NortonIDaughter wrote:Elizabeth and Justin's relationship really seems to point up how much of a society in transition the galaxy has at this point, re: prolong. She was only sixteen when they met, while he had already done a tour with the Marines, gotten out and gotten a position at LUM. Before her father's assassination they were already engaged-- this while she was too young to hold the throne in her own right.
On one hand, given that they're going to live for centuries, the age gap is no big deal; on the other, given that they're going to live for centuries, getting engaged before you're even of age seems to be rushing things a bit? Especially for a crown princess who can expect any divorce of hers to have serious repercussions.
I'm likewise intrigued by Honor and others being able to enlist at seventeen; if these people are going to live for centuries without physically "aging out", why the push to start adult life early?
RFC mentions that part of the scandal around Honor and Hamish was fueled by pre-prolong mentalities, and QEIII herself calls out the RoH's constitution for being a little behind the times re: prolong at the end of UH. But it seems to me that the whole Honorverse is still trying to reset it's defaults in that regard.
To some extent, it's true that the Honorverse in general is trying to reset its default parameters on physical aging.
A couple of points, though.
(1) Honor didn't enlist at 17. She was accepted for Saganami Island at 17, and it's a five-year program, so she would have been 22 when she graduated (and completed her snotty cruise), at which point she would have been an ensign — think Scotty Tremaine from On Basilisk Station. This at a time when, thanks to King Roger, the Royal Manticoran Navy was expanding rapidly. (And, in fact, if she hadn't so obviously been the round peg in the round hole in her chosen tactical track, it's highly probable that she would've been sent on for additional graduate classes before she ever had her first shipboard assignment.)
(2) When Elizabeth became engaged to Justin, don't forget that there was a treecat in the mix. Even before treecats could sign, they could communicate an awful lot of information, including whether or not what someone is saying is honest and the depth of another human being's feelings. Elizabeth was engaged to Justin. Had her father not been killed, she would not have married him before she was of legal age to take the throne in her own right if she had to. There wasn't a whole lot of point in pussyfooting around (you should pardon the reference to the 'cats), when Ariel was involved in the equation and there wasn't a chance in hell that Elizabeth — who was constitutionally required to marry a commoner — was going to marry anybody but Justin.
(3) The Star Kingdom of Manticore is making institutional changes where the implications of prolong are concerned. It's why (absent the war with Haven) Caparelli would have been cycled back to a fleet command, rather than staying put as First Space Lord for the duration. It's why it is becoming/has become the norm, rather than the exception, for someone to have multiple careers. No one is going to force you to have a second career if you like what you're doing and you're good at it, but there are provisions for almost all public entities (and for pretty much any successful private entity) to make room for incoming talent by cycling people out of senior positions — and, quite possibly, back into those positions again.
(4) Political institutions, as opposed to the bureaucracies attached to/overseen by those institutions, are slower to change. Partly that's because no one wants anyone mucking around with the way that the Senate and the House of Representatives are organized or their relationship to the Executive and the Judiciary [or the Honorverse equivalent]. If you're going to make changes in the fundamental institutions of government, then prudence suggests going about it slowly. And, of course, there can be additional complicating factors. For example, there was no provision under the Legislaturalist Constitution requiring any President to ever step down. After all, he was going to be President for Life. The restored Péricard Constitution, dating from well before Prolong became available — and a dead letter even before the Legislaturalist Constitution formally supplanted it. As such, there was absolutely no pressure to amend the term limitation which was created well before the situation in which someone might be president for five or six decades was even remotely possible, far less probable. What's Elizabeth and Honor are talking about at the end of Uncompromising is the fact that Eloise Pritchart has zero intention of modifying the Constitution in any way which might even remotely look like she is planning on following in the Legislaturalist/Committee of Public Safety's footsteps. Mostly that's because she and Tom Theisman are in complete agreement about how absolutely essential it is for the restorers of the Republic to make it obvious that they take the rule of law and the sanctity of the ballot box seriously. And, frankly, another part of it — which she probably hasn't admitted even to herself — is that she's tired. She's been on "active operations" even longer than Honor, and like Honor, she would dearly love to find something else – something peaceful, that doesn't mean killing people or simply being responsible for billions of human beings — in which she can invest herself.
(As an aside, I sometimes find myself wondering if I am going to allow Elizabeth to acknowledge "combat fatigue" and abdicate in favor of her son. It's been done at least once in the Star Kingdom's history, after all, and that was when prolong wasn't a possibility.)
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While I'm writing, let me also respond to why Justin didn't recognize Elizabeth when she walked into his lab the first time. A lot of this is already been touched on by other people, and I had put together a post on the subject, just in time to have my Internet go down and the entire draft disappear into cyberspace. I was so ticked off I just threw up my hands and walked away. Very mature of me, I know.
Okay, so why didn't Justin recognize Elizabeth Winton when she walked into his lab.
(1) Elizabeth avoided the camera. Like Honor, she had what she considered to be an "awkward adolescence." In fact, it was nowhere near as bad as Honor's actually was, if only because she didn't have the altitude challenge Honor carried around everywhere with her, but it was enough to make her uncomfortable about casual photography. The Star Kingdom has a short way with paparazzi, as well — especially paparazzi foolish enough to hound someone like a member of the royal family (or Duchess Harrington, for that matter) — so there weren't a lot of pictures of her in a public setting that wasn't formally structured. And in most of those, she was in either formal court dress or haute couture (as appropriate for teenagers).
(2) No one at the University, outside senior members of the faculty and the Administration, had been told that Elizabeth was planning on touring the campus that day. Partly that was a security measure, but it was also because Elizabeth wanted to see the university in normal operation while she considered whether or not she wanted to attend it. So no one had said to Justin, "Hey, better keep an eye out! The Crown Princess is wandering around campus today."
(3) Elizabeth was bad that day. She deliberately gave her security detail the slip so that she could explore on her own, without having an official bodyguard presence alerting everyone in her vicinity that she was a VIP, in which case someone undoubtedly would have recognized Crown Princess Elizabeth. This would have been A Bad Thing,™ in her judgment, since she wanted to see the college as a student would have seen it. It was Not Smart, but she was a teenager. I have three of them. Believe it or not, they don't always do the "smart" thing. Shocking, I know, but there it is.
(4) Elizabeth was definitely not in court dress that day! She was "slopping around" in casual clothing. Now, admittedly, it was very good quality casual dress, but it was definitely not anything that anyone had ever seen many photographs of her in. She also hadn't had the sort of makeup attention that went with the more formal photographs which had been taken of her.
(5) Justin had been working on his research project for a long time, and the experiment was at a sensitive point, when Elizabeth walked straight past the "Lab In Use" notice because she wasn't a student yet, no one had briefed her on SOP, and, frankly, she didn't notice/recognize the notice for what it was.
So, here is Justin, carefully monitoring his experiment, and suddenly the lab door opens, a young woman he's never seen in his life walks through it, screwing up his entire experiment, despite the fact that he turned on the "Keep the Hell Out" notice that should of kept anyone but a moron from disturbing him. She's not accompanied by any bodyguards, she hasn't been "dolled up" for a formal picture, she's in casual clothing, nobody told him that anyone important — far less the heir to the throne — would be touring the campus, and she doesn't instantly respond to his outrage by looking down her nose at him and saying "Look, jackass — do you have any idea who it is you're talking to?!"
It's like meeting her in the 24-hour laundromat at three in the morning, when she's dressed in a ratty sweatshirt and yoga pants, with her hair in curlers.
Trust me, it's not too surprising he didn't instantly say "My God! That's Crown Princess Elizabeth! I'd know her anywhere!"
Just saying.
Sorry I lost it again!!