History Literature / Temeraire

* {{Irony}}: [[BreakThemByTalking "I will see you bereft of all that you have, of home and happiness and beautiful things. I will see your nation cast down and your allies drawn away. I will see you as alone and friendless and wretched as am I; and ''then'' you may live as long as you like, in some dark and lonely corner of the earth, and I will call myself ''content''."]] [[spoiler: In the end, Lien and Napoleon are exiled to the remote St. Helena, where they will spend the rest of their days cut off from everyone else. Napoleon is left a broken man, betrayed by his wife who now rules all of France as regent to his infant son, and with no more allies to speak for him]].

* MortonsFork: In book 8, the Japanese Lord Kaneko is bound by law to deliver all foreigners to the state for interrogation and execution, and bound by oath to provide SacredHospitality to travelers. This becomes a problem when he encounters Captain Laurence laying half-dead on the road.

* SavedFromTheirOwnHonor: The AntiVillain Lord Kaneko is stuck in a MortonsFork where he's bound [[IGaveMyWord by honour]] to grant SacredHospitality to Laurence but required by law to give him up for interrogation and execution. While he's stalling for time, [[TakeAThirdOption Laurence escapes]].

** At the beginning of ''Black Powder War'', there is a fire aboard the ''Allegiance'' that damages the dragon-transport ship enough to delay Laurence and Temeraire's departure from China for at least a month, and which smoke-damages Laurence's normal bottle-green aviator's coat. He has to dress up for a dinner, however, and nobody on his crew has a coat that will fit him in the shoulders, so he has to make do with a padded silk Chinese-style tunic-coat with embroidered cuffs that slightly inflames his sense of impropriety. At the dinner, a couple people make some remarks about aviators and Laurence supposedly styling himself a Chinese prince, which offends Laurence and Granby, but that's about it. One book and a full in-story year later, Laurence, Temeraire, and crew finally arrive home in Dover near the start of ''Empire of Ivory'' and meet Jane, who remarks, "You are a damned sight; whatever has happened to your coat?" And then you realize that he wore a padded Chinese-style silken coat for a full year while tromping through China and the desert, putting up with Tharkay's initial hostility, meeting the Sultan in Istanbul, breaking into the harem bathhouse and escaping Istanbul with the dragon eggs, fighting through Prussia for months on end in the mud and rain and putting up with ''their'' command, conveying the king and queen of Prussia to safety, and finally escaping back to England with hundreds of Prussian soldiers and feral dragons in tow and the French on their tail.

* DeterminedWidow: Mrs. Pemberton in ''Crucible of Gold''.

* WhatIf: Effectively, "What if the Napoleonic wars were fought '''[[RecycledInSpace with dragons]]'''!" In the beginning the world appears much the same, save for an added dimension to war and a few necessary societal changes. Over time we see more of the world and the way dragons would have affected the course of events, practically to the point of OffTheRails as far as real world history goes.

* InvincibleVillain: Napoleon is perceived by many as completely unstoppable, particularly after his victory at Austerlitz -- which even on Wiki/TheOtherWiki is described as "the greatest victory achieved by Napoleon," and "a tactical masterpiece, in the same league as other historic engagements like [[CurbStompBattle/RealLife Cannae]] or Gaugamela."

** ''Throne of Jade'' mentions that the Chinese aerial corps is all female, but in ''Blood of Tryants'', they appear to be split evenly between men and women.

* YouShouldKnowThisAlready: Temeraire is a Celestial, not an Imperial.

** Taken UpToEleven with the Incan dragons, who see people as more valuable than treasure thanks to a plague wiping out most of the human population. It's to the point where "theft" of humans has become a serious, albeit commonplace, crime.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: A byproduct of the series' globetrotting nature. Each trip introduces new players, new officers, new dragons, etc., etc....

* DragonHoard: Dragons are naturally inclined to collect shiny things, with actual value an important but ultimately secondary concern. However, only Russian dragons present with true hoards: sleeping on them and being enraged by tiny bits of it going missing included.

# ''Tongues of Serpents'' (2010), in which Laurence and Temeraire are [[ReassignedToAntarctica Reassigned to Australia]] (rather than executed) after Napoleon's repulsion and attempt to make a fresh start for themselves on the new, wild continent.

This AlternateHistory series sets out to answer a vital question that has intrigued historians for centuries: What would UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars have been like if the countries involved fought them with ''[[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons]]''?

--> '''Lien:''' ...I will not kill you, or your captain... I will see you bereft of all that you have, of home and happiness and beautiful things. I will see your nation cast down and your allies drawn away. I will see you as alone and friendless and wretched as am I; and ''then'' you may live as long as you like, in some dark and lonely corner of the earth, and I will call myself ''content.''

** ''His Majesty's Dragon'' has one of the commanders note that there was a time the British Parliament considered a mass culling of all non-essential dragons due to the massive cost of their current upkeep. Word soon spread to the military as a good portion of their dragons actually count as non-essential by their standards. ''Cue the majority of the British dragon force staying put right outside the Palace of Westminster in a combination of threat and protest, pulling a non-verbal version of ShameIfSomethingHappened threat to them and possibly a good chunk of London.'' Not surprisingly, the culling was quietly dropped and never brought up again. The biggest implication taken from this is that the dragons ''themselves'' came up with this stunt, with their riders only coming along as moral support.

-->''"Supply-lines," [[OldSoldier Gentius]] said, dolefully, shaking his head. "War is [[TruthInTelevision all about supply-lines]]; my third captain told me."''

** "[[HaveAGayOldTime There's something queer in the hold, sir]]."

** As of ''Blood of Tyrants'', we learn what Russia is like: [[spoiler:their heavyweights are ''colossal'' and have treasure heaped upon them after every battle. They're also spurred on by their handlers with violence (one man nearly takes off Napoleon's head with a well-placed stab to his dragon), and the tiny lightweights are knocked around by the heavyweights and whipped by the humans in between being forced to fly all over carrying messages and bringing food and water to the heavyweights, while fed only on scraps the heavyweights don't want. They endure it because if they don't they'll be sent to the breeding grounds. Temeraire and Laurence wonder why they wouldn't just flee the grounds, and later learn the reason. The dragons in the breeding grounds are chained with hobbles similar to the one Arkady was held prisoner in earlier in the book, injuring them and preventing them from even flying, and fed even less]]. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard The Russians don't change their ways quickly enough]] [[TheDogBitesBack to prevent the French from using this against them.]]

--> Temeraire still woke occasionally with a start from dreams in which he heard Roland saying again, "He has lost his fortune," and found the eyes of all his friends upon him accusingly, horrified, as they all repeated in unison, "Ten thousand pounds."

** In ''His Majesty's Dragon'', after meeting Celeritas, an unharnessed dragon who nonetheless is trusted to train both dragons and humans, Laurene is stunned by the implications. Public knowledge of dragons is that unharnessed or feral dragons are useless for anything but breeding and that only a harnessed dragon can be trusted. (Celeritas had two captains, but refused a third when he saw what a pillock he was.) He then remembers a proposal put forward in Parliament to exterminate all unharnessed dragons in Britain, including the ones in the breeding grounds, to save money. The rumor was that it was only stopped because every Admiral descended on London at once to reveal that the Corps would mutiny if any such thing occurred. This reflection is used to demonstrate how Laurence's opinion is already changing--he had thought the proposal wrong, but only as the sort of bureaucratic short-sightedness that would risk a ship costing thousands of pounds to save ten shillings on sailcloth. He also hadn't believed the rumors, even with stories of the lack of discipline in the Aerial Corps--but now considered his own indifference with horror. ''Of course'' they would have rebelled; how could they not? But aside from these considerations of character, the passage also foreshadows future actions, such as [[spoiler:the attempt at turning the dragon plague into a bioweapon, and Laurence and Temeraire's own reactions to these plots]].

* IdiotBall: {{invoked}} by Admiral Roland later in the series. [[spoiler:This is after Laurence and Temeraire have returned to England and been convicted for treason. While most people are mad at them for violating "MyMasterRightOrWrong," Jane holds no such compunctions: she wholeheartedly agrees that Laurence made the right choice in being [[ToBeLawfulOrGood Good rather than Lawful]]. The ''problem'' is that he did it publicly with banners flying, taking a number of his subordinates down with him... as opposed to simply sneaking some mushrooms to one of the captured French soldiers and "allowing" that man to escape.]]

* TheMario: In the appendix of ''His Majesty's Dragon'', Sir Edward Howe explicitly calls out that the Yellow Reapers are often denigrated for being so common, even though the reasons they are so common are what make them invaluable assets. They're clannish and not swift flyers, but on the other hand aren't fastidious about food, are easygoing as a rule, aren't bothered by any but the most extreme weather, and are bred easily with dragons of all sizes, having contributed to nearly every British-bred dragon's bloodline.

* MyBelovedSmother: Temeraire comes off this way to other dragons in ''Tongues of Serpents'' when it comes to [[spoiler: Rankin]] trying to harness a dragonette.

-->'''Temeraire:''' "It is not terribly interesting [in the egg], that is why we come out."

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome

** Their smallest breeds can already grow bigger than a horse at full maturity (Chasseur-Vocifere, Greyling) while the biggest known breeds can reach the size of a ''house'' (Celestial, Regal Copper, Grand Chevalier). To put in a sense of scale, the biggest dragons can carry around to a ''dozen crew members on their harnesses alone''.

--> '''Napoleon''' ''(to Laurence):'' [[FriendlyEnemy You do not suffer the disease of ambition.]]

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits

* SavedByCanon

** The first novel has one shoehorned in suddenly in the last chapter (though there hints[[note]]Temeraire's roar is strong enough to shake the leaves off trees and rattle his crew; his appearance matches that of the Yellow Emperor of China, the ''Celestial'' dragon that united the Empire; and others[[/note]]); the rest are handled better. Justified as the author was asked to make the novel into a series at the insistence of her editor.

* SeriesContinuityError

** There's a subtle reference to Franchise/StarTrek in Blood Of Tyrants when Laurence, [[spoiler:having remembered that Granby and Little are gay]], reflects on things he heard about while in the Navy, namely, the relationship between how effusively a certain Captain K greeted his wounded second-in-command, returning from a boarding action.

** In ''Empire of Ivory'' Laurence is himself flogged on the orders of the Tswana king. We don't know how severe it is since it's from his perspective and he loses count at around ten, but he does end up being delirious for a week.

--> ''"Where you go, you leave half the world overturned behind you. You are more dangerous than Bonaparte in your own way, you and that beast of yours."''

* ADateWithRosiePalms

* AlternateHistory: For obvious reasons. The presence of dragons results in a kind of FixFic to some of the worst tragedies of the imperialism. Although the British still control India and use opium as a trade tool against China (and the Ottoman Empire and Russia are no vacation destination either), China is still powerful, the Tswana in Africa could claim to be the strongest nation in the world, the Inca in South America likewise remain extremely formidable despite the depopulation caused by European diseases, the United States has colonists and natives working in harmony ''with'' dragons, and Australia, whose natives [[spoiler:put together a trade network with China]], casually declares independence and keeps it. Even Napoleon's tyranny in France is begrudgingly admitted by Laurence to at least be getting put to better use in many ways than Britain's own petty, short-sighted government. ''Blood of Tyrants'' reveals that the President of the United States is [[spoiler:Tecumseh, suggesting better relations between Native Americans and settlers]]. In addition, Alexander Hamilton is implied to still be alive in 1812 and to have run for (but lost) the presidency (though whether he survived the fateful duel or it never happened is never mentioned).\\\
''Golden Age and Other Stories'' gives us an [[AlternateContinuity alternate history of this alternate history]], one where Temeraire's egg wound up on the shores of a small island rather than in Laurence's care, where he is raised by a pack of ferals and taken to piracy, which Laurence comes to put an end to. Laurence is still a captain on the Reliant, Riley is his second, and for some reason [[ForWantofaNail O'dea is part of the crew instead of being sent to the Australian penal colony]].

* AndTheAdventureContinues: The series ends with [[spoiler: Napoleon and Lien]] defeated, [[spoiler:Laurence and Temeraire]] restored to fortune and respectability, and a standing invitation [[spoiler:from Tharkay for them to settle on his lands where Temeraire would be the only civil dragon in a newly established Parliamentary district]]. While the main conficts have been resolved, the fight for [[spoiler:full rights for dragons]] continues.

* BlaseBoast: In the EncyclopediaExposita piece from Black Powder War, the Reverend Salcombe humblebrags about his own puny accomplishments in draconic studies in comparison to the impressive depth of knowledge shown by Sir Edward Howe for a long paragraph... before launching into his "thesis", which insults everyone who doesn't think dragons are, in terms of intellect, roughly equivalent with a particularly intelligent dog. The Reverend appears in the first chapter of ''Victory of Eagles'' in person, but Temeraire knows of his work and refuses to even grant him an interview unless he can solve a ''very'' simple geometry problem (specifically, an application of the Pythagorean Theorem). Rev. Salcombe does not get an interview. (Though Temeraire finds himself regretting the loss of intellectual stimulation.)

** Iskierka is told that in order to have "capital" (which she understands to be treasure) she must capture enemy ships. This leads to a cute bit where she steals a fisherman's boat and the other dragons need to return it, and nothing much more is made of it while Laurence and Temeraire go off on their adventure through Africa. A few hundred pages later, however, they return and find that Iskierka and Arkady's ferals have made a regular habit of seizing French ships, and that she's won five Prizes from thim since they've left, all of her own accord as her captain Granby can't stop her.

* ChangelingFantasy: Temeraire is for all intents and purposes a Chinese prince growing up as a common (okay, not-so-common) British BeastOfBattle.
** {{Inverted}} from the Chinese point of view in-universe, who don't approve of Temeraire fighting.

-->"Supply-lines," [[OldSoldier Gentius]] said, dolefully, shaking his head. "War is [[TruthInTelevision all about supply-lines]]; my third captain told me."

* CourtMartialed
** A captain whose dragon is killed is automatically court-martialed in much the same way that naval captains are automatically court-martialled for losing a ship. (In the rare event that they ''survive'', that is. Typically they [[GoingDownWithTheShip fall to their deaths with the dragon.]])

* EggMcGuffin

* FieldPromotion

--> Temeraire still woke occasionally with a start from dreams in which he heard Roland saying again, “He has lost his fortune,” and found the eyes of all his friends upon him accusingly, horrified, as they all repeated in unison, “Ten thousand pounds.”

* IntoxicationEnsues
** In ''Throne of Jade'', Temeraire gets drunk on a sauce made from a mushroom found while they're in Capetown. (Given the mushroom's medicinal properties, it could be seen as analogous to any number of modern medicines that can result in altered states of mind when indulged in.)

* InSpiteOfANail
** Has an interesting tension with ForWantOfANail. Having [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons]] for the entirety of recorded history hasn't actually changed that much; European history seems basically the same up to the Napoleonic wars. In Africa and the Americas, the differences from actual history are considerably larger--for example, while the Incas and other American peoples were ravaged by European diseases which prevented them from gaining global influence and allowed European colonization of plagued-out areas, the addition of dragons allowed them to force out the invaders and made the names "Cortez" and "Pizarro" into cautionary tales. China in this universe, far from being in decline, is a major power that Britain must needs treat with respect (though a great many Englishmen still hold racist attitudes towards the Chinese--and anyone not English, for that matter), and the African human/dragon empire in ''Empire of Ivory'' [[spoiler:is strong enough to drive the European colonists and slavetraders clean out of sub-Saharan Africa. As noted below in the MeaningfulBackgroundEvent entry, the Tswana eventually expand their anti-slavery campaign to the Americas, with all the profound implications that carries]].
** In North America, the native Americans and colonists somehow joined forces against the British, and later formed a governemnt, on equal terms; the current president when the story takes place is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh Tecumseh]]. Despite this drastic change to American politics, Hamilton was apparently still a leading Federalist figure (and the Federalist party still existed, for that matter!), to the point where one dragon notes that they would have preferred to have him as president.

* ItsRainingMen

* MedievalStasis: Invoked and averted. [[spoiler: Perscitia realizes that technology is becoming more and more effective, and fights so hard for dragon civil rights because at some point, a gun is going to be effective as a dragon; ergo, dragons are going to lose their place as military beasts sooner or later, and will need to have other options for their lives. It's been made clear that some humans will stoop to 'exterminating animals', so the clock is ticking.]]

* WhatIf: Effectively, "What if the Napoleonic wars were fought [[AC:[[RecycledInSpace with dragons]]]]!" In the beginning the world appears much the same, save for an added dimension to war and a few necessary societal changes. Over time we see more of the world and the way dragons would have affected the course of events, practically to the point of OffTheRails as far as real world history goes.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman

* WhatTheHellHero: Captain/[[spoiler:Admiral]] Roland's short, but sharp verbal smackdown of Laurence in ''Victory of Eagles'' regarding his actions at the end of ''Empire of Ivory''. [[spoiler:Note that she was not upset over his treason (although the note he left was a bit of a personal embarrassment), so much as his quite literally suicidal lack of subtlety and discretion]].

* InvincibleVillain: Napoleon is perceived by many as completely unstoppable, particularly after his victory at Austerlitz -- which even on TheOtherWiki is described as "the greatest victory achieved by Napoleon," and "a tactical masterpiece, in the same league as other historic engagements like [[CurbStompBattle/RealLife Cannae]] or Gaugamela."

* BrainFever: When [[spoiler:Laurence]] nearly drowns and wakes up without his most recent eight years worth of memories, the physician attributes his amnesia to a brain fever. That is to say, they have no idea what's wrong or how to fix it.

* StayInTheKitchen: {{Invoked}} by the Sapa Inca to get herself elected empress. Since dragons are [[ThisIsMyHuman possessive of their people]] (especially in light of the recent plagues that have decimated the Inca populations), the fact that she isn't supposed to lead wars is actually seen as a ''positive''. She managed to use this DoubleStandard to strike a blow against the HeirClubForMen!

** Directed towards dragons. Used in a somewhat {{Anvilicious}} manner, because the series ''also'' enumerates the many forms of very real human discrimination still in place in 19th-century Britain, but because this often has to be brought home to the creatures-of-their-time characters, not the reader, it's also SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped--parallels are drawn between the fight for draconic and various types of human rights, but they are never equated and the fights take place at different times and places. It also varies from culture to culture. Britain is comparable to Europe outside of France's sphere of influence, Russia is reputed to be even worse, the Islamic world has long regarded Dragons as having souls, Napoleon and Lien have instituted considerable reforms in France, China regards them as (large, winged, thumbless) citizens of various stations according to their capabilities, and dragons are actually revered as returned ancestors among the Tswana of Africa.

* TheStationsOfTheCanon: With the exception of the Battle of Dover, the first three books are basically the real Napoleonic Wars without especial alteration. The dragon plague sends things OffTheRails for a while, but [[spoiler:Napoleon's invasion of Russia hardly goes any better than it did in reality, albeit for different reasons. The final book bypasses a showdown at Waterloo and sends him (and Lien) straight into exile--although worries of their escape might be a SequelHook, the site of his exile is St. Helena, where Napoleon spent his last days, rather than Elba which he escaped.]]

* RuleOfCool: [[InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons The use of dragons in general]], but there are also swordfights on the backs of flying dragons. This is actually justified in-universe: one of the easiest ways for a dragon boarding party to disable a dragon is to hold its handler hostage, as outright killing them will cause the dragon to go berserk. Therefore, a boarder has to get up close to the handler, and a gun is too easy to kill with.

* BlackBlood: Dragon blood in is consistently described as black, a trait shared with {{sea serpents}} and [[YowiesAndBunyipsAndDropBearsOhMy bunyips]]. This implies that all three share a common ancestor — though nobody really comments on it, as the series takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, forty years before Charles Darwin codified the theory of evolution.