In-game Official Story

[MercantileInterest]

We all have an idea of the scripted backstory from the in-game quotes. Zakharov activates the Voice of Planet so he probably ends up joining Deirdre in the Planetary Neural Net but what happens to the rest of the leaders? "The Fall of Sparta" quotes suggest Deirdre toasted Santiago. The best we have on Morgan is his script from the Living Refinery project. In the next mission century, he expects most of Planet's industries to move into orbit. Do the Morganites become a spacefaring faction, a floating nation of ten thousand souls? Does anybody have any clues about what happens to Lal or Yang?

Miriam is the strangest of all. Her Final Testament (quoted after completion of a psi gate) urges her followers to go through, cast off sin and walk in the garden of the Lord. She was much more wary about teleporting through the Bulk Matter Transmitter. Where do the Believers end up?

[realjackryan]

Noob here:

Good question! This actually a very succint description that I never realized playing through the game. If I had to guess - Lal dies. Lal always dies.

[PvtHudson]

Other people also wondered about "canon" events: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=397392

[BFG]

Good questions; I've often wondered about this too.  The novels might shed more light, but whether they're canon is a different discussion.

My thoughts:
Zakharov - Activates Voice of Planet and transcends.
Deirdre - Joins him.  (That makes Zak "Lady Dierdre's Lover"...)
Santiago - My guess is that she's killed by Planet, not Dierdre.  After all, Dierdre abhors war and probably wouldn't have had a significant mindworm count so early.  Or Santiago may have survived with minimal bases and no real development.  Either way she's a non-factor.
Morgan - I suspect he focuses on full industrialization of Planet followed by spacefaring and a return to Earth.  Many of the human engineers/industrialists described in the Transcend Victory probably are from his faction.
Yang - We don't have much to go off of here.  His last quote is the Genejack.  My guess is that he and Lal started warring, Lal was killed, but in the process Yang committed atrocities that caused the other factions to join and kill him as well.
Lal - See Yang.
Miriam - Yeah, she's interesting.  She, along with Zak, Dierdre, and Morgan clearly survived to the end.  I have two guesses for her - either she works with Morgan to return to Earth (seeing it as "Eden" or the "Promised Land" where she can get away from the unbelievers), or she joins in Transcendence as a way to grow closer to God.  Both paths would cause her faction some hesitation so it's even possible the faction split and both occurred.

"New" 7 factions - virtually impossible to say, but it does appear that neither of the Progenitors succeed in the official storyline.

[Kurvivor]

I have heard a theory that Mitiam vanishes in psi-gate accident, since psi-gate quote is her last

[Yitzi]

I have heard a theory that Mitiam vanishes in psi-gate accident, since psi-gate quote is her last

Psi-gate is high enough in the tech tree that it being a faction leader's last quote doesn't really count for much.  Doubly so when the quote fits so well with "this is one of the last things to happen in the story".