I think there’s a sidenote in Excession about one of the “murals” depicting the last war fought on one of the original Culture planets. I think the suggestion w

I think there’s a sidenote in Excession about one of the “murals” depicting the last war fought on one of the original Culture planets. I think the suggestion was that those civilizations evolved into Culture civilizations after forming a planetary government one way or another. It seemed to hint that the process was often rather nasty, a perspective I disagree with.