Spoiler Solarian idiots Spoiler

TheMonster wrote:

Northstar wrote:And, who knows? Masadan women migrating to Grayson may be going on and just has not been mentioned due to not figuring in any of the stories told so far.

You mean like how not a word was mentioned in HotQ about Prince Michael's Excellent Endicott Adventure, nor the subsequent events that gave Queen Elizabeth's only brother Masadan refugees as wife and adopted daughter?

Something tells me it was cooked up after HotQ was written, to make CoS possible.

I though the events in Endicott happened before HotQ, and the whole incident was kept quiet 'for reason of state' (i.e. Manticore didn't want to ruin chances on an alliance). Its fairly obvious that the event pushed Endicott into making an alliance with PRH, leading to the events in HotQ.
It was also clearly stated that the Graysons didn't have any trade or open means of communication with Endicott and for what every reason we can assume they hadn't attempted to establish a covert capability (after all Sword Intellegence didn't really come into being until after the Mantie Alliance was signed and Grayson started to operator on a larger scale).

In fairness, yes, Battle fleet senior officers are blind to reality of the changing nature of war (after all they haven't actual had to fight one in there lifetime and probably never expected too) but for Fronter Fleet a lot of their personnel are actually trying to-do a good job (and have an idea that things are changing) but aren't in a position to actually do it. They are also restricted by the chain of command which has resulted in them being under the orders of well 'not very nice people' leading them to-do 'bad things'.

In the case of dealing with SEM, the Frontier Fleet problem is the communication length, they haven't been informed by high command what's going on (i.e. accurate intelligence or briefings) and therefore the are still reacting in the 'old model' of how do things.

After all I doubt the vice-admiral at Saltash, had she known the true relationship between the SLN and SEM war fighting capability would have agreed to illegal seize the SEM merchant ships (might be wrong there, but the idea seems to have come from the commissioner) but I very much doubt she would have tried to fight the SEM when it turned up.

Garth 2 wrote:I though the events in Endicott happened before HotQ, and the whole incident was kept quiet 'for reason of state' (i.e. Manticore didn't want to ruin chances on an alliance). Its fairly obvious that the event pushed Endicott into making an alliance with PRH, leading to the events in HotQ.

Yeah, and "for matters of state" you are going to prevent your one person who really understands the situation from talking to your negotiators. The negotiators who all have extremely high security clearances and are trusted with weapons that can destroy entire planets. Yeah, that makes sense.

Garth 2 wrote:In fairness, yes, Battle fleet senior officers are blind to reality of the changing nature of war (after all they haven't actual had to fight one in there lifetime and probably never expected too) but for Fronter Fleet a lot of their personnel are actually trying to-do a good job (and have an idea that things are changing) but aren't in a position to actually do it. They are also restricted by the chain of command which has resulted in them being under the orders of well 'not very nice people' leading them to-do 'bad things'.

In the case of dealing with SEM, the Frontier Fleet problem is the communication length, they haven't been informed by high command what's going on (i.e. accurate intelligence or briefings) and therefore the are still reacting in the 'old model' of how do things.

After all I doubt the vice-admiral at Saltash, had she known the true relationship between the SLN and SEM war fighting capability would have agreed to illegal seize the SEM merchant ships (might be wrong there, but the idea seems to have come from the commissioner) but I very much doubt she would have tried to fight the SEM when it turned up.

I think you make excellent points in this.

One of the things I am personally looking forward to in future Honorverse books is how the smarter and/or younger people in the SL get out from under the dead weight of the idiots cronyism etc have put at the top of their command structures, plus how they start unraveling all the MA has wrought within the SL an how they fix it.

The fix may well be impossible for the SL as a whole and may devolve into fixing smaller subunits, like the Maya Sector or various individual planets. I can hardly wait to find out

kzt wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:I though the events in Endicott happened before HotQ, and the whole incident was kept quiet 'for reason of state' (i.e. Manticore didn't want to ruin chances on an alliance). Its fairly obvious that the event pushed Endicott into making an alliance with PRH, leading to the events in HotQ.

Yeah, and "for matters of state" you are going to prevent your one person who really understands the situation from talking to your negotiators. The negotiators who all have extremely high security clearances and are trusted with weapons that can destroy entire planets. Yeah, that makes sense.

Political maneuvering by the couple he managed to 'annoy' to try to prevent the alliance?

kzt wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:I though the events in Endicott happened before HotQ, and the whole incident was kept quiet 'for reason of state' (i.e. Manticore didn't want to ruin chances on an alliance). Its fairly obvious that the event pushed Endicott into making an alliance with PRH, leading to the events in HotQ.

Yeah, and "for matters of state" you are going to prevent your one person who really understands the situation from talking to your negotiators. The negotiators who all have extremely high security clearances and are trusted with weapons that can destroy entire planets. Yeah, that makes sense.

Prince Michael probably briefed the foreign office extensively, and possibly discussed matters with the ambassadors before they set out. Judith, while she knew a lot about Masadan society from the inside, wouldn't have known much about Grayson, and even her knowledge of Masada would have been of limited use in a diplomatic context.

It's not clear how much (or how little) Adm. Corvosier knew about Judith and Michael's experiences, but there wouldn't have been a great deal of point passing them on to Honor before the Masadan attack - and no opportunity after.

I'm pretty sure Judith's adventure(s) were invented after Honor of the Queen had been published, but the retcon involved is pretty minimal - they would have been a little better briefed going in, and they may have dug up some crew members from Michael's visit for their local knowledge...

Hi Northstar,

Masada isn't that germane to the series, but I've wondered about various possibilities.

Among them years ago I imagined the Sisterhood of Barbara after they got to Manticore, before Ruthless, received quite a bit of public support including financial from not just Manticore but women's organizations throughout the SL [several dozen women could visit several hundred planets, especially the very rich core, in a decade or two] such that when Masada was taken by Hamish the Sisterhood could build, buy, or the influence to have refuges for women built throughout the system by the occupation, most being women only initially, and how that cultural breathing space might affect Masada.

Meanwhile security for women and like minded men on Masada meant building new cities on virgin land, even if it had to be deserts and island atolls, to avoid the previous infrastructure being used against them, NTM a huge ground based occupation protection force, but in a rich [SKM] contra-grav society that's not much of a problem.

While even without prolong, thanks to current medical aids simply outliving the male fanatics is one revenge; I've wondered about all the cultural permutations of giving women full civil rights such as the vote, a full education, property rights etc when they still outnumber the males despite killing females at birth; ie the number of males mentioned at the Templeton estate seemed far far fewer than all the women there, besides those coming from other estates [the ratio is less than 3-1 but males still are the minority]; including things like broadcasting women stoning guilty men instead of the other way round, possibly being limited to only their ex-wives.

I've wondered if the most effective counter to male rioting etc would be stunners, with the occupation deciding when to wake you up in 10-20-30 years etc, or possibly exiled to another planet without any women on the surface controlled by Masadan women in the orbitals, your fate to be decided by your ex-wives.

Then there's the possibility of encouraging the hardcore males to move out to another planet ~2000 LY away, only to discover the women, if any, are awakened first and again asked if they wish to continue to accompany the men, and now say no; so the men are again left alone on the planet surface, watched by some of their ex-wives above.

Whether or not this are straight forward extrapolations or illustrate thinking outside the box, I've wondered about someone doing short stories involving some of the hierarchy hiding in deep fortress tunnels using suspended animation tanks etc to last 50-100 or more years into the future to lead the revolution they've left instructions for, only to find Masada so drastically changed that living there is the ultimate punishment, etc.

Then there's the advent of treecat lie detector's to check if the men are really telling the truth, and what might develop from those possible revelations.

Mercedes Brigham spent a tour with the occupation forces in Masada, I've always expected we might hear her explain how things had progressed from when she'd left.

I almost expected the High Ridge government to screw things up there as well, such that Grayson offered to replace the occupation force, to which HR agreed to save money for his other coalition projects, controlling Masada being an obvious Grayson goal.

Since RFC is so busy and fanfic isn't published here, if you want to suggest some possible other authors for another future anthology please feel free.

Forex, the idea of John Ringo doing a humorous satire of one of the above possible exile concepts somehow tickles my funny bone all over; OTOH, as they say, be careful what you wish for.

L


[quote="Northstar"][quote="packhunter"]Or Grayson could let any Masadan woman who wants emigrate to them. For that mater so could the Manties. It'd be kinda funny when within a generation there are no women left on Masada, and the male fanatics are forced to turn to artificial forms of procreation. Could totally happen [/quote]

I adore this idea. It is both delicious and completely appropriate. [/quote]

KNick wrote:We have been lamenting the fact that there has not appeared a Solarian bureaucrats with the brains to see what is going to happen. Yet, when one comes along, we don't mention her at all. Lt. Gov. Tiilikainen had the brains and intestinal fortitude to get many of the people of her system out of the way of the violence. While she did this in a round-about way, she did do it.

What do you think the consequences will be for her? How likely is it that she will remain the voice of reason in Saltash?

IMPO, LT. Gov. Tiilikainen will, because she has shown both FF and the Saltash people she has a brain that works and that she does care about the consequences, end up leading a revolt against OFS. Captain Myau will realize that her best chance is backing the LT. Gov. Captain MacNaughton already has some respect for her and this incident will only add to that. His knowledge that his people need that outside influence to prevent wholesale destruction will also work in her favor. I can see Tiilikainen becoming one of the first of the "Warlords" to arise out of the collapse of the League. Especially once word of the fall of Meyers begins to get around.

Lt. Gov. Tiilikainen might easily be from Mannerheim. Same ethnic derived name. Possibly Mesa Alignment agent pre-positioned to do exactly this. Which makes her not a Sollie Bureaucrat, but a M'Align agent.

There are all kinds of feminists dreams being discussed to deal with Masada. They are all predicated on the assumption that Manticore is able to put enough boots on the ground to impose these ideas. Iraq and Afghanistan offer two very good examples of how difficult it is to transform a culture. Remember how Bush was castigated for not deploying a large enough invasion force to properely occupy Iraq? IIRC, the ratio was something like 50,000 troops deployed to a country of 50 million people or 1000:1 ratio. The surge brought the ratio to 200:1 which seemed to work until the troops were withdrawn.

Even if a 1,000:1 ratio is adequate, Manticore would have to deploy an occupation army of about 5 million troops to impose any type of societal change on Masada. Any bright ideas about inviting women to emigrate would just provoke the Masadan males to kill a lot of women.

The best that Manticore can hope for is to interdict Masada and prevent the construction of serious weaponry including planet based missiles similar to those at Blackbird.

The issue on Masada is self sorting most of the 'hard fanatics' are going to be older generation, i.e. older than the pro-long cut off. SO they will die out whilst the SEM Army troops on the surface can still carryout the hearts and mind campaign on the younger generation knowing that it will stick.

Its probably that Masada citizens now know about the 'genetic' alteration that was made to them as partly it would help to undermine the church's position - if they did this and didn't tell us what else haven't they told us - and it would re-enforce the SEM news services are telling the truth.

As for the SL, we have only seen a small sample of the OFS leadership, it would be made up of 10's of thousands of people with a variety of response/ways of working, leading to a whole host of different set-ups (some of them, like smoking frog, could actual have the best interest of the population at heart and have done the best they can to minimise the transtellers impact.