History HonorHarrington / TropesMToR

* 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 (see [[http://www.davidweber.net/faqs/index/series:0 here]]) that the entire series is transcribed by software with some questionable ability.

* RecycledINSPACE:

** The entire plot of the first novel is Honor Harrington's 'exile' to Basilisk Station.

** 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.

** In ''Crown of Slaves'', one of the Masadans that had captured the slave freighter ''Felicia'' gropes Berry Zilwicki [[spoiler:(who they think is Princess Ruth)]] while searching her for weapons. Later, when Berry is to be moved into the "cargo" area, Cachat warns the Masadan given the task that if he molests her again, the Masadan will wind up very'painfully dead.

* OrbitalBombardment: Specifically prohibited by the Eridani Edict. In fact, ships even have to make sure that their actions inadvertently cause this (e.g. destroying an orbital station and have it debris rain down). [[spoiler:Then in book 19 the Solarians go ahead and start violating it themselves in order to terrorize the dissenting systems into not seceding. It's one of the turning points that convinces the Manticorans that a star nation this corrupt ''must go''.]]

* 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.]]

** This is averted at times, usually as the result of good damage control work by a ship's crew, or hits in odd places. Still, when weapons in the megaton range are being nonchalantly thrown around hundreds or thousands at a time, 'something' is bound to blow up.

* MindControl: [[spoiler:One of Manpower's secret weapons mimics this ability through the use of bioengineered nanotechnology, which lies dormant inside a chosen host until triggered by a specific stimulus. It's not truly mind control in that the host does not themselves feel any sense of compulsion; rather, their muscles are "hijacked" to perform a series of preprogrammed actions. Manpower uses it mostly to disguise high-profile assassinations as random [[MurderSuicide Murder-Suicides]].]]

* 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.

** In ''Crown of Slaves'', one of the Massadans that had captured the slave freighter ''Felicia'' gropes Berry Zilwicki [[spoiler:(who they think is Princess Ruth)]] while searching her for weapons. Later, when Berry is to be moved into the "cargo" area, Cachat warns the Massadan given the task that if he molests her again, the Massadan will wind up very'painfully dead.

** Inverted with Pritchart's conclusion that [[spoiler:Arnold Giancola was working with Manpower to reignite the Haven-Manticore war]]. He was actually doing it out of self-interest and miscalculated how far he could push things. The practical significance of this distinction is minimal since the important point ([[spoiler:Manpower's involvement]]) is still true, but by Detweiler's own admission it is the most logical conclusion based on the evidence Pritchard had, making her Wrong for the Right Reasons.

* RankUp: Happens regularly, as the stories take place over a long time period in which a lot of people die to free up slots for the surviving cast members to get promoted into. The most notable example is Honor, who starts the series as a mere Commander (As a middie if you count the short stories), and is currently one of the top twenty (Possibly top ten, and slots 1-8 are reserved for the Space Lords, the administrative heads of the various Navy Bureaus) ranked officers in the Manticoran Navy and the ''second'' ranked officer in the Grayson Navy.

* 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.

* ProportionalAging: Prolong triples the human lifespan, but true to its name also prolongs ''every'' stage of human development. Several characters who have received prolong are OlderThanTheyLook, with individuals in their twenties looking as potentially young as late preteens. [[RetCon It is later mentioned]] that to avoid the {{squick}}, prolong often includes the artificial aging treatments, so that during the early stages the biological age would roughly match the real one.

* OurWormholesAreDifferent: Wormholes in the Honorverse are defined as ruptures in space between n-space and {{Hyperspace}}, which usually lie within a few light-hours of a star. Ships with Warshawski sails can use them to move instantaneously between two fixed points in space, making them economically and strategically valuable. The Manticore Wormhole Junction has a whopping ''seven'' wormholes in close proximity, and the shipping tariffs it brings in are a major contributor to the SKM's affluence. Of note is that wormholes have a mass limit, and will temporarily destabilize after a transit for a period exponentially proportional to the transit mass[[note]]For the MWJ, this ranges from 10 seconds for small ships, to 2 minutes for large ships, to 17 ''hours'' for a max-size fleet[[/note]]. This means that attempting to use a wormhole to invade a star system is a risky proposal: the maximum tonnage of the invading fleet is limited, and will destabilize the wormhole for so long as to preclude any possibility of reinforcement or retreat.

* OutOfContextEavesdropping: From "Nightfall" in ''Changer of Worlds''. Two characters are preparing evidence so that, if it becomes necessary to remove Esther McQueen, they'll have backup. They spend some considerable time talking about the necessity of hiding this action, since they need McQueen and will for some time yet. The final comment of the conversation (approximately, "We'll need this when we pull the trigger on McQueen") is overheard and passed to McQueen — where it triggers a full revolt. McQueen repeatedly complains that if she'd been given even six more weeks she would really have been ready. The revolt fails, McQueen dies, in the aftermath the government falls — and the entire premise of the first 8-9 books in the series (good monarchy against evil socialist republic) is fundamentally altered. The series is up to 12 books now.

** Played straight and then averted in the same book by Oscar Saint-Just [[spoiler:the man had a nuclear device only he had the detonator to placed in the basement of the Octagon just in case the military got any funny ideas (which they do) and then gets taken out when Thomas Theisman stumbles across Esther McQueen's coup plan that didn't work the first time simply because Oscar Saint-Just never thought the military would try the same thing twice]].

* MinovskyPhysics: A clear example, as Weber has stated that he prefers to set up the rules of his universe first, then extrapolate from there how society would develop under those rules. Gravitic technology forms the basis for just about every piece of AppliedPhlebotinum in the Honorverse: the [[FTLTravel Warshawski Sail]], the [[ReactionlessDrive Impeller Drive]], [[DeflectorShields sidewalls]], [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter pulser guns]], shipboard missile launchers, and even the super-tall skyscrapers that pepper the landscapes of the most advanced planets. In military doctrine especially, the status quo changes frequently as the galaxy's first large-scale war challenges many previously untested assumptions about how best to utilize these technologies.

** Oyster Bay is Pearl Harbor In Space, while the Mesan reaction in ''Cauldron of Ghosts'' is pretty much the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt In Space, and Torch is the Haitian revolution In Space.