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* RightForTheWrongReasons: In ''At All Costs'', when [[spoiler:President Pritchart]] is seeking a face-to-face summit with Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore in order to negotiate [[spoiler:a peace treaty]], [[spoiler:Theisman]] recommends that she specifically request that Honor Harrington be present for several reasons, including that "all reports indicate she has a rather uncanny ability to tell when people are lying to her." When [[spoiler:Mike Henke]] delivers the summit proposal on [[spoiler:Pritchart]]'s behalf, however, Honor assumes that the LivingLieDetector being invited is ''[[TheEmpath the treecats Ariel and Nimitz.]]''
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** In ''Cauldron of Ghosts'', a member of Beowulf's Planetary Board of Directors openly says that in his opinion Mesa's problem is not the idea of attempting to improve the human genome, but instead a) the particular 'improvements' they want and b) the methods by which they're willing to force their opinions on the rest of the galaxy. He then goes on to say that in his opinion the genetic modifications of people like Honor are a technical violation of the Beowulf Code but that neither he nor anyone else on Beowulf really cares, and finishes up by going 'If the Mesan Alignment had spent one-hundredth the resources and effort they did on their front company of slavers and their galactic takeover conspiracy on simply attempting to sway public opinion to their side by legitimate means, they'd already have won the ideological conflict between us and them five hundred years ago.'
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The quote\'s origin can be easily found by Googling and just clutters up the example.
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** Many of the Havenites (in fact, pretty much all of them who are not painted as morally reprehensible slime) subscribe to the forgotten part of the quote as used by US Senator Carl Shurz: "if wrong, to be set right". Most notably Victor Cachat, Kevin Usher, Lester Tourville, Javier Giscard, Dennis [=LePic=], Shannon Foraker, and of course Thomas Theisman and Eloise Pritchart.
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** Many of the Havenites (in fact, pretty much all of them who are not painted as morally reprehensible slime) subscribe to the forgotten part of the quote as used by US Senator Carl Shurz: quote: "if wrong, to be set right". Most notably Victor Cachat, Kevin Usher, Lester Tourville, Javier Giscard, Dennis [=LePic=], Shannon Foraker, and of course Thomas Theisman and Eloise Pritchart.
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* MuggingTheMonster: In the lead-up to the Haven-Manticore War in ''The Short Victorious War'' the Peeps start sending out raiding squadrons to destroy isolated Manticoran convoys and patrols. One Havenite battlecruiser squadron goes on one of these missions, but instead of finding the lightweight patrol ships they drop out of hyper within spitting distance of the dreadnought HMS ''Bellerophon'' that was passing through the system on its way home to Manticore. After ''Bellerophon's'' crew gets over their surprise they blow all four battlecruisers to bits in one broadside.
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* MuggingTheMonster: MuggingTheMonster:
** In the lead-up to the Haven-Manticore War in ''The Short Victorious War'' the Peeps start sending out raiding squadrons to destroy isolated Manticoran convoys and patrols. One Havenite battlecruiser squadron goes on one of these missions, but instead of finding the lightweight patrol ships they drop out of hyper within spitting distance of the dreadnought HMS ''Bellerophon'' that was passing through the system on its way home to Manticore. After ''Bellerophon's'' crew gets over their surprise they blow all four battlecruisers to bits in onebroadside.broadside.
** In ''Field of Dishonor'', the duel between [[spoiler:Denver Summervale and Honor Harrington]] proves to be a mistake on the part of [[TheGunslinger the professional duelist]] when [[spoiler:Harrington]] hits him with a shot from the ''hip'' before he can even get his gun into firing position.
** In the lead-up to the Haven-Manticore War in ''The Short Victorious War'' the Peeps start sending out raiding squadrons to destroy isolated Manticoran convoys and patrols. One Havenite battlecruiser squadron goes on one of these missions, but instead of finding the lightweight patrol ships they drop out of hyper within spitting distance of the dreadnought HMS ''Bellerophon'' that was passing through the system on its way home to Manticore. After ''Bellerophon's'' crew gets over their surprise they blow all four battlecruisers to bits in one
** In ''Field of Dishonor'', the duel between [[spoiler:Denver Summervale and Honor Harrington]] proves to be a mistake on the part of [[TheGunslinger the professional duelist]] when [[spoiler:Harrington]] hits him with a shot from the ''hip'' before he can even get his gun into firing position.
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** Competent professionals on the wrong side of such situations tend have reactions closer to ThisIsGonnaSuck. Sometimes at the same time that their less-competent superiors are giving the standard OhCrap response. [[spoiler: Example: the captain of the ''Jean Bart'' at New Tuscany,]] while his [[TooDumbToLive commanding admiral]] was in a total panic, was basically pondering how unfair it was that he was going to be collateral damage to a well-deserved [[DarwinAwards Darwin Award]].
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** Competent professionals on the wrong side of such situations tend have reactions closer to ThisIsGonnaSuck. Sometimes at the same time that their less-competent superiors are giving the standard OhCrap response. [[spoiler: Example: the captain of the ''Jean Bart'' at New Tuscany,]] while his [[TooDumbToLive commanding admiral]] was in a total panic, was basically pondering how unfair it was that he was going to be collateral damage to a well-deserved [[DarwinAwards Darwin Award]].Website/{{Darwin Award|s}}.
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** In ''On Basilisk Station'', Dame Estelle Matsuko has an... ''interesting'' meeting with a courier carrying a message from [[SleazyPolitician Countess New Kiev]], which we do not see. The message absolutely ''enrages'' Dame Estelle, whose description of said meeting to Honor is described as "sulfurous". The exact words she uses are not noted, but she is heavily implied to have let loose with a ClusterFBomb.
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** In ''On Basilisk Station'', Dame Estelle Matsuko has an... ''interesting'' meeting with a courier carrying a message from [[SleazyPolitician Countess New Kiev]], which we do not see. The message in question, however, absolutely ''enrages'' Dame Estelle, whose description of said meeting to Honor is described as "sulfurous". The exact words she uses are not noted, but she is heavily implied to have let loose with a ClusterFBomb.
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* QuoteToQuoteCombat: In ''Flag in Exile'' a reactionary Grayson minister, Brother Marchant, crashes a party thrown by Honor at her Steading and starts demanding that she repent for her sins, yadda yadda, including {{Quote Min|e}}ing the Grayson scripture ''The Book of the New Way''. Honor, having studied Grayson history and scriptures in order to better govern her fief, matches Marchant line for line, including at one point supplying the second half of a verse Marchant {{quote mine}}d. The situation gets out of hand when Marchant suggests that her [[TheLostLenore slain lover]] Captain Paul Tankersley was killed to punish her for perfidy, at which point Honor's bodyguards have to rescue Marchant to keep her citizens from lynching him.
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It wasn\'t physically dangerous, since she first called on Harrington at Trevor\'s Star. See Mo H ch.42.
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** And on an even lesser one, the survival of [[spoiler:Commander McKeon]] with a hundred of his crew in the same book.
** The villains get one in ''Mission of Honor''. While [[spoiler: the attack on the Manticoran system]] is described [[DescriptionGorn in loving detail]], the matching attack [[spoiler: on the Grayson system]] gets only a passing mention. This continues in the two stories taking place [[spoiler: in Grayson]] at the time, due to the point-of-view characters being LateToTheTragedy.
** The villains get one in ''Mission of Honor''. While [[spoiler: the attack on the Manticoran system]] is described [[DescriptionGorn in loving detail]], the matching attack [[spoiler: on the Grayson system]] gets only a passing mention. This continues in the two stories taking place [[spoiler: in Grayson]] at the time, due to the point-of-view characters being LateToTheTragedy.
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** And on an even lesser one, the survival of [[spoiler:Commander McKeon]] [=McKeon=]]] with a hundred of his crew in the same book.
** The villains get one in ''Mission of Honor''. While [[spoiler: the attack on the Manticoran system]] is described[[DescriptionGorn [[SceneryGorn in loving detail]], the matching attack [[spoiler: on the Grayson system]] gets only a passing mention. This continues in the two stories taking place [[spoiler: in Grayson]] at the time, due to the point-of-view characters being LateToTheTragedy.
** The villains get one in ''Mission of Honor''. While [[spoiler: the attack on the Manticoran system]] is described
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** President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, is both impressed and astounded.
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** President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen propose an impromptu summit conference with Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of " And end by proposing -- not just a peace settlement -- but a ''military alliance'' against the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. Solarians and Mesans.]] ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, Elizabeth is both impressed and astounded.
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* RivalScienceTeams: Admiral Sonja Hemphill's [=BuWeaps=] vs. Admiral [[spoiler:Shannon Foraker]]'s Bolthole in the Second Manticoran-Havenite War. After [[spoiler:the peace treaty was signed and the Grand Alliance was formed, the two were sent off to ''team up'']]. Cue salivating readers.
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Re-adding. Removed from YMMV with edit reason.
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* RecycledPremise: ''The Best Laid Plans'' bears a very similar presence to the earlier ''A Beautiful Friendship'', being as both stories are about a young Harrington girl sneaking off into the Sphynxian woods without her parents' informed consent, and ending up forging a powerful bond with a Treecat, save for some key character differences, demonstrating some important ways that Stephanie and Honor were not GenerationXerox copies. Honor was far more methodical and prepared than Stephanie was, specifically decided to hike due to the danger of hang-gliding in poor weather, came to the rescue of a treecat rather than vice versa, and was able to resolve the situation with her own resources handily rather than requiring rescue.
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moving to ymmv with a section added detailing the reason, hopefully dosen\'t count as natter
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* RecycledPremise: ''The Best Laid Plans'' bears a very similar presence to the earlier ''A Beautiful Friendship'', being as both stories are about a young Harrington girl sneaking off into the Sphynxian woods without her parents' informed consent, and ending up forging a powerful bond with a Treecat, save for some key character differences, demonstrating some important ways that Stephanie and Honor were not GenerationXerox copies. Honor was far more methodical and prepared than Stephanie was, specifically decided to hike due to the danger of hang-gliding in poor weather, came to the rescue of a treecat rather than vice versa, and was able to resolve the situation with her own resources handily rather than requiring rescue.
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* NarrativeProfanityFilter: In the short story "Nightfall", a guard supervisor's tirade is mentally noted by the target of the supervisor's ire to be worthy of study for chewing out due to the use of "colorful" language, but the specific words used aren't mentioned.
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* NarrativeProfanityFilter: NarrativeProfanityFilter:
** In the short story "Nightfall", a guard supervisor's tirade is mentally noted by the target of the supervisor's ire to be worthy of study for chewing out due to the use of "colorful" language, but the specific words used aren'tmentioned.mentioned.
** In ''On Basilisk Station'', Dame Estelle Matsuko has an... ''interesting'' meeting with a courier carrying a message from [[SleazyPolitician Countess New Kiev]], which we do not see. The message absolutely ''enrages'' Dame Estelle, whose description of said meeting to Honor is described as "sulfurous". The exact words she uses are not noted, but she is heavily implied to have let loose with a ClusterFBomb.
** In the short story "Nightfall", a guard supervisor's tirade is mentally noted by the target of the supervisor's ire to be worthy of study for chewing out due to the use of "colorful" language, but the specific words used aren't
** In ''On Basilisk Station'', Dame Estelle Matsuko has an... ''interesting'' meeting with a courier carrying a message from [[SleazyPolitician Countess New Kiev]], which we do not see. The message absolutely ''enrages'' Dame Estelle, whose description of said meeting to Honor is described as "sulfurous". The exact words she uses are not noted, but she is heavily implied to have let loose with a ClusterFBomb.
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** And {{Subverted}} by Midshipmen (and soon promoted to Ensign) Claire Bedlam [=LeCroix=], one of the first female officers in Grayson service. She was appointed by Steadholder Burdette to attend the Manticoran naval academy at Saganami Island, with the intent to [[StayInTheKitchen demonstrate that Grayson women were not fit to serve in combat,]] but was determined to succeed because it was the only chance her family had at anything other than being at the very bottom of the social heap. That said, she has thus far proven to be a mediocre combat officer at best, with her true calling being [[TheEngineer in the maintenance and repair of shipboard equipment and systems.]]
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** And {{Subverted}} {{subverted}} by Midshipmen (and soon promoted to Ensign) Claire Bedlam [=LeCroix=], one of the first female officers in Grayson service. She was appointed by Steadholder Burdette to attend the Manticoran naval academy at Saganami Island, with the intent to [[StayInTheKitchen demonstrate that Grayson women were not fit to serve in combat,]] combat]], but was determined to succeed because it was the only chance her family had at anything other than being at the very bottom of the social heap. That said, she has thus far proven to be a mediocre combat officer at best, with her true calling being [[TheEngineer in the maintenance and repair of shipboard equipment and systems.]]systems]].
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I\'m not sure Pritchart\'s treaty counts, but I\'m pretty sure the thing I added to the funny page does...
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* RefugeInAudacity: President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, is both impressed and astounded.
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* RefugeInAudacity: RefugeInAudacity:
** In ''On Basilisk Station'', Honor Harrington disables a ship by charging through its drive safety radius in order to blow out its impeller ring. When the captain of said ship coms her to complain, she apologizes, claiming: "[[BlatantLies I'm afraid I wasn't watching where I was going.]]"
** President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, is both impressed and astounded.
** In ''On Basilisk Station'', Honor Harrington disables a ship by charging through its drive safety radius in order to blow out its impeller ring. When the captain of said ship coms her to complain, she apologizes, claiming: "[[BlatantLies I'm afraid I wasn't watching where I was going.]]"
** President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, is both impressed and astounded.
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expanded a bit on the BSC\'s purpose in the \"Mildly Military\" entry
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* MildlyMilitary: Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps. The rest of their military is described as unorthodox, too, but it's not elaborated upon.
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* MildlyMilitary: Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps. The rest of their military is described as unorthodox, too, but it's not elaborated upon. The BSC is implied to be unusual even by the standards of Beowulf's armed forces, given that it's an elite special-warfare unit specializing in covert operations against Mesa and its genetic slave traders.
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HonorHarrington/TropesAToF | HonorHarrington/TropesGToL | '''Tropes M - R''' | HonorHarrington/TropesSToZ | [[HonorHarrington Main Page]]
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HonorHarrington/TropesAToF | HonorHarrington/TropesGToL | '''Tropes M - R''' | HonorHarrington/TropesSToZ | [[HonorHarrington [[Literature/HonorHarrington Main Page]]
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** A variant happens in ''Shadow of Saganami'' to HMS Warlock. Having a stain on the ships Honor ever since being commanded by [[DirtyCoward Pavel Young]] and the Battle of Hancock, her current Captain Ito Anders vows to redeem her in the coming [[spoiler:Battle of Monica. He succeeds, even if he himself dies and the Ship itself is too damaged to return to service. But afterwards, there will always be a HMS Warlock in the RMN.]]
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** A variant happens in ''Shadow ''The Shadow of Saganami'' to HMS Warlock. ''Warlock''. Having had a stain on the ships Honor ship's honor ever since being commanded by [[DirtyCoward Pavel Young]] and in the Battle of Hancock, her current Captain Captain, Ito Anders Anders, vows to redeem her in the coming [[spoiler:Battle of Monica. Monica]]. He succeeds, [[spoiler:succeeds, even if he himself dies and the Ship itself is too damaged to return to service. service]]. But afterwards, afterward, the ship's name is added to the List of Honour, meaning that there will always be a an HMS Warlock ''Warlock'' in the RMN.]]
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HonorHarrington/TropesAToF | HonorHarrington/TropesGToL | '''Tropes M - R''' | HonorHarrington/TropesSToZHonorHarrington/TropesSToZ | [[HonorHarrington Main Page]]
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** A variant happens in ''Shadow of Saganami'' to HMS Warlock. Having a stain on the ships Honor ever since being commanded by [[DirtyCoward Pavel Young]] and the Battle of Hancock, her current Captain Ito Anders vows to redeem her in the coming [[spoiler:Battle of Monica. He succeeds, even if he himself dies and the Ship itself is too damaged to return to service. But afterwards, there will always be a HMS Warlock in the RMN.]]
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** The capture of Trevor's Star was a major strategic objective of the Manties and a turning point of the war which gave the RMN a bridgehead (via the Trevor's Star Terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction) deep into Haven territory. We don't see it.
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** The capture of Trevor's Star [[spoiler:Trevor's Star]] was a major strategic objective of the Manties and a turning point of the war which gave the RMN a bridgehead (via the [[spoiler:the Trevor's Star Terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction) Junction]]) deep into Haven territory. We don't see it.
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** And on an even lesser one, the survival of [[spoiler:Commander McKeon]] with a hundred of his crew in the same book.
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* PuttingOnTheReich: Havenite StateSec. It is no surprise their initials are ''SS''. David Weber can be subtle when he wants to be, he just chose not to here.
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* PuttingOnTheReich: Havenite StateSec. It is no surprise their initials are ''SS''. David Weber can can, in fact, be subtle when he wants chooses -- but in this case, he did ''not'' choose to be, he just chose not to here.be.
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* OneSteveLimit: Actual Steves are in short supply, but other common names are reused. Given the scale of the series, characters with the same name rarely ever meet or come within light-centuries of each other at all.
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* OneSteveLimit: Actual Steves are in short supply, but other common names are reused. Given the scale of the series, characters with the same name rarely ever meet or come within light-centuries of each other at all. Probably the most notable exception is in the Talbott Quadrant; Michelle Henke's flag captain, Captain Armstrong, and Augustus Khumalo's flag captain, Captain Saunders, are both named Victoria.
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* POWCamp: Both Manticore and Haven have them. Manticore, of course, makes sure to treat its prisoners well at all times, but the PRH's StateSec was notorious for treating its prisoners ''horribly'' -- captured Manticoran personnel note universally that they were much better treated by the Navy (assuming the Navy officers in question could keep StateSec off their backs) than by StateSec itself. One major sign of the drastic differences between the People's Republic and the ''restored'' Republic is that the latter treats its prisoners as well as Manticore treats theirs.
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** The Alignment basically craps its pants when it learns that a) [[spoiler:Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki]] are alive, b) [[spoiler:they got top-ranked and tremendously important scientist Herlander Simoes out with them]], c) the revelation of the above has resulted in [[spoiler:Manticore and Haven ''signing a military alliance'']], d) [[spoiler:every secret they've worked to keep hidden for centuries has been blown wide open]], and e) now [[spoiler:the Grand Alliance -- the very best military fleet ever formed in the history of the human race, honed in the crucible of decades of cutthroat warfare, and commanded by a group of tactical minds who will probably go down as among the greatest of all time -- is coming after ''them'']].
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* ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: Happens to Honor herself when she's "executed" on TV in Haven (faked video feed after she had apparently been killed trying to escape), and Michelle Henke whose ship is seen exploding mid-way through ''At All Costs'', only for us to learn later she just barely escaped.
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* ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: Happens to ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated:
** Honor herself when she's "executed" on TV in Haven (faked video feed after she had apparently been killed trying toescape), and escape). Readers know perfectly well that she survived, as we see her doing it, but her star nations? Not so much.
** MichelleHenke Henke, whose ship is seen exploding mid-way through ''At All Costs'', Costs'' at the Battle of Solon, only for us to learn later that she just barely escaped.escaped. ''Storm from the Shadows'' shows us how.
** Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki, believed dead after an explosion on Mesa. (As with Honor, readers know they survived, but the rest of the galaxy doesn't, thanks to a nonfunctional hyperdrive on their transport home.) Their reappearance has, to put it mildly, ''massive'' repercussions on the course of events thereafter.
** Honor herself when she's "executed" on TV in Haven (faked video feed after she had apparently been killed trying to
** Michelle
** Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki, believed dead after an explosion on Mesa. (As with Honor, readers know they survived, but the rest of the galaxy doesn't, thanks to a nonfunctional hyperdrive on their transport home.) Their reappearance has, to put it mildly, ''massive'' repercussions on the course of events thereafter.
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* ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: Happens to Honor herself when she's "executed" on TV in Haven (faked video feed after she had apparently been killed trying to escape), and Michelle Henke whose ship is seen exploding mid-way through ''At All Costs'', only for us to learn later she just barely escaped.
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HonorHarrington/TropesAToF | HonorHarrington/TropesGToL | '''Tropes M to R''' | HonorHarrington/TropesSToZ
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HonorHarrington/TropesAToF | HonorHarrington/TropesGToL | '''Tropes M to - R''' | HonorHarrington/TropesSToZ
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* NicknamingTheEnemy: "Manties" (Star Kingdom/Empire of Manticore), "Peeps" (People's Repubic of Haven),"Andies" (Andermani Empire), "Sillies" or "Confeds" (Silesian Confederacy), and "Sollies" (Solarian League).
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* NicknamingTheEnemy: "Manties" (Star Kingdom/Empire of Manticore), "Peeps" (People's Repubic of Haven),"Andies" Haven)[[note]]on the Manticoran side, the switch from "Peeps" to "Havenites" is a critical marker of the change from the People's Republic to the ''Republic'', and corresponding shift in attitude[[/note]], "Andies" (Andermani Empire), "Sillies" or "Confeds" (Silesian Confederacy), and "Sollies" (Solarian League).League).
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HonorHarrington/TropesAtoF | HonorHarrington/TropesGToL | '''Tropes M to R''' | HonorHarrington/TropesSToZ
----
* MadeOfExplodium:
** The fusion bottles on board starships in the Honorverse blow up like a supernova if they're sufficiently damaged, ensuring that destroying a starship in combat always results in a massive explosion killing everyone still aboard. The reactors are stated to work via gravity manipulation. Basically, take a bunch of hydrogen, squish it with a few hundred gees, and you've got a miniature star. Remove the gravity and the magnetic containment field and even though the reaction has stopped, you've still got a bunch of hydrogen plasma at about 10,000,000 degrees on the loose.
** In ''Flag in Exile'', Honor's pinnace is hit by a missile and crashes into the spaceport runway. As a safety feature, it ejects its hydrogen fuel tanks -- one of which smashes into the spaceport's terminal, explodes, and kills over ten times as many people as were aboard the pinnace.
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident:
** In ''Honor Among Enemies'' an attempt is made on [[spoiler: Ginger Lewis's]] life with a suit malfunction. Unfortunately for the perp, his "accident" was a little too complex and could not have been an accident.
** The Legislaturalists favored method of removing troublesome political opponents were aircar "accidents." This returns to make problems for the new Republic of Haven government when [[spoiler:Arnold Giancola]] is killed in a legitimate crash caused by a DrunkDriver; they honestly had nothing to do with it, but nobody is going to believe that they did not have him killed.
* MamaBear: Honor lives by this. Whether it is her crew, her family, her Steading, or anyone she considers under her protection, attacking them is effectively committing suicide.
* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler: Detweiler]] has had a hand in just about every major event in the books, if he did not plan them outright to begin with.
* ManchurianAgent: In ''At All Costs'', [[spoiler:Mesa]] secretly deploys a nanotech virus that can reprogram its victim to perform a predefined action under specific circumstances. Now, ''[[ParanoiaFuel anybody]]'' could be a sleeper assassin without even knowing it.
* ManipulativeBastard: [[spoiler: The Mesan Alignment]], who accomplished almost everything through manipulation and cats-paws.
* [[MacrossMissileMassacre 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 is still impossible.
* MasterOfNone: The given reason why Manticore does not build or use battleships: Not strong or survivable enough to fight full wallers, not capable of enough acceleration to match battlecruisers or below. Eventually, the Havenites manage to turn them into JackOfAllStats by using them in deep raiding, where being stronger than battlecruisers allows them to blow away pickets using said class while outrunning full wallers, and every Manty waller stuck guarding a backwater is one fewer at the frontlines. The ability to tow a LOT of pods helps, too.
* MatchCut
* MeaningfulName:
** "Honor" Harrington is one of the characters with the most personal integrity and honor seen in the entire series—hence, almost every book with "Honor" in the title (''The Honor of the Queen'', ''Honor Among Enemies'', etc.) is also a PunBasedTitle. Lampshaded at the end of "Let's Dance".
--->Allison Harrington looked up at her towering daughter for endless seconds, and then, slowly, she shook her own head.\\
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said softly, “it ''is'' my fault—mine and your father’s. After all,” she smiled hugely through a haze of tears, “we’re the ones who named you Honor.”
** Also ''any'' treecat name ever. 'Cats are empaths who tend to give out names based on the one most noticeable character trait that they sense first in the person's "mindglow". Given their PsychicPowers these names may sometimes seem to be too whimsical for us "mind-blind", but they are ''always'' spot-on. Honor herself is "Dances on Clouds", Queen Elizabeth III is "Soul of Steel", Hamish Alexander is "Strong Heart", Eloise Pritchart is "Truth Seeker", and Thomas Theisman? "Dreams of Peace".
** "Mesan" can be pronounced like "Mason." Both the Mesans in-universe, and the Freemasons in RealLife, stand accused of secretly manipulating whole governments behind the scenes.
* MegaCorp: Manpower, Incorporated is the poster child for this trope, although it is not the only one in the setting.
* TheMessiah: Judith Newland, to the "Sisterhood of Barbara", a group of women dedicated to escaping Masada.
* MetalDetectorCheckpoint: In the short story "Let's Go to Prague" by Creator/JohnRingo, a PRH commercial spaceport's scanner serving the same purpose as RealLife airport metal detectors is a potential concern for Manticoran agents [[spoiler:trying to sneak out a defecting Peep admiral.]]
* MildlyMilitary: Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps. The rest of their military is described as unorthodox, too, but it's not elaborated upon.
* MileLongShip: Ship sizes are usually given in tonnage but one diagram showed most ships of the wall as being 2 km in length while superdreadnoughts were 3. Then David Weber realized that was too light with the given tonnage (the ships ended up being somewhat less dense than cigar smoke) and rescaled them so that [=SDs=] top out at 1500 m.
* MilitaryAcademy: Saganami Island, named for Commander Edward Saganami, regarded as the founder of the Royal Manticoran Navy for his legendary last stand at the Battle of Carson and his foundation of "[[HeroicSacrifice the Saganami Tradition]]."
* MilitaryAlphabet: The modern NATO/ICAO alphabet is used universally, with a few variations like Able, Baker and Roger for flavor. The last one may also be a reference to King Roger I Winton, the first king of Manticore.
* MilitaryScienceFiction: SpaceNavy focused.
* MinovskyPhysics: Gravity control technology forms the basis for just about every piece of AppliedPhlebotinum in the Honorverse: The [[FTLTravel Warshawski Sail]], the [[ReactionlessDrive Impeller Drive]], the [[DeflectorShields sidewalls]], the [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter pulser guns]] and shipboard missile launchers, even the super-tall skyscrapers that pepper the landscapes of most big cities.
* MisguidedMissile: A most dreaded thing for any naval commander due to Eridani Edict, which forbids the deliberate bombardment of an occupied planet without first securing an orbital position and offering surrender. Though an errant missile is not technically a violation of the Edict, it might be perceived as such by the Solarian League, which could then use that as a rationale for an overwhelming military response.
* MissingManFormation: At Honor's funeral in ''Echoes of Honor'' the missing man formation is used, as it is for all pilots in the Royal Manticoran Navy. The whole scene is a {{Tearjerker}}, even if you just read the previous book and know that Honor's [[FakingTheDead not really dead]].
* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: Pavel Young blackmails Elaine Sakristos, his chief of security, into sleeping with him, and the experience itself is a painful, humiliating evening. Afterwards, Pavel never seems to catch on to the fact that she is subtly helping Honor Harrington penetrate his security.
* MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness: Weber attempts to write Hard Science fiction, while using several coincidences of AppliedPhlebotinum to justify combat being [[SpaceIsAnOcean explicitly naval in nature]].
* MonsterClown: Jeremy X, Audubon Ballroom leader and Torch's Secretary of War. A former genetic slave intended to be a house entertainer, he became a [[SociopathicHero 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.
* MoreExpendableThanYou: Honor's armsmen keep trying to convince her of this.
* MorningSickness: The first indication of [[spoiler: Honor]]'s pregnancy is a slight queasiness at breakfast.
* MovingTheGoalposts: An admiral who did not care for the development of LAC-based tactics and technology managed to get himself put in charge of the evaluation board and started putting more and more restrictions on how the weapons could be used in an effort to get a test battle in which the new [=LACs=] would be decisively defeated. Captain Truman recognized the plan and sent notification letters to even ''higher'' ranking officers; not asking them to change anything or intervene on her behalf, but simply appraising them of the situation so that they would look at ''all'' the data when it came time to review the exercise. [[spoiler: When the Peeps launch an actual attack on the system the entire plan becomes moot, as the [=LACs=] are put into real combat and perform superbly]].
* MuggingTheMonster: In the lead-up to the Haven-Manticore War in ''The Short Victorious War'' the Peeps start sending out raiding squadrons to destroy isolated Manticoran convoys and patrols. One Havenite battlecruiser squadron goes on one of these missions, but instead of finding the lightweight patrol ships they drop out of hyper within spitting distance of the dreadnought HMS ''Bellerophon'' that was passing through the system on its way home to Manticore. After ''Bellerophon's'' crew gets over their surprise they blow all four battlecruisers to bits in one broadside.
* MyCountryRightOrWrong: A number of Havenite military and political officers.
** Subverted in heartbreaking manner in ''Echoes of Honor''. Warner Caslet holds onto this attitude like a life preserver, until Legislaturalist Admiral Parnell lays it out for him: "Son, you don't have a country any more..."
** Many of the Havenites (in fact, pretty much all of them who are not painted as morally reprehensible slime) subscribe to the forgotten part of the quote as used by US Senator Carl Shurz: "if wrong, to be set right". Most notably Victor Cachat, Kevin Usher, Lester Tourville, Javier Giscard, Dennis [=LePic=], Shannon Foraker, and of course Thomas Theisman and Eloise Pritchart.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Several examples throughout the series.
** [[spoiler: Admiral Byng after ordering the unwarranted destruction of three Manticoran destroyers, which had been in the system on a diplomatic mission. To make things worse, not only was the battle [[CurbStompBattle staggeringly one-sided]] due to numbers alone, but the Manticoran warships had their engines and weapons off line, and were given no warning of the impending attack, leaving them totally helpless. Byng would later suffer from a literal case of LaserGuidedKarma, compliments of Admiral Henke's squadron of battlecruisers, and the Royal Manticoran Navy's infamously effective missile guidance systems.]]
** [[spoiler: Aldona Anisimovna]] has a bout of this after destroying a [[spoiler:New Tuscan]] space station, killing over 40,000 innocents, in order to provoke [[UnwittingPawn Admiral Byng's]] attack on the Manticoran destroyers. She quickly rationalizes it away [[spoiler:by saying that [[IDidWhatIHadToDo she was doing what was necessary for the Mesan Alignment's plans]].]]
** [[spoiler: [[BigBad Albrecht Detweiler]]]] has one after the Oyster Bay raids result in over [[spoiler: ''eight million dead'' in the Manticore home systems alone.]] He decides that he needs to accept that, because it would be a drop in the bucket by the time he is done if [[IDidWhatIHadToDo the plan is to succeed.]]
** Literally when, in ''Flag in Exile'', a hardcore fundamentalist Grayson [[spoiler:kills the head of his own church in an attempt to assassinate Honor. He suffers a BSOD upon realising and his grief stricken testimony is the main plank in the case that convicts the Steadholder Burdette of treason and murder.]]
** Thomas Theisman has one in ''In Enemy Hands'' when [[spoiler: he realises that his bringing up the Deneb Accords leads to Cordelia Ransom thinking of ways to RulesLawyer around them in her typically horrific manner.]]
** Captain Zavala in ''Shadow of Freedom''. He has no problem with attacking the Solarian force when it refuses to surrender. The moment they do -- after Zavala's first salvo utterly destroys its target -- Zavala realizes the ''next'' three salvos are already committed, preventing several thousand Solarians from abandoning ship in time, including the Vice Admiral. For added irony, Zavala had gone with this plan instead of a [[MacrossMissileMassacre Missile Massacre]] fake-out partly to ''avoid'' overusing a now limited supply of missiles if the fake-out hadn't worked.
* MySignificanceSenseIsTingling: Being partially telepathic, treecats can spot potential trouble before it appears. This has saved Honor's life at least twice and may prove an Achilles Heel for the Mesan Alignment (as altered humans taste "wrong" to treecats).
* NameThatUnfoldsLikeLotusBlossom: The treecats use these names not only for themselves (Laughs Brightly, Swift Striker, Sorrow Singer) but also for humans they think are important (Death Fang's Bane, Soul Of Steel, Dances On Clouds). It is worth noting that a treecat may have his or her name changed several times during their life but adopted treecats have two names, their descriptive name and the name that their human gives them (which never changes).
* NamesTheSame: Despite what it sounds like, Manticore is not at war with [[http://marshmallowpeeps.com trays of marshmallow chickens and bunnies]].
* NarrativeProfanityFilter: In the short story "Nightfall", a guard supervisor's tirade is mentally noted by the target of the supervisor's ire to be worthy of study for chewing out due to the use of "colorful" language, but the specific words used aren't mentioned.
* NervesOfSteel: Half of the characters, but ''especially'' Honor, if only because she is routinely thrown into the worst situations. Hundreds or thousands of other people are along with her in the same situations, but she is in command, and their lives are ''her'' responsibility.
* NewTechIsNotCheap: Part of the issues in the war between the People's Republic of Haven and Manticore. Courtesy of their control of the largest known wormhole junction in the Galaxy and a massive merchant marine Manticore can afford to run a robust R&D program in the middle of a shooting war while the bankrupt PRH can't, even if their educational system wasn't hideously crippled.
* NavalBlockade: This was employed by the Royal Manticoran Navy against the Solarian League by blockading wormhole termini in Solarian space.
* NGOSuperpower: Manpower thinks it is this, but it is just a group of slavers and generic criminals that are the big fish in a small pond. Manticore and Haven, their default enemies, both regard them as little more than a nuisance, a dime-a-dozen organization with delusions of grandeur. Manpower's delusions of grandeur are encouraged [[spoiler:by the Mesan Alignment, which is a superpower, and has been using Manpower as a front for centuries.]]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain:
** In ''Field of Dishonor'', Pavel Young, primarily by [[JerkAss being himself]], invokes a MistreatmentInducedBetrayal by his chief of security, which leads directly to Honor's friends in the Navy tracking down evidence of what he'd done and to his own death.
** One of the side-effects of Yawata Strike is that it ends up breaking the diplomatic deadlock between Manticore and Haven by inspiring Eloise Pritchart, having also learned of the existence of [[spoiler: the Mesan Alignment]], to approach Queen Elizabeth and propose not just a peace treaty, but [[spoiler:a military alliance against the Solarian League]]. In the process they clear up all their past diplomatic misunderstandings and become [[spoiler:the ''last'' thing the Alignment wants: a force powerful enough to destroy the Solarian League Navy several times over]].
* NiceToTheWaiter:
** Almost every single villain of the series is either dismissive or outright contemptuous of their servants, as most of them come from high-society and wealthy backgrounds; multiple characters point out (or at least think) that that is entirely indicative of the way they believe that the universe revolves around them, and that their lower-class supporters are there for the express purpose of appeasing them.
** Rob S. Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just are the only two villains of the series who are courteous to their subordinates; Esther [=McQueen=], who knows that they will kill her the moment she is a threat and is already planning to kill ''them'', believes that it is actually an authentic character trait and not something assumed for appearances.
* NicknamingTheEnemy: "Manties" (Star Kingdom/Empire of Manticore), "Peeps" (People's Repubic of Haven),"Andies" (Andermani Empire), "Sillies" or "Confeds" (Silesian Confederacy), and "Sollies" (Solarian League).
* NoDeadBodyPoops: An undercover agent, realizing he has been made, judo flips over and snaps the neck of the man who has caught him, and notes in narration the smell of the voided bowels, presumably while his victim is still upside down.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: You have got to feel sorry for Commander Caslet and crew in ''Honor Among Enemies'', who due to their acting out of basic human decency are subject to severe punishment by the PRH.
* NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine:
** Inverted in ''Honor Among Enemies'' -- Honor invites the [[PunchClockVillain captive officers of PNS ''Vaubon'']] to dine with her. There's the expected tension, but Honor has no ulterior motive, she's just showing her prisoners of war the respect their rank deserves, and the dinner is a pleasant experience for both sides. For reference, had their ships encountered one another in time of peace, such an invitation would have been expected.
** Played with in ''Storm From The Shadows''. A few months after being captured by Haven, Admiral Mike Henke is invited to dinner with President Eloise Pritchart. As with the earlier example, it's a pleasant dinner, but Pritchart does have an ulterior motive -- the dinner is a setup for using Mike as Pritchart's envoy back to Manticore to try and bring an end to the war.
* NothingPersonal: In ''Shadow of Freedom'', [[spoiler:Firebrand]] notes to himself that he has nothing personal against the agents for the [[spoiler:Seraphim Independence Movement]] he meets in Chapter Four. He even wishes them well, even if he doesn't expect "well" to be what actually happens.
* NoTranshumanismAllowed: The Beowulf Life Code outlaws anything that adjusts the human body beyond its natural limits, even [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld prolong]] is described as just modifying and extending natural biological processes as opposed to drastically altering the human genome. Honor has faced occasional issues with her own status as a "Genie," a person whose ancestry includes genetic modification (In her case, the Meyerdahl First Wave modification which adjusted her ancestors for life on the high-gravity world of Meyerdahl). The role of Mesa is designed to explore this; David Weber has commented that Mesa has perfectly valid concerns and is right about Beowulf holding back humanity by outlawing transhumanism, but that they have been corrupted by hundreds of years of insular planning and hiding and now believe they must show that Beowulf is wrong by force.
* NotSoDifferent: Even during the worst periods of the Committee of Public Safety's reign, the Peoples' Republic of Haven [[EvenEvilHasStandards shared Manticore's opinion of pirates and slavers]]. [[spoiler: This is one of the main reasons the Mesans have been prodding both sides in their decades-long war.]]
* NoWarpingZone: Every astronomical body of sufficient mass has a "hyper limit;" inside this limit, translation into or out of hyperspace is either impossible or lethal. Most of the encountered hyper limits are caused by stars, but even the larger planets can have hyper limits of their own, if they're sufficiently far out from their primaries for it to matter.
* NoodleIncident:
** Whatever it was that Lt. Takahashi did to the flight simulators at Kreskin Flight School. He got an impressive number of demerits for it and strict orders not to do it again.
** The second-worst drunken night of Thomas Theisman's life, a "disastrous evening in his third year at the Academy". (The worst drunken experience of his life was when ''Cordelia Ransom'' interrupted with a knock at the door.)
* NotMeThisTime: When news finally begins to spread of what the Mesan Alignment is truly after, Manticore and Haven realize that they were [[spoiler: behind the resumption of hostilities when they had Arnold Giancola modify the diplomatic notes between the two governments]]. Detweiler, however, is confused when that conclusion reaches him, because that was something he actually had ''no'' part in, and he realizes that they are being improperly blamed because they had one of their operatives helping with the clean-up afterwards.
* NumberTwoForBrains: If you see this trope, it's an ironclad guarantee that the NumberTwo in question will [[YouAreInCommandNow wind up in command]] by the end of the book, and it will be a disaster.
* NWordPrivileges: Honor makes her guest feel uncomfortable when she explains that she is a "Genie". She then goes on to venture that most people on her homeworld are genetically modified by now they just do not think about it.
* ObfuscatingStupidity:
** A number of Havenite military and political officers, most spectacularly Admiral Lester "Cowboy" Tourville. It was something of a survival trait in the old [=PRH=], thanks to StateSec.
** For a very long time, treecats practiced [[ObfuscatingStupidity Obfuscating Cuteness]]. Treecats are soft, cuddly, affectionate creatures who occasionally "adopt" humans--and they would love you to think that is all there is to them. As of ''Ashes of Victory'', they are learning how to [[spoiler:communicate using sign language]] and are starting to reveal more details about their culture. They have also casually begun colonizing other worlds (worlds populated by humans friendly to them, as they do not have their own means of getting around off-world). Notably, they began doing this ''before'' telling even their Manticoran companions about it.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Several are found throughout the series, but particularly the High Ridge government in ''War of Honor'', where they are more concerned with holding power and acumulating wealth than the good of Manticore. Quite prevalent in the Solarian League, as well, given the SL Constitution makes it almost impossible for the government to take any but the most milquetoast of actions, leaving most actual power in the bureaucracies.
* OffTheRails: ''Honor Harrington'' was, more or less, ''Horatio Hornblower'' IN SPACE! Then someone nuked Haven's equivalent of Napoleon, and -- well -- it all kind of spiraled out from there.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome:
** The Third Battle of Yeltsin, which was a critical battle in the opening stages of the Haven/Manticore war that was fought on a scale which had not been encountered in hundreds of years, but which was never seen or described in detail.
** The capture of Trevor's Star was a major strategic objective of the Manties and a turning point of the war which gave the RMN a bridgehead (via the Trevor's Star Terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction) deep into Haven territory. We don't see it.
** In ''The Service of the Sword'', half of the naval battle takes place offscreen, while the readers follow Abigail's adventures dirtside. Abigail's exploits are certainly awesome, but the Battle of Tiberian becomes Michael Oversteegen's RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun moment for at least the next several books.
** On a lesser scale, Admiral White Haven brings the Grayson-Masadan conflict to a final closure in ''Honor of the Queen'', via the conquest of the Masadan system, between chapters just before the epilogue.
** The villains get one in ''Mission of Honor''. While [[spoiler: the attack on the Manticoran system]] is described [[DescriptionGorn in loving detail]], the matching attack [[spoiler: on the Grayson system]] gets only a passing mention. This continues in the two stories taking place [[spoiler: in Grayson]] at the time, due to the point-of-view characters being LateToTheTragedy.
* OhCrap: There are many instances where characters realize how monumentally screwed they are, usually right before dying:
** Honor has a couple; in ''On Basilisk Station'' when she realizes that the merchant ship she is chasing [[spoiler: is not 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 [[spoiler: ''is'' 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. [[spoiler: Specifically, the RN is capable of reverse engineering or reinventing most of the technology that gave Manticore the lead in the LensmanArmsRace. And of launching ''really big'' surprise attacks.]] Direct quote from Honor, when she learns that the Republic's black project is headed up by [[DitzyGenius Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker]]: "Oh God."
** The Peeps have one almost every time the Manties drop their EW or emerge from stealth, most notably at Fourth Yeltsin.
** Competent professionals on the wrong side of such situations tend have reactions closer to ThisIsGonnaSuck. Sometimes at the same time that their less-competent superiors are giving the standard OhCrap response. [[spoiler: Example: the captain of the ''Jean Bart'' at New Tuscany,]] while his [[TooDumbToLive commanding admiral]] was in a total panic, was basically pondering how unfair it was that he was going to be collateral damage to a well-deserved [[DarwinAwards Darwin Award]].
** In ''Mission of Honor'', some Solarian analysts are discussing the implications of [[spoiler:the Manties' performance at the Battle of Spindle]], and their initial reaction is "OhCrap, we're behind the curve." Then, after [[spoiler:the Manties get kneecapped by Oyster Bay]], those analysts realize it's even worse than that: "OhCrap, whoever did ''that'' to ''them'' is going to be coming after ''us''."
** The trope is said exactly by the commander of an LAC watching from the sidelines in his own system as Manticoran and Solarian ships confront each other, then less specifically by Solarians when the Manticorans launch an overwhelming missile strike well beyond their range and with far better ECM -- only to deliberately suicide the missiles against their wedges. And are told the next wave will 'fired for effect'. They leave.
* OneNationUnderCopyright: Both Mesa and Beowulf, as Mesa is Beowulf's EvilTwin.
* OneSteveLimit: Actual Steves are in short supply, but other common names are reused. Given the scale of the series, characters with the same name rarely ever meet or come within light-centuries of each other at all.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Honor is portrayed as a military professional: killing is an unfortunate consequence of her career, she takes no pleasure in it, and she can be courteous to opponents [[NothingPersonal who tried to kill her]] [[PunchClockVillain because that was their job]]. Those who have known her long enough instantly recognize [[OhCrap and are scared shitless by]] her change in bearing when she really, truly [[ItsPersonal wants someone dead]].
* OperationBlank:
** Manticoran op names are randomly assigned, so that if the name leaks there is no indication what the plan is, which gives us gems like Operations Buttercup, Cutworm, and Sanskrit. Operation Laocoön is an outlier, since the name is relatively apropos.
** Haven tends to favor grandiose names like Operations Icarus, Pegasus, and Thunderbolt.
** Solarian naval ops favor the poetic, like Operations East Wind, Winter Forage and even ''Raging Justice''.
** Mesan covert ops favor very direct names like Operation Rat Poison, Operation [[TrojanHorse Wooden Horse]], and Operation Oyster Bay (they are really not even ''trying'' with that one).
** In ''Echoes'', Honor comes up with Operation Nelson, involving a waypoint designated Point Trafalgar. At this pont in the series she is missing both an eye and an arm, the same wounds suffered by Admiral Nelson for whom the operation is named.
* OutlawTown: [[SdrawkcabName Erewhon]] is a planet founded by an alliance of [[TheMafia Mafia families]] hoping to set up shop outside the reach of any existing law enforcement agency and a place to launder their money (hence "Maytag" as the capital city, for example). Over the centuries, they evolved into a planet that was still run by those families, and still carried with it many of the old traditions, but which also had [[{{Irony}} some of the strictest law enforcement in the galaxy.]]
* OutOfFocus: Honor herself past ''Mission of Honor'' as she is now the strategic overview due to her high rank, and not able to get into the fights she used to be able to do.
* OutsideContextVillain: [[spoiler: The Mesan Alignment.]] Until the protagonists started being a [[SpannerInTheWorks spanner]] in their long term plans and forcing them to act ''slightly'' more openly to get things back on track, nobody even suspected their existence. And the protagonists were still lucky that their initial investigation hit jackpot the way it did. Nevertheless, they have plans on plans on backup plans stretching centuries, claws sunk into places no one expects and their technology breaks the rules the rest of the galaxy has comfortably become used to.
* PapaWolf: Many Grayson men embody this trope. The rest believe they do.
* PassedOverPromotion: In ''On Basilisk Station'', Lt. Commander [=McKeon=], executive officer of the light cruiser ''Fearless'', finds having the younger and more charismatic Honor Harrington appointed to the captain slot he wanted almost intolerable. It takes until [[spoiler:he backs up Honor against Klaus Hauptmann's attempt at extortion]] for the situation to be resolved.
* PassiveAggressiveKombat: Happens all the time when officers converse with each other, particularly in ''On Basilisk Station''. Everybody's trying to guess what everybody else ''really'' means, because military professionalism prevents them from coming out and saying it.
* PermanentElectedOfficial: The Legislaturalist families of the early People's Republic are ostensibly elected to their positions, but the system is thoroughly rigged so that they can never lose.
* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: Played straight enough that you could use it as a navigation-aid for plotting hyperspace jumps with the aforementioned People's Republic of Haven. To the point where the entire nation pulled a seemingly collective HeelFaceTurn by the simple method of removing the "People's" bit from their name. It's pointed out repeatedly, by people on both sides, that the Republic of Haven is a ''completely'' different beast to the ''People's'' Republic of Haven, and several {{False Flag Operation}}s manage to only ''temporarily'' convince anyone otherwise.
* PlanetOfHats:
** Most of the various star nations have hats that correspond to Terran national identities, though they are usually not as pronounced as most Hat examples.
** The Talbott Cluster is pretty much just an excuse for these. From New Montana (founded by worshippers of Montana who made it as close to the original state ("Planet of Stetson Hats"?) as possible) to Rembrandt (founded by art lovers). Erewhon (founded by gangsters with somewhat odd senses of humor) also qualifies.
* PlasmaCannon: Comes in full size and carbine models, used by Manticorian infantry as anti-armor weapons. The Royal Manticorian Army mounts a ''[=120mm=]'' version on tanks. Earlier books (and at least one short story taking place farther in the past) feature the Plasma Torpedo, an immensely powerful starship weapon that is capable of entirely coring through a Battlecruiser... but is entirely useless against even the weakest sidewall and is very limited in range, being used almost exclusively to finish an enemy off at close range. Ironically, both times we see one used in combat, it is by a [[PintsizedPowerhouse Light Cruiser]] against a significantly more powerful enemy ship that let it get too close.
* PlayingDrunk: Kevin Usher put on a charade as a hopeless (and constant) drunk in order to avoid suspicion while under the authority of the Committee of Publc Safety.
-->"Lesson number -- what is it, now? -- eight, I think. A ''reputation'' for being a drunk can keep you out of as much trouble as being one gets you into." [Usher] padded to his couch and sunk into it. "I've got a high capacity for alcohol, but I don't drink anywhere near as much as people think."
* PluckyMiddie: Honor herself in the prequel story ''Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington'', several other characters in various books, especially the ''Shadow of Saganami'' side novels.
** And {{Subverted}} by Midshipmen (and soon promoted to Ensign) Claire Bedlam [=LeCroix=], one of the first female officers in Grayson service. She was appointed by Steadholder Burdette to attend the Manticoran naval academy at Saganami Island, with the intent to [[StayInTheKitchen demonstrate that Grayson women were not fit to serve in combat,]] but was determined to succeed because it was the only chance her family had at anything other than being at the very bottom of the social heap. That said, she has thus far proven to be a mediocre combat officer at best, with her true calling being [[TheEngineer in the maintenance and repair of shipboard equipment and systems.]]
* ThePoliticalOfficer: The "Citizen Commissioners" placed on PRH warships to watch officers. Since they tend to be the only civilians on navy ships, they serve as [[TheWatson the explanation for why officers are]] [[InfoDump explaining the rudiments of space combat]].
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Damn near ''all'' of them. The easiest way to pick an ''Honor Harrington'' villain out of a crowd is to wait for them to deride the titular character's sex or her origins as a commoner, sometimes both at once. One almost starts to wonder if Weber came up with Grayson and Masada just so he would always have a place to pick out aristocratic mysogynists if he needed them. Averted, however, by most of the Moderate Graysons, who still have the centuries-old gut instinct to protect women and keep them out of combat at all costs, but manage to ignore it well enough to work with the female officers of the RMN. Letting their ''own'' daughters join the service, however, is much harder, even for the most progressive.
* PoorCommunicationKills: It's a running theme of the series, as it has often been for earth's naval combat as well.
** In ''In Enemy Hands'', Honor's heightened empathic sensitivity alerts her that White Haven has suddenly fallen in love with her. She cannot deal with this, so she runs off to the navy again [[spoiler:and promptly gets captured and then "executed", leaving White Haven to go through the rest of that book and ''Echoes of Honor'' feeling guiltily certain that he somehow scared her off to her death]]. They then spend part of ''Ashes of Victory'' and almost all of ''War of Honor'' continuing not to communicate with each other, [[spoiler:and are saved from it at the end of ''War of Honor'' only by Samantha having a heart-to-heart with Hamish's current wife]].
** In ''Ashes of Victory''/"Nightfall" a snatch of conversation between Oscar St. Just and Esther [=McQueen's=] minder Erasmus Fontein, heard out of context by an informant, [[spoiler:causes Esther [=McQueen=] to kick off her coup attempt before she is fully prepared—needlessly, as it turned out, as Oscar St. Just was only asking Fontein to ''fabricate evidence'' against [=McQueen=], not to move against her as the informant assumed. In the end, this case of poor communication ends up killing ''1.3 million people''.]]
** In ''War of Honor'', a recursive example: Haven Secretary of State Arnold Giancola is fooled by President Eloise Pritchart's extremely-controlled facade into misjudging the amount of anger hiding beneath it. (He forgot that not only was she one of the only surviving members of a more doctrinaire pre-Committee revolutionary group, she was also one of few People's Commissioners good enough at hiding what she really felt to survive the Committee's reign of terror while [[spoiler:''being in a romantic relationship with the admiral she was supposed to ride herd on'']].) As a result, [[spoiler:when he changes key points in diplomatic communiques to ratchet up tensions between Haven and Manticore so that he then can make himself look good by smoothing the tensions away, Giancola inadvertently goes too far and provokes Pritchart to announce a return to war]].
* PoweredArmor: Quite a few examples, mostly among [[SpaceMarine Space Marines]].
* PrecisionFStrike:
** Honor ''never'' swears, so you know she is angry when she dares to say "''hell''". This is commented on within the series, as several officers who had served with her for years sit up and take notice when they hear her swear for the first time, especially when she eventually brings out the more dramatic curses.
** Captain Alfredo Yu, in ''The Honor of the Queen'', vents his frustrations in a profanity-laden rant to his XO after spending the first part of the book being scrupulously polite around Sword Simmons.
** Admiral Allen Higgins in ''War of Honor'' uses it to make his feelings abundantly clear during a discussion with his chief of staff.
--->"No more of my people are going to be killed in a battle we can't win anyway."
--->"But, Sir, if you just abandon the yards, the Admiralty will—"
--->"Fuck the Admiralty!"
** Queen Elizabeth, though legendary for the 'Winton Temper,' almost always retains an air of civility and control, even when in the throes of almost violent anger. This lends more credence to her emphasis when she finally decides to swear.
--->"I suppose the only thing I'm really surprised about is who seems to have arranged this entire--what's that charming military phrase? Oh, yes. This entire ''cluster fuck''."
** Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta, the very first time we see him lose his temper. With the same line, he is KilledMidSentence.
* PreMortemOneLiner: [[spoiler:"Good-bye, Citizen Chairman."]]
* [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent President Corrupt]]: Baron High Ridge, during ''War of Honor''.
* {{Privateer}}: Mentioned occasionally. The majority of them seem to be outright pirates using a Letter of Marque as a shield to protect themselves if captured but more respectable ones turn up occasionally.
* ProperlyParanoid:
** Rob Pierre notes, in the opening to ''In Enemy Hands'', that he much preferred when he simply was paranoid. Now that he actually has people after him he would give anything to go back to seeing shadows.
** A Peep officer in ''Echoes of Honor'' deduces that the prison planet of Hades has suffered a prisoner revolt when a courier's mail lacks the warden's latest correspondence chess move. He is absolutely correct.
** Bodyguards, most notably Honor's armsmen, are '''always''' paranoid and frequently right. In ''Field of Dishonor'', Andrew [=LaFollet=] is uncomfortable when she changes her plans and decides to go to a restaurant, though he does not ''really'' think anything will happen. Halfway through the meal, half a dozen thugs come through the door and start shooting.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The "Amazons" in ''Crown of Slaves'', and to a lesser extent scrags in general. Their social structure has more in common with pack predators than with baseline humanity, they are all extremely capable warriors (although occasionally [[{{Pride}} a bit too convinced of their own superiority]]) and they only respect a leader who can beat them in a fight.
* PsychoLesbian: Oddly for a franchise that features numerous cosmopolitan worlds whose sexual mores are very "liberal" when compared to the present-day, the only confirmed homosexual character (at least in the main series books) was an unpleasant person. However, there is no implication that her orientation and her personality were in any way related, as her heterosexual compatriots were just as bad; nor does she get more than four lines of dialogue or virtually any character development. Even her lesbianism is only mentioned through exposition. [[spoiler: She was one of the characters that intended to jump ship in Silesia using a small explosive device as a distraction.]]
* PunBasedTitle: Almost every book with "Honor" in the title. (''The Honor of the Queen'', ''Honor Among Enemies'', etc.)
* PuppeteerParasite: Mesa's assassination nanotech.
* PurpleProse:
** While Weber is fairly good writing military situations, he is arguably much, much less proficient at casual dialogue. For example, in ''Storm from the Shadows'' we meet a character on the planet Montana; in PlanetOfHats terms, the planet wears a cowboy hat. For all the character's principle-driven, plain-spoken ways he still refers to a "plebiscite" and the "oligarchs" behind it the same as everyone else.
** In general, characters who are angry will actually become ''more'' verbose, not less, regardless of educational level. One common example is describing someone with three adjectives or phrases, such as "stiff-necked, obstinate, mule-headed ''idiot''!" or suchlike. Even the Queen, who has the fiercest temper in the entire series, is prone to this.
** These are dialed way down in books written or co-written by other authors.
** [[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=635193 David Weber orders a pizza]].
* PuttingOnTheReich: Havenite StateSec. It is no surprise their initials are ''SS''. David Weber can be subtle when he wants to be, he just chose not to here.
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: The Q-ship crew Honor gets stuck with in ''Honor Among Enemies.''
* TheRashomon: Latest novels (until the ''Mission of Honor'' started the clock again), which basically just go back and forth in the time period around the Battle Of Manticore. The earliest of them (in the internal chronology, that is), ''Crown of Slaves'', is set in 1919 p.d., while ''Torch of Freedom'' ends in the spring of 1922, and ''At All Costs'' and ''Mission of Honor'' overlap both of these books. Weber and Flint needed to introduce a lot of people and concepts in their greatly expanded universe, true, but that's no less frustrating to the reader, who just gets to read about the same events again and again. Especially given the Weber's habit to lapse into chapter-long {{infodump}}s and {{As You Know}}s.
* RapeAsDrama:
** Pavel Young attempted to rape Honor during their time at Saganami Island, starting their rivalry (or, rather, pathological mutual hatred) that would last for decades.
** In ''The Honor of the Queen'' the crew of a captured Manticoran ship are beaten, tortured, gangraped, and killed by Masadan fanatics. Only 2 of 26 women survived the experience.
* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil:
** In ''The Honor of the Queen'', when Honor Harrington discovers what the Masadans had done to the crew of the captured Manticoran destroyer, she loses it and nearly commits what would have been a career-ending murder of the Masadan captain. She has to be physically restrained by her own subordinates to get back under self-control. At least one senior officer muses that they'd have acted exactly the same if they'd been in her shoes.
** In ''Honor Among Enemies'', the brutal rape and murder of a crew of Manticoran merchantmen leads Havenite Citizen Captain Warner Caslet to go off-mission to hunt down and bring the pirates responsible to fatal justice. Note that Caslet's orders would have required him to attack that same merchant ship himself if not for the pirates.
* ReactionlessDrive: A spaceship's impellers work by gravity manipulation. There's no reaction mass getting thrown out the back of the ship as exhaust.
* RealityEnsues: In ''On Basilisk Station'' the Bronze Age-tech Medusans manage to brutally kill some Manticorans by swarming them. Then, the Manties bring out the heavy weapons and air support. The aliens die. And die. And die some more.
* ReallyGetsAround: Honor gets ''accused'' of this by [[StrawmanNewsMedia the press]] when they discover she [[spoiler: has had her baby "tubed" (an artificial gestation environment, commonly used by military women). They ask of her doctor if Earl White Haven is the father (true), but also on the candidate list are Prince Michael (who's married), Baron Grantville (Earl White Haven's brother), and ''Protector Benjamin'' (who's married twice over). This has the effect of mashing the BerserkButton flat for both the doctor (who demands that the privacy of patients be maintained) and the Graysons (who consider Honor a planetary hero). Ironically, Honor was a CelibateHero until Paul Tankersley, and has only been with three men in her ''life'', that the reader knows of -- only two of them consensual]].
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: 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. The drawback is that she is literally 20 years old from a physical standpoint, so her hormones can sometimes make her act that age. 90% of the characters fall into this category, though there are a few exceptions in those too old to get prolong.
* {{Realpolitik}}: The dominant foreign policy of the Andermani Empire. Another way in which they [[FantasyCounterpartCulture resemble Prussia]].
* ReassignmentBackfire:
** The entire plot of the first novel is Honor Harrington's 'exile' to Basilisk Station.
** In ''War of Honor'', her superiors drop the VillainBall 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 another offscreen backfire. Which, naturally, happens.
* ReassignedToAntarctica:
** This happens to Honor quite a lot (see ReassignmentBackfire above):
*** In ''On Basilisk Station'', she and her crew are assigned to Basilisk Station, the dumping ground where incompetent captains, politically disappointing crews and general screw-ups are sent.
*** At the end of ''Field of Dishonor'', [[spoiler:Honor is benched on half-pay as punishment for embarrassing the parties in political power in Manticore]].
*** In ''Honor Among Enemies'', Honor is given a dangerous, unglamorous assignment patrolling a pirate-ridden sector of space in extremely fragile "Q-ships" (merchant ships refitted for combat). This is done at the behest of two of her political enemies, who see it as a XanatosGambit — she'll either get rid of pirates or get killed, and either way, they win.
** Pavel Young may be too politically connected to bench, but he spends much of his career in the least important assignments the Navy can find.
** John Ringo's "A Ship Named Francis" exemplifies this trope, not surprising given that [[IrresponsibleCaptainTylor the anime it shouts out]] does as well. It's explicitly lampshaded that the ''Francis Mueller'' is where the Grayson Space Navy sends the people who are varying kinds of screw-ups, but not so much as to justify the administrative expenses of tossing them out of the service.
** Lt. Matthew Askew comes to suspect that the Manties may be a great deal tougher than the 'neobarbarians' the Solarian Navy is used to beating up on. For which [[CassandraTruth he's accused of defeatism]], relieved from his position as tactical officer, and transferred to public affairs -- on another ship. [[spoiler:The last means that he's the ''only'' member of his first ship's company to survive the engagement with the Manties.]]
* RecycledINSPACE:
** ''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 [[PuttingOnTheReich Putting On The Committee For Public Safety]]. By ''Storm From Shadows'' the parallels end, in part because a conflict between [[spoiler: The Solarian League and Manticore]] does not have a historical parallel, and because [[spoiler:the Hornblower-analogue survived her Trafalgar, against authorial expectations]].
** HMS ''Fearless'' (Honor's command in the first book), with its rearmament, is a carronade frigate (like HMS ''Glatton'' or HMS ''Rainbow'') IN SPACE!
* RecycledPremise: ''The Best Laid Plans'' bears a very similar presence to the earlier ''A Beautiful Friendship'', being as both stories are about a young Harrington girl sneaking off into the Sphynxian woods without her parents' informed consent, and ending up forging a powerful bond with a Treecat, save for some key character differences, demonstrating some important ways that Stephanie and Honor were not GenerationXerox copies. Honor was far more methodical and prepared than Stephanie was, specifically decided to hike due to the danger of hang-gliding in poor weather, came to the rescue of a treecat rather than vice versa, and was able to resolve the situation with her own resources handily rather than requiring rescue.
* RecursiveAmmo: Missiles that shoot lasers. Pure awesomeness, though not without theoretical grounding; see [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur Project Excalibur]].
* RedBaron:
** Honor is almost invariably called ''The Salamander'' by the newsies (for her habit of always being where the fire is hottest), 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.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: In the ''Torch of Freedom'', when [[spoiler: Jack [=McBryde=] understood that he would not be able to get away with the others after his HeelFaceTurn]], he opted to stay behind and create a hell of a diversion (in the 50 kiloton range, that is) to buy the heroes a chance.
* RedHerring:
** In ''The Short Victorious War'' Pavel Young and Commander Houseman, both [[ItsPersonal with extremely strong personal dislike for Honor]], meet and begin to conspire against her. Mention is made of them attempting to turn Commodore Van Slyke, their immediate superior, against Honor, but before anything can come of that [[spoiler: the entire situation is upset by the outbreak of war with Haven, especially when both Houseman and Van Slyke are killed when their Heavy Cruiser is destroyed in combat. Young and Houseman's efforts ultimately have no impact on either the personal, political or military events of the book]].
** In ''Honor Among Enemies'', the resident bully aboard ''Wayfarer'' sets up an elaborate plan to jump ship and become a SpacePirate, which included rigging one of the ship's impeller nodes to explode (as a distraction). However, [[spoiler:his co-conspirators crack under interrogation and reveal the existence of the sabotage, allowing the crew to make the impeller node safe again long before it would have gone off.]]
* RedOniBlueOni: Victor Cachat (Havenite State Security, reformed to Foreign Intelligence Service) and Anton Zilwicki (RMN as first construction, then Intelligence). Played with in that Cachat is a genius at improvisation, but almost coldly emotionless while Zilwicki is the obsessive planner and plotter (using Wild Mass Guessing to spin possible scenerios and planning for every contingency), but much more emotional.
* RefugeInAudacity: President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, is both impressed and astounded.
* RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun:
** At the end of ''Flag in Exile'', [[spoiler:Honor's political enemy mentally recaps all the awesome things she has done, and wonders how she survived. The capper on it is that he is forced to lead a push to ''honor'' Honor, and all the things he mentions are all in ''that one book''.]]
** In the short story "The Service of the Sword", Captain Michael Oversteegen, commanding a lone heavy cruiser, wins a battle against ''four-on-one odds'' (as in, he destroyed four heavy cruisers with his one ship) in the star system Tiberian. From that moment on, "Tiberian" becomes a byword for "''Do not fuck with Michael Oversteegen''."
* RenegadeSplinterFaction: The Faithful of the Church of Humanity Unchained (which eventually settled Masada) to Grayson's Church of Humanity Unchained.
* RevengeMyopia: Solarian Fleet Admiral Rajani Rajampet states, in no uncertain terms that he does not care how justified the Manticorans believed they were in killing Admiral Josef Byng, and goes on to say he doesn't care how justified they actually ''were.'' His biggest concern is the blow to the Solarian League Navy's prestige their actions have caused and the precedents it could set.
* RockBeatsLaser:
** Pop quiz; you're Peep brass and need to find some way to counter the Manties' advanced technology which you won't be able to match for decades, at best. What do you do?
** Answer: [[spoiler:Make your own LACs, and have them throw shedloads of nukes (which have been obsolete in naval warfare for ''centuries'') at the Manties. Three shedloads, actually, which blind them, reveal them, then kill them. Then you close and beat the snot out of their remaining LACs in where your "knife fighters" have the edge on their "snipers".]]
--->It isn't pretty, and it isn't elegant, but it ''is'' something more important than either of those things -- it works. --V. Adm. [[spoiler:Shannon Foraker]]
* RougeAnglesOfSatin: There seems to be too much of a reliance on automated spell-checking without enough proofreading, leading to errors like "commander" and "commodore" being confused. Still, it is not a serious issue and stems from David Weber's hands being so crippled the entire series is transcribed by software with some questionable ability.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Just about anywhere where royalty is involved. Manticore, Grayson, Andermani, Torch, etc. [[AristocratsAreEvil Corrupt and unscrupulous]] they may have been, but the Legislaturists were very nearly the only people in the old PRH that actually did ''anything''.
* RoyallyScrewedUp: The Andermani family, which has had more than its share of rulers with personality quirks, is almost the joke dynasty of the Honorverse. The founder of the dynasty, Gustav Anderman, believed himself to be the reincarnation of Frederick the Great of Prussia and dressed in period dress, and one of his descendants attempted to make a potted plant a government minister. Another had herself legally declared a man in order to comply with the dictate that the ruler must be male. However, despite their personal foibles almost every member of the dynasty (except the afore-mentioned plant guy) has also been a competent ruler who has steadily expanded the boundaries of the Anderman Empire for centuries. [[BunnyEarsLawyer Their subjects willingly put up with their faults because of the other skills that they bring to the table]].
* RunningGag:
** Ruth Winton is a brilliant analyst with a lot of political knowledge, but not terribly familiar with history, hence she confidently explains historical references as references to minor contemporary political figures with the same names. You'd think she'd figure out that modern politicos aren't who they're quoting after the third or fourth time.
** The explanation of, and the explainee's reaction to, the precise manner in which the ''Tepes'' met its fate.
** In ''Ashes of Victory'', the continual "oopses" when mentioning the ''Medusa''-née-[[spoiler:''Harrington'']]-née-''Medusa'' starship class.
** Alice Truman's tendency to surround herself with male officers as blond, blue-eyed and gorgeous as herself.
** The continual Manticoran confusion over a) what, exactly, baseball is and b) why the Graysons don't just round up to the nearest meter in their park dimensions. The Graysons repeatedly and patiently explain that a) it's a sport and b) because it's ''[[SeriousBusiness baseball]]''.
* RuleThirtyFour: Hinted at in universe. The reader is informed that treecats are not interested in human sexuality, but Havenite tabloids published stories about relations between Queen Elizabeth III and her treecat, among other lurid tales.
----
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* MadeOfExplodium:
** The fusion bottles on board starships in the Honorverse blow up like a supernova if they're sufficiently damaged, ensuring that destroying a starship in combat always results in a massive explosion killing everyone still aboard. The reactors are stated to work via gravity manipulation. Basically, take a bunch of hydrogen, squish it with a few hundred gees, and you've got a miniature star. Remove the gravity and the magnetic containment field and even though the reaction has stopped, you've still got a bunch of hydrogen plasma at about 10,000,000 degrees on the loose.
** In ''Flag in Exile'', Honor's pinnace is hit by a missile and crashes into the spaceport runway. As a safety feature, it ejects its hydrogen fuel tanks -- one of which smashes into the spaceport's terminal, explodes, and kills over ten times as many people as were aboard the pinnace.
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident:
** In ''Honor Among Enemies'' an attempt is made on [[spoiler: Ginger Lewis's]] life with a suit malfunction. Unfortunately for the perp, his "accident" was a little too complex and could not have been an accident.
** The Legislaturalists favored method of removing troublesome political opponents were aircar "accidents." This returns to make problems for the new Republic of Haven government when [[spoiler:Arnold Giancola]] is killed in a legitimate crash caused by a DrunkDriver; they honestly had nothing to do with it, but nobody is going to believe that they did not have him killed.
* MamaBear: Honor lives by this. Whether it is her crew, her family, her Steading, or anyone she considers under her protection, attacking them is effectively committing suicide.
* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler: Detweiler]] has had a hand in just about every major event in the books, if he did not plan them outright to begin with.
* ManchurianAgent: In ''At All Costs'', [[spoiler:Mesa]] secretly deploys a nanotech virus that can reprogram its victim to perform a predefined action under specific circumstances. Now, ''[[ParanoiaFuel anybody]]'' could be a sleeper assassin without even knowing it.
* ManipulativeBastard: [[spoiler: The Mesan Alignment]], who accomplished almost everything through manipulation and cats-paws.
* [[MacrossMissileMassacre 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 is still impossible.
* MasterOfNone: The given reason why Manticore does not build or use battleships: Not strong or survivable enough to fight full wallers, not capable of enough acceleration to match battlecruisers or below. Eventually, the Havenites manage to turn them into JackOfAllStats by using them in deep raiding, where being stronger than battlecruisers allows them to blow away pickets using said class while outrunning full wallers, and every Manty waller stuck guarding a backwater is one fewer at the frontlines. The ability to tow a LOT of pods helps, too.
* MatchCut
* MeaningfulName:
** "Honor" Harrington is one of the characters with the most personal integrity and honor seen in the entire series—hence, almost every book with "Honor" in the title (''The Honor of the Queen'', ''Honor Among Enemies'', etc.) is also a PunBasedTitle. Lampshaded at the end of "Let's Dance".
--->Allison Harrington looked up at her towering daughter for endless seconds, and then, slowly, she shook her own head.\\
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said softly, “it ''is'' my fault—mine and your father’s. After all,” she smiled hugely through a haze of tears, “we’re the ones who named you Honor.”
** Also ''any'' treecat name ever. 'Cats are empaths who tend to give out names based on the one most noticeable character trait that they sense first in the person's "mindglow". Given their PsychicPowers these names may sometimes seem to be too whimsical for us "mind-blind", but they are ''always'' spot-on. Honor herself is "Dances on Clouds", Queen Elizabeth III is "Soul of Steel", Hamish Alexander is "Strong Heart", Eloise Pritchart is "Truth Seeker", and Thomas Theisman? "Dreams of Peace".
** "Mesan" can be pronounced like "Mason." Both the Mesans in-universe, and the Freemasons in RealLife, stand accused of secretly manipulating whole governments behind the scenes.
* MegaCorp: Manpower, Incorporated is the poster child for this trope, although it is not the only one in the setting.
* TheMessiah: Judith Newland, to the "Sisterhood of Barbara", a group of women dedicated to escaping Masada.
* MetalDetectorCheckpoint: In the short story "Let's Go to Prague" by Creator/JohnRingo, a PRH commercial spaceport's scanner serving the same purpose as RealLife airport metal detectors is a potential concern for Manticoran agents [[spoiler:trying to sneak out a defecting Peep admiral.]]
* MildlyMilitary: Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps. The rest of their military is described as unorthodox, too, but it's not elaborated upon.
* MileLongShip: Ship sizes are usually given in tonnage but one diagram showed most ships of the wall as being 2 km in length while superdreadnoughts were 3. Then David Weber realized that was too light with the given tonnage (the ships ended up being somewhat less dense than cigar smoke) and rescaled them so that [=SDs=] top out at 1500 m.
* MilitaryAcademy: Saganami Island, named for Commander Edward Saganami, regarded as the founder of the Royal Manticoran Navy for his legendary last stand at the Battle of Carson and his foundation of "[[HeroicSacrifice the Saganami Tradition]]."
* MilitaryAlphabet: The modern NATO/ICAO alphabet is used universally, with a few variations like Able, Baker and Roger for flavor. The last one may also be a reference to King Roger I Winton, the first king of Manticore.
* MilitaryScienceFiction: SpaceNavy focused.
* MinovskyPhysics: Gravity control technology forms the basis for just about every piece of AppliedPhlebotinum in the Honorverse: The [[FTLTravel Warshawski Sail]], the [[ReactionlessDrive Impeller Drive]], the [[DeflectorShields sidewalls]], the [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter pulser guns]] and shipboard missile launchers, even the super-tall skyscrapers that pepper the landscapes of most big cities.
* MisguidedMissile: A most dreaded thing for any naval commander due to Eridani Edict, which forbids the deliberate bombardment of an occupied planet without first securing an orbital position and offering surrender. Though an errant missile is not technically a violation of the Edict, it might be perceived as such by the Solarian League, which could then use that as a rationale for an overwhelming military response.
* MissingManFormation: At Honor's funeral in ''Echoes of Honor'' the missing man formation is used, as it is for all pilots in the Royal Manticoran Navy. The whole scene is a {{Tearjerker}}, even if you just read the previous book and know that Honor's [[FakingTheDead not really dead]].
* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: Pavel Young blackmails Elaine Sakristos, his chief of security, into sleeping with him, and the experience itself is a painful, humiliating evening. Afterwards, Pavel never seems to catch on to the fact that she is subtly helping Honor Harrington penetrate his security.
* MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness: Weber attempts to write Hard Science fiction, while using several coincidences of AppliedPhlebotinum to justify combat being [[SpaceIsAnOcean explicitly naval in nature]].
* MonsterClown: Jeremy X, Audubon Ballroom leader and Torch's Secretary of War. A former genetic slave intended to be a house entertainer, he became a [[SociopathicHero 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.
* MoreExpendableThanYou: Honor's armsmen keep trying to convince her of this.
* MorningSickness: The first indication of [[spoiler: Honor]]'s pregnancy is a slight queasiness at breakfast.
* MovingTheGoalposts: An admiral who did not care for the development of LAC-based tactics and technology managed to get himself put in charge of the evaluation board and started putting more and more restrictions on how the weapons could be used in an effort to get a test battle in which the new [=LACs=] would be decisively defeated. Captain Truman recognized the plan and sent notification letters to even ''higher'' ranking officers; not asking them to change anything or intervene on her behalf, but simply appraising them of the situation so that they would look at ''all'' the data when it came time to review the exercise. [[spoiler: When the Peeps launch an actual attack on the system the entire plan becomes moot, as the [=LACs=] are put into real combat and perform superbly]].
* MuggingTheMonster: In the lead-up to the Haven-Manticore War in ''The Short Victorious War'' the Peeps start sending out raiding squadrons to destroy isolated Manticoran convoys and patrols. One Havenite battlecruiser squadron goes on one of these missions, but instead of finding the lightweight patrol ships they drop out of hyper within spitting distance of the dreadnought HMS ''Bellerophon'' that was passing through the system on its way home to Manticore. After ''Bellerophon's'' crew gets over their surprise they blow all four battlecruisers to bits in one broadside.
* MyCountryRightOrWrong: A number of Havenite military and political officers.
** Subverted in heartbreaking manner in ''Echoes of Honor''. Warner Caslet holds onto this attitude like a life preserver, until Legislaturalist Admiral Parnell lays it out for him: "Son, you don't have a country any more..."
** Many of the Havenites (in fact, pretty much all of them who are not painted as morally reprehensible slime) subscribe to the forgotten part of the quote as used by US Senator Carl Shurz: "if wrong, to be set right". Most notably Victor Cachat, Kevin Usher, Lester Tourville, Javier Giscard, Dennis [=LePic=], Shannon Foraker, and of course Thomas Theisman and Eloise Pritchart.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Several examples throughout the series.
** [[spoiler: Admiral Byng after ordering the unwarranted destruction of three Manticoran destroyers, which had been in the system on a diplomatic mission. To make things worse, not only was the battle [[CurbStompBattle staggeringly one-sided]] due to numbers alone, but the Manticoran warships had their engines and weapons off line, and were given no warning of the impending attack, leaving them totally helpless. Byng would later suffer from a literal case of LaserGuidedKarma, compliments of Admiral Henke's squadron of battlecruisers, and the Royal Manticoran Navy's infamously effective missile guidance systems.]]
** [[spoiler: Aldona Anisimovna]] has a bout of this after destroying a [[spoiler:New Tuscan]] space station, killing over 40,000 innocents, in order to provoke [[UnwittingPawn Admiral Byng's]] attack on the Manticoran destroyers. She quickly rationalizes it away [[spoiler:by saying that [[IDidWhatIHadToDo she was doing what was necessary for the Mesan Alignment's plans]].]]
** [[spoiler: [[BigBad Albrecht Detweiler]]]] has one after the Oyster Bay raids result in over [[spoiler: ''eight million dead'' in the Manticore home systems alone.]] He decides that he needs to accept that, because it would be a drop in the bucket by the time he is done if [[IDidWhatIHadToDo the plan is to succeed.]]
** Literally when, in ''Flag in Exile'', a hardcore fundamentalist Grayson [[spoiler:kills the head of his own church in an attempt to assassinate Honor. He suffers a BSOD upon realising and his grief stricken testimony is the main plank in the case that convicts the Steadholder Burdette of treason and murder.]]
** Thomas Theisman has one in ''In Enemy Hands'' when [[spoiler: he realises that his bringing up the Deneb Accords leads to Cordelia Ransom thinking of ways to RulesLawyer around them in her typically horrific manner.]]
** Captain Zavala in ''Shadow of Freedom''. He has no problem with attacking the Solarian force when it refuses to surrender. The moment they do -- after Zavala's first salvo utterly destroys its target -- Zavala realizes the ''next'' three salvos are already committed, preventing several thousand Solarians from abandoning ship in time, including the Vice Admiral. For added irony, Zavala had gone with this plan instead of a [[MacrossMissileMassacre Missile Massacre]] fake-out partly to ''avoid'' overusing a now limited supply of missiles if the fake-out hadn't worked.
* MySignificanceSenseIsTingling: Being partially telepathic, treecats can spot potential trouble before it appears. This has saved Honor's life at least twice and may prove an Achilles Heel for the Mesan Alignment (as altered humans taste "wrong" to treecats).
* NameThatUnfoldsLikeLotusBlossom: The treecats use these names not only for themselves (Laughs Brightly, Swift Striker, Sorrow Singer) but also for humans they think are important (Death Fang's Bane, Soul Of Steel, Dances On Clouds). It is worth noting that a treecat may have his or her name changed several times during their life but adopted treecats have two names, their descriptive name and the name that their human gives them (which never changes).
* NamesTheSame: Despite what it sounds like, Manticore is not at war with [[http://marshmallowpeeps.com trays of marshmallow chickens and bunnies]].
* NarrativeProfanityFilter: In the short story "Nightfall", a guard supervisor's tirade is mentally noted by the target of the supervisor's ire to be worthy of study for chewing out due to the use of "colorful" language, but the specific words used aren't mentioned.
* NervesOfSteel: Half of the characters, but ''especially'' Honor, if only because she is routinely thrown into the worst situations. Hundreds or thousands of other people are along with her in the same situations, but she is in command, and their lives are ''her'' responsibility.
* NewTechIsNotCheap: Part of the issues in the war between the People's Republic of Haven and Manticore. Courtesy of their control of the largest known wormhole junction in the Galaxy and a massive merchant marine Manticore can afford to run a robust R&D program in the middle of a shooting war while the bankrupt PRH can't, even if their educational system wasn't hideously crippled.
* NavalBlockade: This was employed by the Royal Manticoran Navy against the Solarian League by blockading wormhole termini in Solarian space.
* NGOSuperpower: Manpower thinks it is this, but it is just a group of slavers and generic criminals that are the big fish in a small pond. Manticore and Haven, their default enemies, both regard them as little more than a nuisance, a dime-a-dozen organization with delusions of grandeur. Manpower's delusions of grandeur are encouraged [[spoiler:by the Mesan Alignment, which is a superpower, and has been using Manpower as a front for centuries.]]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain:
** In ''Field of Dishonor'', Pavel Young, primarily by [[JerkAss being himself]], invokes a MistreatmentInducedBetrayal by his chief of security, which leads directly to Honor's friends in the Navy tracking down evidence of what he'd done and to his own death.
** One of the side-effects of Yawata Strike is that it ends up breaking the diplomatic deadlock between Manticore and Haven by inspiring Eloise Pritchart, having also learned of the existence of [[spoiler: the Mesan Alignment]], to approach Queen Elizabeth and propose not just a peace treaty, but [[spoiler:a military alliance against the Solarian League]]. In the process they clear up all their past diplomatic misunderstandings and become [[spoiler:the ''last'' thing the Alignment wants: a force powerful enough to destroy the Solarian League Navy several times over]].
* NiceToTheWaiter:
** Almost every single villain of the series is either dismissive or outright contemptuous of their servants, as most of them come from high-society and wealthy backgrounds; multiple characters point out (or at least think) that that is entirely indicative of the way they believe that the universe revolves around them, and that their lower-class supporters are there for the express purpose of appeasing them.
** Rob S. Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just are the only two villains of the series who are courteous to their subordinates; Esther [=McQueen=], who knows that they will kill her the moment she is a threat and is already planning to kill ''them'', believes that it is actually an authentic character trait and not something assumed for appearances.
* NicknamingTheEnemy: "Manties" (Star Kingdom/Empire of Manticore), "Peeps" (People's Repubic of Haven),"Andies" (Andermani Empire), "Sillies" or "Confeds" (Silesian Confederacy), and "Sollies" (Solarian League).
* NoDeadBodyPoops: An undercover agent, realizing he has been made, judo flips over and snaps the neck of the man who has caught him, and notes in narration the smell of the voided bowels, presumably while his victim is still upside down.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: You have got to feel sorry for Commander Caslet and crew in ''Honor Among Enemies'', who due to their acting out of basic human decency are subject to severe punishment by the PRH.
* NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine:
** Inverted in ''Honor Among Enemies'' -- Honor invites the [[PunchClockVillain captive officers of PNS ''Vaubon'']] to dine with her. There's the expected tension, but Honor has no ulterior motive, she's just showing her prisoners of war the respect their rank deserves, and the dinner is a pleasant experience for both sides. For reference, had their ships encountered one another in time of peace, such an invitation would have been expected.
** Played with in ''Storm From The Shadows''. A few months after being captured by Haven, Admiral Mike Henke is invited to dinner with President Eloise Pritchart. As with the earlier example, it's a pleasant dinner, but Pritchart does have an ulterior motive -- the dinner is a setup for using Mike as Pritchart's envoy back to Manticore to try and bring an end to the war.
* NothingPersonal: In ''Shadow of Freedom'', [[spoiler:Firebrand]] notes to himself that he has nothing personal against the agents for the [[spoiler:Seraphim Independence Movement]] he meets in Chapter Four. He even wishes them well, even if he doesn't expect "well" to be what actually happens.
* NoTranshumanismAllowed: The Beowulf Life Code outlaws anything that adjusts the human body beyond its natural limits, even [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld prolong]] is described as just modifying and extending natural biological processes as opposed to drastically altering the human genome. Honor has faced occasional issues with her own status as a "Genie," a person whose ancestry includes genetic modification (In her case, the Meyerdahl First Wave modification which adjusted her ancestors for life on the high-gravity world of Meyerdahl). The role of Mesa is designed to explore this; David Weber has commented that Mesa has perfectly valid concerns and is right about Beowulf holding back humanity by outlawing transhumanism, but that they have been corrupted by hundreds of years of insular planning and hiding and now believe they must show that Beowulf is wrong by force.
* NotSoDifferent: Even during the worst periods of the Committee of Public Safety's reign, the Peoples' Republic of Haven [[EvenEvilHasStandards shared Manticore's opinion of pirates and slavers]]. [[spoiler: This is one of the main reasons the Mesans have been prodding both sides in their decades-long war.]]
* NoWarpingZone: Every astronomical body of sufficient mass has a "hyper limit;" inside this limit, translation into or out of hyperspace is either impossible or lethal. Most of the encountered hyper limits are caused by stars, but even the larger planets can have hyper limits of their own, if they're sufficiently far out from their primaries for it to matter.
* NoodleIncident:
** Whatever it was that Lt. Takahashi did to the flight simulators at Kreskin Flight School. He got an impressive number of demerits for it and strict orders not to do it again.
** The second-worst drunken night of Thomas Theisman's life, a "disastrous evening in his third year at the Academy". (The worst drunken experience of his life was when ''Cordelia Ransom'' interrupted with a knock at the door.)
* NotMeThisTime: When news finally begins to spread of what the Mesan Alignment is truly after, Manticore and Haven realize that they were [[spoiler: behind the resumption of hostilities when they had Arnold Giancola modify the diplomatic notes between the two governments]]. Detweiler, however, is confused when that conclusion reaches him, because that was something he actually had ''no'' part in, and he realizes that they are being improperly blamed because they had one of their operatives helping with the clean-up afterwards.
* NumberTwoForBrains: If you see this trope, it's an ironclad guarantee that the NumberTwo in question will [[YouAreInCommandNow wind up in command]] by the end of the book, and it will be a disaster.
* NWordPrivileges: Honor makes her guest feel uncomfortable when she explains that she is a "Genie". She then goes on to venture that most people on her homeworld are genetically modified by now they just do not think about it.
* ObfuscatingStupidity:
** A number of Havenite military and political officers, most spectacularly Admiral Lester "Cowboy" Tourville. It was something of a survival trait in the old [=PRH=], thanks to StateSec.
** For a very long time, treecats practiced [[ObfuscatingStupidity Obfuscating Cuteness]]. Treecats are soft, cuddly, affectionate creatures who occasionally "adopt" humans--and they would love you to think that is all there is to them. As of ''Ashes of Victory'', they are learning how to [[spoiler:communicate using sign language]] and are starting to reveal more details about their culture. They have also casually begun colonizing other worlds (worlds populated by humans friendly to them, as they do not have their own means of getting around off-world). Notably, they began doing this ''before'' telling even their Manticoran companions about it.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Several are found throughout the series, but particularly the High Ridge government in ''War of Honor'', where they are more concerned with holding power and acumulating wealth than the good of Manticore. Quite prevalent in the Solarian League, as well, given the SL Constitution makes it almost impossible for the government to take any but the most milquetoast of actions, leaving most actual power in the bureaucracies.
* OffTheRails: ''Honor Harrington'' was, more or less, ''Horatio Hornblower'' IN SPACE! Then someone nuked Haven's equivalent of Napoleon, and -- well -- it all kind of spiraled out from there.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome:
** The Third Battle of Yeltsin, which was a critical battle in the opening stages of the Haven/Manticore war that was fought on a scale which had not been encountered in hundreds of years, but which was never seen or described in detail.
** The capture of Trevor's Star was a major strategic objective of the Manties and a turning point of the war which gave the RMN a bridgehead (via the Trevor's Star Terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction) deep into Haven territory. We don't see it.
** In ''The Service of the Sword'', half of the naval battle takes place offscreen, while the readers follow Abigail's adventures dirtside. Abigail's exploits are certainly awesome, but the Battle of Tiberian becomes Michael Oversteegen's RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun moment for at least the next several books.
** On a lesser scale, Admiral White Haven brings the Grayson-Masadan conflict to a final closure in ''Honor of the Queen'', via the conquest of the Masadan system, between chapters just before the epilogue.
** The villains get one in ''Mission of Honor''. While [[spoiler: the attack on the Manticoran system]] is described [[DescriptionGorn in loving detail]], the matching attack [[spoiler: on the Grayson system]] gets only a passing mention. This continues in the two stories taking place [[spoiler: in Grayson]] at the time, due to the point-of-view characters being LateToTheTragedy.
* OhCrap: There are many instances where characters realize how monumentally screwed they are, usually right before dying:
** Honor has a couple; in ''On Basilisk Station'' when she realizes that the merchant ship she is chasing [[spoiler: is not 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 [[spoiler: ''is'' 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. [[spoiler: Specifically, the RN is capable of reverse engineering or reinventing most of the technology that gave Manticore the lead in the LensmanArmsRace. And of launching ''really big'' surprise attacks.]] Direct quote from Honor, when she learns that the Republic's black project is headed up by [[DitzyGenius Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker]]: "Oh God."
** The Peeps have one almost every time the Manties drop their EW or emerge from stealth, most notably at Fourth Yeltsin.
** Competent professionals on the wrong side of such situations tend have reactions closer to ThisIsGonnaSuck. Sometimes at the same time that their less-competent superiors are giving the standard OhCrap response. [[spoiler: Example: the captain of the ''Jean Bart'' at New Tuscany,]] while his [[TooDumbToLive commanding admiral]] was in a total panic, was basically pondering how unfair it was that he was going to be collateral damage to a well-deserved [[DarwinAwards Darwin Award]].
** In ''Mission of Honor'', some Solarian analysts are discussing the implications of [[spoiler:the Manties' performance at the Battle of Spindle]], and their initial reaction is "OhCrap, we're behind the curve." Then, after [[spoiler:the Manties get kneecapped by Oyster Bay]], those analysts realize it's even worse than that: "OhCrap, whoever did ''that'' to ''them'' is going to be coming after ''us''."
** The trope is said exactly by the commander of an LAC watching from the sidelines in his own system as Manticoran and Solarian ships confront each other, then less specifically by Solarians when the Manticorans launch an overwhelming missile strike well beyond their range and with far better ECM -- only to deliberately suicide the missiles against their wedges. And are told the next wave will 'fired for effect'. They leave.
* OneNationUnderCopyright: Both Mesa and Beowulf, as Mesa is Beowulf's EvilTwin.
* OneSteveLimit: Actual Steves are in short supply, but other common names are reused. Given the scale of the series, characters with the same name rarely ever meet or come within light-centuries of each other at all.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Honor is portrayed as a military professional: killing is an unfortunate consequence of her career, she takes no pleasure in it, and she can be courteous to opponents [[NothingPersonal who tried to kill her]] [[PunchClockVillain because that was their job]]. Those who have known her long enough instantly recognize [[OhCrap and are scared shitless by]] her change in bearing when she really, truly [[ItsPersonal wants someone dead]].
* OperationBlank:
** Manticoran op names are randomly assigned, so that if the name leaks there is no indication what the plan is, which gives us gems like Operations Buttercup, Cutworm, and Sanskrit. Operation Laocoön is an outlier, since the name is relatively apropos.
** Haven tends to favor grandiose names like Operations Icarus, Pegasus, and Thunderbolt.
** Solarian naval ops favor the poetic, like Operations East Wind, Winter Forage and even ''Raging Justice''.
** Mesan covert ops favor very direct names like Operation Rat Poison, Operation [[TrojanHorse Wooden Horse]], and Operation Oyster Bay (they are really not even ''trying'' with that one).
** In ''Echoes'', Honor comes up with Operation Nelson, involving a waypoint designated Point Trafalgar. At this pont in the series she is missing both an eye and an arm, the same wounds suffered by Admiral Nelson for whom the operation is named.
* OutlawTown: [[SdrawkcabName Erewhon]] is a planet founded by an alliance of [[TheMafia Mafia families]] hoping to set up shop outside the reach of any existing law enforcement agency and a place to launder their money (hence "Maytag" as the capital city, for example). Over the centuries, they evolved into a planet that was still run by those families, and still carried with it many of the old traditions, but which also had [[{{Irony}} some of the strictest law enforcement in the galaxy.]]
* OutOfFocus: Honor herself past ''Mission of Honor'' as she is now the strategic overview due to her high rank, and not able to get into the fights she used to be able to do.
* OutsideContextVillain: [[spoiler: The Mesan Alignment.]] Until the protagonists started being a [[SpannerInTheWorks spanner]] in their long term plans and forcing them to act ''slightly'' more openly to get things back on track, nobody even suspected their existence. And the protagonists were still lucky that their initial investigation hit jackpot the way it did. Nevertheless, they have plans on plans on backup plans stretching centuries, claws sunk into places no one expects and their technology breaks the rules the rest of the galaxy has comfortably become used to.
* PapaWolf: Many Grayson men embody this trope. The rest believe they do.
* PassedOverPromotion: In ''On Basilisk Station'', Lt. Commander [=McKeon=], executive officer of the light cruiser ''Fearless'', finds having the younger and more charismatic Honor Harrington appointed to the captain slot he wanted almost intolerable. It takes until [[spoiler:he backs up Honor against Klaus Hauptmann's attempt at extortion]] for the situation to be resolved.
* PassiveAggressiveKombat: Happens all the time when officers converse with each other, particularly in ''On Basilisk Station''. Everybody's trying to guess what everybody else ''really'' means, because military professionalism prevents them from coming out and saying it.
* PermanentElectedOfficial: The Legislaturalist families of the early People's Republic are ostensibly elected to their positions, but the system is thoroughly rigged so that they can never lose.
* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: Played straight enough that you could use it as a navigation-aid for plotting hyperspace jumps with the aforementioned People's Republic of Haven. To the point where the entire nation pulled a seemingly collective HeelFaceTurn by the simple method of removing the "People's" bit from their name. It's pointed out repeatedly, by people on both sides, that the Republic of Haven is a ''completely'' different beast to the ''People's'' Republic of Haven, and several {{False Flag Operation}}s manage to only ''temporarily'' convince anyone otherwise.
* PlanetOfHats:
** Most of the various star nations have hats that correspond to Terran national identities, though they are usually not as pronounced as most Hat examples.
** The Talbott Cluster is pretty much just an excuse for these. From New Montana (founded by worshippers of Montana who made it as close to the original state ("Planet of Stetson Hats"?) as possible) to Rembrandt (founded by art lovers). Erewhon (founded by gangsters with somewhat odd senses of humor) also qualifies.
* PlasmaCannon: Comes in full size and carbine models, used by Manticorian infantry as anti-armor weapons. The Royal Manticorian Army mounts a ''[=120mm=]'' version on tanks. Earlier books (and at least one short story taking place farther in the past) feature the Plasma Torpedo, an immensely powerful starship weapon that is capable of entirely coring through a Battlecruiser... but is entirely useless against even the weakest sidewall and is very limited in range, being used almost exclusively to finish an enemy off at close range. Ironically, both times we see one used in combat, it is by a [[PintsizedPowerhouse Light Cruiser]] against a significantly more powerful enemy ship that let it get too close.
* PlayingDrunk: Kevin Usher put on a charade as a hopeless (and constant) drunk in order to avoid suspicion while under the authority of the Committee of Publc Safety.
-->"Lesson number -- what is it, now? -- eight, I think. A ''reputation'' for being a drunk can keep you out of as much trouble as being one gets you into." [Usher] padded to his couch and sunk into it. "I've got a high capacity for alcohol, but I don't drink anywhere near as much as people think."
* PluckyMiddie: Honor herself in the prequel story ''Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington'', several other characters in various books, especially the ''Shadow of Saganami'' side novels.
** And {{Subverted}} by Midshipmen (and soon promoted to Ensign) Claire Bedlam [=LeCroix=], one of the first female officers in Grayson service. She was appointed by Steadholder Burdette to attend the Manticoran naval academy at Saganami Island, with the intent to [[StayInTheKitchen demonstrate that Grayson women were not fit to serve in combat,]] but was determined to succeed because it was the only chance her family had at anything other than being at the very bottom of the social heap. That said, she has thus far proven to be a mediocre combat officer at best, with her true calling being [[TheEngineer in the maintenance and repair of shipboard equipment and systems.]]
* ThePoliticalOfficer: The "Citizen Commissioners" placed on PRH warships to watch officers. Since they tend to be the only civilians on navy ships, they serve as [[TheWatson the explanation for why officers are]] [[InfoDump explaining the rudiments of space combat]].
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Damn near ''all'' of them. The easiest way to pick an ''Honor Harrington'' villain out of a crowd is to wait for them to deride the titular character's sex or her origins as a commoner, sometimes both at once. One almost starts to wonder if Weber came up with Grayson and Masada just so he would always have a place to pick out aristocratic mysogynists if he needed them. Averted, however, by most of the Moderate Graysons, who still have the centuries-old gut instinct to protect women and keep them out of combat at all costs, but manage to ignore it well enough to work with the female officers of the RMN. Letting their ''own'' daughters join the service, however, is much harder, even for the most progressive.
* PoorCommunicationKills: It's a running theme of the series, as it has often been for earth's naval combat as well.
** In ''In Enemy Hands'', Honor's heightened empathic sensitivity alerts her that White Haven has suddenly fallen in love with her. She cannot deal with this, so she runs off to the navy again [[spoiler:and promptly gets captured and then "executed", leaving White Haven to go through the rest of that book and ''Echoes of Honor'' feeling guiltily certain that he somehow scared her off to her death]]. They then spend part of ''Ashes of Victory'' and almost all of ''War of Honor'' continuing not to communicate with each other, [[spoiler:and are saved from it at the end of ''War of Honor'' only by Samantha having a heart-to-heart with Hamish's current wife]].
** In ''Ashes of Victory''/"Nightfall" a snatch of conversation between Oscar St. Just and Esther [=McQueen's=] minder Erasmus Fontein, heard out of context by an informant, [[spoiler:causes Esther [=McQueen=] to kick off her coup attempt before she is fully prepared—needlessly, as it turned out, as Oscar St. Just was only asking Fontein to ''fabricate evidence'' against [=McQueen=], not to move against her as the informant assumed. In the end, this case of poor communication ends up killing ''1.3 million people''.]]
** In ''War of Honor'', a recursive example: Haven Secretary of State Arnold Giancola is fooled by President Eloise Pritchart's extremely-controlled facade into misjudging the amount of anger hiding beneath it. (He forgot that not only was she one of the only surviving members of a more doctrinaire pre-Committee revolutionary group, she was also one of few People's Commissioners good enough at hiding what she really felt to survive the Committee's reign of terror while [[spoiler:''being in a romantic relationship with the admiral she was supposed to ride herd on'']].) As a result, [[spoiler:when he changes key points in diplomatic communiques to ratchet up tensions between Haven and Manticore so that he then can make himself look good by smoothing the tensions away, Giancola inadvertently goes too far and provokes Pritchart to announce a return to war]].
* PoweredArmor: Quite a few examples, mostly among [[SpaceMarine Space Marines]].
* PrecisionFStrike:
** Honor ''never'' swears, so you know she is angry when she dares to say "''hell''". This is commented on within the series, as several officers who had served with her for years sit up and take notice when they hear her swear for the first time, especially when she eventually brings out the more dramatic curses.
** Captain Alfredo Yu, in ''The Honor of the Queen'', vents his frustrations in a profanity-laden rant to his XO after spending the first part of the book being scrupulously polite around Sword Simmons.
** Admiral Allen Higgins in ''War of Honor'' uses it to make his feelings abundantly clear during a discussion with his chief of staff.
--->"No more of my people are going to be killed in a battle we can't win anyway."
--->"But, Sir, if you just abandon the yards, the Admiralty will—"
--->"Fuck the Admiralty!"
** Queen Elizabeth, though legendary for the 'Winton Temper,' almost always retains an air of civility and control, even when in the throes of almost violent anger. This lends more credence to her emphasis when she finally decides to swear.
--->"I suppose the only thing I'm really surprised about is who seems to have arranged this entire--what's that charming military phrase? Oh, yes. This entire ''cluster fuck''."
** Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta, the very first time we see him lose his temper. With the same line, he is KilledMidSentence.
* PreMortemOneLiner: [[spoiler:"Good-bye, Citizen Chairman."]]
* [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent President Corrupt]]: Baron High Ridge, during ''War of Honor''.
* {{Privateer}}: Mentioned occasionally. The majority of them seem to be outright pirates using a Letter of Marque as a shield to protect themselves if captured but more respectable ones turn up occasionally.
* ProperlyParanoid:
** Rob Pierre notes, in the opening to ''In Enemy Hands'', that he much preferred when he simply was paranoid. Now that he actually has people after him he would give anything to go back to seeing shadows.
** A Peep officer in ''Echoes of Honor'' deduces that the prison planet of Hades has suffered a prisoner revolt when a courier's mail lacks the warden's latest correspondence chess move. He is absolutely correct.
** Bodyguards, most notably Honor's armsmen, are '''always''' paranoid and frequently right. In ''Field of Dishonor'', Andrew [=LaFollet=] is uncomfortable when she changes her plans and decides to go to a restaurant, though he does not ''really'' think anything will happen. Halfway through the meal, half a dozen thugs come through the door and start shooting.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The "Amazons" in ''Crown of Slaves'', and to a lesser extent scrags in general. Their social structure has more in common with pack predators than with baseline humanity, they are all extremely capable warriors (although occasionally [[{{Pride}} a bit too convinced of their own superiority]]) and they only respect a leader who can beat them in a fight.
* PsychoLesbian: Oddly for a franchise that features numerous cosmopolitan worlds whose sexual mores are very "liberal" when compared to the present-day, the only confirmed homosexual character (at least in the main series books) was an unpleasant person. However, there is no implication that her orientation and her personality were in any way related, as her heterosexual compatriots were just as bad; nor does she get more than four lines of dialogue or virtually any character development. Even her lesbianism is only mentioned through exposition. [[spoiler: She was one of the characters that intended to jump ship in Silesia using a small explosive device as a distraction.]]
* PunBasedTitle: Almost every book with "Honor" in the title. (''The Honor of the Queen'', ''Honor Among Enemies'', etc.)
* PuppeteerParasite: Mesa's assassination nanotech.
* PurpleProse:
** While Weber is fairly good writing military situations, he is arguably much, much less proficient at casual dialogue. For example, in ''Storm from the Shadows'' we meet a character on the planet Montana; in PlanetOfHats terms, the planet wears a cowboy hat. For all the character's principle-driven, plain-spoken ways he still refers to a "plebiscite" and the "oligarchs" behind it the same as everyone else.
** In general, characters who are angry will actually become ''more'' verbose, not less, regardless of educational level. One common example is describing someone with three adjectives or phrases, such as "stiff-necked, obstinate, mule-headed ''idiot''!" or suchlike. Even the Queen, who has the fiercest temper in the entire series, is prone to this.
** These are dialed way down in books written or co-written by other authors.
** [[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=635193 David Weber orders a pizza]].
* PuttingOnTheReich: Havenite StateSec. It is no surprise their initials are ''SS''. David Weber can be subtle when he wants to be, he just chose not to here.
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: The Q-ship crew Honor gets stuck with in ''Honor Among Enemies.''
* TheRashomon: Latest novels (until the ''Mission of Honor'' started the clock again), which basically just go back and forth in the time period around the Battle Of Manticore. The earliest of them (in the internal chronology, that is), ''Crown of Slaves'', is set in 1919 p.d., while ''Torch of Freedom'' ends in the spring of 1922, and ''At All Costs'' and ''Mission of Honor'' overlap both of these books. Weber and Flint needed to introduce a lot of people and concepts in their greatly expanded universe, true, but that's no less frustrating to the reader, who just gets to read about the same events again and again. Especially given the Weber's habit to lapse into chapter-long {{infodump}}s and {{As You Know}}s.
* RapeAsDrama:
** Pavel Young attempted to rape Honor during their time at Saganami Island, starting their rivalry (or, rather, pathological mutual hatred) that would last for decades.
** In ''The Honor of the Queen'' the crew of a captured Manticoran ship are beaten, tortured, gangraped, and killed by Masadan fanatics. Only 2 of 26 women survived the experience.
* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil:
** In ''The Honor of the Queen'', when Honor Harrington discovers what the Masadans had done to the crew of the captured Manticoran destroyer, she loses it and nearly commits what would have been a career-ending murder of the Masadan captain. She has to be physically restrained by her own subordinates to get back under self-control. At least one senior officer muses that they'd have acted exactly the same if they'd been in her shoes.
** In ''Honor Among Enemies'', the brutal rape and murder of a crew of Manticoran merchantmen leads Havenite Citizen Captain Warner Caslet to go off-mission to hunt down and bring the pirates responsible to fatal justice. Note that Caslet's orders would have required him to attack that same merchant ship himself if not for the pirates.
* ReactionlessDrive: A spaceship's impellers work by gravity manipulation. There's no reaction mass getting thrown out the back of the ship as exhaust.
* RealityEnsues: In ''On Basilisk Station'' the Bronze Age-tech Medusans manage to brutally kill some Manticorans by swarming them. Then, the Manties bring out the heavy weapons and air support. The aliens die. And die. And die some more.
* ReallyGetsAround: Honor gets ''accused'' of this by [[StrawmanNewsMedia the press]] when they discover she [[spoiler: has had her baby "tubed" (an artificial gestation environment, commonly used by military women). They ask of her doctor if Earl White Haven is the father (true), but also on the candidate list are Prince Michael (who's married), Baron Grantville (Earl White Haven's brother), and ''Protector Benjamin'' (who's married twice over). This has the effect of mashing the BerserkButton flat for both the doctor (who demands that the privacy of patients be maintained) and the Graysons (who consider Honor a planetary hero). Ironically, Honor was a CelibateHero until Paul Tankersley, and has only been with three men in her ''life'', that the reader knows of -- only two of them consensual]].
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: 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. The drawback is that she is literally 20 years old from a physical standpoint, so her hormones can sometimes make her act that age. 90% of the characters fall into this category, though there are a few exceptions in those too old to get prolong.
* {{Realpolitik}}: The dominant foreign policy of the Andermani Empire. Another way in which they [[FantasyCounterpartCulture resemble Prussia]].
* ReassignmentBackfire:
** The entire plot of the first novel is Honor Harrington's 'exile' to Basilisk Station.
** In ''War of Honor'', her superiors drop the VillainBall 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 another offscreen backfire. Which, naturally, happens.
* ReassignedToAntarctica:
** This happens to Honor quite a lot (see ReassignmentBackfire above):
*** In ''On Basilisk Station'', she and her crew are assigned to Basilisk Station, the dumping ground where incompetent captains, politically disappointing crews and general screw-ups are sent.
*** At the end of ''Field of Dishonor'', [[spoiler:Honor is benched on half-pay as punishment for embarrassing the parties in political power in Manticore]].
*** In ''Honor Among Enemies'', Honor is given a dangerous, unglamorous assignment patrolling a pirate-ridden sector of space in extremely fragile "Q-ships" (merchant ships refitted for combat). This is done at the behest of two of her political enemies, who see it as a XanatosGambit — she'll either get rid of pirates or get killed, and either way, they win.
** Pavel Young may be too politically connected to bench, but he spends much of his career in the least important assignments the Navy can find.
** John Ringo's "A Ship Named Francis" exemplifies this trope, not surprising given that [[IrresponsibleCaptainTylor the anime it shouts out]] does as well. It's explicitly lampshaded that the ''Francis Mueller'' is where the Grayson Space Navy sends the people who are varying kinds of screw-ups, but not so much as to justify the administrative expenses of tossing them out of the service.
** Lt. Matthew Askew comes to suspect that the Manties may be a great deal tougher than the 'neobarbarians' the Solarian Navy is used to beating up on. For which [[CassandraTruth he's accused of defeatism]], relieved from his position as tactical officer, and transferred to public affairs -- on another ship. [[spoiler:The last means that he's the ''only'' member of his first ship's company to survive the engagement with the Manties.]]
* RecycledINSPACE:
** ''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 [[PuttingOnTheReich Putting On The Committee For Public Safety]]. By ''Storm From Shadows'' the parallels end, in part because a conflict between [[spoiler: The Solarian League and Manticore]] does not have a historical parallel, and because [[spoiler:the Hornblower-analogue survived her Trafalgar, against authorial expectations]].
** HMS ''Fearless'' (Honor's command in the first book), with its rearmament, is a carronade frigate (like HMS ''Glatton'' or HMS ''Rainbow'') IN SPACE!
* RecycledPremise: ''The Best Laid Plans'' bears a very similar presence to the earlier ''A Beautiful Friendship'', being as both stories are about a young Harrington girl sneaking off into the Sphynxian woods without her parents' informed consent, and ending up forging a powerful bond with a Treecat, save for some key character differences, demonstrating some important ways that Stephanie and Honor were not GenerationXerox copies. Honor was far more methodical and prepared than Stephanie was, specifically decided to hike due to the danger of hang-gliding in poor weather, came to the rescue of a treecat rather than vice versa, and was able to resolve the situation with her own resources handily rather than requiring rescue.
* RecursiveAmmo: Missiles that shoot lasers. Pure awesomeness, though not without theoretical grounding; see [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur Project Excalibur]].
* RedBaron:
** Honor is almost invariably called ''The Salamander'' by the newsies (for her habit of always being where the fire is hottest), 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.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: In the ''Torch of Freedom'', when [[spoiler: Jack [=McBryde=] understood that he would not be able to get away with the others after his HeelFaceTurn]], he opted to stay behind and create a hell of a diversion (in the 50 kiloton range, that is) to buy the heroes a chance.
* RedHerring:
** In ''The Short Victorious War'' Pavel Young and Commander Houseman, both [[ItsPersonal with extremely strong personal dislike for Honor]], meet and begin to conspire against her. Mention is made of them attempting to turn Commodore Van Slyke, their immediate superior, against Honor, but before anything can come of that [[spoiler: the entire situation is upset by the outbreak of war with Haven, especially when both Houseman and Van Slyke are killed when their Heavy Cruiser is destroyed in combat. Young and Houseman's efforts ultimately have no impact on either the personal, political or military events of the book]].
** In ''Honor Among Enemies'', the resident bully aboard ''Wayfarer'' sets up an elaborate plan to jump ship and become a SpacePirate, which included rigging one of the ship's impeller nodes to explode (as a distraction). However, [[spoiler:his co-conspirators crack under interrogation and reveal the existence of the sabotage, allowing the crew to make the impeller node safe again long before it would have gone off.]]
* RedOniBlueOni: Victor Cachat (Havenite State Security, reformed to Foreign Intelligence Service) and Anton Zilwicki (RMN as first construction, then Intelligence). Played with in that Cachat is a genius at improvisation, but almost coldly emotionless while Zilwicki is the obsessive planner and plotter (using Wild Mass Guessing to spin possible scenerios and planning for every contingency), but much more emotional.
* RefugeInAudacity: President Eloise Pritchart is sufficiently annoyed by [[spoiler:Mesan scheming]] to [[spoiler:turn up in Manticoran space, unannounced, at midnight, after their home system had just been catastrophically attacked, and screen Queen Elizabeth, saying simply, "I think we need to talk."]] The sheer ''guts'' that must have taken is simply unbelievable — she knew very well she might be shot out of the sky with no warning, but she thought it was worth the risk to [[spoiler:finally end the fighting]]. ''And it worked.'' Even Queen Elizabeth, who is hardly short on guts herself, is both impressed and astounded.
* RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun:
** At the end of ''Flag in Exile'', [[spoiler:Honor's political enemy mentally recaps all the awesome things she has done, and wonders how she survived. The capper on it is that he is forced to lead a push to ''honor'' Honor, and all the things he mentions are all in ''that one book''.]]
** In the short story "The Service of the Sword", Captain Michael Oversteegen, commanding a lone heavy cruiser, wins a battle against ''four-on-one odds'' (as in, he destroyed four heavy cruisers with his one ship) in the star system Tiberian. From that moment on, "Tiberian" becomes a byword for "''Do not fuck with Michael Oversteegen''."
* RenegadeSplinterFaction: The Faithful of the Church of Humanity Unchained (which eventually settled Masada) to Grayson's Church of Humanity Unchained.
* RevengeMyopia: Solarian Fleet Admiral Rajani Rajampet states, in no uncertain terms that he does not care how justified the Manticorans believed they were in killing Admiral Josef Byng, and goes on to say he doesn't care how justified they actually ''were.'' His biggest concern is the blow to the Solarian League Navy's prestige their actions have caused and the precedents it could set.
* RockBeatsLaser:
** Pop quiz; you're Peep brass and need to find some way to counter the Manties' advanced technology which you won't be able to match for decades, at best. What do you do?
** Answer: [[spoiler:Make your own LACs, and have them throw shedloads of nukes (which have been obsolete in naval warfare for ''centuries'') at the Manties. Three shedloads, actually, which blind them, reveal them, then kill them. Then you close and beat the snot out of their remaining LACs in where your "knife fighters" have the edge on their "snipers".]]
--->It isn't pretty, and it isn't elegant, but it ''is'' something more important than either of those things -- it works. --V. Adm. [[spoiler:Shannon Foraker]]
* RougeAnglesOfSatin: There seems to be too much of a reliance on automated spell-checking without enough proofreading, leading to errors like "commander" and "commodore" being confused. Still, it is not a serious issue and stems from David Weber's hands being so crippled the entire series is transcribed by software with some questionable ability.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Just about anywhere where royalty is involved. Manticore, Grayson, Andermani, Torch, etc. [[AristocratsAreEvil Corrupt and unscrupulous]] they may have been, but the Legislaturists were very nearly the only people in the old PRH that actually did ''anything''.
* RoyallyScrewedUp: The Andermani family, which has had more than its share of rulers with personality quirks, is almost the joke dynasty of the Honorverse. The founder of the dynasty, Gustav Anderman, believed himself to be the reincarnation of Frederick the Great of Prussia and dressed in period dress, and one of his descendants attempted to make a potted plant a government minister. Another had herself legally declared a man in order to comply with the dictate that the ruler must be male. However, despite their personal foibles almost every member of the dynasty (except the afore-mentioned plant guy) has also been a competent ruler who has steadily expanded the boundaries of the Anderman Empire for centuries. [[BunnyEarsLawyer Their subjects willingly put up with their faults because of the other skills that they bring to the table]].
* RunningGag:
** Ruth Winton is a brilliant analyst with a lot of political knowledge, but not terribly familiar with history, hence she confidently explains historical references as references to minor contemporary political figures with the same names. You'd think she'd figure out that modern politicos aren't who they're quoting after the third or fourth time.
** The explanation of, and the explainee's reaction to, the precise manner in which the ''Tepes'' met its fate.
** In ''Ashes of Victory'', the continual "oopses" when mentioning the ''Medusa''-née-[[spoiler:''Harrington'']]-née-''Medusa'' starship class.
** Alice Truman's tendency to surround herself with male officers as blond, blue-eyed and gorgeous as herself.
** The continual Manticoran confusion over a) what, exactly, baseball is and b) why the Graysons don't just round up to the nearest meter in their park dimensions. The Graysons repeatedly and patiently explain that a) it's a sport and b) because it's ''[[SeriousBusiness baseball]]''.
* RuleThirtyFour: Hinted at in universe. The reader is informed that treecats are not interested in human sexuality, but Havenite tabloids published stories about relations between Queen Elizabeth III and her treecat, among other lurid tales.
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