”Lamanites”—could expect to retain their city and actually achieve higher status and office, something they could not do under the Nephite egalitarian political ideal.