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''Honor Harrington'' is a MilitaryScienceFiction series by David Weber. The book series is mainly set around the adventures of the titular heroine, although we see a fair amount of the wider universe. The primary conflict of the storyline is the Kingdom of Manticore (The Good Guys) vs. The (People's) Republic of Haven (The Bad Guys Who Get Something Of A HeelFaceTurn).

Weber has explicitly described the series as "HoratioHornblower" [-[[RecycledINSPACE IN SPACE!]]-] with the series being a great deal more focused on (Space) Naval operations than other science fiction series. Honor Harrington occasionally performs ground-based and political adventures, but the vast majority of the series is focused on her ship-to-ship conflicts (no, not [[ShipToShipCombat that kind]]), where she serves as commanding officer.

All but the latest novel (''Storm From The Shadows'') are legally available for free, along with many other Baen titles, via the [[http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ Baen Free CD site]]. The best collection of Honorverse titles is on [[http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/17-StormfromtheShadowsCD/ CD #17]], the ''Storm From The Shadows'' promotional CD.

Also, please help to make and expand the [[Characters/HonorHarrington character page]]

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!!These novels provide examples of:
* AbsentAliens: Subversion, it's not so much that they're absent from the setting as much as absent from the story line, as they exist, but aren't a big deal and are not particularly important in a geo-political sense. The Honorverse seems mostly lack sentient aliens at first, but later we discover that Honor's pet, Nimitz, is intelligent. And would probably resent being called a "pet." In fact, the usual construction is to call Honor "Nimitz's human," and to say that he adopted her. Also, the Medusans of ''On Basilisk Station'' are intelligent, have their own language and even get to fight Manticoran Marines, but are barely bronze age technologically (on account of their planets' [[PlanetOfHats hat]] being moss).
* ActionGirl: ''Tons'' of.
* ActionMom: Take a wild guess.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Surprisingly averted with the Republic of Haven; while the regime itself is a bloodthirsty monster, several of its officers are shown to be truly decent people who are loyal to what they believe their country could be, especially Lester Tourville, Warner Caslet, Shannon Foraker, Admiral Giscard, Eloise Pritchart, and even Thomas Theisman.
** Or perhaps ''especially'' Thomas Theisman...?
* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: When we meet Honor's mother, the first words out of her mouth are an observation of how nice Venizelos' butt is and [[CrowningMomentOfFunny telling Honor she needs to tap that]]. And she does that kind of thing ''all the time''.
* AmericanCustomaryMeasurements: Grayson is the only planet that apparently still uses them. Particularly when it comes to Baseball, while Manticorans are left wondering why they don't just round everything up to the nearest meter.
* {{Anvilicious}}: The destruction of the starships ''Sovereignty of the People'' and ''Equality'' by [[spoiler:StateSec]] during the coup that put [[spoiler:Saint-Just]] in power.
** Also, just about anything to do with politics.
* AnyoneCanDie: Unexpected character deaths abound. Even in the last ten pages after a dozen books building the character up only for them to get killed by a mook. Even the title character was once intended to kick the bucket, but a mixture of fan's talking him out of it and Eric Flint's moving things 20 years too early saved her. It was supposed to be her son who dealt with the Solarians and Mesa. WordofGod says only Honor's valet is invulnerable, because his wife likes him.
* AntiHero: Mostly as a secondary characters. Chief Harkness, Jeremy X, Klaus Hauptmann, etc. The Spook Duo are more than willing to ignore some pesky little rules in their pursuits too...
* ApocalypseHow: The Eridani Edict, enforced by the Solarian League, says Thou Shall Not Bombard a Planet, unless you control the orbitals and have given the inhabitants a chance to surrender. (Controlling the orbitals is the equivalent of holding a sword to the planet's neck, and only the incredibly stupid do not surrender.) A brief [[{{Infodump}} discussion]] in one book on planetary traffic control near planets also points out that the possibility of ''accidental'', civilian [=Relativity kill vehicles=] are at least taken into account, at least where Manticore is concerned.
* ArtificialGravity
* AristocratsAreEvil: Pavel Young might as well be the poster boy of this trope.
** Often averted, however - much as the Youngs, High Ridge, New Kiev, Burdette, and the like are scum, Cromarty, the Alexanders, Queen Elizabeth, Protector Benjamin, and Honor herself are all examples of aristocrats in the best sense of the word. Any series this laden with nobility is going to have examples from both sides of the fence, especially when the author has strong opinions on what constitutes good and bad aristocrats.
* ArmCannon: Honor's current cybernetic arm packs a pulser (essentially a high-tech gauss pistol) inside it. It's not huge; the index finger is the barrel of the gun, and to use it she's got to blow the fingertip off.
* AttemptedRape: Pavel Young tries to rape Honor in the backstory of the first book. She beats the snot out of him, but is too scared to press charges, leading to much of the plot of the first four novels.
* AuthorAvatar: [[GodModeSue Victor Cachat]] to series coauthor Eric Flint. Weber's is probably Honor, unless it's Hamish Alexander. [[spoiler:He does gets to marry Honor.]]
** Here I thought the consensus was that Weber's avatar was Protector Benjamin.
* {{Badass}}: Most of the cast. Notably Honor herself, Thomas Theisman (who ''Honor'' is afraid of!), Admiral Lester 'Cowboy' Tourville, and ''especially'' Victor Cachat. Really, it would be easier to list the named characters that aren't one, most of them are either offhand references or are such arrogant, rich, stupid, stuck up, antagonists that they could qualify for being {{Badass}}es in how stupid and evil they are.
* {{Badass Family}}: The Zilwicki clan. [[HeroicSacrifice Posthumous]] war hero mom, {{Genius Bruiser}} super-spy dad, {{Cute Bruiser}} and {{Lady of War}}-in-training daughter, rabble-rousing anti-slavery step-mom, {{A Child Shall Lead Them}} adopted daughter, and that doesn't even count the super-spies, [[SuperSoldier Super Soldiers]], and various freedom-fighters who make up the family friends.
* BattleButler: Grayson steadholders accumulate entire ''units'' of these, in the form of their personal armsmen. Honor, of course, collects the most awesome set of them, as personified in their BadAss leader, Andrew [=LaFollet=]. Though special mention goes to Cathy Montaigne's butler who is an ex-combat slave and undercover freedom fighter.
* BavarianFireDrill: TwoWords -- Victor Cachat. Also, the only steward in the RMN who isn't actually ''in'' the Navy, [[spoiler:James [=MacGuiness=]]].
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Subverted and played straight. Honor gets torn to pieces in quite a few books only to return as good as ever the next book. Just with a few new prosthetic pieces. Like an arm and an eye.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Honor can be pushed too far. The results are ''bad'' for the ones who do it. Also, even though treecats are "cute" to humans and love children, they turn into ruthless living implements of death (once described as berserking buzzsaws) when "their" humans are threatened. Also Shannon Foraker, it's rather shocking when she says "Oops!" and two full squadrons of super-dreadnoughts ([[WhatMeasureIsAMook with crew numbering in the tens of thousands]]) get annihilated by a few keystrokes.
* {{BFG}}: The tri-barrels carried by marines, plasma rifles, a few others.
* BigBad: [[spoiler:Albrecht Detweiler.]]
* {{Bishonen}}: Victor Cachat, repeatedly described as cute, and Jeremy X, who was ''literally'' genetically engineered to be one, to fit his intended role as a jester.
* BlitheSpirit: Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou Harrington, being Beowulfian, enjoys playing this trope immensely. She often managed to scandalize even "libertine" Manticorans, not to mention members of her husband's much more straitlaced society on Sphynx. But when Harringtons moved to [[DeepSouth Grayson]]...
** [[CoolBigSis Ginny Usher]] seems to be the personal BlitheSpirit for just one man, her [[BigBrotherMentor adopted little brother]] ''Victor Cachat''.
* BondCreatures: Treecats which "adopt" humans form an instant and indissoluble psychic bond with them.
* BoringInvincibleHero: Honor, though this is highly YourMileageMayVary prone, with this being the negative perspective and requiring her several injuries to be handwaved.
* [[spoiler:ButICantBePregnant]]: Honor in At All Costs. The trope name is more or less a direct quote, by the way. There was a birth control failure, when a paperwork error prevented her doctor from realizing her implant had [[spoiler:expired during her "death" on Hades]].
* CallASmeerpARabbit: Sphinxian chipmunks.
* CanonSue: A frequent accusation leveled at Honor, occasionally even in the books themselves, depending on how you interpret the lines in question. Oscar St. Just has a very good line near the beginning of ''Ashes of Victory'', and there are ruminations from Pavel Young and William Fitzclarence about it, as well.
** Victor Cachat. ''[[GodModeSue Again]]''.
** Just so long as TropesAreNotBad is remembered.
* TheCaptain: Honor and many others, this being a navy focused series.
* CasualInterstellarTravel: Helps that it's the year 1921 p.d., or AD 4023. 2,000 years of interstellar travel with it becoming casual only in the last 600 years after long work. Until the discovery of wormholes the travel times between the edges of human space could take years. Even travel between two close stars will take a week or more. It was also dangerous, with high risks of running into a NegativeSpaceWedgie.
* CatchPhrase: "Let's be about it." Honor's use of it as such has been picked up on in the books. Honor herself has been zinged a few times by having it quoted back to her by one of the other characters. And we learned in ''Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington'' that she picked it up from her first captain, during her middie cruise.
* {{Chessmaster}}: Half the cast are top notch military strategists, others are political strategists, and some are both.
* ChristianityIsCatholic: Averted.
** Grayson state church is a new religion evolved from Christianity much as Christianity did from Judaism. They have an additional scriptural book alongside the Bible. This is partly because of technology dominating on Earth (originally their bogeyman) according to Saint Austin, the church founder. Also, 'God' is known as the Tester and Comforter among other things in their religion, the Church of Humanity Unchained. In short, they're basically Space Mormons.
** The splinter church of Masada rejects the New Testament and takes the Old Testament very literally.
** Judaism seems to have a lot more sects and denominations than there are now.
** Honor is Third Stellar, which appears to be an outgrowth of Methodists.
** The Queen is 2nd Reformation Catholic; in ''At All Costs'', Reverend Sullivan notes that the Second Reformation Catholic Church had "seen its uncontested primacy broken long before Man ever left Old Earth", a clear reference to the Reformation that we know. Apparently Mother Church had another one.
** At one point, Honor mentions to a young Grayson man in her employ that an average Manticoran Navy ship carries a multitude of religious beliefs, and that her own had everyone from atheist to Reform Scientologist on board.
* CoolShip: Honor's various commands are often as quirky as she is, though the cruiser and battlecruiser she commanded in the second through fourth books were pretty normal ships for their class, if sometimes fresh off the assembly line.
**The converted merchant ships that she used in ''Honor Among Enemies'' was cool. It had superdreadnought class lasers and MacrossMissileMAssacre amounts of missile pods. Which were stealth to boot.
* CopyProtection: Averted in this and all other Baen titles. Their books made digitally available, unencrypted and in all common formats, on CD compilations that are explicitly stated as free for distribution by any third parties, like the site linked in this page's header. It deserves a mention, because it's [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome awesome!]] Given how friendly they are, you'd have to be a {{jerkass}} to steal from Baen.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: played straight and subverted.
** Played straight with the board of directors of Manpower Incorporated, and all of Mesa's rulers in general [[spoiler:at first, it's becoming increasingly clear that the whole CorruptCorporateExecutive thing is just a cover for their real evil scheme.]]
** Subverted with the Hauptmann Cartel and Honor's various enterprises, though Hauptman originally played it straight -- the very first book has him getting into a conflict with Honor that involves [[spoiler:threatening her parents' careers.]] He gets so nasty [[spoiler:she issues a ''death threat'' to stop him cold]]. His HeelFaceTurn comes only many books and many in-universe years later [[spoiler:after Harrington saves his daughter Stacey's life]] and Stacey [[CallingTheOldManOut called the old man out]].
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Victor Cachat is guaranteed to pull ''at least'' one off in every book he is in. It's a rule.
** Shannon Foraker, a Havenite 'tac witch,' has several, such as the BewareTheNiceOnes entry.
** Nimitz in ''The Honor of the Queen''. The moral here? If you enter a room intending to assassinate someone, and there is a treecat in the room, your first action upon entry should be to shoot the 'cat.
*** MUCH easier said than done. 'Cats have much quicker reaction than average human, and much lower body mass to react on. It's ''really'' difficult to outspeed the 'cat, and we haven't started on the whole empathy thing yet...
*** In that case, the moral is: If you enter a room intending to assassinate someone, and there is a treecat in the room, either abort your mission immediately, or switch to nuclear weapons.
*** The treecat has no ranged weapons. You do. Pray to your gods that you're out of easy leaping distance and good at hitting small moving targets... on second thought, yeah, break out the powered armor and grenades.
** [[spoiler:Horace Harkness]].
*** As noted on [[spoiler:FakeDefector]], that's [[spoiler:SIR Horace Harkness]] if you please!
** Let's not forget the main character here guys! Let's start with the fact why the phrase an 'Honor Death Ride' exists.
** The [[strike:Battle]] Massacre of Hell.
*** It's noted in the next book that if that hadn't gone ''exactly'' right, she would have gotten her entire command killed and quite possibly [[spoiler:a good chunk of the prisoner population]]. Honor's best friend characterizes it as one of the craziest gambles in the history of space combat.
** We don't [[NoodleIncident see it directly]], but Havenite Admiral Amos Parnell pulls off what may qualify as one by getting almost half his fleet out of a deep-space ambush against no less a commander than Earl White Haven in the 3rd battle of Yeltsin ... an ambush that he went into not only out-numbered against opponents with better equipment, but misled by some rather devious misinformation schemes plotted by Admirals Givens and Caparelli.
** [[spoiler:Jack [=McBride=]]] in the ''Torch of Freedom''. Blowing the whole Mesan research center up to smithereens, destroying ''all'' the information [[spoiler:Alignment]] has on the Ballroom, and generally confusing the hell out of everything, up to the point that even [[MagnificentBastard Albrecht Detweiler]] himself has completely skewed grasp of the situation -- well, that's a hell of a HeroicSacrifice!
*** In the same novel, [[MrFixit Andrew Artlett]] repairing a hyper generator [[MemeticMutation IN THE CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!!]]. Well he wasn't in a cave, but given his [[UsedFuture spaceship]] [[TheAllegedCar condition]], its machine shop was hardly better... And he indeed made it mostly from scraps.
*** Rear Admiral Luiz Roszak, who up to the point was mainly a NonActionGuy [[TheStrategist Strategist]], finally entered the fray in the [[spoiler:late StateSec's goons attack on Torch]], which looked just like Battle of Monica reprised, in the terms of carnage at least, and proved to be just the second [[TheDeterminator Terekhov]].
* CultColony: Grayson and Masada. Possibly Zanzibar. Probably a few more.
* DaysOfFuturePast: The Napoleonic Wars set in [[RecycledInSPACE the future.]]
* DeathWorld: Several.
** Grayson is so toxic (very high concentrations of heavy metals) that breathing the dust in its air will give you lung cancer (though long before that you'll die of lead poisoning). Inhabitants must live in sealed environments with carefully filtered air; food must be grown either in soil detoxified at great expense and carefully isolated, or in even more expensive (but somewhat less laborious) orbital farms. [[spoiler:It later becomes known that they were also genetically modified without their knowledge by a small handful of colonists; survival would have been otherwise impossible in the early days.]]
** The prison planet Hades ("nicknamed" Hell by its inmates, not that that's much different from its actual name) has a lousy climate (mostly: it's refreshingly ''not'' a SingleBiomePlanet -- the main StateSec base is practically a ''resort''. Some of the personnel mention how they're going to go surfing after they [[MoralEventHorizon finish having their way with the prisoners]]). Its wildlife is distinctly Red in Tooth and Claw. And worst of all, the biochemistry of the place is such that humans ''just can't eat the native life,'' cruelly letting any inmate cut off from imported supplies starve amidst lush greenery and easy prey.
*** As it turns out, there is one plant we can at least digest. It causes brain damage. And if you tried to live on it and nothing else for long, you'd still die of vitamin deficiencies.
** Guanyin (the original name of the Andermani Empire's capitol planet) also counts -- it had undetected bacteria that ate ''chlorophyll,'' leading to mass crop failure and famine.
** Mesa has a great climate, but its native life was not compatible with humans. Rather than terraforming the planet to suit them, Mesans then made changes in their ''population'', ultimately Mesa-forming people to be able to live on it.
** Honor's homeworld Sphinx comes close sometimes. The climate is very cold, the gravity is on the high end for non-genetically engineered folks, and the native wildlife is very dangerous. Two of the only three species we know much of anything about are both apex predators, and both of them are ''exceedingly'' dangerous. Hexapumas can be stopped by a powerful gun, but treecats are so small and agile that they're near-impossible targets with a truly frightening strength for their small size. Fortunately, treecats are also generally quite friendly to humans, but they are perfectly capable of disposing of humans that they don't like, as Nimitz and a few others have demonstrated from time to time. This is not a planet you want to be on without at least mid-20th century technology to even the odds.
*** Nah, Sphinx's nowhere near the textbook definition of a DeathWorld, it's just somewhat unpleasant. If you want to complain about gravity, don't bother with 1.3g Sphinx, talk about 2.7g San Martin. Everyone lives on mountaintops so that the air pressure isn't lethal, and they've been genetically engineered to be short and ludicrously muscular.
*** Any inhabitant of Gryphon knows that Sphinxians are sissies. Gryphon has ''real'' weather. A "blizzard" on Sphinx qualifies as a moderate sea breeze.
* {{Determinator}}: Honor & Victor Cachat (''again'', seriously the guy made the Terminator look tame the first time he was introduced in ''From the Highlands''), to name just two.
* DesignatedVictim: Poor, poor Mr. Buckley. He's Baen's general designated victim.
* DoomedByCanon: There are a great deal of historical parallels with the series being HoratioHornblower InSpace. However, over time the plot goes OffTheRails and several characters doomed by canon HoratioHornblower end up surviving and vice versa, with Napoleon's expy suffering a rather bad fate. Then there's Oyster Bay...
* DramaticIrony: ''On Basilisk Station'' ends with [[spoiler:Honor chasing a ship trying to ''stop'' a Havenite battle fleet from making a prearranged jump. Honor thinks they're trying to summon said fleet. The captain of the opposing ship even lampshades it.]]
* DumbMuscle: The Scrags; how many times do you see [[SuperSoldier Super Soldiers]] that couldn't pass a high school entrance exam?
** The Scrags' problem is that they've got SuperSoldier ''genes''... but the ones we see live in a slum and have no education. Guess we know which side of the Nature versus Nurture debate Eric Flint comes down on.
*** TruthInTelevision: the critical differences between a thug and a soldier, or an incompetent soldier and a competent one, are Training and Experience.
** A good number of State Security's thugs fit this one to a T.
** Somewhat subverted by the Havenite public educational system, which has been the subject of generations of corruption and systematic dumbing down. At first, this was due to genuine (but misguided) egalitarian sentiments, but later embraced by the newly founded oligarchy as a tool to make the population easier to control. This has lead to the situation when Havenite college degree holders are often little better educated than Manticoran (or Beowulfan, or, for that matter, Old Earth) high-school dropouts.
*** This difference in education levels has bitten Haven in the posterior regions more than once, so one of the genuinely positive deeds of the Committee was to revamp the school system.
* EnemyCivilWar: Haven, twice over the course of the books. It is also heavily hinted that the same fate awaits [[spoiler:the Solarian League]] in the near future.
* EnemyMine: A couple of instances of this.
** Alfredo Yu when he defects to Manticore after he realizes he will [[YouHaveFailedMe get blamed]] for the monumental Peep screw-up at Masada. He eventually ends up an officer in the Grayson Navy.
** Warner Caslet, another Peep officer, also defects to Manticore in an impossible situation.
** Inverted after a fashion: Victor Cachat (are you surprised really?) has managed to rope Manticoran secret agent Anton Zilwicki, in addition to a Manticoran warship or two, into doing the Republic's dirty work on more then one occasion.
** It has also been heavily hinted in ''At All Costs'' [[spoiler:that Zilwicky and Cachat will get proof back to their respective governments of Mesan manipulation and sabotage of the peace talks in order to keep Manticore and Haven shooting at each other. If that happens, it is very possible that Manticore and Haven might team up to give Mesa a ''very'' through ass kicking.]]
*** That should work unless [[spoiler:the war with the Solarian League that appears to be brewing at the end of ''Storm From the Shadows" heats up. In which case even Manticore and Haven combined are in deep trouble, because the Solarians are so big, [[WeHaveReserves even their reserves]] [[WeHaveReserves have reserves]].]]
**** And, just to offset this, the possible [[EnemyCivilWar messy dissolution of the League]] is brewing even since ''The Crown of Slaves''. Never underestimate MWW's ability [[ThirtyXanatosPileup to churn up intrigue]] and hang the {{ChekhovsGun}}s all over the walls.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Basically what drove [[spoiler:Jack [=McBride=]'s HeelFaceTurn]] in the ''Torch of Freedom''.
* EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses: Not in-your-face, but a lot, mostly subverted in various ways. Given that Grayson Steadholder title basically equals royalty, we have Lt. Abigail Hearns, Miss Owens, and Honor as well, at least formally. There's also Queen Berry's intelligence advisor, Princess Ruth Winton, then Vice Admiral Michelle Henke, Countess of Gold Peak and Elizabeth's first cousin, and many, many others. Captain Terekhov once notes that between Lt. Hearns, and Midshipwoman Zilwicki (Crown Princess Helen of Torch) his ship has a super-abundance of princesses.
* EvilutionaryBiologist: practically the only type of biologist in the employ of Manpower Inc.
** Utterly averted, though, by the Beowulfans, including Honor's own mother.
*** Because Mesans are, in a nutshell, the rogue Beowulfans who didn't like the Beowulf Code. Thus, between them, ItsPersonal.
*** In the latest novel, the ItsPersonal even comes with a Beowulfan commando team that exists solely to attack Mesan slavery facilities.
* ExplosionsInSpace: Completely averted, all explosions in vacuum are realistically described.
* {{Expy}}: Pierre and Saint-Just have a pretty good Stalin/Beria vibe going.
** Stalin and Beria were your first thoughts about who [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre Rob S. Pierre]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Saint-Just Saint-Just]]? Admittedly, evil dictators tend to have some pretty frightening similarities, and parts of the post-revolutionary government have a very Soviet feel (e.g., political officers), but it's much more blatantly modeled after the French Revolution.
*** Haven is a mix-and-match society as it is, so why its tyrants shouldn't be mix-and-match too?
**Emily Alexander is basically just a [[GenderBender genderflipped]] version of Stephen Hawking, just much more better-looking.
* EyepatchOfPower: [[spoiler:Honor loses her left eye in ''The Honor of the Queen'', but it is replaced by a prosthetic that has some superiority despite the imagery from it not seeming as 'real'. The prosthetic is burned out by a technician aboard ''Tepes'' in the book ''In Enemy Hands'', and goes unreplaced for over two years.]]
* FakeDefector: [[spoiler:Horace Harkness.]]
** That's [[spoiler:''Sir'' Horace Harkness]], please-and-thank-you!
* FanNickname: MWW -- or Mad Wizard Weber -- for David Weber, obviously. ''Very'' common on Baen's Bar and quite rare everywhere else. Derived from Mr. Weber's often serving as a GameMaster for paper-and-dice RPGs, prior to his big break as an author.
** Citizen Admiral Cluster Bomb, AKA Citizen Admiral Esther [=McQueen=].
*** That one was actually an ''in-universe'' nickname for her, even.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Some blatantly obvious, some mixed-and-matched:
** The Star Kingdom of Manticore is 18th century Britain: Manticore itself is England, Landing is London, and Gryphon and Sphinx are Scotland and Ireland, respectively, though without the brutal exploitation the English applied to those two countries in that era.
*** There was some unrest on Gryphon, though.
**** If you read carefully, you'll notice that's because a lot of the nobles on Gryphon, in the parlance of the series, aren't worth the pressure to blow them out the lock. The central government not only doesn't have anything to do with it, the Crown routinely sides with the common citizens when issues flare up, who are thus very loyal to the Queen.
** The People's Republic of Haven is mostly 18th century Revolutionary France -- lampshaded with a revolutionary leader named Rob S. Pierre -- mixed with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin for good measure.
*** Let me repeat: [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast ''Rob. S. Mutherlovin'. Pierre.'']]
**** [[spoiler:They get better.]]
** The planet Medusa is colonial North America, complete with Native Medusans.
** The Andermani Empire is explicitly modeled on the Kingdom of Prussia (that is, in-universe their society was engineered by its founder in Prussia's image), but the vast majority of the population is ethnically Chinese.
*** Including the royal family. Whose members sport names like "Chien-Lu Anderman, Herzog von Rabenstrange" (That's the Emperor's cousin, his close friend, confidant and advisor).
*** They were founded by a guy who thought he was the reincarnation of Frederick the Great...to the point of running around in full Prussian military uniform. Just the first in a line of loony, yet competent, emperors.
** The Solarian League seems like either the European Union with teeth, or the modern United States, depending on who you ask with a heavy dose of late Imperial Rome, in terms of size, hegemony, and the structure by which its outer provinces are governed. This is much stronger in the most recent books, which are clearly setting up its messy dissolution.
*** They're so '''big''' compared to everything else that historical analogies fail. No historical nation on Earth has been larger than all its neighbors and competitors by as big a margin as the League is. It's more fair to compare all the major players in the stories as different counties in California and the Solarian League as the rest of the United States.
** Grayson admits that it's Meiji Japan, complete with kudzu, with a dose of the DeepSouth. Which side the kudzu comes from, it's hard to tell.
*** Don't forget Honor's little episode with the katanas in ''Flag in Exile''...
*** Which is explained by the fact after their technological society started to fall apart, they based part of their culture on the movie ''The Seven Samurai,'' since it was the only source they had for information on pre-industrial warfare. .
*** Not to mention Grayson also loves Baseball.
**** Which nobody except them plays anymore.
***** Not true. There are at least six other planets that still play it!
****** Hell, even if they didn't Protector Benjamin would just gravely say, "This is ''baseball''" whilst leaving everyone else confused as hell.
*** They're also one of the last planets to still use ties, as well as US Air Force style uniforms for their space navy complete with clouds and thunderbolts for field officers. (Naturally, this is commented on as anachronistic, as obviously SpaceIsAnOcean and should have uniforms to match.)
** The Silesian Confederacy is a nice pastiche of the worst parts of the Third World in terms of corruption, ineffectual government, and generally being a very bad place to be.
*** As well as the actual Silesia and its role in history between France, England, Prussia, and Austria.
** The Talbott Cluster is ''also'' a nice pastiche of the worst parts of the Third World in... see above.
*** Except for the planet Montana, which is, well, exactly what it sounds like as a counterpart culture.
* FasterThanLightTravel
* FeudalFuture
* FutureSlang: or rather, future military terminology. "Ship of the Wall" instead of "Ship of the Line", etc.
* GattacaBabies: Manpower Incorporated's hat. Let's take a look at their [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_%28Honorverse%29#Manpower_Incorporated product line]] shall we?
** They also produce ''themselves'' just the same way. Not always, but often enough.
* GeniusBruiser: Anton Zilwicki, Kevin Usher (acts like a drunken thug of a SpaceMarine), Honor to a certain degree (six-feet-two, very physically fit, and a seventh-degree (out of 9) black belt in a form of unarmed combat), and a lot of others.
** Anton Zilwicki is perhaps the single most extreme example, being both a (three-times) gold medalist in the Manticoran equivalent of the Olympics for Greco-Roman wrestling, a HeavyWorlder with such a massive build that he can ''literally'' tear a [[SuperSoldier Scrag]] limb from limb with only moderate effort, and one of the greatest computer hackers and intelligence agents in known space.
* GeniusCripple: Emily Alexander. A triplegic for decades, and easily THE one most shrewd mind in the whole kingdom. Sometimes she looks just like Stephen Hawking's {{expy}} of sorts, only with politics and drama instead of physics.
* GodModeSue: Victor Cachat is Eric Flint's AuthorAvatar.
* GoodRepublicEvilEmpire: Not so much subverted as demolished with comparisons of the democratic monarchy of the Star Empire of Manticore to the totalitarian oligarchy style government of the People's Republic of Haven and the Solarian League. The trope is also reference in-universe as one of the problems Manticore has in its war against Haven: Solarians tend to automatically think in this trope, and though the League is neutral, public opinion skews against Manticore.
* GovernmentDrugEnforcement: Manpower, Inc. uses a combination of genetic engineering and powerful medication to control a population of "genetic slaves" to do manual labor, serve as super soldiers, and act as sex slaves. Also, it's heavily hinted that Haven used drugs in the drinking water and food supply to keep a lid on rebellious proles in their welfare state gone wild.
* GreatEscape: Honor Harrington is responsible for one of the grandest examples on record; she managed to take over a whole prison planet and made it back to friendly space with half a million freed inmates.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: Although it's not evident in the first book, by the second book we get the first sympathetic Havenite characters, and the series has been trending this way since then, with Manticore as the LighterShadeOfGrey. By the beginning of ''War of Honor'', the two sides are both in about the same place in terms of morality, and it looks as though they will be teaming up in the future against Mesa.
* HappilyMarried: Hamish and Emily Alexander ([[spoiler:and later Honor happily married to both Hamish and Emily Alexander-Harrington]]), Alfred and Allison Harrington, and many, many others.
* HeavyWorlder: As noted elsewhere on this page, Gryphon is a high gravity world, as is San Martin in the Trevor's Star system and some other worlds, making people from those worlds fit this trope.
* HeelFaceTurn: As a consequence of a large amount of CharacterDevelopment (and [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters characters]], of course), there's lot of it in the series.
** Klaus Hauptman went from the typical CorruptCorporateExecutive in the first book, through just some {{jerkass}} who learned to tread lightly where Honor is concerned later, through JerkWithAHeartOfGold in the ''Honor Among Enemies'', to the outright hero (although [[IsntItSad sadly sidelined]]) in the latest books. It had required a lot of CharacterDevelopment and CallingTheOldManOut on his daughter part, though.
** Havenites are, probably, the most well known example, given that they've had not one, but ''two'' major revolutions in just 20 years, with several smaller coups in between, and the latest bunch of revolutionaries is [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified significantly better than others]].
** [[spoiler:Jack [=McBride=]]] in the latest novel, ''Torch of Freedom'', combined with EvenEvilHasStandards and TooDumbToLive on the LRPB's side.
* HeroicSociopath: A couple...
** Jeremy X, leader of the Audubon Ballroom. An escaped genetic slave, engineered to be a sort of court jester; now he's kind of the bastard love child of the Joker and the Punisher. He does Very Bad Things to Very Bad People, laughing and cracking wise all the while...
** Victor Cachat doesn't fit the ''trope'' (he does not unduly enjoy his work, and isn't villainous in nature) but may actually fit a ''clinical'' definition of sociopathy (which is essentially an extreme lack of empathy).
*** He certainly doesn't ''lack'' empathy, he's just somehow [[TheDeterminator able to turn it off]] for a while.
** Honor herself has traits that lead this way, although she also has a great deal of empathy and self-discipline that keeps them under control.
* HeroicSacrifice:
** Andreas Venizelos stayed behind covering Honor and others' getaway from the ''Tepes'' in the ''In The Enemy Hands''.
** Similarly, [[spoiler: Jack [=McBride=], a ''Mesan'', for Gog's sake!, security official in the ''Torch of Freedom'']] who opted to stay behind to cover the heroes' escape.
** Helen Zilwicki, sacrificing her ship to let civilian ships(with her husband and daughter on board) escape an attack from the enemy navy.
* {{Homage}}: The entire series started as one big homage to HoratioHornblower, though as of late it has moved away from that.
* HonorBeforeReason: Subverted, characters express a very low opinion of about commanders who futilely get their commands destroyed just to not be seen as running away.
** It is mentioned, however, that the "honor of the Star Kingdom" is one of the few acceptable reasons to stand and fight a suicidal battle. That's because [[HeroicSacrifice such fights]] tend to build quite a reputation, and reputation is a fuel that merchant empires (which Manticore effectively is) run on.
* HugeGuyTinyGirl: Alfred and Allison Harrington. Alfred is 4 cm taller than his daughter, which puts him squarely on a 2 meters mark, while Allison is somewhere around two-thirds that.
** Inverted with Anton Zilwicky and Cathy Montaigne: Anton is short and stout, Cathy is tall and lanky, though their difference isn't that much pronounced as with Harringtons.
*** His usual partner Victor Cachat is essentially in the same kind of pairing -- he's of average height, but his girlfriend Thandi Palane is from [[DeathWorld Ndebele]] and is positively huge by any standard.
** To a lesser extent, also on the Havenite side is [[GeniusBruiser Kevin]] and Virginia Usher.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: All even-numbered books are titled with some [[JustForPun pun]] involving the title character's first name.
* IdiotBall: Villains sometimes like to toss it between them, the current holder being the [[spoiler:Mesan Alignment's]] LRPB.
* InertialDampening, complete with explanation of how it works, and what happens to any poor SOB on board a ship that has it fail.
** Though only the affect of a failure on humans is ever described, leading some to falsely assume he messed up and left the equipment out. It's just more fun to describe people as chunky salsa.
* IndyPloy: The area where Victor Cachat (really, [[GodModeSue who else?]]) shines. The guy can take any, just ''any'' situation, no matter how craptastic, and turn it on its head with a bit of creativity and a whole lot of [[TheDeterminator sheer guts]].
* {{Infodump}}s: David Weber's specialty; the series is flooded with these. Arguably the worst and most egregious use was in the climax of the first book. Honor's vastly outsized and outgunned starship is chasing a Havenite ship, trying to get to it and take it down before it can make good its escape. It's a tense chase as the range closes, with both sides readying their weapons and defenses, steeling their resolve...and then Weber dumps a full ''ten pages'' of the history of hyperspace travel in the middle of it. It really could have gone most anywhere else in the book and would have fit better.
* ItsPersonal: Several times, but notably Honor's duel with Pavel Young.
** Also, Beowulf and Mesa, and everything between them.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: The swords of Grayson are katanas with a western hilt put on them. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] as Grayson based a fair chunk of its society off movies like ''SevenSamurai''.
* KillEmAll: ''At All Costs'' manages to kill off at least a third of the cast, including some of the most important characters on both sides.
* KnightTemplar: the entire Committee of Public Safety. The old government was indeed corrupt and needed to go, and they did make a ''ton'' of positive reforms to the economy. But they drowned Haven in a sea of blood doing so. Specifically referencing Napoleon and his "Whiff of Grapeshot" when a riot is put down using orbital bombardment.
** Note, that the aptly named eponymous short story, which describes this event, portrays rioters in such extremely negative light that Rob S. Pierre looks downright benevolent by comparison.
* LadyOfWar: Honor first and foremost, although most female military types count. Of course, considering the fact that it's a military science fiction series, it makes sense that the LadyOfWar archetype comes up regularly.
* LesYay: The ''first'' thing Berry says to Thandi when they meet is "if you were a guy, I'd tear my clothes off right now!" Various lines throughout ''Crown of Slaves'' indicate that if Thandi weren't already taken or completely straight herself, Berry might have done so anyway.
** Other than that, though, it's obvious that Weber doesn't care much about such stuff and always rush to his true fetish -- political intrigue and fleets' deployment numbers. Eric Flint spends a bit more time on it.
* LensmanArmsRace: Superior technology is often treated as a powerful tactical edge, but one that can be and is overcome if not used properly or simply overwhelmed. [[spoiler:Fourth Yeltsin is a good example. While the electronic warfare capabilities of the GSN are key to Honor's deception there, stock Havenite superdreadnoughts could have done just as thorough a job of wrecking the Havenite battleships as the refit captured [=SDs=] under her command do and with only marginally higher losses.]]
* LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt: A character in ''Basilisk'' is given a full three pages of backstory before being "killed" while trying to escape.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Between eleven main storyline novels, four spinoff novels, and four short story anthologies, the series' cast numbers in the ''hundreds'' only for named characters. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honorverse_characters The list of Honorverse characters]] on TheOtherWiki is 150K long and still growing.
* LowerDeckEpisode: ''Shadow of Saganami'' focused largely on four midshipmen fresh out of the academy. Also, ''Honor Among Enemies'' spent a great deal of time with new ratings on their first deployment. And, of course, many of the short stories qualify.
* MagnificentBastard: Honor considers Thomas Theisman to be one and Theisman seems to return the favor. Then there is Victor Cachat who proves to be a heavy weight contender for the title with his actions in ''Crown of Slaves.''
** While above examples are just contenders, Oscar Saint-Just and Albrecht Detweiler are ''the'' ones. With emphasis on the "bastard" part.
* MamaBear: Honor lives by this. Whether it's her crew, her family, her Steading, or anyone she considers under her protection, attacking them is [[strike:practically]] committing suicide.
* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler: Detweiler]] has had a hand in just about every major event in the books, if he didn't just plan them outright to begin with.
* ManipulativeBastard: Victor Cachat, ''[[{{RunningGag}} again]].'' Eric Flint, whatever you were smoking when you designed him, please tell us where to get some.
* [[MacrossMissileMassacre Manticoran Missile Massacre]]: Weber is fond of fleets getting utterly annihilated by waves of missiles. Interestingly, however, this is a fairly new development in universe, as prior to the technological and tactical advances of the Havenite wars it was just too hard to kill a capital ship with missiles.
** In fact, the Solarian League thinks it's still impossible...
*** Battle Fleet types, at least.
* MatchCut
* MegaCorp: Manpower Incorporated is the poster child for this trope, although it's not the only one in the setting.
* MemeticBadass: Victor Cachat -- of this very page.
* MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds: Honor has cost the Manticoran navy a pretty penny in destroyed ships under her command. Got lampshaded and then reigned in.
* MisguidedMissile: A most dreaded thing for any naval commander due to Eridani Edict.
* MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness: Weber attempts to write Hard Science fiction, while using several coincidences of {{Applied Phlebotinum}} to justify combat being [[SpaceIsAnOcean explicitly naval in nature]].
** This troper doesn't remember many naval conflicts that were commonly decided by ability to detect the opponents before they detect you and then MacrossMissileMassacre them from enormous distances. And when ships form an order of battle, they do so for not-exclusively-naval purpose of mutual protection from incoming missiles.
*** That's because the tactics are based on a cross of ''modern'' naval tactics, which revolve around the threat of antiship missiles and long range radar, and those of the Napoleonic era, which depended on maneuver, battles of the line/wall with stand-off cannon/grasers, and "crossing the T". There haven't been many major naval battles in the modern era (yet), so those tactics aren't as famous as the ones of WorldWarTwo or earlier.
*** The Battle of Guadalcanal was used as a template for one of these battles, with the role of radar guided gunnery by the US versus the Japanese Optical Gunnery being quoted by the Author.
* MonsterClown: Jeremy X, Audubon Ballroom leader and Torch's Secretary of War. A former [[CloningBlues genetic slave]] intended to be a house entertainer, he became a [[HeroicSociopath terrorist/freedom fighter extraordinaire]], but still keeps quite a few of his clownish habits. Not to mention a rather vitriolic sense of humor and the best pistol hand in the known universe.
* MoralEventHorizon: StateSec does this as a matter of course. Then there's what the Masadans did to the crew of the HMS Madrigal...the pirates in ''Honor Among Enemies''...Lord Burdette's role in [[spoiler:killing a middle school class in ''Flag In Exile'']]...Let's just say that Weber makes ''damn'' sure the villains deserve the ''extremely'' satisfying death that awaits them at the end of the book.
* MyCountryRightOrWrong: A number of Havenite military and political officers.
* NoodleIncident: Most notably the Third Battle of Yeltsin.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Again, a number of Havenite military and political officers, most spectacularly Admiral Lester "Cowboy" Tourvile. It was something of a survival trait in the old [=PRH=].
** For a very long time, treecats practiced [[ObfuscatingStupidity Obfuscating Cuteness]]. Treecats are soft, cuddly, affectionate creatures who occasionally "adopt" humans--and they'd love you to think that's all there is to them. As of ''In Enemy Hands'', they're learning how to [[spoiler:communicate using sign language]] and are starting to reveal more details about their culture.
* OhCrap: There are more than a few instances where certain characters realize how monumentally screwed they are:
** Honor has a couple; in ''On Basilisk Station'' when she realizes that the merchant ship she is chasing [[spoiler: isn't really a merchant ship but a Peep Q-ship with the firepower of a heavy battlecruiser]], and in ''The Honor of the Queen'' when she realizes exactly what type of warships the Peeps gave Masada. One of which [[spoiler: ''is'' a heavy battlecruiser]].
** The entire Star Kingdom of Manticore has a couple in ''War of Honor'' and ''At All Costs'' when they realize just exactly what the new Republican Navy is capable of. [[spoiler: Specifically, the RN is capable of reverse engineering or reinventing most of the technology that gave Manticore the lead in the LensmanArmsRace. And of launching ''really big'' surprise attacks.]]
** Oh, and just about any of Victor Cachat's enemies when they realize who they're up against.
** The Peeps have one almost every time the Manties drop their EW or emerge from stealth, most notably at Fourth Yeltsin.
** Conversely, the Manties have one almost every time the Peeps manage to do the same thing, most notably at the (very brief) battle of Adler.
** Havenite CNO Amos Parnell has one we didn't see, but have seen alluded to numerous times, at Third Yeltsin when he walked into an ambush by superior numbers.
** The joint State Security-PRN squadron at Second Cerberus has one, at least for the survivors after the first broadside.
** Albreht Detweiler ''ought'' to have such a moment when implications of the latest snafu on Mesa will finally sink in[[spoiler: and he finally knows that Cachat and Zilwicki are very, ''very'' much ''[[NeverFoundTheBody alive]]'']].
* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: Averted as traditional religions, in addition to some new sects and movements, are alive and well in the Honorverse.
* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: The aforementioned People's Republic of Haven.
* PoweredArmor: quite a few examples, mostly among [[SpaceMarine Space Marines]].
* PsychoLesbian: Oddly for a franchise that features numerous cosmopolitan ''worlds'' the only actual homosexual character (at least in the main series books) was an ... unpleasant person. Although there's no induction that the two characteristics are in any way related. Her heterosexual compatriots were just as bad. [[spoiler: She was one of the characters that intended to jump ship in Silesia using a small nuclear device as a distraction.]]
** Well the only one until At All Costs [[spoiler: Where Emily Alexander (a once famous [[AlwaysCamp thespian]] [[BiTheWay mentions]] that if she was able to feel anything [[IllGirl below her neck]] she'd be at least as sexually attracted to Honor as Hamish is. Possibly she's just a little bit [[EvenTheGirlsWantHer gay for Honor]].]]
*** Emily isn't psycho in the slightest, and her orientation never really comes into the light. After all, Hamish is most definitely a man.
*** Neither psychotic, nor lesbian but still only the second not-entirely-straight character in the whole Honorverse.
*** 'Torch of Freedom' finally adds more persons of other orientations...
* PuttingOnTheReich: Havenite StateSec. It's no surprise their initials are ''SS''. David Weber can be subtle when he wants to be, he just chose not to here.
** [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment I repeat]]: [[ViveLaRevolution ''Rob S. Pierre'']]
*** Never mind the third novel of the series, ''The Short Victorious War''. Not only is it the title, but a quote at the beginning of the work, and even quoted (if perhaps unknowingly) by a Havenite minister in the prologue. At least in the Honor Harrington series, Weber seems to like to demonstrate how ''not'' to do "subtle".
* TheRashomon: Latest novels, which basically just go back and forth in the time period around the Battle Of Manticore. The earliest of them (in the internal chronology, that is), ''Crown of Slaves'', is set in 1919 p.d., while the latest, ''Torch of Freedom'', ends in the spring of 1922. Somewhat justified in that Weber and Flint need to introduce a lot of people and concepts in their greatly expanded universe, but no less frustrating to the reader, who just gets to read about the same events again and again. Especially given the Weber's habit to lapse into chapter-long {{infodump}}s and {{As You Know}}s.
* ReassignmentBackfire: The entire plot of the first novel is Honor Harrington's 'exile' to Basilisk Station.
** It happens again in ''Honor Among Enemies''.
*** And ''again'' in ''War of Honor''. This time, it's subverted- her enemies punt the VillainBall long enough to get a horrible sinking feeling about dumping her into the rapidly deteriorating political situation at Sidemore Station. Ultimately they decide they actually need her there badly enough to risk yet a third backfire. Which, naturally, happens.
*** This was more of a XanatosGambit on their part. If she succeeded, they would make a lot of money, if she failed they wouldn't be any worse off, and maybe this time she'd get herself killed.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Honor Harrington appears to be in her early twenties, too young to be an admiral, but this is the result of life-extending treatments (prolong). As of this writing, the character is over sixty. The drawback is that she is literally 20 years old from a physical standpoint, so her hormones can sometimes make her act that age. 90% of the charicters fall into this category.
* RecycledINSPACE: ''Honor Harrington'' starts as a remake of Horatio Hornblower in space, Manticore being England and Haven being France, complete with Rob S. Pierre running the Committee of Public Safety. Over time, this shifts as State Security gets more focus in-story as a more outright-fascist protector of the Revolution, up to and including [[PuttingOnTheReich Putting On The Comittee For Public Saftey]] By ''Storm From Shadows'' the parallels end, in part because a conflict between [[spoiler: The Solarian League and Manticore]] does not have a historical parallel, and because [[spoiler: the Hornblower-analogue survived her Trafalgar, against authorial expectations]].
* RedBaron: Honor is almost invariably called ''The Salamander'' by the newsies, a nickname that she just barely tolerates.
** Also many other canon nicknames, like ''The Crusher'' for Saganami Island Advanced Tactial Course or ''Nasty Kitty'' for HMS ''Hexapuma''. Also, heaven help you if you call the HMS ''Minotaur'' ''Minnie'' around her XO or Captain.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: In the ''Torch of Freedom'', when [[spoiler: Jack [=McBride=] understood that he wouldn't be able to get away with the others after his HeelFaceTurn]], he opted to stay behind and create a hell of a diversion (in the 50 kiloton range, that is) to buy the heroes a chance.
* RootingForTheEmpire: Late Haven under Pritchart vs Manticore under High Ridge government. Elizabeth's issues about Haven didn't make the situation any better now that High Ridge is out.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Just about anywhere where royalty is involved. Manticore, Grayson, Andermani, Torch...
** [[AristocratsAreEvil Corrupt and unscrupulous]] they may have been but the Legislaturists were very nearly the only people in the old PRH that actually did ''anything''.
* RoyallyScrewedUp: Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore has some issues; especially where anything Havenite is concerned. And then there is the Andermani family, which has had more than its share of rulers with personality quirks. Still, it hasn't stopped them from being effective rulers or the nice guys of the series.
** Elizabeth's issues concerning Haven are quite understandable when you remember that they [[spoiler:assassinated her father, her uncle, her cousin, a man who was practically a second father to her, and a number of her friends]] and [[spoiler: apparently (she mistakenly believes) tried to kill her niece and succeeded in killing a respected naval officer serving as the ambassador to the Solarian League]].
*** [[spoiler:The latter set was Mesa's fault, not Haven's, but they successfully shifted the blame. Mind you, this was fairly easy because she was already irrational about Haven.]]
* RunningGag: Ruth Winton is a brilliant analyst with a lot of political knowledge, but not terribly familiar with history, hence she confidently explains historical references as references to minor contemporary political figures with the same names.
* RuleThirtyFour hinted at in universe: the reader is informed that treecats are not interested in human sexuality. Nevertheless, Havenite tabloids published stories about relations between Queen Elizabeth III and her treecat, among other lurid tales.
* {{Samurai}}: Grayson again, they traditionally considered this an ideal to live up to.
* ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Refreshingly averted. Space is really mutherfrackin' HUGE in the [=HonorVerse=], and times and distances stay the same from one appearance to the next.
** Well... MOSTLY averted. There was the Great Resizing, in which the Superdreadnoughts of the early books have -- thanks to Weber neglecting the SquareCubeLaw -- densities somewhat short of cigar smoke. This is retconned later on, to give them the same masses but much shorter lengths which provide more realistic densities.
* SecretPolice: Havenite State Security.
** Also the Mental Hygiene Police and Internal Security, SS's predecessor services under the Legislaturists.
* ShoutOut: At one point Honor enjoys a Horatio Hornblower novel.
** The planet Erewhon has the same name as a Samuel Butler novel, Haven is also the name of a planet in the CoDominium universe with an oppressive secret police. And let's not forget Grayson and the SevenSamurai...
** An argueable one, but the Havenite navy have the code word "Bounty" meaning, well, [[TheMutiny exactly what you'd think it means]] - seen in ''The Honor of the Queen''.
* ShownTheirWork: Weber went to great length to figure out appropriate scales for vessels, distances, travel times, etc, with one notable exception (see the Great Resizing up in SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale), and he ''also'' goes at great length to give you every fact and figure, to the point of near incomprehensibility. ''Nobody'' in the series will ever say "about two minutes" when "one-hundred-nineteen seconds" is more accurate, and there's so many numbers flying around in any given scene on a ship's bridge that it's best to just skim unless you've got a thing for physics.
** YourMileageMayVary. Exact numbers seem far more realistic in a universe where navigation is this clear-cut and computer-aided, and it's not like they're any longer to read.
*** But it takes a couple of seconds to ''say'' "one-hundred-nineteen seconds" so was that 119 seconds from when they started to say it, or from when they finished, or some point in the middle? Sometimes it gets even worse with people verbally reporting how long until something happens, to the tenth of a second.
* SpaceAmish: The Grayson colonists tried to create a low-tech colony to obey their religion's tenets; their choice of a DeathWorld forced them to compromise. Also the planet Refuge, in the short story ''The Service of the Sword'' located in the anthology of the same name, which was founded by religious dissidents from Haven.
** There's another one mentioned in ''The Shadow of Saganami'' that once again had the misfortune to choose a DeathWorld. While Grayson had a religious schism, the other colony went atheist -- and rather cheerfully so.
* StealthInSpace: At one point normal reaction thrusters are used as a stealthy alternative to the standard impeller wedges, and the plan succeeds in sneaking several warships to within a few hundred thousand kilometers of their targets. Justified as [[IdiotBall the enemy wasn't paying attention]] and thoroughly lampshaded in the next book as being a desperate tactic that was lucky to have worked.
* SpaceIsAnOcean: One of the biggest users. The series treats all naval conflicts as if they were conducted with cannons blazing, and Weber designed the technological paradigm in the series to do just that. One notable exception is that ships are often maneuvering 'vertically' in relation to the local star system and are not locked into a strictly horizontal movement scheme.
*** Not only do the ships move vertically, but there's a large exploration of what space implies to naval combat, complete with transitioning the line of battle to the wall of battle and dealing with acceleration rather than speed being the dominating concern. To the point where listing max speed is silly, as everything has a max normal speed of .8C where particle shielding stops being effective. It's to the point all significant figures are done in KPS^2. Later books also make broadside energy engagements pointless, as missile combat at several light minutes becomes possible.
** It is somewhat {{lampshaded}} in-story: the majority of Manticoran Navy officers are fanatics of Joseph Conrad and other marinistic literature.
* SpaceMarine
* SpotlightStealingSquad: Take a look at [[CrowningMoment/HonorHarrington the series' Crowning Moment Of Awesome listing]], and you'd be forgiven for thinking the series was entirely about Victor Cachat rather than, you know, HonorHarrington.
** That's basically the reason why Flint got his own subseries to play with his favourite character, and Cachat appeared in the mainline novels only as a cameo.
** He also got somewhat subdued in the latest novel, probably due to Anton Zilwicki's influence, as they were together for most of the book.
* StateSec: The trope namer.
* StevenUlyssesPerhero: Rob S. Pierre. If you recognize this name, a great deal of the Havenite side of the plot becomes highly predictable. Also, Admiral Tourville (except in his case the author didn't even bother to cosmetically change the name), Admiral [=DuQuesne=] who came up with the plan of financing Havenite economy by conquest two centuries ago, and Oscar Saint-Just.
* StrangeBedfellows likely in the not too far future: Haven and Manticoran alliance.
* StrawDystopia: Haven, for most of the series.
* StrawmanPolitical: If you are not a moderate (for certain values of "moderate") in the Honorverse, then rest assured you will be holding the IdiotBall and/or VillainBall.
** Averted by {{CanonImmigrant}}s like Cathy Montaigne, who was [[FoxNewsLiberal set up specifically to have a political foe who wasn't an idiot]].
*** It's also around this time that a decent Conservative, Captain Michael Oversteegen, appeared, though even he's very apolitical. Before then, it was all Youngs and High Ridges, utter prats who you wouldn't trust to run errands, much less a government.
*** There are the issues that Cathy's politics just happen to be exactly the same as a Centrist's in the political issues that count - military. Only on the never-ever-spoken-about social issues is she supposedly Liberal. Also, Michael Oversteegen seems very much to be an AuthorAvatar of the sorts, there to speak the author's views on subjects like torture, and show up the actually-worked-their-ways-up-the-ranks-with-no-free-ride admirals.
**** It's primarily military fiction, and most of what gets put in the books is military. This does not mean that domestic issues are irrelevant in-universe, even if readers don't see much of them.
*** That's pretty reasonable, actually, and [[TruthInTelevision happens all the time]] in the RealLife. Never heard of an ''actual'' political moderates? It's completely normal for the politician to differ with his or her party line in one or even several issues, but still identify with that party.
* SuperSoldier: what the Scrags were originally supposed to be, although by the time of the novel's settings they have [[VillainDecay devolved]] into none too bright thugs. Thandi Palane and her wrecking crew are a much more traditional example of this trope. Also, Mesa's been hinted to have combat line clones though we haven't seen them in action yet.
** In fact, Thandi's [[AmazonBrigade Amazons]] are just some Scrag girls after a HeelFaceTurn.
* {{Squick}}: One frequently overlooked effect of prolong therapy is that it extends ''all'' stages of human development. Which, basically, means that legally fully-grown-up 20 y.o. people still look like a bunch of grade school kids. [[LampshadeHanging Furiously lampshaded]] in ''The Shadow of Saganami'', where the people from backwater planets (where prolong hasn't been available yet) were acutely disturbed by this.
** The Graysons start having problems with it in ''The Honor of the Queen'' and are still adjusting in later books.
*** Other then a few examples, though, the books mostly forget about this, which is pretty strange, [[FridgeLogic to think of it]]. While the whole process is around for about a ''century'' already, and there are tons of planets where it's still unavailable, not to mention that such innovation must cause profound changes in the social structure and mores, these implications are usually completely ignored.
**** Not necessarily. There's been plenty of social change in the last 200 years in RealLife, but aside from pension plans how many of them have to do with our life expectancies doubling?
**** They're mostly ignored due to the fact that the author is subtly backtracking on all this because of the squick factor. For example, the recent claim that Honor received prolong at seventeen despite looking thirteen as a twenty-year-old midshipwoman.
***** Which is just plain [[RetCon contradictory to the established facts]]: This Troper remembers that third generation (which Honor has) has the cutoff age at about 13-15 years, and after that it just won't work. Second and first generation has upper limits at 17-20 and 25-30 years, IIRC.
* TechnologyPorn: Every starship description and hyperspace jump, ever.
* TheEmpire: Subverted; the new Star Empire of Manticore and the Andermani Empire may be expansionist monarchies, but they are the nice guys of the galactic political setting - the Manticorans more so than the Andermani, however.
* TheFederation: Deconstructed with Haven.
** Perhaps even more thoroughly deconstructed with the Solarian League.
* TheKingdom: Subverted; far from being the political ButtMonkey, anyone who attacks the Star Kingdom of Manticore is in for a world of hurt.
** It's now the Star ''[[TheEmpire Empire]]'' of Manticore, upon the formal incorporation of the Talbott [[strike:Cluster]] Quadrant.
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Straight up by the Havenites, since it's based on the French Revolution; the revolution is justified and its leader well-intentioned, but it quickly turns into a bloody tyranny. When the military overthrows ''that'' regime they're treated a lot more sympathetically, not least because the previous regime's economic policies were beginning to work.
** It gets further deconstructed in ''The Shadow of Saganami'' with the two resistance groups opposing Manticore's annexation of the Lynx systems. [[spoiler: Both are being played for fools by the Solarian Office of Frontier Security and Mesa]].
*** One of those resistance groups isn't villainous in the slightest. They're quite noble, if misled. The other one... not so much.
* TheUnfettered: [[MemeticBadass Victor Cachat]].
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: 8th fleet versus 5th fleet with over 37,000 laser warheads versus 85 ships. That's after 30% of the missiles were taken out by point defenses.
** See also the later stages of Operation Buttercup, where the engagements are stupendously tilted in Manticore's favor thanks to the fruits of their Ghost Rider program and having the only "podnaughts" (AKA [[MacrossMissileMassacre Manticore Missile Massacre delivery system]]) at the time.
* ThirtyXanatosPileup: The ''Torch of Freedom'', although by April 1922 p.d. there are still too few people to understand ''all'' the implication of what has just happened.
* TooDumbToLive: Pavel Young, and, surprisingly, [[spoiler:Mesan Alignment]], or at least its Long-Range Planning Board.
* TricoloursWithRustingRockets: the Solarian League's Battle Fleet.
** But note that Russia couldn't support its military due to economical meltdown of TheGreatPoliticsMessUp, while sollies just ''[[WhatAnIdiot chose not to]]'', due to belief that nobody could be ''that'' stupid to attack them. The result is gonna be [[BreakTheHaughty somewhat predictable]].
* TropeOverdosed: Are you starting to get the feeling the HH series contains examples of just about everything? You are not alone.
** MWW does know his tropes... and ''loves'' 'em.
*** Also, the series is several thousand pages long, providing plenty of room for tropes.
** And it has now been around long enough that it has arguably ''invented'', or greatly popularized, a number of science fiction tropes in its own right.
* TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard: Since Manticore is based on 18th century Britain, people there tend to accumulate formidable arrays of fancy titles. As of the current novel, the title characters full name is Admiral of the Fleet Lady Dame Honor Stephanie [[spoiler:Alexander-]]Harington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, [[spoiler: Countess White Haven]], with a long string of awards, medals, and [[JustForPun honors]] to follow.
* {{Two-D Space}}: Strongly averted. The one time Honor sends her ship on a two-dimensional maneuver, it's because the 3-D equivalent, which would have ensured her escape, would not have drawn the attacking ships out of position.
* WeHaveReserves: This might as well be the motto of the People's, and later, Republican Navy. And let's not get started on the Solarian League military, which is this trope incarnated.
** The Republican Navy is very aware that they "Have Reserves," but they aren't totally callous about it. They don't throw their troops away if they think they can help it.
* WhatAnIdiot: [[spoiler: Mesan Alighnment]]'s Long-Range Planning Board. Not only have those guys deviated significantly from their founder's original vision (their current ''modus operandi'' surprisingly resembles the one of [[spoiler: one [[GundamSEEDDestiny Gilbert Durandal]]]]), but the whole snafu in the ''Torch of Freedom'' was created exclusively by their actions. Would've they not insisted on [[spoiler: culling the Herlander Simoens autistic daughter as a failed experiment]], the guy in question won't have the nervous breakdown that brought [[spoiler: Jack [=McBride=]]] into the pictire and made him his friend. And it all went downhill from there.
** ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards Isabel Bardasano]]'', of all people, described their actions in almost the same language, when she discussed that problem with Jack.
** In the end, their insistence on "proper procedure" has lead to the complete unraveling of the [[spoiler: Alignment's "onion"]] and gave the Manties and Havenites the smoking gun they've needed. Together with several ''more'' critical secrets, like the [[spoiler: streak drive and the man who friggin' ''made it'']]. The outcome is debatable, and may even be a case of DoomedByCanon, as those critical secrets are being revealed too late to do anyone any good due to a PhlebotinumBreakdown keeping [[spoiler: Herlander Simoens from getting anywhere useful to prevent Oyster Bay, aka Pearl Harbor InSpace]].
*** Date analysis doesn't yield anythig useful, as both Weber and Flint are intentionally vague about it: [[spoiler: Zilwicky and Cachat returns to their staging point (NOT Manticore) in April 1922, and must yet get home to bring the news, while Oyster Bay is scheduled at October 1922, with just enough time gap to feed the readers' anxiety.]]
** Also, Pavel Young, Eleventh Earl of North Hollow, who was so stupid and petty that he sent ''everything'' his AffablyEvil [[MagnificentBastard ancestors]] worked for centuries on down the drain in his feud with the main character.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The Honorverse was originally going to be timeskipped several decades, following the death of its namesake character. Her children would have continued the action. The EricFlint collaboration ''Crown of Slaves'' nixed this original plan; its espionage plot ended up fast-forwarding the conflict by putting pressure on the Mesans to enact their plan early. As a happy side effect, Honor was spared, cutting off what would probably have been the [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks greatest fan rebellion]] in modern Sci-Fi literature.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Inverted. [[spoiler:After Honor's ship is to all apparences incapacitated in ''Basilisk'', the ship she's been chasing stops trying to escape just to finish her off. That was a mistake.]]
* WhyWontYouDie: Asked inwardly about [[spoiler: Honor's ship ''Fearless'' in the first book.]]
* TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask: Elizabeth III in her early life. Not so much later, but it still shows sometimes.
** To a slightly lesser degree (as she is not a Queen), Eloise Pritchart.
* XanatosGambit: Mesa has been [[spoiler: manipulating events behind the scene to keep the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven shooting at one another in the hopes that they will annihilate each other and allow the Office of Frontier Security along with Mesa to move in. ''However,'' the Republic of Haven has already figured out what they are doing and has dispatched super-agent Victor Cachat to Mesa to get proof of this.]] Needless to say, Manticore is going to be very, ''very'' pissed when they find out about it. This shades into [[XanatosRoulette Roulette]] territory before Cachat becomes involved, though.
** Worse yet, [[spoiler:Mesa was responsible for the original Republic of Haven falling two hundred years ago. Worst of all, Mesa was already planning back then for Haven to take down Manticore eventually.]]
*** ''Storm from the Shadows'' moves it all into RefugeInAudacity territory. [[spoiler: Mesa is playing everyone, including most of its organization for fools. There are layers upon layers to keep people from guessing the true purpose is Galactic Domination. The outer layers of the organization have their own operations and philosophies to obscure the inner layer. This includes cultivating the idea they are greedy hedonists. And this plan's been around since at least the Beowulf civil war. They have a new FTL faster than everyone else's and are using it since the C&C loop they have is shorter than would be possible for them to control events. Heck, even the Audubon Ballroom, the greatest anti-Mesa terrorist organization, is really being played by the Alignment. The Alignment deliberately outs no-longer-useful allies and incompetent twits to the Ballroom, using their worst enemies as their cleanup crew.]]
** Maya Sector gets a silver medal. The local governor is seeing the writing on the wall and knows the Solarian League is finished. He's attempting to build his resources so when everything hits the fan, Maya Sector will be one of the dominant powers.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Happens at least once a book: the flagship of a formation is destroyed, or battle damage kills the captain of a spaceship. Sometimes things work out fine; usually they don't.
* YouFailEconomicsForever: Haven, in-universe - Weber seems to have a decent enough handle on things. Indeed, by the time the series starts the Havenites are failing economics in the worst sense of the word possible. Their economy is such a hash that it cripples their ability to fight a much smaller enemy that ''should'' be a pushover.
** However, it also applies to Manticorean economics. While having a monopoly on a wormhole that carries a significant percentage of the galaxy's trade is going to make you pretty rich, some claim it's a bit too rosy on Manticore.
** It's not quite this trope, but Grayson using orbital farms for ''free-range cattle grazing'' is a pretty clear case of ''some'' fail on their part. I's a horrendously inefficient method of protein production -- a structure the size of a superdreadnought would be needed to support fifty heads of cattle -- and there are lots of another methods, which are vastly more productive and better adapted to space than that. But for some strange reason they didn't use them until entering Manticoran Alliance.
*** Being Grayson, though, "tradition" probably isn't that far down the list of possible reasons. They certainly didn't keep Air Force dress blue uniforms for so long because they're ''comfortable'', after all.
* YouFailYourMedicalBoardsForever: Anything involving Allison Harrington and pregnancy.
** Well, she's a geneticist, not an obstetrician, and medical specialties tend to be rather narrow.
* YouShallNotPass: Honor has a tendency to end up in situations where she has to put her command into life-or-death battles against overwhelming odds in order to do her duty and protect a helpless target.
** In fact, she does this so often that the media calls her ''[[RedBaron The Salamander]]'', her enemies view her as a bloodthirsty commoner/plutocrat with delusions of glory and several crewmen explicitly note that since they're on her ship, their chances of dying like animals have gone up significantly.
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