Literature / Prince Roger

aka: The Empire Of Man

A.k.a. The Empire of Man series or the March Upcountry series.

A series by David Weber and John Ringo. Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock was the third and youngest child of Alexandra VII, Empress of Man. Roger is The Unfavorite of his mother, considered a foppish clotheshorse who looks a bit too much like his father for his mother to trust him. With a crisis on the horizon he's sent off to represent the Royal family in a sector capital's chief festival. During transit the crisis starts for real with an attempt on his life. The destroyer transporting him is sabotaged, but Roger and his company of Marines manage to land on a primitive planet on the farside of the planet from the Imperial trading post.

Most of the first three books deal with character development while Roger and his Battalion of Marines march toward the spaceport. The fourth deals with the consequences of their actions and what has happened while they've been out of contact.

Books:

• March Upcountry (2001)
• March to the Sea (2001)
• March to the Stars (2003)
• We Few (2005)

Ringo is currently working on a sequel, tentatively titled Rage of the Seraphs, from which he's posted snippets on his Facebook page.

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This series provides examples of:

• 2-D Space: Exploited by Admiral Helmut in the fourth book. His opponent, Admiral Gajelis, breaks from a losing engagement by moving "vertically" i.e. perpendicular to the ecliptic... but still ends up falling victim to terrestrial thinking.
  Helmut: He's a swimmer. What does a swimmer do when he's been down too long?
  Julian: He goes for the surface.
  Helmut: And that's what he's doing—trying to break for the surface. When he breaks vertically for the TD sphere, four times out of five he has his ships go up. Never forget, Sergeant. Predictability is one of the few truly unforgivable tactical sins. As Admiral Niedermayer will demonstrate in about eight hours.
• Aborted Arc: Ima Hooker, amongst other characters, were given some importance in the first book. They're slaughtered within minutes of the beginning of the second book.
• Action Girl: Naturally, all female marines. (They do come from a society with gender-equality, after all.) More notable would be the few Mardukan females that qualify: Sena and Pedi, two of the most deadly martial artists in the series.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Dogzard, a roughly Great Dane sized lizard serving as the Mardukan equivalent of a dog for humans. In We Few we get a bit of Dogzard's view of things, which is modeled under the common belief of how dogs view their human owners.
• And I Must Scream: The narration of the toot zombie early in the first book states that deep inside, the real person is struggling not to do what she's doing.
• Anyone Can Die: Except for the title character, do not take anyone else's life as a given. The group was down from 190 Marines & 4 shuttle pilots to just 12 by the time they leave Marduk.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: There is the moment when Roger realizes he does love his mother; when he hears she's being sexually and physically abused. And when Alexandra realizes that she does love - and trust - her son; when she breaks down and clings to him as the one thing saved from the wreckage of her life.
• Badass Crew: Bronze Company and the Basik's Own.
• Badass Family:
  Helmut: I'd like to see what could change a clothes horse into a...
  Julian: Just say a MacClintock.
• Bar Sinister: The flag of the Basik's Own wears one for Roger, who was born out of wedlock.
• Bawdy Song: We never get the lyrics, but references are made to a song about someone called "Three-Ball Pete".
• Bears Are Bad News: Though not for the good guys in this case. Althari are koala bear-like aliens whose females are Proud Warrior Race Girls.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Roger and Despreaux have this, if only because Roger begins with no idea how to interact with a woman who genuinely likes him and is not after something.
• BFG: Par for the Marine course. Bead and plasma cannons, which Mardukans can wield one-handed. All of Pol's weapons — he's huge even for a Mardukan and can carry vehicle-mounted weaponry. Even Roger's "smoke pole" is big for a chemical-propellant firearm.
• Bodyguard Crush: Despreaux and Roger (genderswapped as she is part of his Marine guard). Also the Empress and her paladin in the fourth book.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Much to the Barbarians' surprise and chagrin, Roger is a better and faster shot than any of them. Occasionally, he protects them. At one point, over their objections, he attempts a Heroic Sacrifice on the grounds that he is the only person capable of making it work.
• Boom, Headshot!: Roger's specialty. He astonishes the Captain of his bodyguard when he gets seven in half as many seconds at a reverse-ambush.
• Braids of Action: Prince Roger sports a head of beautiful blond hair long enough to sit on. He has to ask Despreaux to teach him how to braid it.
• Brains and Brawn: Krindi Fain is a bright, up-and-coming laborer-turned-soldier who is tagged for command pretty much from the start and is also hand-picked to sit in on at least one critical weapon-design project. His right-hand Mardukan, Erkum Pol, is huge, even for a Mardukan, prefers to fight with tables or a plasma cannon he appropriated from a human tank, and responds to any and every question with "Yes, sir!"
• Break the Haughty: Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock starts out the series as a bit of a vain, arrogant fop, partly in rebellion to the generally negative or dismissive treatment he gets from others. His father, whom he physically resembles somewhat, was banished from Court for attempted treason, but no one told him about the reasons for the banishment. Between being stranded on a Death World and finding out why he was treated as he was, the fop is quickly blown away in the course of a Heroic BSoD, and the ones who overthrew the family in a coup find Roger taking a level in badass when he demonstrates just why you don't pock with a MacClintock.
• Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie: Guard bodybags have an auto-cremation function so that the fallen can be taken home to bury without overburdening the survivors with the weight.
• Camp Straight: Roger is a Long-Haired Pretty Boy who loves clothes, and has never shown any sexual interest in any of the women (or men) at court. His valet is so used to the question he laughs at Despreaux's tentative query into his orientation.
• Card Sharp:
  • Poertena. Then he makes the mistake of teaching his four-armed friends a few tricks... It turns out all Mardukans love this trope. If you aren't cheating, you're stupid. If you are and get caught, you're incompetent. They spend half the time bragging about how good they are at cheating and the other half denying, tongue-in-cheek, that they'd ever stoop to it. Standard Mardukan poker rules give every player the right to call a card check once per game. They even invented ways of cheating which are biologically impossible for humans to pull off.
  • A hilarious scene happens at the beginning of March to the Sea when Prince Roger asks him how to play Spades.
• Cassandra Truth: Soon after crashing on Marduk, several Marines needlessly die in an animal attack because the commanding officer refused to listen to Roger who, as an experienced hunter, recognized warning signs. Pahner assumed Roger was just shooting for pleasure's sake, but later apologized. ^note  At the time, Roger didn't know Pahner had ordered that no one fire since he had no idea yet how the marine comms systems worked.
• Character Development: Mostly focused on Roger himself as he has to stop being a Royal Brat and becomes a badass.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Marine bodies entombed at Voitan. It tips off a friendly spy in book 3.
  • Pahner mentions that while some implants (like the Royal family's) are hardened against intrusion, old-fashioned drugs would do the trick. Turns out that's what's used during the coup, on the Empress.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Admiral Helmut and Thomas Catrone at first appear to be minor characters, but take on a more important role later in the series in countering the conspiracy for the coup d'etat.
• Chekhov's Skill: Prince Roger and geology. It plays a minor role in the first book, and it plays a more important role in the third.
  • Enforced with regards to the Bronze Barbarians. Having a potential Chekhov's Skill is a requirement to be even considered for The Empress' Own.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Poertena is unable to form a sentence without every third word being some variation of the word "pock". He's threatened in order to make him stop doing it, but he can't help it.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Marines' equipment supplier. "Your weapon was made by the lowest bidder", indeed - this kills a third of the Marines, when their equipment either fails after extended exposure to conditions where they're supposed to be functional, or have a random chance of just blowing up when you use them. Roger vows that heads will literally roll for this once they return.
• Corrupt Politician: The Parliamentary faction seeking to overthrow Roger's mother isn't portrayed at all positively.
• Corrupt Quartermaster: Offscreen corrupt quartermasters left the unit with plasma cannons that failed explosively in humid conditions, causing numerous casualties, and "upgraded" powered armor whose critical components also failed (if not explosively) shortly after exposure to Marduk's climate. Prince Roger swears that heads will literally roll over the matter when he gets home.
• Crazy-Prepared: The MacClintock family has had ultra-secret bases and security back doors in place so that the rightful heir could retake the throne after a coup... for centuries.
• Cunning Linguist: Roger and O'Casey both have Universal Translator program in their "toot" implants that let them quickly learn new languages and dialects and then share with the other marines. On the Marduk side, Denat is an absolute natural at learning new languages (and at pretending to be too much of a dumb barbarian to eavesdrop on people).
• The Dandy: Prince Roger, before his Character Development. He even tries to get his Marines to lug his Unlimited Wardrobe with them.
• Deadline News: Harvard Mansul, IAS. We first meet him as a prisoner in a Krath fortress after being sent to investigate Shin barbarians. He ends up following Prince Roger (the story of millennia) through all sorts of combat hell. In his past, he'd encountered bandits and pirates, gotten shot at by inner-city gangs, been stabbed, and nearly died while lost in a desert.
• Decadent Court: Q'Nkok is a relatively innocuous example - or at least easily fixed. Mashad is much worse but what really shocks Pahner is that Roger seems completely unaware that he's lived in just such a court his entire life.
• Death World: Marduk qualifies due to the large and angry (and more common than should be ecologically possible, until justified) wildlife, but the sneaky, venomous wildlife is Nightmare Fuel as well. This a world where a ocean map with "here there be monsters that will eat your ship" isn't superstition. It's accurate .
• Designer Babies: One of Roger's ancestors had some illegal gene work done, leaving him with inhuman reflexes and endurance, as well as low-light vision and really nice hair.
• Destructive Savior:
  • Erkum Pol, thanks to A-Team Firing combined with being able to wield vehicle-mounted weaponry, leaves Roger's team thinking that the safest place to be when Pol is firing is between him and the intended target.
  • The Mardukans pulls this during while assaulting a transport to get off-planet. Heavy resistance is countered by Napoleonic shoulder-to-shoulder firing lines...with plasma rifles. The defecting first mate, quite rightly, gives them Hell for it later.
• Did You Just Have Sex?: Julian to Roger after Roger and Nimashet finally get it together.
  Julian: My, Your Highness, you're looking chipper today.
  Roger: Oh, shut up, Julian.
  Julian: Is that a hickey I see on your neck?
• Dirty Coward: Prince Jackson Adoula. Runs away as the counter-coup starts and sacrifices underlings several times just to save his skin. Also, his co-conspirator New Madrid, Roger's father, who is pretty much unable to handle meeting Roger. Granted, a pissed off Roger would terrify anybody.
• Doomed Hometown: Rastar, Honal, and their people hail from the ruined cities of the Northern League, brought down by a combination of Sindi treachery and the Boman hordes.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Cord comes "into season" while recovering from injuries. As the attendant problems might compromise his recovery, his apprentice Pedi takes care of him. As an additional complication, he did have feelings for Pedi but refused to act on them because he felt it was inappropriate.
• Dumb Muscle: Erkum Pol is huge, even for a Mardukan, and at one point takes out four people simultaneously with a table. His response to anything and everything said by an officer is "Yes, sir".
• Eco-Terrorist: The series features these as the villains opposed to the Empire of Man. They're an interstellar empire of environmentalist extremists who are a Strawman Political nation for the authors.
• The Empath: Phaenurs, a race of centaroid-lizards whose abilities make them Living Lie Detectors. They are one of the only races never to engage in cannibalism or physical war. The Phaenur have had conflicts a-plenty, but they are stated to resemble "...a society-wide dinner with a Jewish Mother" more than anything else.
• The Engineer: Poertena is The Mechanic. Pahner and Julian are very technically savvy as well, and all of the Guard can function as The Combat Engineer with their demo experience. The former Laborers of God can all fulfill the Support Engineer role since their old job was to build levies, dams, canals, and other civilian, fortification-like structures in an area with regular severe flooding problems.
• Ensign Newbie: Captain Pahner realizes Prince Roger is this after Roger asks to be called "Colonel MacClintock" during a planning session.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: If it's not the Hungry Jungle, it's the oppressive heat; if it's not the barbarian hordes, it's the Byzantine politics.
• Expy: Kny Camsen is basically Genghis Khan, in the early days.
• Extended Disarming: Pedi Karuse takes a bit of time to shed all her weaponry when visiting a mobster who's holding Despereaux hostage in We Few.
• The Fashionista:
  • Pedi Karuse. It falls behind both her (lampshaded) Fiery Redhead personality and being a badass as a defining trait for her, but she's the only fashion & makeup loving Mardukan (since most came from cultures that didn't wear clothes), and she's the only woman of any species to qualify on the team as well.
  • Roger was, of course, The Dandy, always concerned about how he looks and being dressed in the latest of fashions.
• Fictional Accent: T'e series gots t'e pocking Pinopan accent of Poertena, t'e unit armorer. His uncle (actually an older cousin) only reverts to that accent under stress, having worked hard on surpressing it in his speech.
• Foreign Queasine: Roger and his people build up an entire menu of recipes based on animals they kill during their march, which the locals view as utterly insane because said animals tend to be incredibly dangerous predators. The parallel mentions is a recipe for T. Rex steak - yes, it may be delicious, but what sort of maniac would go treating a multi-ton carnosaur as a game animal?
• Freudian Excuse: Roger has these in spades and justifiably, given the way Alexandra has treated him.
• Friendly Fireproof: Played with. When the group is ambushed by a horde of natives and forced to melee, Prince Roger picks up a grenade launcher and fires it into the mixed group. On the one hand, this is smarter than it sounds since the light armor the marines wear will protect them from the worst of the damage, and it would shred the natives. On the other hand, they could've broken the assault without it, and he cost the team needless broken bones and minor shrapnel injuries.
• Funetik Aksent: Poertena and others from Pinopa.
• Gender Bender:
  • The "embarrassingly male" Mardukans are actually female by biological definition, based on the fact that they produce ova. Their "penis" is actually an ovipositor (egg-placer), and the actual males are the gender that receives the eggs, fertilize them, and carry them to term. After this is initially sorted out, the series continues to go with calling the biologically female gender "male" based on their appearance and societal role.
  • Also, Julian suggests disguising Prince Roger by giving him a sex change.
• Great White Hunter: Prince Roger is initially looked down on by his Marine bodyguards for, among other things, living this trope as part of the general perception of him being a rich layabout and general waste of space. When they crash on the technologically primitive planet of Marduk, however, he quickly demonstrates that the experience has made him possibly the best equipped to survive the hostile planet because of his understanding of animal behaviour, survival skills, and that his aim with his old-fashioned slug-thrower rifle makes him the best sniper of all the humans.
• Gun And Sword: Prince Roger often charges into battle with both a bead pistol and the sword he acquired during the trek across Marduk, and gets plenty of use out of both.
• Gun Stripping: Happens a good bit because this is a military squad in a hostile environment that really does need to clean and maintain its gear, but special recognition goes to Julian, who can strip down a 40-piece plasma rifle in 7 seconds, if you don't mind chasing down all the pieces that flew off in the process, afterward (the wager was about how quickly he could take the thing apart, not how neatly).
• The Gunslinger: Rastar Komas Ta'Norton, last prince of Therdan. Master of the Quick Draw, 4-armed Guns Akimbo, and Improbable Aiming Skills, all at once while sometimes riding a dinosaur. He's even quicker than Roger and can pull off Shooting It Out Of Their Hands.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: Or at least harmless - or so the Marines assume. Roger, an experienced big game hunter, knows better.
• Heroic Bastard: The titular prince, Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock, after he took multiple levels of badass. He also develops into the other type of bastard, the literal meaning already applicable since the Empress had never married his father:
  Sgt. Catrone: Order received and understood, and I will comply. You bastard.
  Prince Roger: That I am. Literally and figuratively. The last bastard standing. The flag of the Basik's Own wears a bar sinister proudly.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Before the start of the story, there is only one person in the universe that likes and trusts Roger, his valet. His tutor, his mother, and his siblings have ambiguous feelings about him, and everyone else thinks he's a useless prat. And then while he's on Marduk, the villains finger him as a traitor, which everyone is all too willing to believe.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • What happens to Empress Alexandra VII, after the painful Awesome Moment of Crowning of Roger MacClintock. Of course, her Heroic RRoD after being drugged was pushing her towards this anyway.
  • Also happens to Roger a few times — first when he discovers exactly why he's trapped on a stinking hellhole of a planet, and then when his lifelong servant and surrogate father get killed.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Standing orders for the Empress' Own. To the extent that the entire rest of the regiment is wiped out during the coup that seizes the Empress and kills her son and daughter.
  • The Prince's transport is destroyed off Marduk, but takes two Saint cruisers with it to prevent the Saints from realizing Roger escaped.
  • Rastar, holding a gate into the Imperial Palace.
  • Roger himself, trying to clear a path to his mother's chamber.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: From the beginning, Prince Roger never liked himself thanks largely to his mother's ambiguous treatment of him and to his own awareness of what a whiny prat he was. It takes him quite a while, with a lot of backsliding thanks to guilt over the deaths of his people, to grow past this.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Krindi Fain and Erkum Pol have no romantic interest in one another, but stick together as a team throughout the series after their introduction, with Fain providing "brains" and Pol providing "brawn".
• Hidden Depths: Prerequisite for acceptance to the Empress' Own. The Captain is a pretty good machinist, the senior NCO is a skilled seamstress doubling as chaplain, the armorer is a journeyman shipwright, their best pilot is a Combat Medic, the Prince is an amateur geologist and master sniper, one of their heavy gunners is an accomplished car thief.
• Horse of a Different Color: Serving on Marduk for cavalry mounds are the elephant-sized, heavily clawed, triceratops-like flar-ta and the horse-sized, omnivorous, velociraptor-like civan. The latter is often fed from the dead enemies on a battlefield and will try to take a bite from their riders when in an ill mood or hungry.
• Humans Are Special: Not pushed all that much but the inevitable conclusion when there are several species of sentient aliens but of the six interstellar nations only one is non-human and even then humans make up a significant minority of the three race alliance.
• Hungry Jungle: Marduk's jungles feature hyper-aggressive herbivores, vampire moths, and flesh-dissolving "killerpillars."
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: Some Mardukan poisons have no effect on humans, and even have nutrients the humans need. This ends really, really horribly for a Mardukan traitor in the first book.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Prince Roger goes through a lot of Survivor Guilt as he sees more and more people die on his behalf, especially when it's the result of one of his many (usually minor) lapses in judgment.
• I Owe You My Life: D'Nal Cord to Roger, and later, Pedi Karuse to Cord.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder:
  • Zig-zagged with Dobrescu. First, he protests that he's a shuttle pilot, not a medic (his MOS is shuttle pilot, but he started off as a Marine Raider Medic). Then he gets to start treating Mardukans...
    Dobrescu: I'm a goddamned medic, not a xeno-surgeon.
  • Somewhat of a Running Gag for the character as he asked to be a backup astrogator (he refuses) and to pretend to be a real estate agent (which he does).
  • Amanda Beach is "an astrogator, not an engineer." (She does a fine job of the later, anyway.)
• Info Dump (doubling as Scenery Porn): When the protagonists arrive in the abandoned city of Voitan, a conversation between Prince Roger and Gunny Jin is interrupted after two lines with a full two pages of scenery and battle lines.
• Insult Backfire: One of the supporting characters is a Satanist. Her (originally Catholic) planet got this way during a religious civil war, in which one side demonized the other as Satanists. The other side accepted and maintained the term, having decided that given the evil of their opponents, Satan must actually be good.
• Interrupted Intimacy: When Pahner walks in on Eva and Julian. Done with malice aforethought with Roger & Nimashet.
• Ironic Echo Cut: In March to the Stars:
  Pahner: "I almost wish he was still considered incompetent. Maybe then I'd have sent a decent sized force to look after him." (cut)
  Roger: "You know," [as Roger fights], "I could wish that Pahner didn't have so much confidence in me!"
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: When Despreaux is kidnapped, Roger almost cuts the messenger's hand off to feed to an atul to find out where she is. He only holds back at all because she wouldn't approve.
• Kick the Dog: Governor Mountmarch. Bad enough that he's a Saint-sympathizer. But when they take the spaceport, they find him with a naked ten-year old boy in his bed.
• Killer Rabbit: Humans are considered this by Mardukans. We look like a large version of a weak, stupid, easily scared prey animal called the basik that's usually hunted by children by scaring them into a circle and clubbing them to death. Only we don't even have horns, claws, or armor. And our smiles look like the expression they make right before being clubbed. Fortunately, Mardukans learn quickly to take humans seriously. Honored when "The Basik's Own" forms and takes a nastily smiling basik as its banner. Even better, basik/vern are explicitly compared to rabbits several times.
• King Incognito: Roger and his team remold their bodies with looted Saint supertech, right down to the DNA, to go undercover. Roger takes the identity of a Martian restauranteur.
• Klingon Promotion: It's Boman tribal tradition for a war chief to be "anointed in the blood of his fallen predecessor." This isn't quite Challenging the Chief, because the previous chief loses his place/head by group consensus, not ritual combat.
• Kraken and Leviathan: The main inhibition to ocean travel on Marduk are giant versions of the Coll fish that can snap even large ships in half with one bite.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Much to the constant despair of his bodyguards, Roger tends to happily charge into combat. In the second book, it actually gets discussed - now that Prince Roger has turned himself around and has proven himself to be a capable leader, the Marines (and Mardukians) willingly follow him into dangerous situations. Pahner has to lay this out for him, telling him that, with each heroic action he does, he risks another Marine (and a nice dosage of guilt).
• Little Miss Badass: Pedi Karuse. Small and underage-looking. Pregnant. And still capable of wiping the floor with her enemies in job lots, armed or unarmed, chained or free.
• The Load: How the marines view Roger at first. Mostly justified (99%) because he's a spoiled clothes horse with three feet of gorgeous blond hair famous for throwing snit fits. Somewhat unjustified in that, for example, the first time he kills something he gets thoroughly yelled at despite the fact that it was, essentially, a Cape Buffalo^note One of the most dangerous animals in the world the size of a house, and he did so because he recognized that it was a highly territorial herbivore (like a Cape Buffalo). They begin to realize he's not The Load when they learn that his extensive experience on safari makes him well qualified to survive a dangerous jungle. Also, he slaughters six enemies in as many seconds with perfectly aimed head shots.
  • His tutor/Chief of Staff really is The Load and feels guilty about it but the Marines reassure her; she didn't volunteer for this and it's no fault of hers she's been thrown in the fecal matter. She then subverts it, though - as an expert on sociology, history and political sciences (among other things) she turns out to be invaluable as a political advisor. She's also one of the only two people (apart from Roger, who is too important to be risked) who has toot capable of supporting translator software, necessary to create "language pills", without which others would not be able to communicate with locals.
  • Kostas, the titular prince's valet, defies the trope by actively seeking out ways to pull his weight, and eventually settles into an unofficial position as quartermaster and cook.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Anything involving Krindi Fain in March to the Sea.
• The Mafiya: Roger's crew runs into some interference from local organized crime in We Few which seems to be the Russian mob. Unfortunately for Siminov, he fails to take hints that he's biting off more than he can chew by trying to muscle in on the prince's cover operation.
• The Magnificent: A future historian looking back on the events of the books says that the writers of his time called Prince Roger Roger the Terrible, Roger the Mad, the Tyrant, the Restorer, or even the Kin-Slayer.
• May–December Romance: Pedi and Cord. Directly named by Roger.
• Medal of Dishonor: Roger makes personalized friendly joke versions for every one of his men who make it off Marduk alive. For example, Poertena gets a little pocking wrench so he can beat up little pocking pieces of armor.
• Miles Gloriosus: Averted by Roger, to everyone's surprise. The Marines assumed he was taking credit for the hunting successes of his guides; the reason they don't know he's a marksman is that he thought his bodyguards were too noisy and went out alone.
• Mind Rape:
  • Just about everyone has a computer implant in their brain, called a tutorial implant, or "toot", and the implant can be hacked. The chain of events leading to being stranded on Marduk was from a sailor whose toot was hacked by the conspiracy.
  • The details of how it was done are left off-screen, but Empress Alexandra VII effectively has her mind destroyed by the conspirators, to the point that she can't tell reality from the manufactured fantasy, and occasionally lapses into memories from her younger years.
• Morality Chain: Despreaux is specifically groomed to be this for Roger by Pahner, who notices Roger's bloodlust is much less pronounced with Despreaux by his side.. It works, too.
• Mister Seahorse: Technically, Mardukan "women" are male, and vice versa. The "men" have an ovipositor that resembles human male genitalia. But in fact, the men ovulate and implant the ova into a woman, who fertilizes the egg and carries it to term.
• More Expendable Than You:
  • Captain Pahner and his Marines make it painfully clear that no matter what they think of the Prince, their duty is to protect him at all costs, up to and including throwing their lives away to get between him and a threat. As the March continues, Roger comes to accept this, while at the same time taking a more and more active role in his own protection - to the point where the tables get turned, and Pahner finds himself in the position of relying on Roger to save the Marines, when it's supposed to be vice-versa. Gets deadly serious in the third book when they find out Roger is suddenly the one-and-only Heir to the Throne, making him absolutely unexpendable ... and then even more seriously flipped again when things get so desperate that even Roger himself becomes expendable:
    Roger: The mission is to safeguard the Empire, Captain. Safeguarding me is only part of that. ... [The Empress] can make a new heir. If she wants to, she can use DNA from John and Alexandra's dad. The mission, Captain, is "Save the Empire."
  • Played with and lampshaded when Catrone has the urge to step between Roger and a damnbeast. He stops himself for two reasons — One, he recognizes that Roger has it under control, and that the other Marines recognize this too. Two, Roger is incognito at the time, and the other civilians watching would wonder why he put himself in danger to save a Martian entrepreneur.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: All the Mardukans, which evolved from a six-limbed, amphibious ancestor. Special credit to Rastar, who can quadruple-wield pistols and still fire all of them with pinpoint accuracy.
• Mugging the Monster: Happens a few times on Marduk when Mardukans try to poison the Marines or force them to fight in clan wars, and again on Earth when the mob tries to extort the cover operation and then kidnaps Nimashet. As Roger puts it, "You have no idea who you're pocking with."
• Mundane Utility: Killerpillar venom causes humans and Mardukans alike to die excruciating deaths, as their flesh dissolves and slides off their bones. Kostas uses it (in diluted form) to tenderize steak.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Denat accidentally does this.
  "I greet you in the name of The People." He hoped he'd all the sounds right. Some of the words were the same, but accented so differently as to make them nearly unintelligible.
  "Denat," Julian said over the earbud the intel NCO'd installed, "if you're having translation problems ask me. I'll give you the right words. You just said 'I sneeze you in the name of The Idiots'."
• My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That:
  • Subverted. Julian is monitoring Despreaux's blood pressure and heart rate. When both go up, she is arguing with Roger. When the heart rate goes up and the blood pressure drops, it's time to send in a Moment Killer.
  • This doesn't work on Roger: his heart rate and blood pressure stay low, no matter how angry or excited he gets. Julian calls this "scary".
• Nested Ownership: D'nal Cord owes Roger his life, and later acquires a life-debt of his own when he saves Pedi Caruse from pirates. Prince Roger has a good laugh at the latter, noting that Cord's Oh, Crap! reaction when he realizes Pedi's culture also has life-debts exactly mirrored his own after he saved D'nal.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Boman kill their clever and adaptable war chief when he decides not to rush enemy fortifications in a suicidal berserk charge.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Played with.
  • The Bronze Barbarians and Roger have no problem eating local flora and fauna and breaking it down into base nutrients... because they have genetic modifications and nanobots in their intestines intended to let them do just that. There are some plants which are digestible to baseline humans, but the civilians in the expedition are in danger of starvation when the group's supply of human rations dwindles.
  • Mardukan plant- and animal life are so different that many chemical compounds humans need to survive are just not present. Vitamin deficiencies are a constant threat.
  • Several Mardukan poisons are shown to not work on humans, and vice-versa. One poison, which to Mardukans is tasteless, tastes like rotten fennel to humans. Another poison fails much, much harder— it's not only harmless to the humans it's meant to kill, but meditating on its failure inspires the doc to check on the chemistry of other inedible local species. This leads him to discover an effective dietary supplement for human biology, saving the lives of much of the expedition by stretching out the dwindling supplies of manufactured supplements they need to survive on the partially-indigestible Mardukan diet.
  • Roger at one point mentions in passing that he intends to introduce Mardukan barleyrice to the rest of the Empire, since it is more flavorful and nutritious than the equivalents grown elsewhere.
• Old Master: D'Nal Cord. He's almost retirement age, and a shaman of his people. And he takes Roger under his slimy wing.
• Overly Long Name:
  • Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock (and the rest of his family).
  • Pedi Dorson Acos Lefan Karuse, Daughter of the King of the Mudh Hemh, called the Light of the Vales.
• Pardon My Klingon:
  • Pocking pock, modderpocker.
  • The Saints use "pollution" as their go-to swear word.
  • Diasprans use "Water!" or "polluted water" since they worship water as a god.
  • Kosutic, as a Satanist, uses "Papists" where most people would use devil-worshippers and swears by "His Wickedness" where most people would swear by Jesus or God.
• Parental Substitute: Kostas & eventually Captain Pahner for Roger. Roger also mentions that a need for one may have been an unconscious influence behind his interest in sports.
• Path of Inspiration: The Church of Ryback, the religion behind the "Saints," which believes that humans should return to Earth and undo all the damage they've done to nature on other worlds. The problem is that they go way beyond this simple mission into outright hating all sentient life outside of their own faith, they ruthlessly treat all rivals and their own lower-classes as non-persons, and they engage is pretty much every act of environmental hypocrisy or "can't see the forest for the trees" behavior possible. Worse, some of their fundamentalists are even rumored to eat babies as a means of population control.
• Parents as People: Alexandra's mistakes as a mother are due to the fact that Roger reminds her all too much of his bastard of a father.
• Percussive Maintenance: Poertena's pig pocking wrench, the twist being it's actually better than the standard procedure on jammed powered armor.
• Place Worse Than Death: For the unprepared (everybody), it's Marduk. Also, any of the Saints' worlds that are being "reclaimed from humanity's taint". Slave labor provided from captured enemies, political prisoners, and dissidents, all plucking weeds and other Terran plants from the ground. By hand. To "minimize the footprint" caused by, say, basic biological processes like excrement, they're given less than a thousand calories of food a day. Death is kinder.
• Planet of Hats: Pinopa is a planet of many islands and few continents primarily settled by Polynesians who are talented sailors. Armagh is a planet of Satanists who provide a frightening number of soldiers to the Empire thanks to their religious belief in preparing for Armageddon.
• Plasma Cannon: Heavy artillery, they're notoriously faulty and cost some marines their lives.
• Politeness Judo: Sergeant Major Kosutic breaks up several arguments prior to planetfall, and O'Casey drops part of the trope name when discussing Roger with her.
• Poor Communication Kills: Nobody ever explained to Roger that his father was a traitor who tried to manipulate the Empress and has been unofficially banished from Court. His tutor felt that it was something his mother should explain, his mother really didn't want to talk about it, and everybody else assumed somebody must have explained the situation to Roger. As a result, everyone takes Roger's imitation of his father's mannerisms as a declaration of support for his politics, while Roger has no idea what he did to earn his mother's permanent distrust.
• Power Armor: Its use and maintenance in Marduk's perpetually humid climate makes using them for all but the most important tasks inadvisable.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Or, in the case of Althari females in general, Proud Warrior Race Girls.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The battle for the tramp freighter at the end of March to the Stars. 30 Marines make the assault; 18, including Captain Pahner, Julian's bromance straight man Gronnigen, both Gunnys, & one of the St. John twins die in the attempt, and their Mardukan allies practically gut the ship with plasma fire, not really knowing better.
• Race Against the Clock: Once Roger's group finds out what's happened in the empire while they've been gone, they realize they only have a few months to save it. Before a new heir is born to a mind-controlled Empress, and her use is at an end.
• Rags to Royalty: Nimashet isn't exactly poor, but she's very much lowborn and from a frontier planet. It is looking like everyone else in the party will get the Rags to Nobility treatment.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits:
  • All members of the Empress' Own Royal Guard Marine units are chosen on the basis of being exceptionally competent soldiers, but service also requires high levels of proficiency in a least one other, potentially useful skill. These range from the expected (demolitions, medicine, gunsmithing) to the implausible (linguistics, piloting) to the flat out incredible (shipbuilding, car theft, theology). They are by no means rag-tag, but the Empress' Own attracts some pretty interesting people.
  • Aside from the Guard is everyone else who tags along with Roger. The humans include a valet, tutor who provides political advice to both humans and Mardukans, 4 pilots (3 of whom are never heard of again once the assault shuttles land), and reporter previously captured by the locals while on assignment, while the Mardukans that join up include an eccentric old mentor, a princess, a mercenary band, and an entire sepoy regiment.
• Recycled In Space. The plot of the first two and the first half of the third book is Xenophon's Anabasis in space.
• Religion of Evil:
  • The Fire Temples, from the volcanic land of Krath. Despite being a theocracy, none of the natives will talk about their religion at all, and cities are ruled by the principle of "all is forbidden, save that which the law requires." They trade for slaves to act as Servants of the God. "Servants" are sacrifices which are roasted and then served in chunks to the people of the cities. There's a reason the local pirates fight to the last man to avoid capture.
  • Later deconstructed when they explain how Krath went from a peaceful, semi-Taoist religion to the nightmare they encounter.
  • Subverted with Armagh's Satanists. The planet they come from was involved in a civil war triggered by a Catholic-based Corrupt Church government, who accused those who opposed of being satanists. The accused figured that if they were called such by a church that was prone to atrocity, Satan couldn't be all that bad a guy after all.
• Rescue Romance: Cord and Pedi, after initial annoyance.
• Rock Beats Laser: Mostly Downplayed: The Mardukans do manage to kill quite a number of Marines, but only at the cost of losing anywhere from dozens to hundreds of their own warriors for every Marine they kill.
  • There is one specific example of this trope: One of the layers of a Marine uniform hardens in response to sudden impact, making it bulletproof (or at least heavily bullet-resistant). Swords and javelins, on the other hand, don't move quickly enough to trigger the hardening, and can cut right through.
• Royal Brat: Roger comes off as selfish, shallow, and arrogant at the start of the story, and behaves like a sulky child even though he's in his 20's. He has a fair few Freudian excuses, but his thoughtlessness and petulance are still a pain in everyone's ass for a while (even he privately gets sick of his own whining, though it takes a few Break the Haughty experiences to snap him out of it).
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • The Empire of Man's political system leaves the Emperor/Empress with quite a bit of personal power. The Heirs usually have important roles to get them used to wielding power.
  • Despite being a generally useless prat, one of Roger's hobbies is big game hunting which results in him being the best sniper of all the troops. It also becomes a headache and problem for the (technically second-in-charge, but he's the unofficial CO anyway) Marine CO, who has to keep reminding him that, if Roger fucks up and dies, the Marines might as well kill themselves.
  • Honal and Rastar, heirs to the lost city of Therdan and cavalry commanders extraordinaire. Not to mention loyal friends who become instrumental to the party's survival and victories.
• Sea Monster: Giant coll fish. Imagine a stonefish large enough to bite a ship in half.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Cord to Roger, regarding Pedi.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: This starts to become a problem by the third book as the fatigue of nearly endless campaigning across Marduk leaves more and more of the Bronze Barbarians unfit for combat duty. Pahner compensates by pulling them into leadership and support roles, while adding competent natives to the ranks.
• Shout-Out:
  • Admiral Helmut, "Dark Lord of the Sixth". Also Helmut is startlingly reminiscent of a certain Admiral Naismith.
  • IBI Special Agent Temu Jin (Temujin being another name of Genghis Khan).
  • Atul liver is apparently nice served with the local equivalent of fava beans and a light chianti.
  • Ancient plasma rifles. Forty kilowatt-range.
  • SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND! In this case, said "little friend" is not a grenade launcher but the big pocking wrench.
  • Captain Pahner seems to know Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads by heart, and can find a Kipling quote to fit almost any situation.
  • Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red dawn!
  • Prince Roger is apparently a J. R. R. Tolkien fan as he also mutters "the kazoos, the kazoos of North." upon hearing the small horns of the Vashim.
  • "Schultzes," guards who can be trusted to see, do, and hear nothing. Subverted, since they ignore atrocities, not heroic hijinks.
  • "Fish of unusual size."
  • Roger mentions that he's hunted damnthings on Zarathustra
  • A minor character is Admiral Neidermayer. He isn't The Neidermeyer though, being a reasonable and competent commander.
• Space Sector: Locations include Sagittarius Sector (which includes the planet to which Prince Roger and company were originally headed), Baldur Sector (where Marduk is located), and Handelmann Sector (a neighboring sector to Sagittarius Sector).
• Straight Gay: Gunny Jin.
• The Strategist: Admiral Helmut.
• Strawman Political: The Saints are corrupt descendants of Greenpeace. Specifically they claim to un-terraform planets, but are actually one of the most polluting of the interstellar civilizations^note Ironically, this is partially because their methods are so inefficient in their attempts to be "green", they end up putting more resources into inferior products.. Leadership-wise they're really more Straw Hypocrites, while as a culture they tend more towards Dirty Communists with a focus on being "green" rather than support of the working class.
• Supreme Chef: Kostas. Takes on the duty to be able to contribute, and proves able to knock together a respectable stew from day old atul and swamp water, and a multi-course gourmet meal when sent to a well-stocked market with enough money.
• Tastes Like Chicken: In March to the Sea, after killing the flar-ke that were threatening the group the humans make a meal of the remains of the beasts. Pahner comments that they're about to find out what flar-ke tastes like, to which Dobrescu replies "one guess". It turns out that it really does taste "very much like chicken."
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Subverted by Armagh's Church of Satan. They were the more secular schism on a planet of Catholics and were labeled minions of Satan by their opponents. So they embraced the name, won the holy war, instituted religious freedom, and turned "Satanism" into a positive church in the wake of a discredited Christianity.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Prince Roger takes several, and goes from being thought of as a pompous Long-Haired Pretty Boy to badass warrior prince over the course of the series, mentally toughened up by Marduk as he treks across it to get to a spaceport so he can return home.
  • His Marines, elite of the elite, are selected partially based on their incredible loyalty to the Empress. They start off despising him, but this gets blown away the more they get to see him in action. In the end, every one of them is so loyal to the Prince that other (non-Bronze Barbarian) Marines think they're dangerously compromised.
  • It gets to the point where his subordinates push a woman he loves into marrying him despite her objections, due to the fact that he's Heir Primus to the Throne of Man.. because without her acting as his conscience, he would be a neobarbarian tyrant with "shoot first, ask later" policy. With entire fleets of starships and a massive army at his disposal.
• Translation with an Agenda: A particularly insidious one. The only language kernel they have pre-loaded before landing is High Krath, from the "civilized" neighbors of the port. When they start using it, it has a preloaded bias for words translated as "service," "Servant," or "Serve." These are all euphemisms for being butchered live and then roasted and served to Krath's upper class in a religious ritual. Given the likely human (i.e. Saints) inspiration of the practice, there's a good chance the bias is deliberate.
• Turn Out Like His Father: The initial reason for Roger's estrangement. He has no idea, and is ticked to find out.
• The Unfavorite: Roger is despised mostly because he looks like his father, though made worse by his being a foppish twit, since his father is also a foppish twit as well as a traitor not even permitted within six planets of the Empress. Everyone assumes he's intentionally following in his father's footsteps, when in fact Roger knows nothing about his father and just thinks everyone hates him.
• The Unfettered: By the time he's finished with Marduk (and vice versa), Roger would be this if not for Nimashet acting as his Morality Chain. He and his people call her his "prosthetic conscience."
• Unobtainium: ChromSten collapsed matter armor.
• Unwanted Rescue: By the Peoples' traditions, rescuing someone not of your tribe without a personal need to do so makes them your slave. Cord is miffed when Roger does it to him, though they eventually bond. And then this is flipped back on him when he unthinkingly rescues Pedi.
• The Uriah Gambit: Subverted. Gunny Jin has to keep a plasma gunner who should be on the front lines in a safer spot because that person is dating someone he's interested in — all to avoid this trope.
• Villain Has a Point: The faction seeking to seize control over the empire actually has some sensible goals - Roger's grandfather died senile after gutting the military and allowing their neighbors to grow strong enough to be a threat to national security, and they want to rebuild the armed forces and push the Saints back. Empress Alexandra actually agrees with those policies, it's just the bit about the policies only being implemented by people who are personally loyal to Prince Jackson as an individual rather than the Empire as an institution that she has trouble with, and Jackson cannot accept the notion of not being in charge.
• We Have Reserves: Barbarian tribes on Marduk seem to exclusively rely on berserk Zerg Rush tactics. It works for the most part until humans introduce soldier formation tactics. The few who wise up to this fact find themselves quickly overruled for being "weak."
• Weirdness Censor: The Mardukans are almost shockingly blasé to the presence of humans, partially because we resemble a harmless prey animal. Few towns display any curiosity for more than a couple of days before treating the group like any other traveling traders/warriors. This is Lampshaded several times.
• What Does This Button Do?: Honal's "strategy" when they board the Saint ship is to press buttons at random. It works.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Ima Hooker was named so by a mostly absent junkie with a twisted sense of humor, apparently...
• Will They or Won't They?: The UST between Prince Roger and Sgt. Despreaux is so obvious the Marines start a betting pool. Of course, the inevitable is delayed with several wars, a couple Moment Killers, one drunken False Start and Roger's amazing ability to put his foot in it.
• Wrench Whack: If it needs to be disassembled, no matter if it's a hostile combatant or a recalcitrant suit of armor, Poertena and his big pocking wrench will provide. For the Powered Armor suit removal, it's faster than the official method of removing a jammed suit.
• Ye Olde Nuclear Silo: Thomas "Tomcat" Catrone lives in one. He bought a large tract of land in central Asia to retire and start a horse ranch on, and since there already was a large and very solid structure on his property, he converted it into a well-appointed home. The fact that he can hold off an assault platoon on his own in there is a nice bonus.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In We Few, Prince Jackson Adoula blows up his house on Earth, along with his secret files and household staff; makes a note to eliminate his chauffeur soon thereafter; and intends to do away with at least one of his co-conspirators. Oh, and then there's the whole plot to murder the Empress after she produces a new heir. He orders her and the unborn heir eliminated once he has to flee the failure of his plans.

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