YMMV / Honor Harrington

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: One of the plot points in At All Costs involves an expired contraceptive implant — a device which sounds exactly like (and is presented to the reader in the same style as) the kind of futuristic medical technology that David Weber might invent, but which (in a less long-lived version than Harrington's) exists right now.
• Anvilicious:
  • The Anvilicious Revolutionary France parallels go beyond just Rob S. Pierre: His co-conspirator and successor is Oscar Saint-Just, his government is called the Committee of Public Safety, characters repeatedly refer to his governance as a Reign of Terror, and his capital is Nouveau Paris, where the revolutionaries end up having an important meeting in a tennis court. (Ironically, this was later revealed to have been deliberately exploited by Weber, who ruthlessly pointed neon signs at these parallels to keep his readers looking in one direction while the plot went an entirely different direction.)
  • The destruction of the starships Sovereignty of the People and Equality by StateSec during the coup that put Saint-Just in power is a pretty blatant sign that extra emphasis is being put on the "Tyranny" part of People's Republic of Tyranny.
  • And then there is the Solarian League: "But the Constitution was what accepted practice made it, not some dead-letter document which hadn’t functioned properly in over six hundred T-years!" from A Rising Thunder. The parallel with the US and the 'living Constitution' argument is unmistakable.
    • Even if it doesn't quite rise to "anvil" levels, you could make a case for parallels with the EU and UN as well: The fundamental flaw in the Solarian League, that explains how it got to where it is at the time of the main-line novels, is that it was conceived as something well beyond a mere alliance or regional grouping, but short of a true government. As a result, it was sufficiently government-like for large numbers of people to want it to do things that required real governmental power, but not government-like enough to be able to reliably do those things using the powers that it was actually intended to have. Cue a series of gradually expanding workarounds and "established practices," many of which started out with good intentions . . .
    • In particular, the excessive power of the permanent bureaucracy relative to the elected legislature is a result of the fact that the constitutional limits on the ability of the League government to pass controversial laws are extremely strict, but the limits on its ability to come up regulations that creatively "implement" existing laws are . . . less precise.
    • Similarly, while the extent of OFS's exploitation of the protectorates may be attributable to corruption and human greed, it's made clear that the ultimate cause of that exploitation is that the League **can't function** on tax revenues alone, due to the difficulty of passing legislation that increases taxes, and so it has to rely heavily on "administrative fees." And given that those fees are determined by an unaccountable, legally-gray — at best! — process anyway, it's a lot less disruptive to the status quo to collect them disproportionately from people who live on the ass end of nowhere and aren't voting citizens.
• Awesome Music: In-universe example. Later on, Havenite units start using music in place of standard shipboard alarms for things like General Quarters or Battle Stations. One ship uses "Ride of the Valkyries" for the Battle Stations alarm. In context, it is awesome.
• Cargo Ship: Well, not quite cargo, but there is a certain subset of fans that subscribe to the idea that Thomas Theisman's one true love will always be the Republic of Haven.
• Complete Monster: Most of Honor Harrington's enemies have been fairly complex adversaries with understandable or even altruistic goals. This is not the case for all of her foes, however:
  • Honor Harrington series:
    • The Honor of the Queen: Captain of the Faithful Williams is the commander of Masada's Blackbird base. When Williams receives war prisoners from HMS Madrigal, he orders all of the female prisoners brutally raped by him and his men, leading to the deaths of all but two. Once the forces of Manticore and Grayson try to capture Blackbird, Williams orders all of the prisoners killed and his men to fight to the death, despite knowing they won't accomplish anything against better equipped Manticore marines, and when they try to avoid pointless deaths, Williams shoots everyone within reach. Williams's cruelty inspires revulsion and hatred from his enemies, allies, and subordinates alike.
    • Honor Among Enemies: Andre Warnecke is the former dictator of the Chalice Cluster. Taking control of the Cluster during a revolution, Warnecke promised reform, but delivered oppression so severe that three million people died. After being run out of the system, he turned to piracy, robbing and stealing from merchant ships in order to finance a return to Chalice. Coming upon the pacifistic world of Sidemore, Warnecke took power, executed all senior officials, and placed nuclear warheads in all major cities in order to ensure the population's loyalty. When Honor and the HMAMC Wayfarer arrived on Sidemore to bring him to justice, Warnecke detonated one of his nukes to show that he wasn't bluffing, then offered to exchange the lives of Sidemore's urban population for his own personal safety.
  • Wages of Sin series's To End in Fire: Karoline Adebayo is the administrator of Galton, a Mesan Alignment star system focused on research and development. Adebayo unflinchingly perpetuates a system of slavery based on principals that she doesn't even believe in. When she hears that her superiors have launched a terrorist attack that killed 43 million, Adebayo celebrates. When Honor attacks Galton and inflicts a Curb-Stomp Battle, Adebayo is furious about being defeated, but seemingly agrees to surrender to save the lives of her surviving soldiers. However, as soon as her enemies have lowered their guard, Adebayo violates the truce and launches missiles hidden amidst all of the system's civilian settlements, even though she knows Manticore's defensive weaponry will keep this act from achieving any strategic meaning. Adebayo knows that Honor is likely to retaliate by wiping out the areas those missiles will come from, but doesn't care. Adebayo's last act is risking a retaliatory strike that will kill millions of people she's sworn to protect just so that she can kill a few thousand Manticorian sailors under a flag of truce to placate her own ego.
• Continuity Lockout: The eleventh book, At All Costs, marks the point where David Weber officially started assuming you've read all the spinoffs: events from both the Zilwicki/Cachat novels and the first of the new Saganami Island gaiden books are integral to a full understanding of the plot, and yet are not Infodumped by the book itself, merely alluded to in passing. Shadow of Victory is at least partially designed to unite all the various spinoffs prior to the final book. However, it makes so the actual timeline advances only one day as various different thread, including those before the end of At All Costs are brought up to the end of Shadow of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • "Tac witch" Shannon Foraker for her plucky, geeky cheer even under a tyranny that distrusts its officers, for the "Oops!" CMOA, and for almost single-handedly being responsible for the Republic of Haven catching up to Manticore in their Arms Race. The prospect of her teaming up with (a thoroughly redeemed over the last dozen books, thank you) Admiral Sonja Hemphill was enough to have readers in literal Tears of Joy.
  • Many fans voice appreciation for Theodosia Kuzak, for her assertive role in the court-martial of Pavel Young, long string of Naval accomplishments, and good Working with the Ex dynamic with Hamish.
  • First Space Lord Thomas Caparelli gets a lot of praise for his ability to balance the needs of the military and the civilian populace, his willingness to trust and appreciate Honor even at a time when she's Persona non grata in several circles, and how gracefully he takes his Always Someone Better relationship with Hamish, appreciating and seeking out the man's superior insight and planning ability, but still being capable of brilliant ideas of his own.
  • Victor Cachat got his own spinoff series for a reason. Things tend to get a lot more colorful and fast-paced when he's around with an absolutely entertaining mixture of humor, action and Realpolitik.
  • Mark Sarnow's role as Honor's most capable direct superior yet, as well as his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to an admiral biased against her, proved to be some of the highlights of book three, The Short Victorious War.
  • Admiral Kotouc and Megan Petersen with their Big Damn Heroes, Saganami-inspired moment in Uncompromising Honor.
  • Alice Ramsbottom from the short story "Ruthless," due to helping thwart her villainous parents in a Guile Hero fashion while still loving them and gracefully accepting she isn't going to have a Childhood Friend Romance with Prince Michael.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • At the end of Flag In Exile, Weber's Author Note points out an uncomfortable parallel between the Oklahoma City bombings—which occurred after the manuscript had been finished—and the Mueller dome collapse. Readers after 2001 may notice a few parallels with 9/11 as well.
  • In Field of Dishonor, Queen Elizabeth's refusal to divert Honor from challenging Pavel Young, Earl of North Hollow, to a duel takes on a stronger tone after reading the story "Queen's Gambit", in the Worlds of Honor anthology. Elizabeth was herself prevented from seeking justice for the assassination of her father by the People's Republic of Haven, prior to the outbreak of the war.
• He's Just Hiding: Given the sheer scale of The Beowulf strike and the number of prominent, likable characters present, it isn’t hard too hope some of them might have survived but been lost in the confusion.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • At the end of On Basilisk Station Honor is told about the political theory of "The Big Lie", how the bigger the lie the more likely the uninformed would believe it. Jump forward to the 2020 US election where Donald Trump puts that theory into practice.
  • Rereading Honor of the Queen after At All Costs, many of the idiotic and ridiculous maneuvers ordered by Masadan officers look less "idiotic" than "premature":
    • The idea of using hyper-capable warships to carry LACs with their tractor beams is seen as an ingenious solution to a nonexistent problem ... but it presages both tractored missile pods and LAC-carriers.
    • One officer is criticised for relying on weight of fire to try and overwhelm Honor's defences, which is odd when later books are so much about Manticoran Missile Massacre. (Although, in Theisman's defense, he'd previously demonstrated the proper way to increase weight of fire when his destroyer effectively fired a double-broadside by spinning his ship and delaying the ignition of the drives of his first broadside — thereby anticipating both the off-bore launchers and the stacked salvos of later books.)
    • Simonds' decision to use his battlecruiser in a missile duel against Harrington's heavy cruiser and destroyer instead of closing to energy range flies in the face of all received wisdom about heavier ships fighting lighter ones ... because prior to the development of podlaying ships, missiles couldn't be stacked heavily enough to make them more effective than energy weapons.
    • Although this puts the fumble-fingered Masadans on the other side of the equation, the Hail-Mary salvos Hamish Alexander fires from beyond the range of their drives at the end of the book end up being unexpectedly effective, as their lack of drives means that their target can't detect them ... much like an Apollo missile with a long ballistic stage in its trajectory.
  • In The Short Victorious War, the idea of battlecruisers trumping ships of the wall is dismissed as impossible. 20 years in universe later, Manticore does just that against the Sollies.
  • In Crown of Slaves, Berry Zilwicki claims that the only two things she would be good at are being a housewife or a queen. By the end of the book, she has the latter job.
• Ho Yay:
  • Although Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness are "officially" Heterosexual Life-Partners, there is the rare ... hint ... of something more. Like in In Enemy Hands, when they were captured and Tremaine had thought Harkness had turned traitor, but then discovered it was only a ruse so Harkness could gain the Peeps' trust and engineer an escape:
    Aside from five of the noncoms, [Harkness] was junior to every one of them, but he had their undivided attention. Especially that of Scotty Tremaine, who couldn't seem to take his glowing eyes off him.
  • The Graysons also have some accidental fun with the decision to describe their religious establishment as "Father Church." It fits with their patriarchal society, but the reason we Old-Earth Christians call our faith "Mother Church" is because it is described in Ephesians as "the bride of Christ" and is married to Jesus.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Steadholder Mueller is a pretty canny operator in Flag in Exile who, while an opponent of both Honor and Protector Benjamin, emerges from the events of that book with his hands apparently clean. By Ashes of Victory he expresses no doubts when a group he's never heard of suddenly offers him a sack of cash. Did it not occur to him that they might have ulterior motives? Spoiler: They do. (He also has a spy on his staff, but that's more reasonable as that's what undercover agents are trained to do). The plot even notes that until the penny is dropped - hard - he thinks he's controlling them.
  • If there's a Solarian on the page, always bet money on them holding an idiot ball. Even after getting their collective asses served on a silver platter by Michelle Henke in Talbott and by Honor herself in Operation: Raging Justice, they still can't get it through their heads that they're not the big kid on the block anymore- they're on Manticore's dinner menu.
  • During In Enemy Hands, Cordelia Ransom invites the captured non-coms of HMS Prince Adrian to turn against their plutocratic masters. Horace Harkness accepts. Although his homeworld Gryphon does have a cultural mistrust of its nation's hereditary aristocracy, it doesn't reach the level of class warfare, and even someone fed up with the war would have to be insane to think that State Sec, who only minutes ago were having fun Pistol-Whipping their captives and bragging about Harrington's impending execution, would be a step up. Despite this, all of the other Manticoran prisoners, even Harkness's best friend Scotty Tremaine, collectively grab hold of the ball in completely believing his defection is genuine, without considering the far more obvious (and true) explanation that he's playing into the role of the "poor, oppressed proletarian" to gain their captors' trust. State Sec also isn't particularly smart for trusting him as much as they do, but at least they have the excuse of not knowing Harkness personally and having a propagandized perception of Manticore's sociopolitical climate.
• I Knew It!: The end of Mission of Honor features Haven and Manticore allying against Manpower and the Solarian League. This had been predicted by many readers.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The books primarily consist of political intrigue and military combat/analysis, with the requisite Character Development and technology Infodumps to support them. Many fans are only in the series for one or the other, and Weber has stated in the past that pleasing both camps can feel nigh-impossible.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • A character in Basilisk is given a full three pages of backstory before being "killed" while trying to escape. Anyone could figure out it wasn't him. He is shown later escaping Basilisk thanks to his use of the craft that everyone thought he was in as a decoy. He shows up again in Field of Dishonor, and is hired by Pavel Young to kill Paul Tankersley and Honor in duels. Succeeds at the first, but the second... not so much.
  • Despite the author's insistence that Anyone Can Die, there is a distinct pattern of Plot Armor around Honor and her family. Yes, nearly the entire Harrington clan is wiped out in Oyster Bay, but miraculously almost all the ones we've actually met onscreen escape with their lives.
  • There's a similar tendency for crew members with a lot of Character Development to survive at the least the book they're introduced in. There was no way that, say, a young techie who takes a level in ass-kicking and puts the ship's bullies in their place is going to buy the farm in the inevitable Honor Death Ride at the end of Honor Among Enemies, for example. After their introductory book, however, they're as fair game as anyone else.
  • There's no way Hamish and Samantha are going to bite the dust so close to the end of the main storyline.
• Memetic Badass: Victor Cachat — of this very page.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Masadans, who prior to that point had just been fairly generic religiously oriented bad guys, crossed the MEH with what they did to the crew of the HMS Madrigal.
  • Burdette's faction of Steadholders crosses it when they sabotage a dome while a elementary school class is visiting.
  • Denver Summervale's first appearance gives him a slight Evil Is Cool treatment, then, when he reappears, he murders the love of Honor's life for money and is shown to have enjoyed it.
  • Andrew Warnecke casually nukes a city on a planet he's holding hostage just to show he's serious.
  • Francisca Yucel, who arrives in orbit over Mobius and proceeds to destroy multiple cities with orbital kinetic strikes, causing civilian deaths in the millions, in order to put down a popular revolt against the Solarian-backed government. Aivars Terekhov destroys her entire headquarters with an orbital strike when he sees what she's done after a token effort to get her to surrender.
  • Cordelia Ransom's plot to Loophole Abuse the Deneb Accords so she can have Honor killed. A scummy move from every angle, it results in no fewer than four Heel Face Turns among the Havenite characters, who do things like actively participate in Honor's escape (Warner Caslet), hide the fact she survived her escape attempt (Tourville and Foraker), and spur the fourth into action that would eventually topple the Committee for Public Safety (Theisman).
  • The Solarian League's "Operation Raging Justice," an all out attack on Manticore in the wake of the Yawata Strike, becomes this in-story for characters. For Manticore, it's the point at which they stop pussyfooting around the League. While they still make every effort to end the conflict without bloodshed, they also plan to force Admiral Filareta to surrender if he goes through with the attack, rather than simply let him leave as has been attempted prior. Also for Beowulf, it and Admiral Tsang's actions are the final proof that the Solarian League doesn't care about its own Constitutional law.
  • They go even further with Operation Buccaneer, a plan consisting on destroying all the space infrastructure in any neutral planet close enough to them, just to "punish" them for the fact that they trade with Manticore.
  • Then comes Hypatia, a League Core World that has just voted to leave, where they would have destroyed all the space habitats with more than six million people alive within, if it were not for the Heroic Sacrifice of a few Manticoran ships that the Solarians destroy in order to Leave No Survivors. Both actions, by the way, are forbidden by two edicts the Solarian League had sworn not only to follow, but to enforce.
  • Although they had arguably long since left the horizon in their rear-view, The Mesan Alignment definitely crosses a whole new one when they launch a terror bombing campaign against the citizens of Mesa as part of a False Flag Operation, incurring civilian casualties in the tens of thousands... all so they can fake the deaths of their conspirators and smuggle them away elsewhere.
    • They can do worse. For example, they can plant high-yield nukes in Beowulf's three biggest space habitats and make them explode with pretty much no warning, preventing any kind of large-scale evacuation and killing more than 43 million people.
    • There is also Operation: Janus, a black ops mission where Mesan agents masqueraded as Manticorans, sought out particularly oppressive and unruly planets in the Talbott cluster, and promised the local subversives military grade hardware and Manticoran naval support in the event the Solarian League was to show up and drop a casual Orbital Bombardment on the rebels. The guns always showed up and triggered civil wars that killed potentially millions of people throughout the Verge, all to buy more time for the Solarian League to get its act together and spread Manticore too thin to attack Mesa. It leaves mountains of corpses on multiple planets and still fails to meet its objectives.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When High Ridge forms a government from disparate Opposition parties, Queen Elizabeth predicts that they'll fall apart in months due to conflicting beliefs. They don't. Because they're terrified of what she'll do to them, politically, if they do.
  • Bonus Points for nearly destroying the Manticoran Alliance by simply taking their loyalty for granted. Grayson is left in the doghouse politically- if not for Honor's influence they may have left the Alliance entirely. Erewhon straight up switches sides when High Ridge won't give them a piece of the political pie. They give modern Manticoran tech to the Republic, putting both sides on an even playing field for the first time in a long time.
  • Double bonus points to the High Ridge Government. They're so terrified of losing power, they refuse to formally end the war with Haven, continuing to collect wartime taxes for peacetime political projects. Haven gets so fed up (and are subjected to their own internal problems) that Eloise Pritchart throws up her hands and launches a surprise attack that devastates the navy of Manticore. A navy that was already reduced to peacetime number of hulls thanks to High Ridge.
• Protection from Editors:
  • Mission from Honor and A Rising Thunder have firmly moved the series from its Horatio Hornblower focus on single deployments with a traditional narrative arc (setup, rising conflict, climax, aftermath) to an unwieldy "record of an ongoing period of time" format that embodies this trope. For example, if A Rising Thunder didn't have P v. E, it might not have taken a third of the book to reach the main cast, nor would the first three chapters have focused on one-shot Lower Deck Episodes that basically came down to "Operation Lacoön upsets Solarians and Manticoran shipping companies." A Rising Thunder also features chapters outright copied from the spinoffs, as a method of recapping relevant events in them that probably wouldn't have been used without P v. E.
  • It started in War Of Honor, which revolves around the political tensions between the Pritchart administration, who want to end the First Havenite-Manticoran War, and the High Ridge government, who want to prolong it to remain in power. These negotiations, despite having been easily described in one sentence and a Pot Hole, takes forty-nine chapters to resolve.
• Squick: One frequently overlooked effect of Prolong therapy is that it extends all stages of human development. Which, basically, means that legal adults still look like a bunch of middle school kids. It's specifically noted in War of Honor that one minor character, Anita Eisenberg, age twenty-eight, looks like she's about twelve (which incidentally makes the effects more pronounced than the Prolong used in the usually-more-advanced Manticore; by comparison, Ragnhild Pavletic, age twenty-one and a recipient of third-generation Prolong at a much earlier age than usual, looks thirteen), Honor in Exile offhandedly mentions that sexual relations between said aforementioned very-young looking crewmembers isn't unusual (and mandatory contraceptive implants are mentioned on and off in various books)... and then Crown of Slaves goes and makes it clear that most people are sexually active by age sixteen. 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, and was noted in The Honor of the Queen (the second book, and first where Prolong was brought up) when the Grayson characters first meet the Manticorans. This was later Retconned when it's mentioned that a part of Prolong is receiving treatments in childhood that accelerate aging so that until adolescence is over, chronological and physical ages roughly match.
• Theme Pairing: Pretty much the entire basis for Sonja Hemphill/Shannon Foraker. Canonically, both are flag officers in R&D and become fast friends because of that. Furthermore, both are women in STEM: Shannon is a Playful Hacker while Sonja is a Gadgeteer Genius. Lesbian technological geek geniuses? The idea was inevitable.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Loomis Liberation League is a well-developed and likable resistance movement against the OFS puppet state that are practically wiped out in their first chapter and never manage to contact Manticore despite their leader have been trying to reach out to them right before being killed and even the survivors never get re-visited.
  • Thomas Caparelli has a good run as First Space Lord and Reasonable Authority Figure, but never gets more than a handful of chapters in the spotlight per appearance, and rarely gets to interact with Honor. He even becomes a casualty of the Beowulf strike without even a proper death scene, when there were enough Sacrificial Lion's there that his presence and death wasn't even necessary.
  • Jackie Harmon provided a good perspective as a highly innovative LAC fighter pilot which could have been extended throughout the series, but only appears in two books becoming a casualty in the second.
  • Carolyn Wolcott is a well-developed Mauve Shirt in the second book, in the aftermath of her attempted sexual assault by a Grayson Officer, but is reduced to a barely-acknowledged Bridge Bunny when she next appears in the story, and is Back for the Dead.
  • Seth Chernock, the Wicked Cultured PRH General who figures out something is wrong at the prison planet of Hades just from a missing chess move on the courier ship, only appears in the final chapters of Echoes of Honor and is killed in the ensuring conflict, but could have had a nice Worthy Opponent, or No-Nonsense Nemesis vibe with Honor over subsequent books if he'd lived for at least another book or two.
  • Miranda LaFollet is just another offscreen casualty of Yawata Crossing, adding to the stories angst despite several books of nice character development when it would have been a good moment, and better drama for her brother to save her alongside Honor's children and show her reaction to the event.
  • Thomas Baschfisch, Honor's commanding officer during her snotty cruise in Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington, who works hard to prevent Pavel Young's allies form sabotaging her career, and is considered a rising Naval star and brilliant tactician, is mostly relegated to a desk job afterwards and only appears in one additional story despite his general aura of competence and good dynamics with Honor, although given the high mortality of the supporting cast this isn't completely awful for him.
  • Simon Mattingly, one of Honor's more well-developed and long-lasting Armsmen, never gets much focus despite awesome moments like continuing to guard Honor's quarters stoically when she's presumed dead, then dies suddenly during an assassination attempt which would have had plenty of gravitas even if no armsman had died, or if someone else had, seemingly just to make LaFollet's enduring presence more impactful.
  • Admiral Capriotti and his staff get a good run in Uncompromising Honor, carrying out the illegal "Operation Bucaneer", but in a way designed to completely eliminate civilian casualties. While the death of Capriotti -and implicitly the others- at the end of the novel do emphasize the technological superiority of Manticore, and the War Is Hell /Anyone Can Die themes, seeing their reaction to the Mesan Alignment's Beowulf strike, and realizing how they were used and that Manticore is completely in the right could have provided a good path for the remainder of the novel, and/or future ones.
  • Wallace Canning, one of Rob Pierre's original co-conspirators. Unlike the others at that point, he has a personal grudge against Honor (due to the events of the first book) and could have gotten some interesting plot impact and development as the only legislaturalist in the new government, and seeing just how bloodthirsty it got (and perhaps falling victim to it himself sooner or later). Instead, he's never even mentioned in the series after the end of the third book and the initial coup's success.
  • Thomas Greentree from In Enemy Hands who had an interesting but barely touched on It's All My Fault reaction to Honor being captured. He then had an extremely brief cameo in Ashes of Victory as Yanakov's flag captain and then was never seen again. He could have gotten some further appearances trying to atone for that before Honor turned up alive.
  • Francis Thurgood is notable as virtually the only Solarian officer who takes the Manties and their technological developments seriously, and who wants to develop both technology and tactics to offset them. As the senior naval officer in the Madras Sector (which bordered the new Manticorian territory in the Talbott Quadrant), he could have been used to justify giving at least a portion of the Solarian League Navy the knowledge and capabilities to actually stand up to Manticore and Grand Fleet. However, he's unceremoniously captured at the end of 'Shadow of Freedom' and is literally never mentioned again after that (barring a short scene in 'Shadow of Victory' which was set before his capture). Grand Fleet and 10th Fleet thus continue to annihilate every single Solarian fleet they come across without serious effort.
• Verbal Tic: Not in the series, but from the main series Audible audiobook VA Allison Johnson. Everytime she says 'I know', regardless of how expressive she was before, suddenly turns deadpan flat. It's jarring and not a little irritating.
  • Weber’s practice of making his characters say “Um.” to indicate assent or acknowledgement, rather than being unsure, where common practice would use “Hm.” or “Mm.”
• The Woobie: Admiral Allen Higgins. The first time he appears, he's forced to nuke the incredibly important naval base of Grendelsbane (so it won't fall into enemy hands) and order an immediate withdrawal when he encounters overwhelming Havenite forces. In his second appearance, it gets worse; he's the commanding officer of Manticore's Home Fleet during Operation Oyster Bay, where he is once again forced to stand by and watch helplessly as virtually all of Manticore's military infrastructure is destroyed in minutes. The general fan consensus is that Allen Higgins needs a goddamn hug like nobody else in the Honorverse.
  • On the Havenite side Admiral Chin seems to have incredibly poor luck resulting in her getting ambushed both times we see her in battle (First Hancock Station and First Battle of Manticore). She also had to deal with Robert Jamka, her psychotic and murderous People's Commissioner, and Victor Cachat's ruthless methods to permanently deal with Jamka and his associates.
  • Luiseach MacRory MacGill of the Loomis Liberation League, falls firmly into this despite her sole scene so far lasting less than five pages: almost her entire family (including her two young children and her father) die during a massacre at the hands of the local Solarian League backed dictatorship, and their attempted resistance movement experiences initial success, then is utterly massacred with practically every other named member being killed or implied to and Manticore never even finding out about Loomis even as they liberate so many other neighboring systems.

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