History HonorHarrington / TropesSToZ

** The High Ridge government may not have started the war with Haven, but they do abuse the restored Republic of Haven's patience during the ceasefire negotiations, deliberately stonewalling their new democratic government to buy time to consolidate their popular support back home (since formally ending the war would resume normal peacetime elections, which High Ridge and his cronies know they can't win). This alone may not have thwarted peace, but unfortunately, Haven was also being sabotaged by their similarly power-hungry Secretary of State Arnold Giancola. Their combined mischief is enough to derail what should have been an honest and successful peace treaty and trigger a resumption of hostilities. It's a {{downplayed|Trope}} example, as neither High Ridge nor Giancola actually wanted a new war to break out, but they were both flirting with it in the name of personal ambition and ended up pushing things too far.

* VillainHasAPoint: Mesa, who, as Weber [[WordOfGod went on record to point out]], is actually ''right'' about the right and useful nature of transhumanism ideas (not genetic slavery, though). They're just being dicks about it -- and that's where slavery comes in.

** ScifiWritersHave/NoSenseOfTime is also mostly averted in that, despite interstellar colonization efforts beginning less than a century from today, it still took more than 1200 years after that for the impeller drive to be invented and FTL to become possible, and almost another 20 to make the latter ''safe.''

* ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Refreshingly averted.

--> '''Kayla''': Uniformed goons is what I remember us being mostly.\\

* TokenGoodCopL In ''Cauldron of Ghosts'', Mesan cop [[ByTheBookCop Lieutenant Ferguson]] frustrates both his subordinates (save Kayla Barrett) and superiors alike with his refusal to callously trample the rights and end the lives of the police state planet's freed slaves and their descendants. By ''To End in Fire'', most of the veteran Mesan cops have been killed or fired, with a few moderates like Kayla being kept around on a reformed force they feel a lot better about serving.

* 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. Mesa has been hinted to have combat line clones, though we have not seen them in action yet.
** The key problem with the Scrags is that they took the fact that they were super soldiers too seriously. It eventually gets brutally pointed out that all this really means is that the average Scrag is physically superior to the average normal person. When going up against a baseline human whose physique and combat skills are ''above'' average...