History Headscratchers / HonorHarrington

* Can somebody ''please'' explain the Theisman Coup? This tropes seems to be missing some parts. Known facts: Theisman found info on who is in [=McQueen=]'s secret secret cell, and then used this data. Cue ''[[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Goodbye, Citizen Chairman]]''. But character pages indicate that way more characters were involved (Cachar, Usher) and even Giscard and Tourville had known something. Where is it in the books? And can someone explain the entire coup, stage by stage?

*** You obviously haven't re-read the earlier books recently, it's repentantly stated that SD missiles are bigger than BC one's, which are bigger than Heavy Cruiser missiles. Bigger missiles means more damage per hit, less side-wall effect and better on-board pen-aids to get them past missile defences.

** Also important to remember, given that the Honorverse started as the Napoleonic Wars InSpace!, that Silesia is clearly an Expy of 18th century "Germany". The Andermani probably stand in for Prussia, which had been steadily growing in power and reasserting hegemony lost in the Germanic states since the ''de facto'' break up of the HRE. The other alternative is that the AE is a stand-in for Russia (perhaps hinted at by the Harris' government reluctance to invade it at long distance), and the actions in ''War of Honor'' are a vague mirror of the Moscow campaign (although in that case you'd have to imagine the original plot got even more heavily rewritten than we know it did, and Midgard/Asgard was supposed to play a bigger part). Or it could be a combination of both. Anyway, to get back to the original point, 18th century Germany was a bunch of principalities and dukedoms with the clout and economy to support a few hundred men each, or a few thousand if they actually fought a war and called out the levies, none of whom trusted each other. Scale that up, and you've got a ton of fiercely independent planetary governments with a couple of frigates and maybe a destroyer apiece, determined not to recognize each other as having any claim on them but holding a vague allegiance to something that historically sort of existed once - and half of them are corrupt. I've also come to the conclusion that, much as he likes showing his work, Weber is often more interested in the political "atmosphere" of minor characters or areas, than how exactly some of the side details work out.

** The SLN officer corp is a dumping ground for incompetents, for the same reason their navy is so outdated: it has been accepted since basically forever that the SLN is so large that no one could ever come within spitting distance of posing a threat. So what happened? The same thing that happened to every other bureacratic arm of the Solarian League. It got fat and lazy and rife with corruption and nepotism. Promotions are not based on merit, but on connections and patronage. The debasement of flag rank by treating it as political currency led to an overabundance of administrators that adds even more inertia to an already labyrinthine command structure. Ships are designed by committee. New technologies are designed for what works best in the media instead of in combat. These problems have had ''centuries'' to grow out of control, and no one has had the opportunity to realize how bad they've gotten because no one has ever put the SLN to the test. In addition, most of the SLN flag officers Manticore and its allies encounter are being manipulated or paid off by the Mesan Alignment. Any officer stupid or unethical enough to be in bed with them is going to be even further down a very long totem poll of inept commanders.

** The League ''does'' have a central government. It's just that, because Core Worlds, while drafting League Constitution, were afraid of it having too much authority, and thus didn't design it in. But they also forget to put up the measures ''limiting its powers'', if it, by chance, appears on its own. So when this inevitably happened, in the form of various bureaucratic committees, it was essentially unchecked by any popular representation (as League Assembly, by design, is powerless), or, for that matter, ''any other'' mechanism, and free to run the things as it's pleased. So the League doesn't have a government only in the sense of democratic, accountable one. In the sense of [[TheMan unbridled bureaucratic machine]] run rampant it has it aplenty.

* So all throughout the latter books of the series, we keep getting Solarian League Navy officers who seem like they barely have any training, possess horrible emotional control, and are more than willing to commit war crimes that their OWN NATION wrote into their very Constitution. It's even lampshaded by some of the Manticorans that, if the Sollies picked their flag officers at random, they would get a better crop than their current officer corps. Why is that? Why do SLN officers, in general, seem so arrogant and hypocritical?

* So all throughout the latter books of the series, we keep getting SLN officers who seem like they barely have any training, possess horrible emotional control, and are more than willing to commit war crimes that their OWN NATION wrote into their very Constitution. It's even lampshaded by some of the Manticorans that, if the Sollies picked their flag officers at random, they would get a better crop than their current officer corps. Why is that? Why do SLN officers, in general, seem so arrogant and hypocritical?

** Right, coming back to answer my own question. Yes; it’s all cleared up in “The Universe of Honor Harrington”

* Is it ever explained anywhere how the original first wave of colonists on Manticore had managed to communicate with Old Earth to attract the second wave? It is stated that the first wave set out before the impeller drive was even invented, and the timeline bears this out: The ''Jason'' set out on October 24, 775 PD, and First Landing on Manticore was on March 21, 1416 PD. The impeller drive was invented on Beowulf in 1246 PD, and the Warshawski sail on Old Earth about thirty years after that. Therefore, the first wave would have only light-speed communications and ships to reach the rest of the galaxy. Clearly, they managed somehow without waiting another six and a half centuries (“On Basilisk Station” takes place in 1900 PD, by which families like the Harringtons and Hauptmans had been established for at least two centuries), but how?
** Right, coming back to answer my own question. “The Universe of Honor Harrington” makes it clear that the hyper generator was developed before the impeller drive, and neither depends on the other to function. Therefore, hyper-space travel using reaction drives was already possible when the ''Jason'' set out, but was not yet reliable enough to be used for vessels as large as colony ships. This means that the first wave could have sent a reaction-drive hyper-capable dispatch boat back, and the second wave could have used impeller-drive/Warshawski-sail hyper-capable vessels to come.

* Is it ever explained anywhere how the original first wave of colonists on Manticore had managed to communicate with Old Earth to attract the second wave? It is stated that the first wave set out before the impeller drive was even invented, and the timeline bears this out: The ''Jason'' set out in 774 PD, and First Landing on Manticore was in 1416 PD. The impeller drive was invented on Beowulf in 1246 PD, and the Warshawski sail on Old Earth about thirty years after that. Therefore, the first wave would have only light-speed communications and ships to reach the rest of the galaxy. Clearly, they managed somehow without waiting another six and a half centuries (“On Basilisk Station” takes place in 1900 PD, by which families like the Harringtons and Hauptmans had been established for at least two centuries), but how?

* Is it ever explained anywhere how the original first wave of colonists on Manticore had managed to communicate with Old Earth to attract the second wave? It is stated that the first wave set out before the impeller drive was even invented, and the timeline bears this out: The ''Jason'' set out in 774 PD, and First Landing on Manticore was in 1416 PD. The impeller drive was invented on Beowulf in 1246 PD, and the Warshawski sail on Old Earth about thirty years after that. Therefore, the first wave would have only light-speed communications and ships to reach the rest of the galaxy. Clearly, they managed somehow without waiting another six and a half centuries (“On Basilisk Station” takes place in 1900 PD, by which families like the Harringtons and Hauptmans had been established for at least two centuries), but how?

* Is it ever explained anywhere how the original first wave of colonists on Manticore had managed to communicate with Old Earth to attract the second wave? It is stated that the first wave set out before the impeller drive was even invented, and the timeline bears this out: The ''Jason'' set out in 774 PD, and First Landing on Manticore was in 1416 PD. The impeller drive was invented on Beowulf in 1246 PD, and the Warshawski sail on Old Earth about thirty years after that. Therefore, the first wave would have only light-speed communications and ships to reach the rest of the galaxy. Clearly, they managed somehow without waiting another six and a half centuries (“On Basilisk Station” takes place in 1900 PD), but how?

** And why would anyone agree to live in such a society?

** Simple. They've had thousands of years to deal with communications lag and get accustomed to it as a culture.[[spoiler: In fact, later on, the ability for the Manticorans to circumvent the typical lightspeed lag is something that comes as a shock to people.]] In one book, a Manticoran diplomat insults an officer of a foreign nation they are hostile towards by maintaining a live feed of his end of the communications link, where he is casually reading a novel, waiting for their replies. Based on the actions and responses of the officer and her staff, such a display is apparently considered gauche by most standards of the setting.

** Simple. They've had thousands of years to deal with communications lag and get accustomed to it as a culture.[[spoiler:In fact, later on, the ability for the Manticorans to circumvent the typical lightspeed lag is something that comes as a shock to people.]] In one book, a Manticoran diplomat insults an officer of a foreign nation they are hostile towards by maintaining a live feed of his end of the communications link, where he is casually reading a novel, waiting for their response. Based on the actions and responses of the officer and her staff, such a display is apparently considered gauche by their standards.

* As these trying times have revealed, the mental strain of staying engaged while in a videoconference is pretty high. Now add in the delay (both ways!) caused by coms having to propagate at the speed of light. With separations of light seconds being common during deployments, how on Earth could people carry out conversations as written in the books?

** If I'm reading her narration correctly, the point of the ExactWords was to sound as though she intended to let him go if he kept his end of the bargain, without ever actually promising to do so. Basically, she tricked him into thinking she'd agreed to a deal when she hadn't.

* I don't get the sequence with the deal with Andre Warnecke in ''Honor Among Enemies'', Honor's narrative continually suggests she's going to exploit a loophole in her deal, employing exact words and going to force Warnecke to break the deal before she attacks him. But in the end she just shoot his guard and captures him without him ever not holding up to ''his side'' as far as I can tell?

** You are ''way'' overestimating how powerful the nanovirus is. For starters, it's more like "instinct control" than "mind control". It can't access the victim's memory or affect the conscious decision-making process, only override the body and force it to carry out preprogrammed actions. So it can't make someone enter passwords the programmer didn't know, or reference events the programmer had never heard of. Second, it has a very limited data storage capacity. You can't program it with anything more than a few simple actions and a very basic AI, so you have to know in advance almost exactly what you want your target to do and you probably can't make someone deliver a long speech or carry out a complex series of actions. It's also implied that once activated, the nanovirus can't control the victim for very long before it breaks down or burns out. On top of that, it has to be custom-built for each person you want to control. And finally, the main reason it's undetectable is that the whole concept is so unprecedented that nobody even thought to look for it. Once the thing is known to be possible, Beowulf was able to find traces of the virus in the victim's system, and they will probably figure out how to detect the dormant form soon enough.

** Because Alignment doesn't want to just win at all costs. Alignment was essentially created by a bunch of {{Mad Scientist}}s and {{Evilutionary Biologist}}s who were so hung up [[TheyCalledMeMad on being called mad and evil]] that they went and ''created'' a bona-fide AncientConspiracy, whose goal is just to stand on a high place someday and shout "WhosLaughingNow" at everyone. They don't want to simply win, they want to show everyone!

* So the Mesan Alignment has access to a (nearly) untraceable and (almost) undetectable nanovirus that turns whoever is infected by it into a mind-controlled puppet. And it is only detected by a very specific alien species prevalent in a single star system, a species with a population of only 12 million, compared to the trillions of humans on thousands of worlds in thousands of star systems. If this technology can simply make their enemies decide to stop hostilities, or worse, make their enemies begin covertly helping the Alignment, how is the Alignment LOSING?!?

* On perishable food in the Honorverse they do have hydroponics gardens for various reasons most important is to replace consumable foodstuffs that doesn't keep well frozen. Remember fresh produce only lasts about a week or so before it goes bad and is inedible. Also a secondary reason is that the air in closed environment is stale smelling. According to astronauts who have done long mission aboard the International Space Station is the fact they miss smelling something besides body odor. Another reason is possible food allergies from planet to planet IIRC Howard Clinckscales had an allergic reaction to 'squash' that may have been native to the Star Kingdom but not Grayson and only Sphinxian celery has the 'vitamin' that treecats need for their telepathic abilities.

** Also important to remember, given that the Honorverse started as the Napoleonic Wars InSpace!, that Silesia is clearly an Expy of 18th century "Germany". The Andermani probably stand in for Prussia, which had been steadily growing in power and reasserting hegemony lost in the Germanic states since the ''de facto'' break up of the HRE. The other alternative is that the AE is a stand-in for Russia (perhaps hinted at by the Harris' government reluctance to invade it at long distance), and the actions in ''War of Honor'' are a vague mirror of the Moscow campaign (although in that case you'd have to imagine the original plot got even more heavily rewritten than we know it did, and Midgard/Asgard was supposed to play a bigger part). Or it could be a combination of both. Anyway, to get back to the original point, 18th century Germany was a bunch of principalities and dukedoms with the clout and economy to support a few hundred men each, or a few thousand if they actually fought a war and called out the levies, none of whom trusted each other. Scale that up, and you've got a ton of fiercely independent planetary governments with a couple of frigates and maybe a destroyer apiece, determined not to recognize each other as having any claim on them but holding a vague allegiance to something that historically sort of existed once - and half of them are corrupt. I've also come to the conclusion that, much as he likes showing his work, Weber is often more interested in the political "atmosphere" of minor characters or areas. than how exactly some of the side details work out.

* So the Mesan Alignment has access to a (nearly) untraceable and (almost) undetectable nanovirus that turns whoever is infected by it into a mind-controlled puppet. And it is only detected by a very specific alien species prevalent in a single star system, of which only 12 million exist, compared to the trillions of humans on thousands of worlds in thousands of star systems. If this technology can simply make their enemies decide to stop hostilities, or worse, make their enemies begin covertly helping the Alignment, how is the Alignment LOSING?!?