Normally, if the chieftain dies, another goblin of the tribe will take his/her place. But we aren’t dealing with a single tribe here, but 4 – all of which are very, very different in temperament. That would make it somewhat difficult to pick a chieftain in the best of circumstances.

However, half of them probably still feel like they have a chieftain, as any that was following Rags, Rabbiteater, Numbtongue, or Badarrow never “lost” their chieftain. Even the Mountain City goblins mostly joined up with Rags, if only for a little while. So the only ones that are totally without a chieftain at the moment are the Redfangs that stayed with Garen, or the cave goblins following Headscratcher and Shorthilt. The cave goblins were also possibly at least partially under the control of all 5 Redfangs at once, even if they considered their chosen one to be more chieftainy. So, it may very be only the Garen-Redfangs that would feel any real need to have an “official” chieftain.

As for how the goblins are acting, they are doing so because they consider themselves to be basically dead already. Laken can see everything they do, they can’t escape his sight, they don’t have enough weapons to put up any real sort of resistance. They are trapped, and are only surviving due to Laken’s whims. They are smart enough to know he wants something from them, but don’t know what, and don’t trust him at all. Thus, they are putting up a passive resistance, because that is the only thing that has any semblance of allowing them to survive longer.

So, they are actually being more practical and prioritizing survival compared to any other actions they could take.

And goblins aren’t the “new” misunderstood race. There have been quite a number of references to goblins working with other races. They are just kept in the “misunderstood” category because no one wants to look past the Goblin King rampages. They don’t see potentially dozens or hundreds or years of coexistence as a good trade off for even a single Goblin King, and instead choose to see the entire race as being evil monsters, and its much easier to believe monsters can’t think or feel.

Had to look this up, but that was stated in the old 1.23, according to the wiki. I am assuming this was later retconned, as every other mention I could find of his final fights was up near First Landing.

I think of it a different way: Erin is, 100% the main character of the story. Especially once we get to later volumes, you can see how just about everything revolves around her in some way. All the side stories come together and connect, and that connection is most often Erin, in some way.

However, there are also a whole bunch of other lead characters. Ryoka, Geneva, Laken, Flos, etc. Any parts of the story that don’t connect directly to Erin connect to these characters, and through them, to Erin. Without these characters, the story wouldn’t work nearly as well. They are nearly as important as Erin herself, even though they don’t connect as much to every other part of the story.

Then are are an even greater number of supporting characters. They might have side story chapters from their viewpoints, they might not. But, while they help flesh out the world, and are still important to give context to things, these characters are far less important than the lead characters. Most of the UN characters, for example, are just there as support – most of the Bushrangers could be replaced by nameless, faceless mooks and nothing would change significantly. But having them in the story, with names and faces, still adds to the story as a whole, and makes it better.

Most importantly, though, is that even for characters people don’t enjoy, their stories do absolutely connect with and give context to the main story following Erin. And they should absolutely be read, if for no reason than they are only a tiny fraction of the total number of words you’ll be reading for this story. 20,000 words for a disliked character is only about 1/650th of the total number of words as of the time of this comment.

Certainty, if they’d fought with weapons, Pebblesnatch wasn’t sure if Ulvama would win. -> Certainly

the crowd of Human. -> Humans.

His head jerked as Gamel whispered in her ear. -> his ear.