Thomas Thiesman

*points at literally everything JeffEngel just said and gibbers a lot*

You.

Wow.

NEW FAVORITE PERSON.

Garth 2 wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:[Re: direct negotiations to end a war by heads of state, apart from heads of government] It's not how Manticore's government works, apparently. I don't think that's quite set in stone, but it'd likely invite a constitutional crisis for Manticore if it weren't immediately and totally out of bounds. And Elizabeth was already unwilling to invite that crisis when she accepted the High Ridge Government at all.

Internally, your right that's not how the Manticore government is meant to work, but if a Foreign Head of State, says "I will only negotiate with the Queen" it would be pretty damn hard to say "No".
After all that's what was going to happen at the Torch summit after Mike got home.
Its not saying its something that Pritchart could have done, given the dynamic involved but it is something she should have considered (probably off screen with Tom over a pint or Javier Giscard whilst curled up in each others arms, probably after a good cry about how the mean Manticorians wouldn't talk to her)

Maybe. On the other hand, as often noted, these novels are getting mighty large without asking for more detail. (Though as a detail goes, that wouldn't take much space.) Coming off as inviting domestic political strife in Manticore while trying to reach a peace agreement may well just bring Manticore together in rejecting negotiations even more firmly. If the idea would pan out that badly for Haven, for reasons the readers can tell and Pritchart would recognize easily as well, then maybe it's an option that needn't be considered even so seriously as to be rejected in text.

JeffEngel wrote:Not an option, accomplishes nothing, moving on....

I'm just pointing out that you're using a double standard here.

Rome is still waiting on reparations from Germany for Alaric sacking it. And strangely, there's no uproar.

We're talking about a conflict that's still running its course.
See my next point.

Which will in all too many cases lead to revanchism and another round of wars. Yay. What wonderful work for peace your reparations do.

You'll notice that even Honor, on her peace mission, lists two absolute points that need to addressed if there's any chance for a peace settlement: the correspondence issue must be dealt with, and Haven has to recognize its war guilt.
Sure, she admits High Ridge didn't help any, but the war guilt lies squarely on Haven nonetheless.
I'm saying exactly the same as Honor does, and she's willing to resume operations once again and destroy everything Haven has left for the sake of this point alone.
So yep, who started the thing to begin with IS a pretty important issue still.

The Grantville government wouldn't keep an appointment for direct talks, offered when Haven had the military advantage, in large part because Elizabeth wouldn't tolerate that.
....
Curiously though, the reasons it continues are out of bounds for you, and the actual people responsible for them are also irrelevant.

And she had good reasons not to trust the Peeps.
It's not her fault if they have decades worth of history as conquerers, liars, assassins, and oppressors.
As I said already, Pritchart is the one with the responsibility to go the extra-mile to PROVE that the Peeps have changed.
Elizabeth doesn't have to prove anything of the sort.
Instead Pritchart sneakily resumes the war when she could have avoided it if she really wanted (with no Apollo threat yet!), and then dramatically rises the stakes and the death toll with the Battle of Manticore.

Also, I humbly point out, even Theisman warns her that once the war starts again, there's no telling how things can go from there.
Pandora's Box.
Since she resumes the war anyway, making Haven act as Manticore's aggressor for the second time in a row, she can scarcely complain later that Elizabeth becomes "stubborn" and refuses to see how candid and trustworthy Pritchart supposedly is.
This would be true even without the assassinations, the lies and all.

It is frankly terrifying that they are not set off in your mind by anything prior to that. To mine, they're already well ahead of Elizabeth Winton and that just leaves Good Queen Bess waving in their dust.

Not by a long shot.
Certainly Pritchart is infinitely better than what came before her, and certainly she is an enlightened ruler.
But Elizabeth only shed blood in self defense, while Pritchart saw fit to continue a wrongful offense for the good of her people, which is not the same thing.
It actually seems pretty obvious to me.
Of course all of this makes her a strong and very interesting character for the story, don't misunderstand me on this point.

Anyway, I think I've made my opinions clear enough, more words probably wouldn't help...
I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Peace

Dr. Arroway wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:The Grantville government wouldn't keep an appointment for direct talks, offered when Haven had the military advantage, in large part because Elizabeth wouldn't tolerate that.
....
Curiously though, the reasons it continues are out of bounds for you, and the actual people responsible for them are also irrelevant.

And she had good reasons not to trust the Peeps.
It's not her fault if they have decades worth of history as conquerers, liars, assassins, and oppressors.
As I said already, Pritchart is the one with the responsibility to go the extra-mile to PROVE that the Peeps have changed.
Elizabeth doesn't have to prove anything of the sort.
Instead Pritchart sneakily resumes the war when she could have avoided it if she really wanted (with no Apollo threat yet!), and then dramatically rises the stakes and the death toll with the Battle of Manticore.

Also, I humbly point out, even Theisman warns her that once the war starts again, there's no telling how things can go from there.
Pandora's Box.
Since she resumes the war anyway, making Haven act as Manticore's aggressor for the second time in a row, she can scarcely complain later that Elizabeth becomes "stubborn" and refuses to see how candid and trustworthy Pritchart supposedly is.
This would be true even without the assassinations, the lies and all.

Of course when Pritchart took Haven back to war she really though Manticore had moved from obstructing the peace talks to lying about diplomatic correspondence.

Yes, she later found out that was most likely wrong (but never had hard definitive proof of that - because the evidence had been tampered with) (And obviously we have the viewpoint to see that her Sec State was the one screwing with the correspondence - but she still doesn't have 100% evidence of that)


I'd view things a lot differently if she cynically took Haven back to war over known (or even suspected) false pretenses. But she really did think it was the only way to satisfy her duty to the citizens of those captured worlds - to get their status resolved, in agreement with those citizens own expressed wishes (as per a referendum on their final status) when Manticore had held that up for a decade and then (apparently) began to lie, for unknown reasons, to paint Haven in an even worse light and prevent any final disposition of those occupied systems.

Hi JrffEngel,

My, you seem exercised.

First, a nit or two:

Haven went Conquistador around 1845, or just 6 decades before the first war, not two centuries.

Solon is where HH-A finally got beaten, though it was around 9-1 odds in SDP's, yet the RoH's congress still wanted to give Javier Giscard the CMoH.

Lovat is where Javier Giscard was killed despite outnumbering HH-A again, if by less than 3-1 in SDP's not the 8-1 he initially thought, as Apollo was demonstrated for the first time.

The RHN had something near 588 SDP's at the time of Beatrice, which used 336, ie 252 were still working up; with another ~168 in the Bolthole yards [the last probably completing sometime in the first half of February 1922] before getting to the 400 others being completed in the Haven system and nearby systems.

Aside: In lieu of not finding Bolthole, will they be bait enough to bring the MAlign's Sharks back to attack?

Since 1320+ SDP's; not counting the IAN's, even if only around a quarter are Apollo's, are simply too many for the SL to have any hope of surviving such an onslaught for very long from the spring of 1923, if not sooner.

Yes, Eloise is a much nicer person than Oscar or Robert, but she made her choices freely, wrongly informed in the first case by her Secretary of State [BTW, you haven't properly condemned the RoH's political limitations enough], who she didn't distrust enough, but they were her decisions, which she could have freely chosen to do something else.

Beatrice had a good chance of success; the RHN's familiarity with 'Montrose's toast' made them willing to risk a final shot at victory, so they followed her and their icon Thomas Thiesman's orders [the one this thread is supposed to be about], and 1.5+ million more were killed in attempting that desperate plan.

We haven't seen the RHN balk at following her orders now, because I suspect in part they don't doubt she tried everything to win, and they know they almost did, however heavy the cost.

OTOH, claiming she and TT etc couldn't have explained to the public and the senate in particular why they were beaten by Apollo, if they had chosen to seek terms, is a bit of a stretch.

Indeed as part of the cover for Beatrice, I could see TT detailing to the senate committees why Apollo was such an overwhelming military advantage.

Understand that 8-9 years ago at the bar I predicted Eloise and Elisabeth would get along famously as in the song "Sisters" [from White Christmas], so blaming Elisabeth for being very understandably skeptical, while ignoring the very human baggage both brought to the table seems a bit much.

The fact that Eloise likes Elisabeth as much as she likes Eloise ought to say something nice about Elisabeth too, to you Eloise lovers.

Hint, hint.

Size limits on AAC required RFC to cut some of the background explaining why Eloise was trusted to keep her word by neutrals etc, which along with other books' deleted sections I'd like to read in some future anthology or collection.

Suggested titles might include "Info Dumps Deleted Only For Space Reasons".

Feel free to suggest even better ones.

L


[quote="JeffEngel"][quote="Dr. Arroway"]*quote="JeffEngel"*
I don't think I've ever met this person "Haven" you're referring to. There's a planet by the name and a nation, but you're attributing quite a bit of intention and responsibility to a planet or a nation that it's not much able to bear.
*quote*
If this is how you put things then at most Pritchart should have challenged [i]High Ridge[/i] to a duel or something, instead of resuming operations knowingly condemning scores of innocents to death.[/quote]
Not an option, accomplishes nothing, moving on....

[quote]
[quote="JeffEngel"]
You could talk about a government creating the situation, having these problems, having some intention to "pillage, enslave, and abuse", just because a government is this bunch of people. You get a question then about how far back you go.
[/quote]
As far back as needed.[/quote]
Rome is still waiting on reparations from Germany for Alaric sacking it. And strangely, there's no uproar.

If you want peace - if you want people to stop dying - and you should - you need to have a moral framework that can look forward instead of all backward, all the time. Especially when you find yourself demanding that living people fix the problems created by dead people, dead people who were their [i]enemies[/i], dead people who aren't around to keep causing problems only because of the work and risks of the very same living people you want to hang for the dead leaders' crimes. If you don't, then no one's going to bother with that work or risk - or few enough to get it done, anyway.
[quote]
Nations have been required to give "reparations" for their acts even after decades and changes in leadership, when at all possible, as it should be.[/quote]
Which will in all too many cases lead to revanchism and another round of wars. Yay. What wonderful work for peace your reparations do. And when the reparations are going from the losers to the winners, when war guilt is fixed by who's got the bigger guns, you can just cut the crap and call it "tribute" or "loot" instead and quit dropping a sanctimonious cover over the devastation of war.

If and when it's actually a matter, for all to see and recognize, of paying back what's due, by a party in the wrong who can afford it to a wronged party who needs it, then you've got an exchange that may help settle things. If it's even close enough to that, you'll have something that's not going to cause more problems than it is worth.

In this case, you don't even have it as a real option, when Haven [i]cannot get Manticore to the peace table[/i]. The High Ridge government wouldn't do it for four years, without the felt threat of renewed hostilities, and Elizabeth let that roll. The Grantville government wouldn't keep an appointment for direct talks, offered when Haven had the military advantage, in large part because Elizabeth wouldn't tolerate that. So, Haven's got what left? Offering an unconditional surrender? That's not something Pritchart could sell to her Senate. That's the extra mile you want her to go? [i]She can't.[/i]
[quote]
The war between Haven and Manticore is still an open issue so it's perfectly logical to keep front and center the [i]reasons[/i] why it started.
Reasons both Pritchart and Theisman know perfectly well.
[/quote]Curiously though, the reasons it continues are out of bounds for you, and the actual people responsible for them are also irrelevant. You do get jolly good propaganda being that selective - Rule Manticore, ra ra - but as a moral argument, it's not impressive.

[quote][quote]
So, you've got [i]living[/i] politicians responsible for doing their best for their living constituents, and for the nation in which those constituents live. And you'd need to make the argument that the right thing for them to do for those people and that nation is to grievously endanger that nation, and with it those people, to tell some crazy story that no one will believe (quite rightly, for all the plausibility of it, even though it's true)...
[/quote]
This is the sad reality of the situation Pritchart finds herself in, true enough... which doesn't change the fact that it's a mess [i]created by Haven[/i] in the first place, as a result of the series of policies enacted by the leaders the [i]Havenites[/i] themselves put in charge (or [i]let remain[/i] in charge) over the years.
[/quote]
Cost of removing the High Ridge Government from power: one constitutional crisis (or cutting some deals with enough Liberal Party figures in the House of Lords)
Cost of removing the Committee of Public Safety: two coup attempts and three years of civil war
Blame assigned to Elizabeth Winton for not paying the first charge: zero.
Credit assigned to Eloise Pritchart, Thomas Theisman, and millions of Havenites for paying the second charge: zero.
[quote]
If you argue that the Havenite layman cannot be held responsible for all that, then I'd argue that the [i]Manticoran[/i] layman is certainly even less responsible for that same mess.[/quote]
I'm not going to blame either of them. I'm going to blame [i]people[/i] for putting them ([i]any[/i] of them) into the mess in the first place, keeping them in it, [i]and/or[/i] not getting them out of it in the least bad shape they can.

It [i]is[/i] a mess. Twenty years of war preceded by two centuries of war, oppression and abuse by the Legislaturalists has delivered that to Elizabeth and Pritchart, the RMN and RHN, and hundreds of billions of people on both sides. I'm going to judge people based on what they [i]can[/i] do about that, on the bases both of what they owe anyone and what they owe particularly to people based on their positions.

Pritchart can't get talks with Elizabeth after Solon. Elizabeth feels she's got the whip hand again and boy does that woman loooove whipping Haven. Mmm mmm good.

Pritchart can't just surrender unconditionally. The elected members of her Senate won't abide that, and she'll be impeached, the Republic thrown into chaos, and a government that's finally working for its hundreds of billions of people, a government that's finally [i]capable[/i] of getting along with neighbors who are willing to get along with it (yes, I'm looking at you Elizabeth Winton) gets thrown out again.

So she's got the options of inviting that - which is likely to lead to Beatrice anyway after she's replaced, or something less likely to end the war - or seizing a chance to fight a battle (a huge, horrible one) that will quite possibly let her [i]demand[/i] a totally generous, livable peace out of Elizabeth - so Manticorans and Havenites can finally quit killing one another - or if it fails, let Haven surrender and get Haven to accept that.

And you want to condemn her for taking that chance.
[quote]
Pritchart agrees to try and solve the situation [i]in her own backyard[/i] by killing Manticorans by the thousands yet again. And she does it two times.
It might fit her role and "responsibility" to Haven, but she remains guilty, imho, in the grand scale of things.[/quote]
All right. I'm afraid I can't quite see the same grand scheme you can.


[quote][quote]
The only problem here is that at the time the Beatrice is launched, Manticore wasn't being reasonable. They in fact were not even listening, and were totally unwilling to listen. When one side won't talk, it is hard to have a conversation of any sort.[/quote]
As I said before, by that time Manticore has very valid reasons to show that attitude. Reasons understood, acknowledged and explained by Pritchart [i]herself[/i].
If anyone should be expected to go the extra mile, as I said, it's Haven, not Manticore.
She knows Haven is in the wrong on a score of levels, and the new Manty missiles give her even a real reason (even for public consumption) to consider the surrender as a serious option.
But she prefers to go for the brutal victory, whatever the costs.[/quote]
They've got some 400 SD(P)'s they can afford to throw at Manticore right now. If they do that, and win, it's all over. Given that, they [i]don't[/i] have a reason for public consumption that will pass muster in the Senate. So she "prefers" to go for the decisive victory - or, heck, decisive defeat - that'd make for a peace possibility too - things are only even much worse if she gets neither.

You may remember who'd died recently at Solon before suggesting she's discounting the costs. Really.


[quote][quote]
I'm not seeing the compelling moral case that can be made there, unless it's a blanket one for pacifism. You're welcome to make that one, if you like, but that doesn't sound like the one you mean to make.[/quote]
It's not "pacifism" per se. I've never been pacifist in that sense. Unlike Houseman, I think Manticore has every right and reason to pursue a full military victory.
Haven never had that right, and Pritchart knows it perfectly well.
[/quote]They're at war. It's a war that Haven's current government has been trying to [i]end[/i], one that the last two Manticoran ones have been content to continue. Pritchart is trying to end the war on just, generous terms - she's just trying to get the Manticorans to stop it and listen. But yes, go on, ignore that, ignore it all. Ignore what's supposed to happen going forward. Ignore all the worthless Havenite lives lost - millions of them have it coming, because they didn't assassinate Harris or St. Just - or if they did, well, they didn't simply surrender unconditionally right then either. Someone, somewhere did something bad with Haven to get "this" started, so everyone identified with Haven is subject to summary death until they surrender unconditionally, and every effort to resist the fullness of that judgment is just more weight on your scales against them.

Gracious, if anyone suspected even Elizabeth Winton had that attitude, it'd be insane for them to surrender.
[quote]
Of course, I appreciate that Pritchart [u]redeems[/u] herself and Theisman when she finally comes to Manticore's help. That's what finally sets them fully, splendidly apart from the previous Havenite leaders - the fact that in the end they do something very substantial in support of the Star Nation they kept hurting for decades (and when they actually could very well do the opposite and finish them off).[/quote]
It is frankly terrifying that they are not set off in your mind by anything prior to that. To mine, they're already well ahead of Elizabeth Winton and that just leaves Good Queen Bess waving in their dust.[/quote]

lyonheart wrote:Hi JrffEngel,

My, you seem exercised.

Well, yes. I'm looking at what seems a very skewed way of looking at characters. I like fairness and generosity of judgment.

First, a nit or two:

Haven went Conquistador around 1845, or just 6 decades before the first war, not two centuries.

Yep. I was dating from about the time the Republic put on the black hat, with the establishment of the Legislaturalist regime. And working from vague recollection, so I'm entirely subject to being off even then.

Solon is where HH-A finally got beaten, though it was around 9-1 odds in SDP's, yet the RoH's congress still wanted to give Javier Giscard the CMoH.

Lovat is where Javier Giscard was killed despite outnumbering HH-A again, if by less than 3-1 in SDP's not the 8-1 he initially thought, as Apollo was demonstrated for the first time.

I sit corrected, thanks.

Yes, Eloise is a much nicer person than Oscar or Robert, but she made her choices freely, wrongly informed in the first case by her Secretary of State [BTW, you haven't properly condemned the RoH's political limitations enough], who she didn't distrust enough, but they were her decisions, which she could have freely chosen to do something else.

All granted. My claim is just that the choices she made, given what she knew and what her options were, with their likely consequences, were defensible ones.

And yes, there's a lot of condemnation of the Republic's constitution and current political realities that could be flung. In this context, I'm mostly just insistent on how much better it still was compared to the Committee of Public Safety or the High Ridge Government. We can slap all the blame we have to give on Arnold Giancola, then cook up some more for his surviving associates. And even with that villainy, if they had a system in which he could be removed, bypassed, or even more effectively monitored, the mess could have been avoided. If they had a Senate arrangement and public that could swallow the accurate conjecture about what he'd done, or digest the implications of Apollo and not realize the possibility of Beatrice, then maybe they could have sent Pritchart to Manticore to negotiate an honorable, conditional, tolerable surrender. But that supposes a lot of conditions that either did not obtain or could not at all be counted upon.

Beatrice had a good chance of success; the RHN's familiarity with 'Montrose's toast' made them willing to risk a final shot at victory, so they followed her and their icon Thomas Thiesman's orders [the one this thread is supposed to be about], and 1.5+ million more were killed in attempting that desperate plan.

We haven't seen the RHN balk at following her orders now, because I suspect in part they don't doubt she tried everything to win, and they know they almost did, however heavy the cost.

OTOH, claiming she and TT etc couldn't have explained to the public and the senate in particular why they were beaten by Apollo, if they had chosen to seek terms, is a bit of a stretch.

Indeed as part of the cover for Beatrice, I could see TT detailing to the senate committees why Apollo was such an overwhelming military advantage.

See, to make the surrender option work past the Senate, you'd need to have them reject Beatrice - which we all are conceding came very close to working, and could have delivered a peace livable for all concerned, possibly even if it resulted in a Havenite loss - and to accept that Apollo was already an "I Win" button for Manticore. They'd have to combine carefully briefed savviness on Apollo's impact with being ignorant of what Haven had right then available to throw at Manticore - before Apollo was presumably in wide deployment. That does not strike me as a plausible combination.

Understand that 8-9 years ago at the bar I predicted Eloise and Elisabeth would get along famously as in the song "Sisters" [from White Christmas], so blaming Elisabeth for being very understandably skeptical, while ignoring the very human baggage both brought to the table seems a bit much.

Assigning responsibility is one step; evaluating character is another. Given her baggage, I'm not going to condemn Elizabeth for being at best indifferent to peace with Haven and often hostile to it. But I'm not going to accept someone else being condemned when Elizabeth is the one playing a critical role in preventing peace. She didn't, in particular, have a good enough reason to ditch the Torch conference following the two assassination attempts. (Although renewed discussions of security and location may have been apt....) And she could very well have taken a firmer line with the High Ridge Government about peace talks if she actually cared about peace with Haven or didn't enjoy the sense that they were on the ropes and could be kept squirming indefinitely.

That's on her. We've got fine reason to forgive her for that sort of thing - we don't have reason for condemning others for having to work with the reality Elizabeth's attitudes helped create.

The fact that Eloise likes Elisabeth as much as she likes Eloise ought to say something nice about Elisabeth too, to you Eloise lovers.

Hint, hint.

Size limits on AAC required RFC to cut some of the background explaining why Eloise was trusted to keep her word by neutrals etc, which along with other books' deleted sections I'd like to read in some future anthology or collection.

Suggested titles might include "Info Dumps Deleted Only For Space Reasons".

Feel free to suggest even better ones.

L

"Everything You Wanted to Know About the Honorverse That the Publishers Were Afraid To Print"

This seems to have drifted from Theisman to Elizabeth. Tere were a couple of questions that I have always had about the High Ridge takeover. I understand why Elizabeth couldn't pack the House of Lords, since the new Lords couldn't be seated until a general election (although that begs the question about how Dame Honor got seated in her NEW duchy).
The question in my mind is that why, when it became obvious that High Ridge and company were not going to play ball with the Alexander government, does William Alexander immediately call for a general election. Until he is deposed by the vote of confidence, he is still the head of government, as Cromarty's second in command. Even if they force a vote of confidence in the Lords, it is only going to be about 6 weeks until the general election, and that puts paid to High Ridge and his group.

The second question is why Elizabeth (after High Ridge had been in power for a couple of years), basically forced a constitutional crisis by ordering general elections, on the grounds that it had been over five years, and that due to the truce, the state of emergency was over. (Certainly I can see for her to push for such a provision for the Crown to order general elections after the constitutional mandated period of 5 years for new elections, in the event that the Crown determines that it is necessary, just to prevent this same sort of thing from happening again.)

The House of Lords isn't elected. If yo have a title you are in unless the already sitting Lords can find an excuse not to seat you like they did the first time that Honor got a title. They were probably convinced that trying that stunt a second time with mass Kingdom wide hero worship of Honor on and Elizabeth backing Honor would lead to mobs with torches and pitchforks hunting for the Lords that voted against seating her.

Roguevictory wrote:The House of Lords isn't elected. If yo have a title you are in unless the already sitting Lords can find an excuse not to seat you like they did the first time that Honor got a title. They were probably convinced that trying that stunt a second time with mass Kingdom wide hero worship of Honor on and Elizabeth backing Honor would lead to mobs with torches and pitchforks hunting for the Lords that voted against seating her.

The point is that Honor's old seat - the Earldom had already been passed to Honor's cousin Devon. Her Duchy was a new one, and by textev, the constitution does not new Lords to be seated until after a general election. So how did Honor skate past this constitutional requirement? Note that this is not an option of the House of Lords - they can vote to exclude a member for sufficient reason, but that isn't the case here. They can't even vote to exclude the new Lords (from San Martin, e.g.) until after a new election, and the attempt to do so at that time would have triggered a major constitutional crisis. The High Ridge government was working around the constitutional requirement for a general election at least every 5 years by using the state of emergency declared at the start of the First Haven War. The state of emergency allows the delay of elections until the state of emergency is over. No general election, no new Lords.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:The House of Lords isn't elected. If yo have a title you are in unless the already sitting Lords can find an excuse not to seat you like they did the first time that Honor got a title. They were probably convinced that trying that stunt a second time with mass Kingdom wide hero worship of Honor on and Elizabeth backing Honor would lead to mobs with torches and pitchforks hunting for the Lords that voted against seating her.

The point is that Honor's old seat - the Earldom had already been passed to Honor's cousin Devon. Her Duchy was a new one, and by textev, the constitution does not new Lords to be seated until after a general election. So how did Honor skate past this constitutional requirement? Note that this is not an option of the House of Lords - they can vote to exclude a member for sufficient reason, but that isn't the case here. They can't even vote to exclude the new Lords (from San Martin, e.g.) until after a new election, and the attempt to do so at that time would have triggered a major constitutional crisis. The High Ridge government was working around the constitutional requirement for a general election at least every 5 years by using the state of emergency declared at the start of the First Haven War. The state of emergency allows the delay of elections until the state of emergency is over. No general election, no new Lords.

I think that the "after the next general election" thing was spicific to the SM lords.