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Honor Harrington
Honor Harrington is a military science fiction 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 Heel Face Turn).

Weber has explicitly described the series as "Horatio Hornblower" 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 that kind), where she serves as commanding officer.
These novels provide examples of:
  • Absent Aliens: The Honorverse seems to lack 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.
    • There are two sentient alien species in Manticoran space alone (while their full intelligence isn't really known until Ashes of Victory, the treecats have been regarded as Sphinx's native sentients for a few centuries by the time of the main books, and the Medusans are discussed extensively in On Basilisk Station). Another is important in one of the short stories set on the Solarian League's rim, and Weber has said that there are about a dozen others, but we have no information about them other than none are advanced enough to be in space. (Although there are ruins that suggest one may have been long ago).
  • The Ace: Honor when she's not on her ship.
    • Hm? I'd guess it's the other way around. She's really much better at naval combat than she is at most other things. She's a lot more likely to perform aceworthy feats aboard ship.
  • Action Girl: Tons of.
  • Action Mom: Take a wild guess.
  • Anyone Can Die: Many unexpected character deaths abound. Often 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.
      • Word of God says only one character is immune, Honor's valet because his wife likes him.
  • Apocalypse How: The main weapons batteries on a Super Dreadnought are capable of sterilizing entire planets; however, there is a treaty/edict that prevents them from doing this.
    • Actually, MOST shipborne weaponry — even LA Cs are perfectly capable of that. One Word: RKV.
      • Hell, an unarmed freighter full of cheese could manage the trick using just its drive. Again, RKV. (This, of course, supposes no warship shoots it down first, which is why this doesn't actually happen.)
      • That's a First Law of Space Combat for you: any drive that is powerful enough to be interesting is powerful enough to be a weapon (of mass destruction).
      • All of this is acknowledged in universe. The Eridani Edict, which is enforced by the Solarian League, says Thou Shall Not Bombard a Planet, unless you control the orbitals and are aiming at legit military targets.
  • Artificial Gravity
  • Attempted Rape
  • Author Avatar: Victor Cachat to series coauthor Eric Flint. Rumor has it that David Weber has one too, though this troper doesn't know who it might be. (Cough Honor Cough)
    • Gender bending Mary Sue? There so needs to be a trope of this.
      • Honor fits with the Protagonists the Author writes tending to be part Asian naval commanders.
    • WMG: 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.
    • Edward Janacek, Reginald Houseman, Michael Janvier, Pavel Young. We're half done...
      • OK, the non-Strawman Political named characters.
      • Null set.
      • A lot of the minor and semi-major characters qualify: Alistair Mc Keon, (arguably) Admiral White Haven, pretty much every head of state in the series except Eloise Pritchart...
      • Eloise just undergoes Badass Decay when she becomes President. She used to be an assassin in one of the political sects not discredited in the Havenite civil wars.
  • Bavarian Fire Drill: Two Words — Victor Cachat.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: 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.
    • Notably, this level of recovery isn't unusual for the setting. In fact, Honor's own recovery is harder and less complete than most humans could manage if they survive due to her rejection of regen therapies — she has prosthetics. Also, the injuries and abuse she endures in In Enemy Hands are present throughout Echoes of Honor and the lasting injuries are only addressed in Ashes of Victory.
  • Beware The Nice Ones: 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 buzzsaw) when "their" humans are threatened. Nimitz's personal philosophy is that there are two types of enemies, those properly dealt with, and those still alive.
    • Victor Cachat also fits this trope to a T.
    • That's not Nimitz's personal philosophy. When that comes up, it's mentioned that Nimitz, like most treecats, has that view. A more notable example involving treecats is the fact that no hexapuma will knowingly set foot in their territory. Hexapumas are, as I recall, about six meters long and share the same high gravity adaptations that make treecats so stunningly dangerous for their size... only they're scaled up the same way the hexapuma is. And these stunningly dangerous predators don't wander into the range of a treecat clan, because a good-sized pack of treecats can and will turn hexapumas into nothing but bones and small scraps of meat.
      • Hexapumas are pretty pathetic, considering a person with a 1911A Colt Army Action can apparently kill them reliably.
  • BFG: The tri-barrels carried by marines, plasma rifles, a few others.
  • Bishonen: Half the male cast but especially Victor Cachat, repeatedly described as cute, and Jeremy X, who was literally genetically engineered to be one. Handwaved by the prolong treatments which can make a forty-year old marine commando look like a fourteen-year old whose balls have not dropped yet. The head of the Grayson Navy even comments on it in The Honor of the Queen.
  • Blithe Spirit: Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou Harrington, being Beowulfan, enjoys playing this trope immensely. She often managed to scandalize even "libertine" Manticorans, not to mention members of her husband's much more straighlaced society on Sphynx. But when Harringtons moved to Grayson...
    • Where's the mother, there's the daughter. While Honor, a Sphynxian, was naturally much less playful and frivolous, she still seems to inherit this from Allison. Which is especially evident during her early time on Grayson, whose society she basically just turned upside down and let it be.
    • Ginny Usher seems to be the personal Blithe Spirit for just one man. Her adopted little brother Victor Cachat.
  • Bond Creatures: Treecats which "adopt" humans form an instant and indissoluble psychic bond with them.
  • Boring Invincible Hero: Honor, bordering on Mary Sue at times. Perhaps Justified as She is suppose to be Lord Nelson In Space.
  • But I Cant Be Pregnant: Honor in At All Costs
  • Canon Sue: 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.
  • The Captain: Honor when she's on her ship.
  • Casual Interstellar Travel: 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.
  • Catch Phrase: "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.
  • Chessmaster: Half the cast are top notch military strategists, others are political strategists, and some are both.
  • Christianityis Catholic: Averted, the Grayson state church is very much Protestant.
    • Actually, there's a good case to be made that it's a new religion evolved from Christianity much as Christianity did from Judaism. They have an additional scriptural book alongside the Bible and rarely if ever seem to actually refer to Christ.
      • Subverted in recent books, where Weber seemed to notice this and started to throw in Christ references here and there.
      • Also, 'Christ' is known as the Comforter, who does crop up occasionally.
    • Speaking of Judaism — there too seems to be a lot more sects and denominations than there are now.
    • The Masadans, who left Grayson after a bloody civil war and who are featured heavily in The Honor of the Queen chucked out the New Testament and produces an unpleasant theocracy.
    • Honor is Third Stellar, which appears to be an outgrowth of Methodists, while the Queen is 2nd Reformation Catholic.
    • 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 including atheist to Reform Scientologist on board.
      • At that point, David Weber was just throwing out random words to make them sound tolerant.
      • No, every one of those was either a real religion or one easily seen as derived from the same.
      • Which misses the point that he was just throwing out random religions to sound inclusive, even though these are /never seen/.
  • Cool Ship: Honor's various commands are almost as invariably quirky as she is.
    • I'm not sure I'd characterize Wayfarer or the other Trojans as a 'cool' ship. It's a freighter. A heavily-armed, refit freighter with a terrifying broadside armament, but it's still a freighter when you get down to it.
      • So was the Millenium Falcon. Freighters can indeed be cool and quirky.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: played straight with the board of directors of Manpower Incorporated, and all of Mesa's rulers in general. Subverted with the Hauptmann Cartel and Honor's various enterprises.
    • Also played straight — Klaus Hauptmann is still pretty much one of these, he just sided with the good guys.
      • He was originally a completely straight example of the trope, in fact — the very first book has him getting into a conflict with Honor that involves threatening her parents' careers. He gets so nasty she issues a death threat to stop him cold. His Heel Face Turn comes only many books and many in-universe years later after Harrington saves his daughter Stacey's life.
      • And it still took a Calling The Old Man Out on Stacey's part.
    • There are inferences that some of these crop up from time to time. At least a few of Hauptmann's employees are smugglers in the first book, which is how he gets involved in the first place after she cracks down hard on them.
  • Crowning Momentof Awesome: Victor Cachat is guaranteed to pull at least one off in every book he is in. It's a rule.
    • Shannon Foraker, the Havenite 'tac witch,' has several, her greatest being when she destroys two entire State Sec naval squadrons by subverting their computers, rigging their reactors to turn off their containment fields and serve as an impromptu but horrifyingly effective self-destruct system. Her only comment? "Oops."
    • 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.
    • Horace Harkness.
      • As noted on Fake Defector, that's 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 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 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 never see it directly, but Havenite Admiral Amos Parnell pulls off what may qualify as one by getting a third of his fleet out of a deep-space ambush against no less a commander than Earl White Haven... 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.
  • Days Of Future Past: The Napoleonic Wars set in the future.
  • Death World: Several.
    • Grayson is so toxic (very high concentrations of heavy metals) that breathing the dust in its air could kill you. 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.
    • 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 Single Biome Planet and some places are okay). 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 just about survive on. It causes brain damage.
    • Guanyin (the original name of the Andermani Empire's most populous planet) also counts — it had undetected bacteria that eat chlorophyll, leading to mass crop failure and famine.
    • Mesa had a great Climate, but the native life was not compatible. Mesa then made changes 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 large 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 Death World, it's just somewhat unpleasant.
      • Also, large gun? Its stated that Honor trained with guns in her childhood (as part of an Ass Pull Wall Banger) to protect herself from Hexapumas and the like - and her favored gun for such was a /1911A Colt Army Action/, which is a pretty underpowered gun for shooting bears, much less 30 feet long monstrosities.
  • 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.
  • Designated Victim: Poor, poor Mr. Buckley. He's Baen's general designated victim.
  • Dumb Muscle: The Scrags; how many times do you see Super Soldiers that couldn't pass a high school entrance exam?
    • A good number of State Security's thugs fit this one to a T.
  • Enemy Civil War: Haven, twice throughout the books.
  • Enemy Mine: A couple of instances of this.
    • Alfredo Yu when he defects to Manticore after he realizes he will 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.
    • Victor Cachat (are you surprised really?) has managed to rope Manticoran secret agent Anton Zilwicky into doing the Republic's dirty work, in addition to a Manticoran warship or two, on more then one occasion.
    • It has also been heavily hinted at in At All Costs 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.
  • Everythings Better With Princesses: Not in-your-face, but a lot, mostly subverted. 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.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: 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 Beowulf Code. Thus Its Personal.
  • Eyepatch Of Power: 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.
  • Fake Defector: Horace Harkness.
    • That's Sir Horace Harkness, please-and-thank-you!
  • Fan Nickname: MWW — or Mad Wizard Weber — for David Weber, obviously. Very common on Baen's Bar and quite rare everywhere else.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: 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, 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.
    • The People's Republic of Haven is mostly 17th to 18th century 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: Rob. S. Mutherlovin'. Pierre.
      • 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" (Emperor's cousin, his close friend, confidant and advisor).
    • The Solarian League is either the European Union with teeth, or the modern United States, depending on who you ask.
      • It's also got a very 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 are a bit tricky. 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 islands in Micronesia and the Solarian League is everyone else on the planet.
    • Grayson admits that it's Meiji Japan, complete with kudzu, with a dose of the Deep South.
      • Don't forget Honor's little episode with the katanas in Flag in Exile...
      • 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 anacronistic, as obviously Space Is An Ocean and should have uniforms to match.)
    • The Silesian Confederacy is a nice pastiche of the worst parts of the Third World and the worst parts of the former Warsaw Pact in terms of corruption, ineffectual government, and otherwise being a very bad place to be.

  • Faster Than Light Travel
  • Future Slang: or rather, future military terminology. "Ship of the Wall" instead of "Ship of the Line", etc.
  • Gattaca Babies: Manpower Incorporated's hat. Let's take a look at their product line shall we?
  • Genius Bruiser: Anton Zilwicky, Kevin Usher (acts like a drunken thug of a Space Marine), Honor to a certain degree (taller then most basketball players, very physically fit, and skilled in unarmed combat), and a couple of others.
  • Genius Cripple: Emily Alexander. A triplegic for decades, and easily THE one most shrewd ming in the whole kingdom. Sometimes she looks just like Stephen Hawking's expy of sorts, only with politics and drama instead of physics.
  • God Mode Sue: Victor Cachat is Eric Flint's Author Avatar, and is a living, breathing Crowning Momentof Awesome. One of the few examples of a Marty Stu done right.
  • Good Republic Evil Empire: Not so much subverted as demolished with comparisons of the monarchy-style governments of the Star Kingdom of Manticore and Andermani Empire to the republican style governments of the People's Republic of Haven, the Solarian League, and Mesa.
  • Happily Married: Hamish and Emily Alexander (and later Honor too), Alfred and Allison Harrington, and many, many others.
  • Heroic Sociopath: 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).
    • 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.
  • Homage: The entire series is one big homage to Horatio Hornblower.
  • Honor Before Reason: Subverted, characters express a very low opinion of about commanders who futilely get their ships destroyed just to not be seen as running away.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Not at first but latter books tend to be titled with some pun involving the title character's first name.
    • Honor of the Queen. That's not a pun?
      • It is, but it's also played straight at the same time in regards to Manticoran actions defending Grayson.
  • Inertial Dampening
    • The quirks of this technology is one of Manticore's larger tactical edges during the first war, in fact.
  • Indy Ploy: The area where Victor Cachat (really, 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 sheer guts.
  • Infodumps: David Weber's specialty; the series is flooded with these. As You Know is a particular offender. The worst happens in the climax of the first book, where a life-and-death space chase is interrupted by 10 pages of the history of hyperspace. While neither ship actually enters hyperspace, the discussion's more practical side includes the tactical issues Fearless is dealing with. Considering the whole book takes place around a system of hyperspace nodes, one wonders why Weber didn't stick it in earlier.
  • Its Personal: Several times, but notably Honor's duel with Pavel Young.
  • Jumping Off The Slippery Slope: Just exactly how long did it take Rob S. Pierre to go from well-intentioned reformer to bloody tyrant?
    • This troper would say this case is subverted- he reads Pierre as starting off well toward the bottom of the slope, with thoroughgoing delusions of being much higher than he really was.
      • He does get results though, and manages to fix things so later when the 'Good' Havenites take control they have a functioning economy.
    • This troper disagrees. In his opinion, Pierre actually evolves from almost cartoonish villain, who started the bloody revolution half out of personal vendetta, half to fulfill his ambitions, into more well-rounded character that seems to honestly care about the future of Haven, but simply doesn't know any better way of dragging his nation from the pit of economical and military catastrophe, than being a bloody tyrant.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: The swords of Grayson are katanas with a western hilt put on them. Justified as Grayson based a fair chunk of its society off movies like Seven Samurai.
    • Subverted in that they aren't described as being superior to all other weapons. It's a very mild version of the trope, honestly.
  • Knight Templar: 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 short story, aptly named "Whiff of Grapeshot", which describes this event, portrays rioters in such extremely negative light that Rob S. Pierre looks dowright benevolent by comparison.
  • Lady Of War: Honor first and foremost, although most female military types count. This Troper believes that it's basically how Weber's idea of empowered woman looks.
    • Not exactly true. Honor's mother is definitely empowered, and not exactly what you would call militant. The majority of other women in the series also see themselves as equals, and even the Grayson women took on a number of vital jobs and were encourraged to get a certian level of education. Of course, considering the fact that it's promoted as a military science fiction series, it makes sense that the Lady Of War archetype comes up regularly.
  • Lensman Arms Race: Superior technology is routinely treated as the key to winning any conflict in the series.
    • Superior technology is routinely treated as a powerful tactical edge, but one that can be and is overcome if not used properly or simply overwhelmed. 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.
      • This troper seems to remember more than a few cases of superior technology NOT being the key to victory, though it can add new tactical options. He ESPECIALLY remembers when in ''On Basilisk Station"", such "new technology" doesn't work all that well in either wargames OR in a practical battle. Honor herself is outspoken against new weaponry for the sake of new, as is Admiral White Haven.
      • You're confusing 'new' technology with 'superior' technology. Superior technology very much the winner. New technology isn't always.
      • More than once, certain Havenite tacticians (most notably Shannon Foraker) have overcome superior Manticoran technology by employing their equipment in innovative or simply competent ways.
      • The only problen is that it rarely stays. Manties still have vasty more effective industry, that could react to Havenite adjustments on the fly.
  • Loads And Loads Of Characters: Between eleven main storyline novels, two (and there will be two more soon) spinoff novels, and four short story anthologies, the series' cast numbers in the hundreds only for named characters. The list of Honorverse characters on The Other Wiki is 150K long and still growing.
  • Lower Deck Episode: Shadow of Saganami focused 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.
  • Macross 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.
  • Magnificent Bastard: 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 Dettweiler are the ones. With emphasis on the "bastard" part.
  • Mama Bear: Honor lives by this. Whether it's her crew, her family, her Steading, or anyone she considers under her protection, attacking them is practically committing suicide.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Victor Cachat, again. Eric Flint, whatever you were smoking when you designed this character, please tell us where to get some.
  • Mega Corp: Manpower Incorporated is the poster child for this trope, although it's not the only one in the setting.
  • Memetic Badass: Victor Cachat — of this very page.
  • Mike Nelson Destroyer Of Worlds: Honor Harrington destroys any ship she commands (or at least leaves it very severely damaged). It's a rule.
    • While this holds true for most ships under her command, it isn't a constant. ESN Farnese was damaged before she got it, and none of the ships she commandeered in Echoes of Honor were ever even struck by an enemy weapon under her command, let alone mangled. Her commands in War of Honor and At All Costs also get off lightly. It looks suspiciously like Weber caught himself beating this trope into the ground and deliberately reined it in.
  • Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness: Weber attempts to write Hard Science fiction, despite the fact that the conflict is 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 Macross Missile Massacre 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.
  • Monster Clown: Jeremy X, Audubon Ballroom leader and Torch's Secretary of War. A former genetic slave intended to be a house entertainer, he became a 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.
  • My Country Right Or Wrong: A number of Havenite military and political officers.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Again a number of Havenite military and political officers, most spectacularly Admiral Lester "Cowboy" Tourvile.
  • Oh Crap: 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 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 just exactly what type of warships the Peeps gave Masada.
    • 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.
    • Oh, and just about any of Victor Cachat's enemies when they realize just exactly who they're up against.
    • The Peeps have one every time the Manties drop their EW, most notably at Fourth Yeltsin.
    • 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 the survivors after the first broadside.
  • Peoples Republic Of Tyranny: The aforementioned People's Republic of Haven.
  • Powered Armor: quite a few examples, mostly among Space Marines.
  • Putting On The Reich: Havenite State Sec full stop. It's no surprise their initials are SS. David Weber can be subtle when he wants to be, he just chose not to here.
    • I repeat: Rob S. Pierre
      • Never mind the second 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".
  • Rape The Dog: Pavel Young's murder of Paul Tankersley.
    • Burdette's sabotage of the Mueller dome, resulting in eighty-two people, thirty of them children, being crushed by the massive support beams.
      • A special note on this one - Weber says in the afterword that at the time, this was the most "loathsome, despicable, and cowardly" action he could conceive of someone committing. He had no idea that between the completion of the book and its publishing, Timothy McVeigh would top him.
      • And six years later, he gets outdone.
    • Hell. This troper half-expected her to evacuate everyone from the planet, then bomb its surface into lava.
    • There's one mentioned but (fortunately) not described in Service of the Sword that's strongly implied to have made card-carrying Bad Ass Victor Cachat lose his lunch at least once.
  • Reassignment Backfire: The entire plot of the first novel is Honor Harrington's 'exile' to Basilisk Station.
    • It happens again in Honor Among Enemies. And even later on it's subverted- her enemies punt the Villain Ball 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.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Honor Harrington appears too young to be an admiral, but this is just the result of life-extending treatments. It doesn't stop her from acting like a 20-year-old, though.
    • Hormones, man. Nobody said that they don't work anymore. She IS young, after all, despite being in her sixties.
    • This is a trope that covers most of the series aside from a fair number of Grayson characters and a handful of Manticorans (one immigrant, one is Earl White Haven's father).
  • Recycled INSPACE: 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. Overtime this shifts when State Security takes over and is much more fascist including [[Putting on the Reich]]. By Storm From Shadows the parallels end, in part because a conflict between The Solarian League and Manticore does not have a historical parallel.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Just about anywhere where royalty is involved. Manticore, Grayson, Andermani, Torch... That's apparently because MWW is a closet monarchist.
    • Closet?
      • To be honest, Manticore has been shifting the power from the house of Lords and the Queen to the lower house, what she can do it pretty limited, but because the one of the coalition parties in the House of Commons (Crown Loyalists) takes their cues from her.
  • Royally Screwed Up: Elizabeth Winton III, the Manticoran Monarch, 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 assassinated her father, her uncle, her cousin, a man who was practically a second father, and a number of friends and apparently decided to try again, attempting to kill her niece and killing a respected naval officer serving as the ambassador to the Solarian League. The latter set was Mesa's fault, not Haven's.
  • Rule Thirty Four and Rule Thirty Nine 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.
  • Samurai: Grayson again, they traditionally considered this an ideal to live up to.
  • Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: 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 Square-Cube law- 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.
  • Secret Police: Havenite State Security.
    • Also the Mental Hygiene Police and Internal Security, SS's predecessor services under the Legislaturists.
  • Shout Out: 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 Co Dominium universe with an oppressive secret police. And let's not forget Grayson and the Seven Samurai...
      • Erewhon is probably a reference to Butler, given Weber's evident taste in literature, but not necessarily... The name is used in so very many science fiction universes that it's also just a traditional name for a space colony by now.
      • Folks, try spelling "Erewhon" backwards - you'll see where even Butler got it from. It's fairly common in science fiction.
      • So they like Japanese theater about lycanthropes?
  • Space Amish: The Grayson colonists tried to create a low-tech colony to obey their religion's tenets; their choice of a Death World 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 Death World.
  • Space Is An Ocean: One of the worst offenders of this trope. The series treats all naval conflicts as if they were conducted with cannons blazing.
    • To be fair, Weber has admitted to designing 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.
  • Space Marine
  • State Sec: The trope namer.
  • Steven Ulysses Perhero: Rob S. Pierre. If you recognize his name, a great deal of the Havenite side of the plot becomes highly predictable.
    • Admiral Tourville as well. Except in his case the author didn't even bother to cosmetically change the name.
  • Straw Dystopia: Haven, for most of the series.
  • Strawman Political: if you are not a moderate in the Honorverse, then rest assured you will be holding the Idiot Ball and/or Villain Ball.
    • Averted by Canon Immigrants like Cathy Montague who was set up specifically to have a political foe who wasn't an idiot.
    • Weber also has a notable dislike for republican style of government, and it shows.
      • This troper wonders if the above troper has been following the post-Peep Haven lately.
      • He was. But the fact that most of the good guys are still monarchies (some constitutional, like Manticore and Grayson, some not, like Andermani) doesn't help much.
      • Manticore was presented as being the most modern Democracy in the entire area, and is a product of the Horatio Hornblower settings. The changes in the last 20 years have been striping the House of Lords of it's power and changing the balance to be closer to the Modern British System.
    • Similarly, if you feel anything but deepest respect for the military institutions of your state, you surely are a selfish fool or an outright villain.
      • Justified. As the old saying goes, the nation that doesn't want to feed its own army, will feed foreign.
  • Super Soldier: what the Scrags were originally supposed to be, although by the time of the novel's settings they have 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.
  • 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 a grade school kids. 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.
  • The Empire: 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 Federation: Deconstructed with Haven.
    • Perhaps even more thoroughly deconstructed with the Solarian League.
  • The Kingdom: Subverted; far from being the political Butt Monkey, anyone who attacks the Star Kingdom of Manticore is in for a world of hurt.
    • It's now the Star Empire of Manticore. Really.
      • The name hasn't changed. It's just referred to as that informally.
      • MWW uses it himself. So it's still the Word Of God, even if it wasn't reflected in the books themselves yet.
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Averted 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. Both are being played for fools by the Solarian Officer of Frontier Security and Mesa.
      • One of those resistance groups isn't villainous in the slightest. They're quite noble, if misleaded. The other one... not so much.
  • Trope Overdosed: 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.
  • 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. (The captain of one of the attacking ships wonders why she's not heading out of the plane of the ecliptic, and figures she paniced when she saw a large hostile force where she expected to see a friendly one.)
  • We Have Reserves: 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.
    • In the case of the Solarians, the Reserves in question have been in mothballs for a very, very long time. If they ever actually need those reserves, they're going to find themselves in deep technological trouble. Suffice to say that this is not a universe where Rock Beats Laser, or where short ranged energy weapon beats (very) long range missile.
      • To be fair to the Solarian Navy, they're unaware of this. They're convinced of their superior technology and training (not just numbers) and believe that any battle between their navy and a minor power like the Kingdom (how droll) of Manticore would be short and extremely one sided. They're right about that...
      • Presuming that the military attache at Manticore's Solarian League embassy was in a position to watch the climactic battle of At All Costs, the League might just be aware now.
      • They are and were aware of this fact. The problem is that League military is most definitely NOT a monolithic and centrally controlled entity, but instead is a bureaucratic nightmare of literally hundreds of agencies and authorities, each of them responsible for their own acquisitions and R&D. And the Frontier Fleet, the agency most actively involved with (and aware of) "neobarb" capabilities, as they are affiliated with Office of Frontier Security, is limited by regulations to only the light forces, up to battlecruiser at best. On the other hand, the official League hammer, the Battle Fleet, hasn't had any major engagement literally for centuries, its wall-of-battle is mostly in mothballs with very infrequent shake-ups and refits, and its brass is in for a major (and very unpleasant) surprise for their hubris. So, while some light forces of the Solarian Navy are actually quite up-to-date, the heavy hand is woefully inadequate. This is the [1] http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_sln_status.htm.
      • Storm from the Shadows Oopsie ARC show that the most recent changes to battle fleet, as part of the Fleet 2000 operations are designed more for propaganda changes. Making the Bridge look cooler on the Vids was specifically mentioned.
  • The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask: Elizabeth III in her early life. Not so much later, but it still shows sometimes.
  • You Shall Not Pass: 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 ‘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. Of course, considering the Pavel Young incident, the bloodthirsty part may not be unjustified...
      • Pavel Young? Let's be fair to Honor here. We're talking about a man so utterly loathsome, as well as actively dangerous to all around him, that Mother Theresa would have gone after him with a chainsaw.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Mesa has been 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 Roulette territory before Cachat becomes involved, though.
    • Worse yet, looking at the snippets of Storm from the Shadows, Mesa was responsible for the original Republic of Haven falling. Two hundred years ago.
      • Storm from the Shadows Oopsie ARC moves it all into Refuge In Audacity territory. Mesa is playing everyone, including most of it's 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 Audubon Ballroom, the greatest anti-Mesa terrorist organization, is really ran by the Alignment.
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