History Awesome / HonorHarrington

* Relatively early in the novel, Solarian Admiral Josef Byng makes the mistake of slaughtering three Manticoran destroyers in a panic; the fourth and last member of the division survived only because it was hiding out-system to do recon. Later in the book, a cranky Michelle Henke and company vaporize Byng, and his flagship into subatomic particles in retaliation. [[LaserGuidedKarma It is incredibly satisfying]].

* After [[spoiler: her lover, Paul Tankersley]] is murdered, Honor kills the expert duelist who was hired to do the job while he mocks her inexperience in duels. Then she [[spoiler:kills the guy who hired him, longtime enemy Pavel Young]], with one shot in a duel, even though he [[spoiler:broke the law to fire on (and hit) her first.]]

* When Klaus Hauptman is meeting with Honor and [=McKeon=], [=McKeon=] responds to Hauptman's egotistical behavior with a several paragraph explanation on how it could easily be considered treason.
** Throughout the book, Alistair has struggled with an inability to connect to Honor, a resentment toward her that he knows is irrational, and the self-hatred of knowing he's not behaving like a professional and that he's not the XO she deserves even as he wishes he was in command of ''Fearless'' instead. But the instant Klaus Hauptman verbally abuses and threatens _his captain,_ everything instantly clicks into place--and lets him realize that Honor _is_ his captain, and he's capable of the loyalty he's been struggling to feel after all.

* While teaching at the Academy, Honor meets Cadet Abigail Hearns. While the young woman later went on to even bigger and better displays of badassery and awesomeness in the future (as mentioned several times below), the first Grayson woman to become a military officer in the history of her planet started out early when it's revealed that as a 10 year old child she'd watched the explosions as Harrington, a foreign woman, had defended her planet and a her people and ''demanded'' her father give her the right to do the same, an extraordinary step for a culture beginning its first tentative steps toward gender equality. As her later actions demonstrated, her father was a wise man.

* ''The Hard Way Home'', a major avalanche hits a ski resort, burying hundreds of people including a group of schoolkids on a field trip. A young Susan Hibson (in the main line of books, a Marine officer who spends much of her screen time hip deep in the action) [[{{Determinator}} begins digging her way out]], having no idea how deep she even is or which way to dig to get out. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Commander Honor Harrington is coordinating rescue efforts, but they are having trouble finding the survivors under the heavy snow, even with shipboard sensors. Nimitz picks up on the girl's mindglow and immediatly starts tunneling to meet her. Thanks to the girl's determination, the other kids in her ski lift are found and rescued.

** It's basically a free fusion of the Allies leaders' speeches as their nations joined the WorldWarTwo. Somewhat subverted in that the Allies ''dwarfed'' Axis in terms of industrial and military might (and it still took them six years and fifty-odd millions dead to win), but even [[spoiler: the Grand Alliance]] is ''tiny'' compared to [[spoiler: the League]].

** After several chapters of the heroes pointing out that Hancock is not nearly as prepared to fight off an invasion as Neue Rostock is, the "Mistie" troops storm the building and secure the first floor ... only to have most of the ''second'' floor [[DeathFromAbove dropped on them with demolition charges.]]

* Honor, having been put on half-pay by the Royal Manticoran Navy, has been living on Grayson for nine months at the start of the book. While plenty of Graysons are in awe of her prior defense of their world, she still has to deal with numerous protesters lining up outside of her house, a preacher calling her the "Harlot of Satan", and [[spoiler: the loss of her lover, Paul Tankersley]]. Unfortunately, the Grayson Navy needs experienced captains, having very few of their own, and Honor reluctantly accepts a commission. While discussing her new command, [[MightyGlacier a superdreadnought]], Honor comments that it's a big step up for her, as the largest ship she had commanded before was a battlecruiser. High Admiral Matthews says that Honor doesn't quite understand... she's not becoming the Captain of a superdreadnought, she's becoming the ''[[spoiler: Admiral]]'' [[spoiler: of a superdreadnought]] ''[[spoiler:squadron.]]''

*** At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to dilute his awesome levels of {{Badass}}, he's really only able to get away with prying Erewhon from the Manticoran alliance thanks mostly to the gross stupidity of the High Ridge government on Manticore. Cachat even admits that himself. Which is why there's no personal hard feelings between him and Zilwicki, despite both of them being deeply devoted to their nations.

** In his third appearance in the novel ''Crown of Slaves'' he manipulates one of Manticore's oldest allies to void their treaty and cease hostilities with Haven, and then is in large part responsible for a successful attack that frees a slave-planet resulting in the creation of a new nation, and despite being an enemy agent, does it with the cooperation of the Manticoran navy. Victor Cachat, {{Badass}}, ladies and gentlemen.

* Horace Harkness betrays the Star Kingdom of Manticore by defecting to the side of his Peep captors. Only [[spoiler:he's really planning an escape operation for his crewmates all along. When he finally springs the trap, he has singlehandedly reprogrammed every computer on board his captors' ship to do his bidding]].

* Honor has: been called a whore for most of the book, blamed herself for an industrial accident which killed a group of schoolchildren, learned that the [[spoiler: "accident" was sabotage]], had her pinnace shot down, and saved from a point-blank assassination when [[spoiler:''Grayson's spiritual leader'' [[HeroicSacrifice threw himself in front of her]]]], and generally [[{{Hamlet}} suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.]] She finally gets to the Council Chamber, battered, bruised, limping and exhausted, presents her evidence, and names the man who's been orchestrating all of this... who promptly claims a traditional form of justice and demands to face the Protector's Champion in trial by sword combat. And guess who that is? The Protector, seeing that she's in no shape to fight, begins to back off from his proclamation (which will undermine his authority for all time), but she cuts him off:

** For that matter, the entire combined Grayson-Manticoran navy's cold fury towards the man is a darkly satisfying CMOA in and of itself. The Masadans were deluding themselves in thinking they ever had a chance to politic their way out of anything. They were dead the minute they touched ''Madrigal'''s crew.

** One has to wonder--is the overwhelming response simply because it's Honor Harrington in danger, or is it at least partially due to [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge what happened to their sisters]] on ''Madrigal?''

** Later on, it's expanded even more: Harkness implies that he admitted to [=BuPers=], the department in charge of managing personnel, that he's been hacking their systems for years in order to always be assigned to the same ship as Scotty Tremaine. Not only does [=BuPers=] not penalize him for it, they make a note to never break break up [[HeteroSexualLifePartners Scotty and Harkness.]]

* When Commander Truman has been sent in HMS ''Apollo'' to evacuate the wounded and summon the cavalry, knowing that every day counts, she [[TimTaylorTechnology orders her engineer to remove the hyper generator safety interlocks]] and cuts ''thirty hours'' off her transit to Manticore.

** Hibson's actions so impress the Commandant of the Manticoran Marine Corps that when he learns that she wanted to join the Corps when she grew up, he ''personally'' reserved a slot for her at the RMMC academy several years before she could legally apply.

** Later on, it's expanded even more: Harkness implies that he admitted to [=BuPers=], the department in charge of managing personnel, that he's been hacking their systems for years in order to always be assigned to the same ship as Scotty Tremaine. Not only does [=BuPers=] not penalize him for it, they make a note to never break break up [[HeteroSexualLifePartners Scotty and Harkness]]

* [[NewMeat Aubrey Wanderman]] spends the beginning of the book being bullied and getting a beating, which makes his CurbStompBattle of the bully after Chief Harkness mentors him ''so'' sweet.

* ''Beauty And The Beast'': Lieutenant Karl Alfred Harrington is attending medical school on Beowulf, and has become infatuated with a female student named Allison Chou (unbeknownst to him, she is similarly infatuated with him). When she is kidnapped by a group of [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Manpower Inc]] thugs who want to blackmail her brother, Alfred tracks them down to their hideout and [[OneManArmy single-handedly]] launches a rescue. Alfred, who before going to medical school had made [[SergeantRock Platoon Sergeant]] in the Royal Manticoran Marines, and had left the Marines because [[TheBerserker he enjoyed combat far too much]] and didn't like those feelings. It turns out that ass-kicking runs in the family, and that Honor Harrington is most ''definitely'' her father's little girl.

* ''Beauty And The Beast'': Lieutenant Karl Alfred Harrington is attending medical school on Beowulf, and has become infatuated with a female student named Allison Chou (unbeknownst to him, she is similarly infatuated with him). When she is kidnapped by a group of [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Manpower Inc]] thugs who want to blackmail her brother, Alfred tracks them down to their hideout and, using the skills he picked up in the Marines, [[OneManArmy single-handedly]] launches a rescue. It turns out that ass-kicking runs in the family, and that Honor Harrington is most ''definitely'' her father's little girl.

* The Havenites manage to pivot from near total defeat four years ago to rebuild their fleets and reverse engineer the technology that gutted them to make ships that can very nearly go toe to toe with Manticoran ships, which they had always been at a tech disadvantage to. Even better, after [[spoiler:Operation Oyster Bay]], that tech would go on to [[spoiler:save the very people they reverse-engineered it from]] as Haven [[spoiler:rode to Manticore's defense against the Solarian League]], ending with [[spoiler:those two navies standing side by side against the very forces that manipulated them into war in the first place]]. ''Thank you, Shannon Foraker.''

[[AC: On Basilisk Station]]

[[AC: The Honor of the Queen]]

* When Commander Truman has been sent in the HMS ''Apollo'' to evacuate the wounded and summon the cavalry, knowing that every day counts, she [[TimTaylorTechnology orders her engineer to remove the hyper generator safety interlocks]] and cuts ''thirty hours'' off her transit to Manticore.

[[AC: The Short Victorious War]]

[[AC: Field of Dishonor]]

[[AC: Flag in Exile]]

** Made even better when Clinkscales finally believes he can do it. "You are engineers. I was a policeman. [...] Find me the what and how and I'll give you the who and why." - and this is believed to be the worst crime ever committed in the history of their ''world''.

[[AC: Honor Among Enemies]]

[[AC: In Enemy Hands]]

[[AC: Echoes of Honor]]

** It says something about the series as a whole when someone's announcement that they are the direct descendant of the two most famous medical families in the galaxy's history - people who quadrupled human lifespan and cured virtually every disease known to man, and that she is at least that skilled a doctor, rates a single sentence on a CMOA page.
* The [[spoiler: subverted]] ToAbsentFriends speech delivered by Yanakov: "Your grace, my lords and ladies, ladies and gentlemen all, I give you Steadholder Harrington...''and damnation to the Peeps!''"

[[AC: Ashes of Victory]]

[[AC: War of Honor]]

[[AC: At All Costs]]

[[AC: Mission of Honor]]

** Hell. Considering the ship numbers thrown in ''At All Costs'' about the Haven Navy, and considering that Haven kept its production capabilities, considering the Andermani numbers and production capabilities and whatever the Graysons and Manticorans managed to save, it's pretty safe to assume that, even with the disastrous losses in the end of ''At All Costs', the SLN navy, "the biggest, baddest navy in human space", is pretty much outgunned, out-teched, and probably outnumbered.

* Eloise Pritchart [[spoiler:turns up in Manticoran space, almost ''immediately'' after their home system has been catastrophically attacked, screens Queen Elizabeth in the middle of the night,]] and within three days has [[spoiler:not only cleared up every single diplomatic misunderstanding between the two star nations going back nearly fifty years, but been genuine enough, truthful enough, and convincing enough to end up signing a military alliance against the Solarian League ''and'' Mesa]]. It's RefugeInAudacity the likes of which has rarely, if ''ever'', been seen in the Honorverse up until this point; she knew very well that she [[spoiler:and a good chunk of her Cabinet -- including the most critical personnel in it --]] could be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she did it anyway because [[spoiler:she was sick and tired of fighting people she respected, liked, and didn't want to hurt any more]]. And she was able to see past the fact that [[spoiler:the very same star nation she is allying with was responsible for killing the love of her life, however unintended and however much they regret it]]. Just... the whole damn book is one triumph after another for the Republic's President.

[[AC: A Rising Thunder]]

** Bonus points because the stomp-ees were utterly convinced that it would be a CurbStompBattle, but with ''them'' wearing the boots... until the trap was closed on them.

* Towards the end of the book, the League Senate holds a vote on whether or not they should censure the League world of Beowulf for conspiring with the Manticorans. The Leage's senate is horribly corrupt, and the vote is essentially a kangaroo court... and a full quarter of them ''still'' vote in favor of Beowulf. The Mandarins fully understand the implications of that. [[spoiler: And then the Beowulfian delegation announces their intent to withdraw from the Solarian League.]]

-->'''Theisman''': Don’t you 'but' ''me!'' You didn’t know -— you ''couldn’t'' know —- if they’d come up with some kind of fire control fix we’d never heard of before. You had no right, not one ''shred'' of a moral justification, to risk the lives of personnel under your command just because somebody on the other side had done something suicidal! Your responsibility is to ''your'' people, not theirs! It’s your job to neutralize an enemy before he kills ''them'', and you’d ''damned'' well better do it if you’re going to be worthy of the uniform you wear! ''That’s'' your responsibility, Admiral Harrington, and you lived up to it! You reacted to the threat you knew about, the one you saw, and I was right there on that flag bridge with you. It took those missiles three minutes to reach us, and you had a Hermes buoy sitting right off his flagship’s bow. There was ''plenty'' of time for him to get on the com and tell you the launch was a mistake, if he hadn’t meant to launch it! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe he did that, now did he? Not only that, but thirteen-second lag or not, the ''rest'' of his damned fleet was firing full broadsides at you on its heels! I understand that realizing you gave the order to kill that many people has to make you sick to your stomach. It makes ''me'' want to puke, and I didn’t have to give it. But the only ones responsible for what happened to Filareta and the people under his command are whoever arranged to get him sent here and—assuming there’s any basis to all this speculation in the first place -— whoever got to his tac officer. Not you; not me -— ''them!''

[[AC:The Shadow of Saganami]]

[[AC:Storm from the Shadows]]

* Relatively early in the novel, Solarian Admiral Josef Byng makes the mistake of slaughtering three-quarters of a Manticoran destroyer squadron out of hand; the fourth and last member of the squadron survived only because it was hiding out-system to do recon. Later in the book, a cranky Michelle Henke and company vaporize Byng, his flagship, and most of his fleet into subatomic particles in retaliation. [[LaserGuidedKarma It is incredibly satisfying]].

[[AC: Shadow of Freedom]]

* Lieutenant Abigail Hearns needs to rescue captives from a space station held by Solarian Gendarmerie thugs. She has exactly one actual marine at her disposal, the rest of her team are regular crewmen. The enemy outnumbers her and is fighting on their home ground, and even if she manages to push them back they'll have the option of threatening to shoot the hostages. She proceeds to [[CurbStompBattle utterly wipe the floor with them]], getting the captives out with zero casualties while taking out entire enemy platoons.
** It gets better. All of the curb stomping was [[WeNeedADistraction the diversion.]] [[spoiler: The station's staff ([[TheDogBitesBack not Solarians]]) gave Hearns detailed engineers' schematics of the station, allowing her to send teams through access tunnels and air vents to take the brig by surprise.]]

[[AC: Cauldron of Ghosts]]

** General Thandi Palane proving that she really is a FourStarBadass by commanding the defense of Neue Rostock...and holding out with a ragtag band of gangsters and volunteers against well-equipped military forces for almost a month.
** A MauveShirt criminal taking out a squad of goons intent on slaughtering fleeing civilians...using nothing but discarded camping equipment and some ingenuity.
** After several chapters of the heroes pointing out that Hancock is not nearly as prepared to fight off an invasion as Neue Rostock is, the "Mistie" troops storm the building and secure the first floor... only to have most of the ''second'' floor [[DeathFromAbove dropped on them with demolition charges.]]

[[AC: Crown Of Slaves]]

*** How impressive? At the end of ''Mission of Honor'', as described below, [[spoiler:half the people on the above list (Cachat, Zilwicki, Kevin Usher, Pritchart, Theisman, Queen Elizabeth, and Honor herself) are ''in the same room''. And ''on the same side.'' Which is precisely the scenario that the Alignment spent capital like water to prevent - with the added bonus that ItsPersonal for the Manticorans' best naval commander, who's pretty much primed for a RoaringRampageOfRevenge like the galaxy's never seen, backed up by a force that might be the entire Eighth Fleet, or might be the entire Royal Manticoran Navy plus a good chunk of the Grayson Space Navy, and might also include a lot of Havenite heavy metal, helpfully commanded by a few Havenite military geniuses -- including one Lester Tourville, who has beaten ''Honor'' in combat. And all that heavy metal is going to be fitted with whatever new toys the combined genius of [[GadgeteerGenius Shannon Foraker and Sonja Hemphill]] can come up with. Once they figure out where to point it all, odds are the Alignment's going to get ''disintegrated''. Or worse]].

** During their infiltration of Mesa in ''Caldron of Ghosts'', [[SpaceMarine Thandi]] gets ambushed by a street gang hoping for an opportunistic highway robbing, [[MuggingTheMonster having no idea what they have just gotten themselves into]]. After Thandi dispatches several of them with deadly efficiency, Victor [[DynamicEntry shows up]], by ramming his car into one of the gangsters' vehicles and [[DisproportionateRetribution launching a grenade into the cab.]] Victor knows how to make a first impression.

[[AC: Short Stories]]

** Of course (and quite justifiably) Horace Harkness gets credit for much of that, including the Parliamentary Medal of Valor that Honor refused to accept for her part in the jailbreak. Later on, it's expanded even more: Harkness implies that he admitted to [=BuPers=], the department in charge of managing personnel, that he's been hacking their systems for years in order to always be assigned to the same ship as Scotty Tremaine. Not only does [=BuPers=] not penalize him for it, they make a note to never break break up [[HeteroSexualLifePartners Scotty and Harkness]]
--->'''Chief Harkness''': "...And I've sort of promised the Navy I'd swear off playing with computer systems in return for a certain, ah, lack of scrutiny where a few of my records over at BuPers are concerned."

** Of course (and quite justifiably) Horace Harkness gets credit for much of that, including the Parliamentary Medal of Valor that Honor refused to accept for her part in the jailbreak.