Babylon 5 Rewatch Season 1 Episode 3, "Born to the Purple".

Babylon 5 Rewatch Season 1 Episode 3, "Born to the Purple".
 
https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-born-to-the-purple/
 
The key to understanding this episode is to recognize the significance of the phrase—Born to the Purple.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_purple
 
To dye a cloth purple was costly and difficult for a long time in history, and therefore only the wealthy could afford it.  This cost is why it became the choice of those in power to create a distinction enforced by decree that only the 'nobility', the political elite who had power, could wear those colors.
 
This episode focuses on the concept of nobility and who is truly born as noble.
 
It contrasts the personality traits associated with being noble with the social status of being noble.  This conflict is epitomized in the character of Londo Mollari.
 
Noble personality traits bring to mind someone who possesses outstanding qualities embodied often in the fairy tales and stories of legendary Chivalry, the noble knights of the Round Table of Camelot.
 
Londo wishes to be one of those legendary noble knights, yet he realizes and is afraid that he is only someone who was born to the purple—someone who has this status by the mere fact of being in the social class and bloodline.  It is explained in this episode that those in power hold that power by blackmail.  They gather incriminating evidence of the misdeeds of others and then wield the threat of publicly denouncing those misdeeds as the means to gain ascendency in the social and political system.  Thus, to be noble of the royal houses on Centauri is to act ignobly.
 
Londo, who we later learn has three wives, still craves and desires to be thought of as noble in the legendary meaning of the word, which is why he falls in love with Adira, a young dancer of the Centauri race.  Here, Larry DiTillio uses the cliché of the prostitute/illicit dancer with the 'heart of gold' who falls for the elderly gentleman.  This fits with JMS's usage of cliches to take them and then to give them life, and then transcend them.  Here, the cliché is realized in the personality of Londo who fantasizes and wishes he was deserving of being one of the legendary chivalric knights.  He desires this and yet knows at the same time that he falls far short of that fantasy. 
 
This trait of wishing to be a chivalric knight explains his actions in the series when he aids others who are acting heroically and thus, like those chivalric knights, over and over again for 'no' immediate benefit.  He wishes by that act of support to garner for himself a bit of recognition that he can see himself as acting as a true chivalric noble and, of course, wishing and hoping that others will see him in that manner as well.
 
Therefore, his action of seeming to 'lust' after the young dancer is no longer a mere cliché but an actual insight into his true personality.  It is a wish-fulfillment to have someone accept him as what he wishes he was, rather than to be seen merely as the ignoble rich old man who can buy a woman's 'favor'.  This is why he is obsessed with seeing Adira dance.  It is an outward act of his conflicted personality.
 
Londo feels betrayed at first when he discovers that Adira stole from him.  He feels that she betrayed his fantasy more than that she merely stole and betrayed him in actuality.  However, once he is told that she is a slave, then he immediately gains a new perspective on her actions.  He can now forgive her, sees he assumes that being a slave will justify any act, no matter how ignoble it is to gain one's freedom.  This is, of course, why he understands and secretly respects G'Kar and the Narn race.  They were enslaved by the ignoble acts of his people, which drove the Narn race to act ignobly to gain their freedom. 
 
Londo offered the broch to Adira as a sign that he wished her to be noble and to see herself as such.  He wishes her to recognize that she deserves to be socially and politically noble because she showed noble personality traits by seeing that he was worthy of her attention and love. 
 
This episode is a masterful study of the dual meanings of the word nobility.