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About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff

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About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by Dr. Arroway   » Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:47 pm

Dr. Arroway
Lieutenant (Junior Grade)

Posts: 41
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:52 am

Hi all!
I'm going through my second run of the whole series (though I still haven't read Shadow of Freedom nor the last one), and I'd wish to discuss a few things that leave me a bit, uhm, "upset".
Time allowing, and if the discussion picks up at all, that is!

Let me stress that I am a HUGE fan of DW (obviously), whose work I find absolutely brilliant and deserving of all its success and then some (I always try to bring more people on board, though it's not easy with skeptics). So any criticism you may read between the lines is really just minor nitpicking. :)

So, I'll start with this consideration (SPOILER, of course!)
I'm not totally ok with Honor releasing the POWs at the end of Honor Among Enemies. While it's a mighty generous gesture and it provides a nice dramatic effect, I can't help but feeling it is the wrong thing to do.
True, those particular POWs are respectable and gallant, but Honor is NOT new to having to perform unpleasant tasks if duty requires her to. Even taking them prisoners was an unpleasant matter for her, after all. And actually, it would be far more acceptable than many of the "terrible" things she can accept to do, like condemning her own people to death when necessary for the sake of the Kingdom.

My point is, in Manticore they would be treated well, even extremely well if she only indicated that they should, and there is no REAL need for her to release them. Conversely, they might prove dangerous adversaries for the kingdom in the future if released, especially considered their competence - which Honor certainly can measure - and especially considered the extended insight they've had into Manticoran systems and procedures.

Indeed, we know that Foraker will end up causing a great deal of pain and untold casualties to the Kingdom almost by herself (which is another point that nags at me: after having met the "enemy" and known what kind of people populate the Manticoran ships, how can she keep plotting their destruction so relentlessly, considering that Shannon is somehow placed among the "noble" ones?)

Yes, somehow Honor may be planting seeds for nicer things to come (she will be saved by her enemies herself when captive, after all), but in my mind the risk she takes is too strong and, in the face of things, completely unjustified.
Am I missing something, perhaps?
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by jgnfld   » Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:52 pm

jgnfld
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Dr. Arroway wrote:Hi all!
...
True, those particular POWs are respectable and gallant, but Honor is NOT new to having to perform unpleasant tasks if duty requires her so. Even taking them prisoners was an unpleasant matter for her, after all. And actually, it would be far more acceptable than many of the "terrible" things she can accept to do, like condemning her own people to death when necessary for the sake of the Kingdom.

...


You mean sometimes she could be a "copper plated bitch"???!!!
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by Crown Loyalist   » Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:27 pm

Crown Loyalist
Commander

Posts: 196
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Shannon ended up being the only reason Honor and Nimitz lived through In Enemy Hands, so I'd say it worked out.

She probably would have been repatriated during the interwar period anyway.
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by roseandheather   » Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:35 pm

roseandheather
Admiral

Posts: 2056
Joined: Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:39 pm
Location: Republic of Haven

Dr. Arroway wrote:Hi all!
I'm going through my second run of the whole series (though I still haven't read Shadow of Freedom nor the last one), and I'd wish to discuss a few things that leave me a bit, uhm, "upset".
Time allowing, and if the discussion picks up at all, that is!

Let me stress that I am a HUGE fan of DW (obviously), whose work I find absolutely brilliant and deserving of all its success and then some (I always try to bring more people on board, though it's not easy with skeptics). So any criticism you may read between the lines is really just minor nitpicking. :)

So, I'll start with this consideration (SPOILER, of course!)
I'm not totally ok with Honor releasing the POWs at the end of Honor Among Enemies. While it's a mighty generous gesture and it provides a nice dramatic effect, I can't help but feeling it is the wrong thing to do.
True, those particular POWs are respectable and gallant, but Honor is NOT new to having to perform unpleasant tasks if duty requires her to. Even taking them prisoners was an unpleasant matter for her, after all. And actually, it would be far more acceptable than many of the "terrible" things she can accept to do, like condemning her own people to death when necessary for the sake of the Kingdom.

My point is, in Manticore they would be treated well, even extremely well if she only indicated that they should, and there is no REAL need for her to release them. Conversely, they might prove dangerous adversaries for the kingdom in the future if released, especially considered their competence - which Honor certainly can measure - and especially considered the extended insight they've had into Manticoran systems and procedures.

Indeed, we know that Foraker will end up causing a great deal of pain and untold casualties to the Kingdom almost by herself (which is another point that nags at me: after having met the "enemy" and known what kind of people populate the Manticoran ships, how can she keep plotting their destruction so relentlessly, considering that Shannon is somehow placed among the "noble" ones?)

Yes, somehow Honor may be planting seeds for nicer things to come (she will be saved by her enemies herself when captive, after all), but in my mind the risk she takes is too strong and, in the face of things, completely unjustified.
Am I missing something, perhaps?


Point one: Honor releases them because RFC needs them for the purposes of the Haven-specific plot. End of.

Point two: Which would you, as a commander, do - know that the people you're fighting against are good people with honor who are likely to act according to that honor should your own people find themselves POWs, or take them out of the fight and risk that they'll be replaced by those lacking honor? Honor Harrington knows that Haven, on the brink of falling apart, needs people like Warner Caslet and Shannon Foraker. Without them, the Republic wouldn't have survived. And it's not like she's giving them an advantage Manticore doesn't already have; after all, the RMN has Sonja Hemphill.

Point three: Goodness repays goodness. Remember, the Havenites weren't, technically speaking, supposed to be out in Silesia in the first place. There are no strategic objectives at stake. The officers and crew of Vaubon helped a Manticoran ship virtually against orders, and only a polite fiction kept them from being hit with massive repercussions by the Committee. Honor let them go because they risked their lives and careers to help her, when they didn't have to and when, as far as they knew, if they sat by and did nothing she'd have been chewed up and spat out by the pirates in question. (Remember, Caslet thought the ship he was helping was a helpless merchie, not an RMN vessel.)

Point five: Honor was putting nothing at risk to let them go. Vaubon is one ship, with one crew, that by and large is not going to increase the PRN's throw weight by much of anything. She's only a heavy cruiser, after all - not an SD or even a battlecruiser. She explains her reasoning as such in this passage:
"Despite Citizen Commander Foraker's efforts to wheedle technical information out of my people," she said, watching Foraker blush under her level gaze, "none of you have observed anything which isn't already or won't very soon become available to your Navy through other sources. For example, you're aware our Q-ships mount heavy energy weapons and are able to deploy powerful salvos of missile pods, but by now other sources within the Confederacy have undoubtedly already sold that information to one of your many spies there. Accordingly, we can return you to the Republic without jeopardizing our own security, and given your services to Captain Sukowski and Commander Hurlman, not to mention Captain Holtz's people's efforts aboard Wayfarer, it would be churlish not to release you."

And, she thought, letting you go home to tell your admiralty that our "mere" Q-ships destroyed two of your heavy cruisers and a pair of battlecruisers—not to mention Warnecke's entire base—for the loss of only one of our ships may just cause it to rethink the value of commerce raiding in general.

She knows that by sending Caslet and his crew back to Haven, she could accomplish something far greater than capturing a single heavy cruiser. She's playing for bigger stakes than a simple scuffle in the back of beyond - she's hoping to put an end to commerce raiding in Silesia altogether, and as far as I can recall, it works.

Point six: Out of universe, the plot needs Shannon Foraker. Without her, Honor wouldn't have survived Cerberus, and Manticore wouldn't have stood a chance against Rajampet's fleet, both because of how she and Theisman help them and because her very existence forced Sonja to come up with better and better hardware.

Remember, after Oyster Bay Manticore's rebuilding capability was all but destroyed. Throw in the losses from First Manticore, and only the chunk of Capital Fleet that Theisman brought with him kept the Solarian League at bay. More importantly, Honor's release of Vaubon's crew was the very beginning of the groundwork that made the Grand Alliance possible in the first place. Whether Theisman and Pritchart's rebellion succeeded or not, were it not for the rapport Honor developed with Caslet, Foraker, and Tourville in Silesia and during Cerberus, neither Haven nor Manticore would ever have been able to bring themselves to really sit down and talk after the head games the MAlign had been playing with Elizabeth and Eloise. Because the leadership on Manticore, Grayson, and Haven all trust Honor's word, she earned trust enough from Eloise for the President to risk her mad dash to Manticore - and she earned trust enough from Elizabeth to get her to listen. Without that - just as without Bolthole and Shannon's expertise at reverse-engineering, which will revive Grand Fleet far faster than anyone could have expected before the Alliance - the MAlign would have already won.

So, yes. You're missing the context that Honor made at the time - she's brilliant, but not prescient. In the context of what she knew at the time, her decision to release Vaubon's crew made perfect sense. But more importantly, in the overall narrative of the plot, that decision had repercussions that are still echoing nearly a dozen books later. In a very real way, just as with Second Yeltsin and the attempted assassination of Benjamin, the entire course of the Honorverse turns on a choice Honor Harrington made in Silesia. Without that choice, the Republic might not exist; Honor would have died at Cerberus; the Grand Alliance would never have come to be; Manticore would never have been able to hold off the Solarian League; and the Mesan Alignment would have succeeded in a centuries-long conspiracy to break the Haven Sector and with it the worst threat to their plans.

...I have a lot of feelings about Haven and the Grand Alliance.
~*~


I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.

Javier & Eloise
"You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley..."
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by SWM   » Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:25 pm

SWM
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There is another point which has not yet been mentioned. To some extent, the early Honorverse books were modeled after Earth history. During the historical period that this part of the books reflects, prisoner releases like this were not that unusual. While the wars of the period were often quite brutal, individual encounters between enemy ships were often conducted with a great deal of personal honor and obligation. And there is a literary heritage as well. Honor Among Enemies is exactly the kind of story you could imagine Horatio Hornblower in, and he could easily have made the same decision to release the prisoners that Honor did.
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by Vince   » Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:41 pm

Vince
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SWM wrote:There is another point which has not yet been mentioned. To some extent, the early Honorverse books were modeled after Earth history. During the historical period that this part of the books reflects, prisoner releases like this were not that unusual. While the wars of the period were often quite brutal, individual encounters between enemy ships were often conducted with a great deal of personal honor and obligation. And there is a literary heritage as well. Honor Among Enemies is exactly the kind of story you could imagine Horatio Hornblower in, and he could easily have made the same decision to release the prisoners that Honor did.

Although he isn't mentioned by name, Horatio Hornblower's initials are alluded to, and the author of the Horatio Hornblower novels (C. S. Forester) is mentioned briefly in Honor Among Enemies.
Honor Among Enemies, Chapter 37 wrote:Well, that was for the future—which had a pronounced gift for taking care of itself in its own good time, however much humans dithered in the process. Meanwhile, she had an excellent glass of wine and a novel which was thoroughly enjoyable. This Forester guy writes a darned good book, and I can certainly identify with his hero. Besides—she giggled—I like his initials!
Italics are the author's.
-------------------------------------------------------------
History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by Dafmeister   » Thu Apr 24, 2014 5:26 am

Dafmeister
Commodore

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I'm at work so I don't have my copy of HAE to hand, but I believe there may be another issue at work here. I believe that Artemis returned to Manticore by way of the Andermani Empire, which was neutral (though neutral somewhat in favour of Manticore at the time). If she entered Andermani territorial space at any point, there may have been a requirement under interstellar law/convention that any prisoners of a belligerent power be released for repatriation. As a real-world parallel, there were British merchant service prisoners aboard Graf Spee during the Battle of the River Plate in 1939, who were released under international law (I believe it was Article XI of the 1907 Hague Convention) when Graf Spee put into Montevideo after the battle.
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by munroburton   » Thu Apr 24, 2014 6:14 am

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roseandheather wrote:Point five: Honor was putting nothing at risk to let them go. Vaubon is one ship, with one crew, that by and large is not going to increase the PRN's throw weight by much of anything. She's only a heavy cruiser, after all - not an SD or even a battlecruiser. She explains her reasoning as such in this passage:
"Despite Citizen Commander Foraker's efforts to wheedle technical information out of my people," she said, watching Foraker blush under her level gaze, "none of you have observed anything which isn't already or won't very soon become available to your Navy through other sources. For example, you're aware our Q-ships mount heavy energy weapons and are able to deploy powerful salvos of missile pods, but by now other sources within the Confederacy have undoubtedly already sold that information to one of your many spies there. Accordingly, we can return you to the Republic without jeopardizing our own security, and given your services to Captain Sukowski and Commander Hurlman, not to mention Captain Holtz's people's efforts aboard Wayfarer, it would be churlish not to release you."

And, she thought, letting you go home to tell your admiralty that our "mere" Q-ships destroyed two of your heavy cruisers and a pair of battlecruisers—not to mention Warnecke's entire base—for the loss of only one of our ships may just cause it to rethink the value of commerce raiding in general.

She knows that by sending Caslet and his crew back to Haven, she could accomplish something far greater than capturing a single heavy cruiser. She's playing for bigger stakes than a simple scuffle in the back of beyond - she's hoping to put an end to commerce raiding in Silesia altogether, and as far as I can recall, it works.


I'm a bit leery of Honor's reasoning, as Caslet's internal reaction during the First Battle of Sidemore showed he realised how dangerous pod-laying mechanisms could be if applied to wallers.

If Honor had a duplicitous bone in her body, I might think it was a shrewd Machiavellian ploy to make the PRH's intelligence apparatus ignore those new weapon systems, as the bulk of their information would then come from a discredited PN officer who lost his ship saving a Manty Q-ship.

But the reality is, Honor felt she owed the men and women of Vaubon a debt and the only way to repay it was to set them free. That may have been a poor decision in the cold mathematics of war, but hey, it turned out well, given what Caslet and Foraker later did to return the favour.
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by cthia   » Thu Apr 24, 2014 7:25 am

cthia
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I could be wrong about the absolute content of the particular passage, but I remember, somewhere, one of Haven's bigwigs stating that Honor seemed to be making a statement (paraphrased) "That if we showed some restraint that maybe they would too. And that maybe they'd be open to the idea of prisoner exchanges."

Which may have had plenty to do with Pritchart sending Michelle home.

Remember, Haven had plenty of very important Manticoran personnel as well.

Dr. Arroway, I was also wondering about that decision at that time. But we all know how honorable Honor is. It would be a very serious travesty of justice to have her name and not be...Honorable. That one quality won her over in the hearts of many of her would-be enemies. Honor had won over the respect of many Havenites, military and civilian. It was hard to dislike an honorable enemy. That was Cordelia Ransom's entire plan, to taint Honor's pristine humanitarian reputation; a reputation that preceded her everywhere she went, from the Andermani Empire to the backasswards Cerberus...

"You're the Honor Harrington? The Salamander? The one who smites Havenite fleets with a wave of...handwavium? Who picks her teeth with Heavy Cruisers??? Well we'll be a pissin' razorblades and shittin' treecats!"

This isn't an RFC original. But it should be!

I just loved the reception she got at Cerberus. Talk about a gal's reputation hauling ass before her. She was reknown in a nowheresville, backwoods, pipe-n-air, hanging your clothes out to dry, ultra-secluded snake pit of a hidden shithole like Cerberus! Damn. The beeotch is ... B....A....D!

And Honor was all like...well, Honor. "You really can't believe everything that you hear. Some of those things were embellished. But only just a little. It was really nothing. You see, I do it all the time. :oops: "

Talk about hero worship on steroids. All of those rare qualities conspired to make her the prize and talk of the entire honorverse. Must be a highly motivating experience to be 'alofted' so magnaminously by your fans. It spurred her on to do the impossible at Cerberus. After all the praise and hero-worship she got at Cerberus Honor must have felt invincible. She went to sleep that night with a hearty smile thinking "Am I this damn bad?"

Then she ended up taking out all of Cerberus forces without losing a single ship. The Cerberrians were like "Who the hell are you?" :o :lol:

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: About Honor Among Enemies and other stuff
Post by Dr. Arroway   » Sat Apr 26, 2014 11:48 am

Dr. Arroway
Lieutenant (Junior Grade)

Posts: 41
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:52 am

jgnfld wrote:You mean sometimes she could be a "copper plated bitch"???!!!

Ehm, I don't get the meaning of the post, sorry.. :/

Crown Loyalist wrote:Shannon ended up being the only reason Honor and Nimitz lived through In Enemy Hands, so I'd say it worked out.

That's true enough, but Honor didn't know what would happen, and, for that matter, Shannon was a big reason she ended up a prisoner in the first place (unless I'm mistaken).

You guys all make very good points (and thanks for the in depth responses).
Still I have something to add.
I appreciate everything about plot points and the future evolution of the war and of the characters, but I'm only judging Honor's actions in the limit of that single story.

Let me try and organize.
In support of the release we have:
- Honor's own gallantry (which was never in dispute)
- The consideration that restoring decent people among the ranks of the enemy can offset the presence of the more vicious ones.
- Generally spread the seeds of a better understanding
- Let a "message" arrive to Haven, as Honor herself explains.

These are good points, but it still feels to me that in balance they're not enough (banning foreknowledge of the events on Honor's part) to justify the choice.
She still is enabling dangerous, competent officers to go back and do what they do best against Manticore.
She cannot assume anything different.
How many times we see Honor take precautions even against the most UN-likely of the ill-chanced scenarios? Even if it costs her "discomfort"?
Yet this time we hear her saying things like "your spies surely have reported enough information already". Of course she should allow for the possibility, but she should NOT take it for granted. If Haven spies still haven't picked up relevant information, she would be the one rendering it available by releasing the prisoners, therefore putting at least some of her people at risk when there's is no need for it.
And I second what munroburton says about the pods.
Also information from spies is not the same thing as direct, extended observation made by capable officers, from the inside of Manticoran ships.

I don't know, the whole turn seems a bit "off" to me somehow.

All in all the way I prefer to see this episode is a mistake made in good faith on Honor's part, but one that turns for the better in the long run precisely because it's a mistake generated by her decency.

@cthia: I don't remember what happened at Cerberus, sorry, but I should be getting close with my current run :)

EDIT:
I'm just reading the passage where Commodore Yeargin's task force is annihilated by Foraker's surprise attack: basically thousands of Manticorans getting killed because Honor let Foraker free...
Last edited by Dr. Arroway on Sat Apr 26, 2014 12:17 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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