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Honor Harrington
alt title(s): Honorverse
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.

All but the latest novel (Storm From The Shadows) are legally available for free, along with many other Baen titles, via the Baen Free CD program. The best collection of Honorverse titles is on CD #17, the Storm From The Shadows promotional CD.

Also, please help to make and expand the character page

These novels provide examples of:

  • Absent Aliens: The Honorverse seems mostly lack sentient aliens at first, but later we discover that Honor's pet, Nimitz, is intelligent. And would probably resent being called a "pet." In fact, the usual construction is to call Honor "Nimitz's human," and to say that he adopted her. Also, the Medusans of On Basilisk Station are intelligent, have their own language and even get to fight Manticoran Marines, but are barely bronze age technologically (on account of their planets' hat being moss).
    • 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 show that the ones in the short story were long ago before 'devolving' or some such).
      • It should be clarified that they're not absent in the sense that they don't exist, but they don't have a major effect on the setting. No big dangerous alien empires marching around.
  • Ace Pilot: Scotty Tremaine, Ragnhild Pavletic, some others.
  • Action Girl: Tons of.
  • Action Mom: Take a wild guess.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Surprisingly averted with the Republic of Haven; while the regime itself is a bloodthirsty monster, several of its officers are shown to be truly decent people who are loyal to what they believe their country could be, especially Lester Tourville, Warner Caslet, Shannon Foraker, Admiral Giscard, Eloise Pritchart, and even Thomas Theisman.
  • Anyone Can Die: Unexpected character deaths abound. Even in the last ten pages after a dozen books building the character up only for them to get killed by a mook.
    • Even the title character was once intended to kick the bucket, but a mixture of fan's talking him out of it and Eric Flint's moving things 20 years too early saved her. It was supposed to be her son who dealt with the Solarians and Mesa.
      • Word of God says only Honor's valet is invulnerable, because his wife likes him.
  • Anti Hero: Mostly as a secondary characters. Chief Harkness, Jeremy X, Klaus Hauptmann, etc. The Spook Duo are more than willing to ignore some pesky little rules in their pursuits too...
  • Apocalypse How: The Eridani Edict, enforced by the Solarian League, says Thou Shall Not Bombard a Planet, unless you control the orbitals and have given the inhabitants a chance to surrender. (Controlling the orbitals is the equivalent of holding a sword to the planet's neck, and only the incredibly stupid do not surrender.) A brief discussion in one book on planetary traffic control near planets also points out that the possibility of accidental, civilian Relativity kill vehicles are at least taken into account, at least where Manticore is concerned.
    • On the other hand, because of the way the spaceship drives work, it's not that hard to block incoming RKVs as long as you still have a few ships in orbit that can maneuver. Colony Drops are still a devastating weapon in the setting; it's just that they don't work very well until all the enemy's defenses are gone. It's sort of a Finishing Move.
  • Artificial Gravity
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Pavel Young might as well be the poster boy of this trope
  • Attempted Rape
  • Author Avatar: Victor Cachat to series coauthor Eric Flint. Weber's is probably Honor.
    • 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?
      • Why not Hamish Alexander? He gets to marry Honor, after all.
  • 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.
      • A lot of the minor and semi-major characters qualify: Alistair McKeon, (arguably) Admiral White Haven, pretty much every head of state in the series.
  • Badass Family: The Zilwicki clan. Posthumous war hero mom, Genius Bruiser and super-spy dad, Cute Bruiser and Lady of War-in-training daughter, rabble-rousing anti-slavery step-mom, A Child Shall Lead Them adopted daughter, and that doesn't even count the super-spies, Super Soldiers, and various freedom-fighters who make up the family friends.
  • Battle Butler: Grayson steadholders accumulate entire units of these, in the form of their personal armsmen. Honor, of course, collects the most awesome set of them, as personified in their Bad Ass leader, Andrew LaFollet.
    • Cathy Montaigne's butler is an ex-combat slave and undercover freedom fighter.
  • 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 so unusual for the setting. In fact, Honor's own recovery is harder and less complete than most humans could manage if they survived the same injuries. She can't benefit from regen therapies- which means she needs 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, roughly two books, two or three years of in-setting time, and a thousand pages later.
  • 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.
    • Victor Cachat also fits this trope to a T.
    • The all-time scariest character in the whole damn 'verse has got to be mild-mannered techno-geek Shannon Foraker. "Oops!" indeed. It's not every day two full squadrons of S Ds (with crew numbering in the tens of thousands) get annihilated by a few keystrokes.
  • BFG: The tri-barrels carried by marines, plasma rifles, a few others.
    • Scotty, surprisingly for the Ace Pilot, is inordinately fond of plasma rifles — a heavy squad support weapons almost as long as he is tall, and knows his stuff well. Although, in those rare cases when he joins the fun personally, he tends to switch it to the plasma carbine, it being somewhat more manageable.
  • Big Bad: Albrecht Detweiler.
  • Bishonen:Victor Cachat, repeatedly described as cute, and Jeremy X, who was literally genetically engineered to be one, to fit his intended role as a jester.
  • Blithe Spirit: Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou Harrington, being Beowulfian, enjoys playing this trope immensely. She often managed to scandalize even "libertine" Manticorans, not to mention members of her husband's much more straitlaced society on Sphynx. But when Harringtons moved to Grayson...
    • Where's the mother, there's the daughter. While Honor, a Sphinxian, 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, though this is highly Your Mileage May Vary prone, with this being the negative perspective and requiring her several injuries to be handwaved.
  • But I Cant Be Pregnant: Honor in At All Costs
    • The trope name is more or less a direct quote, by the way. There was a birth control failure, when a paperwork error prevented her doctor from realizing her implant had expired during her "death" on Hades.
  • Call A Smeerp A Rabbit: Sphinxian chipmunks.
  • 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 and many others, this being a navy focused series.
  • 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.
    • And we learned in Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington that she picked it up from her first captain, during her middie cruise.
  • Chessmaster: Half the cast are top notch military strategists, others are political strategists, and some are both.
  • Christianityis Catholic: Averted. Grayson state church is a new religion evolved from Christianity much as Christianity did from Judaism. They have an additional scriptural book alongside the Bible. This is partly because of technology dominating on Earth (originally their bogeyman) according to Saint Austin, the church founder. Also, 'God' is known as the Tester and Comforter among other things in their religion, the Church of Humanity Unchained.
    • The splinter church of Masada rejects the New Testament and takes the Old Testament very literally.
    • Judaism seems to have a lot more sects and denominations than there are now.
    • Honor is Third Stellar, which appears to be an outgrowth of Methodists, while the Queen is 2nd Reformation Catholic; in At All Costs, Reverend Sullivan notes that the Second Reformation Catholic Church had "seen its uncontested primacy broken long before Man ever left Old Earth", a clear reference to the Reformation that we know. Apparently Mother Church had another one.
    • At one point, Honor mentions to a young Grayson man in her employ that an average Manticoran Navy ship carries a multitude of religious beliefs, and that her own had everyone from atheist to Reform Scientologist on board.
  • Cool Ship: Honor's various commands are often as quirky as she is, though the cruiser and battlecruiser she commanded in the second through fourth books were pretty normal ships for their class, if sometimes fresh off the assembly line.
  • Copy Protection: Averted in this and all other Baen titles. Their books made digitally available, unencrypted and in all common formats, on CD compilations that are explicitly stated as free for distribution by any third parties. It deserves a mention, because it's awesome! Given how friendly they are, you'd have to be a jerkass to steal from Baen.
    • Not to mention very dedicated to the concept of piracy, given how many are freely available.
  • 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, though Hauptman originally played it straight- 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 lifeand Stacey did a Calling The Old Man Out .
    • The Mesans might be a bit of a subversion; it turns out the whole Corrupt Corporate Executive bit is just a cover for their plot to Take Over the Galaxy.
    • Interestingly, Hauptmann is fairly willing to play patronage and influence games, but he takes umbrage at any fiscal corruption or penny-pinching, and he is also strongly loyal to his company, his people, and his nation- the first two being the reason he got involved in the first place in the first book (where some of his people were smuggling without his knowledge, but he took personal insult at Honors zeal in catching them).
    • Pretty much any large Solarian League corporation you care to name is run by these.
  • 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, a Havenite 'tac witch,' has several, such as the Beware The Nice Ones entry.
    • Nimitz in The Honor of the Queen. The moral here? If you enter a room intending to assassinate someone, and there is a treecat in the room, your first action upon entry should be to shoot the 'cat.
      • MUCH easier said than done. 'Cats have much quicker reaction than average human, and much lower body mass to react on. It's really difficult to outspeed the 'cat, and we haven't started on the whole empathy thing yet...
      • In that case, the moral is: If you enter a room intending to assassinate someone, and there is a treecat in the room, either abort your mission immediately, or switch to nuclear weapons.
      • The treecat has no ranged weapons. You do. Pray to your gods that you're out of easy leaping distance and good at hitting small moving targets... on second thought, yeah, break out the powered armor and grenades.
    • 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 don't see it directly, but Havenite Admiral Amos Parnell pulls off what may qualify as one by getting almost half his fleet out of a deep-space ambush against no less a commander than Earl White Haven in the 3rd battle of Yeltsin ... an ambush that he went into not only out-numbered against opponents with better equipment, but misled by some rather devious misinformation schemes plotted by Admirals Givens and Caparelli.
  • Cult Colony: Grayson and Masada. Possibly Zanzibar. Probably a few more.
  • 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 will give you lung cancer. 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. It later becomes known that they were also genetically modified without their knowledge by a small handful of colonists; survival would have been otherwise impossible in the early days.
    • The prison planet Hades ("nicknamed" Hell by its inmates, not that that's much different from its actual name) has a lousy climate (mostly- it's refreshingly not a 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 at least digest. It causes brain damage. And if you tried to live on it and nothing else for long, you'd still die of vitamin deficiencies.
    • Guanyin (the original name of the Andermani Empire's capitol planet) also counts — it had undetected bacteria that eat chlorophyll, leading to mass crop failure and famine.
    • Mesa had a great climate, but the native life was not compatible. Rather than terraforming the planet to suit humans, 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 powerful gun, but treecats are so small and agile that they're near-impossible targets with a truly frightening strength for their small size. Fortunately, treecats are also generally quite friendly to humans, but they are perfectly capable of disposing of humans that they don't like, as Nimitz and a few others have demonstrated from time to time. This is not a planet you want to be on without at least mid-20th century technology to even the odds.
      • Nah, Sphinx's nowhere near the textbook definition of a Death World, it's just somewhat unpleasant.
  • 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?
    • The Scrags' problem is that they've got Super Soldier genes... but the ones we see live in a slum and have no education. Guess we know which side of the Nature versus Nurture debate Eric Flint comes down on.
      • Truth In Television: the critical differences between a thug and a soldier, or an incompetent soldier and a competent one, are Training and Experience.
    • A good number of State Security's thugs fit this one to a T.
    • Somewhat subverted by the Havenite public educational system, which has been the subject of generations of corruption and systematic dumbing down. At first, this was due to genuine (but misguided) egalitarian sentiments, but later embraced by the newly founded oligarchy as a tool to make the population easier to control. This has lead to the situation when Havenite college degree holders are often little better educated that Manticoran (or Beowulfan, or, for that matter, Old Earth) high-school dropouts.
      • This difference in education levels has bitten Haven in the posterior regions more than once, so one of the genuinely positive deeds of the Committee was to revamp the school system.
  • Enemy Civil War: Haven, twice over the course of the books. It is also heavily hinted that the same fate awaits the Solarian League in the near future.
  • 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.
    • Inverted after a fashion: Victor Cachat (are you surprised really?) has managed to rope Manticoran secret agent Anton Zilwicki, in addition to a Manticoran warship or two, into doing the Republic's dirty work on more then one occasion.
    • It has also been heavily hinted in At All Costs that Zilwicky and Cachat will get proof back to their respective governments of Mesan manipulation and sabotage of the peace talks in order to keep Manticore and Haven shooting at each other. If that happens, it is very possible that Manticore and Haven might team up to give Mesa a very through ass kicking.
      • That should work unless the war with the Solarian League that appears to be brewing at the end of ''Storm From the Shadows" heats up. In which case even Manticore and Haven combined are in deep trouble, because the Solarians are so big, even their reserves have reserves.
      • And, just to offset this, the possible messy dissolution of the League is brewing even since The Crown of Slaves. Never underestimate MWW's ability to churn up intrigue and hang the ChekhovsGuns all over the walls.
  • 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: practically the only type of biologist in the employ of Manpower Inc.
    • Utterly averted, though, by the Beowulfans, including Honor's own mother.
      • Because Mesans are, in a nutshell, the rogue Beowulfans who didn't like the Beowulf Code. Thus, between them, Its Personal.
  • Explosions In Space: Completely averted, all explosions in vacuum are realistically described.
  • Expy: Pierre and Saint-Just have a pretty good Stalin/Beria vibe going.
  • 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. Derived from Mr. Weber's often serving as a Game Master for paper-and-dice RP Gs, prior to his big break as an author.
    • Citizen Admiral Cluster Bomb, AKA Citizen Admiral Esther McQueen.
      • That one was actually an in-universe nickname for her, even.
  • 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, respectively, though without the brutal exploitation the English applied to those two countries in that era.
      • There was some unrest on Gryphon, though.
      • If you read carefully, you'll notice that's because a lot of the nobles on Gryphon, in the parlance of the series, aren't worth the pressure to blow them out the lock. The central government not only doesn't have anything to do with it, the Crown routinely sides with the common citizens when issues flare up, who are thus very loyal to the Queen.
    • The People's Republic of Haven is mostly 18th century Revolutionary France — lampshaded with a revolutionary leader named Rob S. Pierre — mixed with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin for good measure.
    • 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).
      • They were founded by a guy who thought he was the reincarnation of Frederick the Great...to the point of running around in full Prussian military uniform. Just the first in a line of loony, yet competent, emperors.
    • The Solarian League seems like either the European Union with teeth, or the modern United States, depending on who you ask with a heavy dose of late Imperial Rome, in terms of size, hegemony, and the structure by which its outer provinces are governed. This is much stronger in the most recent books, which are clearly setting up its messy dissolution.
      • They're so big compared to everything else that historical analogies fail. No historical nation on Earth has been larger than all its neighbors and competitors by as big a margin as the League is. It's more fair to compare all the major players in the stories as different counties in California and the Solarian League as the rest of the United States.
    • Grayson admits that it's Meiji Japan, complete with kudzu, with a dose of the Deep South. Which side the kudzu comes from, it's hard to tell.
      • Don't forget Honor's little episode with the katanas in Flag in Exile...
      • Which is explained by the fact after their technological society started to fall apart, they based part of their culture on the movie The Seven Samurai, since it was the only source they had for information on pre-industrial warfare. .
      • Not to mention Grayson also loves Baseball.
      • Which nobody except them plays anymore.
      • Not true. There are at least six other planets that still play it!
      • Hell, even if they didn't Protector Benjamin would just gravely say, "This is baseball" whilst leaving everyone else confused as hell.
      • They're also one of the last planets to still use ties, as well as US Air Force style uniforms for their space navy complete with clouds and thunderbolts for field officers. (Naturally, this is commented on as anachronistic, as obviously 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 in terms of corruption, ineffectual government, and generally being a very bad place to be.
      • As well as the actual Silesia and its role in history between France, England, Prussia, and Austria.
    • The Talbott Cluster is also a nice pastiche of the worst parts of the Third World in... see above.
      • Except for the planet Montana, which is, well, exactly what it sounds like as a counterpart culture.
  • Faster Than Light Travel
  • Feudal Future
  • 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 (six-feet-two, very physically fit, and a seventh-degree (out of 9) black belt in a form of unarmed combat), and a couple of others.
  • Genius Cripple: Emily Alexander. A triplegic for decades, and easily THE one most shrewd mind in the whole kingdom. Sometimes she looks just like Stephen Hawking's expy of sorts, only with politics and drama instead of physics.
  • God Mode Sue: Victor Cachat is Eric Flint's Author Avatar.
  • Good Republic Evil Empire: Not so much subverted as demolished with comparisons of the democratic monarchies of the Star Empire of Manticore and Andermani Empire to the republic style governments of the People's Republic of Haven and the Solarian League. The trope is also reference in-universe as one of the problems Manticore has in its war against Haven: Solarians tend to automatically think in this trope, and though the League is neutral, public opinion skews against Manticore.
  • Government Drug Enforcement: Manpower, Inc. uses a combination of genetic engineering and powerful medication to control a population of "genetic slaves" to do manual labor, serve as super soldiers, and act as sex slaves. Also, it's heavily hinted that Haven used drugs in the drinking water and food supply to keep a lid on rebellious proles in their welfare state gone wild.
  • Great Escape: Honor Harrington is responsible for one of the grandest examples on record; she managed to take over a whole prison planet and made it back to friendly space with half a million freed inmates.
  • Happily Married: Hamish and Emily Alexander (and later Honor happily married to both Hamish and Emily Alexander-Harrington), 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, though as of late it has moved away from that.
  • Honor Before Reason: Subverted, characters express a very low opinion of about commanders who futilely get their commands destroyed just to not be seen as running away.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Many of the books are titled with some pun involving the title character's first name.
  • Idiot Plot: War of Honor. While trying to negotiate peace with Manticore, the Havenites receive responses to conditions they simply did not state. Ever. It never occurs to them that perhaps their own messages, which conveyed the polar opposite of what the Manticorians seemed to have received, were not being relayed accurately. And they start a war over it. The Manticorian government at the time doesn't exactly go a long way toward raising the average politician IQ, either.
  • Inertial Dampening, complete with explanation of how it works, and what happens to any poor SOB on board a ship that has it fail.
  • 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.
  • Its Personal: Several times, but notably Honor's duel with Pavel Young.
  • 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.
  • 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 aptly named eponymous short story, which describes this event, portrays rioters in such extremely negative light that Rob S. Pierre looks downright benevolent by comparison.
  • Lady Of War: Honor first and foremost, although most female military types count. Of course, considering the fact that it's a military science fiction series, it makes sense that the Lady Of War archetype comes up regularly.
  • Lensman Arms Race: Superior technology is often treated as a powerful tactical edge, but one that can be and is overcome if not used properly or simply overwhelmed. 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.
  • Loads And Loads Of Characters: Between eleven main storyline novels, three (and there will be one 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 largely on four midshipmen fresh out of the academy. Also, Honor Among Enemies spent a great deal of time with new ratings on their first deployment. And, of course, many of the short stories qualify.
  • 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 Detweiler 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.
  • The Man Behind The Man: Detweiler has had a hand in just about every major event in the books, if he didn't just plan them outright to begin with.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Victor Cachat, again. Eric Flint, whatever you were smoking when you designed him, please tell us where to get some.
  • Manticoran Missile Massacre: Weber is fond of fleets getting utterly annihilated by waves of missiles. Interestingly, however, this is a fairly new development in universe, as prior to the technological and tactical advances of the Havenite wars it was just too hard to kill a capital ship with missiles.
    • In fact, the Solarian League thinks it's still impossible...
      • Battle Fleet types, at least.
  • Match Cut
  • 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 has cost the Manticoran navy a pretty penny in destroyed ships under her command. Got lampshaded and then reigned in.
  • Misguided Missile
  • Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness: Weber attempts to write Hard Science fiction, while using several coincidences of Applied Phlebotinum to justify combat being 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.
      • That's because the tactics are based on a cross of modern naval tactics, which revolve around the threat of antiship missiles and long range radar, and those of the Napoleonic era, which depended on maneuver, battles of the line/wall with stand-off cannon/grasers, and "crossing the T". There haven't been many major naval battles in the modern era (yet), so those tactics aren't as famous as the ones of World War Two or earlier.
      • The Battle of Guadalcanal was used as a template for one of these battles, with the role of radar guided gunnery by the US versus the Japanese Optical Gunnery being quoted by the Author.
  • 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.
  • Noodle Incident: Most notably the Third Battle of Yeltsin.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Again, a number of Havenite military and political officers, most spectacularly Admiral Lester "Cowboy" Tourvile. It was something of a survival trait in the old PRH.
    • Treecats as a species practiced Obfuscating Stupidity until the start of In Enemy Hands. This encouraged the human colonists of the planet they lived on to treat them as protected wildlife, rather than as potentially dangerous aliens with useful abilities that might lead someone to try and cut them up.
  • 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 exactly what type of warships the Peeps gave Masada. One of which also has the firepower of a heavy battlecruiser.
    • The entire Star Kingdom of Manticore has a couple in War of Honor and At All Costs when they realize just exactly what the new Republican Navy is capable of. Specifically, the RN is capable of reverse engineering or reinventing most of the technology that gave Manticore the lead in the Lensman Arms Race. And of launching really big surprise attacks.
    • Oh, and just about any of Victor Cachat's enemies when they realize who they're up against.
    • The Peeps have one almost every time the Manties drop their EW or emerge from stealth, most notably at Fourth Yeltsin.
    • Conversely, the Manties have one almost every time the Peeps manage to do the same thing, most notably at the (very brief) battle of Adler.
    • Havenite CNO Amos Parnell has one we didn't see, but have seen alluded to numerous times, at Third Yeltsin when he walked into an ambush by superior numbers.
    • The joint State Security-PRN squadron at Second Cerberus has one, at least for the survivors after the first broadside.
  • Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Averted as traditional religions, in addition to some new sects and movements, are alive and well in the Honorverse.
  • 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 third novel of the series, The Short Victorious War. Not only is it the title, but a quote at the beginning of the work, and even quoted (if perhaps unknowingly) by a Havenite minister in the prologue. At least in the Honor Harrington series, Weber seems to like to demonstrate how not to do "subtle".
  • 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 again in War of Honor. This time, 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 to be in her early twenties, too young to be an admiral, but this is the result of life-extending treatments (prolong). As of this writing, the character is over sixty. 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 (physically) young, after all, even if she's been around for sixty years.
    • 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). It has caused cognitive dissonance in at least two pre-prolong societies to see warships crewed by apparent pre-teens.
  • 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. Over time, this shifts as State Security gets more focus in-story as a more outright-fascist protector of the Revolution, up to and including 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, and because the Hornblower-analogue survived her Trafalgar, against authorial expectations.
  • Red Baron: Honor is almost invariably called The Salamander by the newsies, a nickname that she just barely tolerates.
    • Also many other canon nicknames, like The Crusher for Saganami Island Advanced Tactial Course or Nasty Kitty for HMS Hexapuma. Also, heaven help you if you call the HMS Minotaur Minnie around her XO or Captain.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Just about anywhere where royalty is involved. Manticore, Grayson, Andermani, Torch...
  • 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 to her, and a number of her friends and apparently (she mistakenly believes) tried to kill her niece and succeeded in killing a respected naval officer serving as the ambassador to the Solarian League.
      • The latter set was Mesa's fault, not Haven's, but they successfully shifted the blame. Mind you, this was fairly easy because she was already irrational about Haven.
  • Rule Thirty Four hinted at in universe: the reader is informed that treecats are not interested in human sexuality. Nevertheless, Havenite tabloids published stories about relations between Queen Elizabeth III and her treecat, among other lurid tales.
  • Samurai: Grayson again, they traditionally considered this an ideal to live up to.
  • 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...
  • 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. While Grayson had a religious schism, the other colony went Atheist.
  • Stealth In Space: At one point nuclear fusion drives are used as a stealthy alternative to the standard impeller wedges, and the plan succeeds in sneaking several warships to within a few hundred thousand kilometers of their targets. Justified as the enemy wasn't paying attention and thoroughly lampshaded in the next book as being a desperate tactic that was lucky to have worked.
  • Space Is An Ocean: One of the biggest users. The series treats all naval conflicts as if they were conducted with cannons blazing, and Weber designed the technological paradigm in the series to do just that. One notable exception is that ships are often maneuvering 'vertically' in relation to the local star system and are not locked into a strictly horizontal movement scheme.
    • Not only do the ships move vertically, but there's a large exploration of what space implies to naval combat, complete with transitioning the line of battle to the wall of battle and dealing with acceleration rather than speed being the dominating concern. To the point where listing max speed is silly, as everything has a max normal speed of .8C where particle shielding stops being effective. It's to the point all significant figures are done in KPS^2. Later books also make broadside energy engagements pointless, as missile combat at several light minutes becomes possible.
  • Space Marine
  • State Sec: The trope namer.
  • Steven Ulysses Perhero: Rob S. Pierre. If you recognize this name, a great deal of the Havenite side of the plot becomes highly predictable. Also, Admiral Tourville (except in his case the author didn't even bother to cosmetically change the name), Admiral DuQuesne who came up with the plan of financing Havenite economy by conquest two centuries ago, and Oscar Saint-Just.
  • Strange Bedfellows likely in the not too far future: Haven and Manticoran alliance.
  • 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 CanonImmigrants like Cathy Montaigne, who was set up specifically to have a political foe who wasn't an idiot.
      • It's also around this time that a decent Conservative, Captain Michael Oversteegen, appeared, though even he's very apolitical. Before then, it was all Youngs and High Ridges, utter prats who you wouldn't trust to run errands, much less a government.
  • 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 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, upon the formal incorporation of the Talbott Cluster Quadrant.
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Straight up by the Havenites, since it's based on the French Revolution; the revolution is justified and its leader well-intentioned, but it quickly turns into a bloody tyranny. When the military overthrows that regime they're treated a lot more sympathetically, not least because the previous regime's economic policies were beginning to work.
    • It gets further deconstructed in The Shadow of Saganami with the two resistance groups opposing Manticore's annexation of the Lynx systems. Both are being played for fools by the Solarian Office of Frontier Security and Mesa.
      • One of those resistance groups isn't villainous in the slightest. They're quite noble, if misled. The other one... not so much.
  • The Unfettered: Victor Cachat.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: 8th fleet versus 5th fleet with over 37,000 laser warheads versus 85 ships. That's after 30% of the missiles were taken out by point defenses.
    • See also the later stages of Operation Buttercup, where the engagements are stupendously tilted in Manticore's favor thanks to the fruits of their Ghost Rider program and having the only "podnaughts" (AKA Manticore Missile Massacre delivery system) at the time.
  • Tricolours With Rusting Rockets: the Solarian League's Battle Fleet.
  • 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.
      • Also, the series is several thousand pages long, providing plenty of room for tropes.
    • And it has now been around long enough that it has arguably invented, or greatly popularized, a number of science fiction tropes in its own right.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • What Could Have Been: The Honorverse was originally going to be timeskipped several decades, following the death of its namesake character. Her children would have continued the action. The Eric Flint collaboration Crown of Slaves nixed this original plan; its espionage plot ended up fast-forwarding the conflict by putting pressure on the Mesans (spoiler probably unnecessary) to enact their plan early. As a happy side effect, Honor was spared, cutting off what would probably have been the greatest fan rebellion in modern Sci-Fi literature.
  • The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask: Elizabeth III in her early life. Not so much later, but it still shows sometimes.
    • To a slightly lesser degree (as she is not a Queen), Eloise Pritchart.
  • 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.
  • 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, Mesa was responsible for the original Republic of Haven falling two hundred years ago. Worst of all, Mesa was already planning back then for Haven to take down Manticore eventually.
      • Storm from the Shadows Oopsie ARC moves it all into Refuge In Audacity territory. Mesa is playing everyone, including most of its organization for fools. There are layers upon layers to keep people from guessing the true purpose is Galactic Domination. The outer layers of the organization have their own operations and philosophies to obscure the inner layer. This includes cultivating the idea they are greedy hedonists. And this plan's been around since at least the Beowulf civil war. They have a new FTL faster than everyone else's and are using it since the C&C loop they have is shorter than would be possible for them to control events. Heck, even the Audubon Ballroom, the greatest anti-Mesa terrorist organization, is really being played by the Alignment. The Alignment deliberately outs no-longer-useful allies and incompetent twits to the Ballroom, using their worst enemies as their cleanup crew.
  • You Are In Command Now: Happens at least once a book: the flagship of a formation is destroyed, or battle damage kills the captain of a spaceship. Sometimes things work out fine; usually they don't.
  • You Fail Economics Forever: Havenite economics.
    • In-universe, mind ye. Weber seems to have a decent enough handle on things. Indeed, by the time the series starts the Havenites are failing economics in the worst sense of the word possible. Their economy is such a hash that it cripples their ability to fight a much smaller enemy that should be a pushover.
    • Not to mention the fact that their whole motivation for expansion is based on the fact that they've failed economics; they've become the Planet Looters to keep their economy afloat on the spoils.
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