Point of View: Wishes and Likes

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:Warning.

Whenever I visit someone's home, I take stock in the titles lining their library. You can tell a lot about someone by what they read. We are what we ingest. I'd like to know the listings lining certain character's library. We all know one title found in Honor's bookcase. General Clauswitz' On War.

What would occupy Elizabeth, Shannon, Cathy Montaigne, Victor, Anton, Shannon, Estelle, Alice Truman, Hamish, Eloise, Theisman, Benjamin, Benjamin's wives, Henke, Caparelli, Hemphill, 's library? I'd wager On War and The Art of War to be a subset of all libraries.

I admit it. Some people nosey about your medicine cabinet. I look around your library.

I doubt that Clausewitz or Sun Tzu are in the Mayhew library. But I could see Il Prince, Das Kapital, On the Origin of Species, and Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids.

cthia wrote:Dating East Coast and West Coast girls are as different as night and day. Dating city girls and country girls are just as different. Dating American girls and girls from the UK represent as wide a chasm. It can be a humorous and often confounding cultural divide.

I'd like this POV from Miss Hearns, who is courted by a culturally inept Manticoran. It worked out rather well with Gwen Archer and Helga Boltitz. Although Gwen was swinging away at bat initially. However Gwen --the one loftily born -- was the one caught in a maelstrom of love and Helga could have cared less.

roseandheather wrote:

cthia wrote:Dating East Coast and West Coast girls are as different as night and day. Dating city girls and country girls are just as different. Dating American girls and girls from the UK represent as wide a chasm. It can be a humorous and often confounding cultural divide.

I'd like this POV from Miss Hearns, who is courted by a culturally inept Manticoran. It worked out rather well with Gwen Archer and Helga Boltitz. Although Gwen was swinging away at bat initially. However Gwen --the one loftily born -- was the one caught in a maelstrom of love and Helga could have cared less.

MICHAEL OVERSTEEGEN.

*politely clears throat*

Sorry.

(Not sorry.)

Lady Deborah Fraser, Countess Fraser, was a Manticoran noblewoman and diplomat.

She was a distant cousin of Michael Oversteegen, who disliked her, believing her to lack both intelligence and integrity.

In 1919 PD, Fraser was the Manticoran Ambassador to the Republic of Erewhon. When Princess Ruth (being in fact Berry Zilwicki in disguise) was kidnapped by Masadan extremists, Countess Fraser placed the entire blame on the Erewhonese, further insulting an already angry ally. (CS1)

cthia wrote:Henke is now the default Queen of Manticore, and they want to impeach her.

We have not seen the POV of an heir apparent, at the infamous moment that all succeeding heirs before her are unceremoniously removed and she is shoved and bullied onto the throne. I'd like to witness the ensuing power struggles first hand. Michelle would have to secure a virgin power base. The balance of political power is threatened during an unforeseen, emotional, enemy instigated usurping of powers. The delicate political balances and processes that Elizabeth had so carefully woven during years of cultivation are unduly stretched and threaten to snap when political alliances are questioned and allegiances are lost.

It happens at the nexus of another two-pronged war, delivered unto the unwitting souls of Manticore by that smiling Demon Murphy, caught between two different entities who've just decided to up the ante on their game.

The MAlign, smelling blood, commits a precipitous act. News of an unprecedented design of attacking MAlign ships is spreading like wildfire. Bad press at such a suspiciously appointed time has shaken the very sanctity of peace deep within the marrow of the average Manticoran citizen in the street, causing widespread panic and fear. But this time the MAlign has seriously wounded the SLN with a devastating attack. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence has convincingly simulated voice and video of Harrington and other officers, indubitably implicating Manticore in this horrendous loss of civilian lives. A total destruction of Solarian infrastructure, with orbital fallouts causing planetside catastrophies that make Oyster Bay look like a circus.

But it wasn't Detweiler's plan. It is the handiwork of a rogue element, a clone. Detweiler didn't count on the god-complex. He had bred one other - who thought his genius exceeded his own, a satan to Detweiler's own plans, a power-ridden megalomaniac who considers himself intellectually Supreme.

Everything is thrown at Michelle. The wolves come out of the woodworks. The SLN, stalwarts in the area of half-a-brain, decides to launch an all out attack of remaining mothballed ships. Every single ship in the fleet, thousands of ships.

Henke is on the ropes, her beloved Star Empire is in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, a chemical reaction is brewing between certain members of a nuclear reactive element - Jeremy X, Thandi Palane, Victor Cachat, Anton Zilwicki, The Ballroom, representatives of Erewhon, Sphinx, the Andermani and Beowulf, along with Nimitz, Samantha, Ariel and Sorrow Singer are all mysteriously assembled together on Torch under the prepossessed eye of Queen Berry - and they are not amused. They've got a well founded sniff of the MAlign Bolthole, a scorched earth policy and plans to Torch it.

Treecats everywhere have unusually adopted a meditative, lotus postion, with two pair receiving palms, crooning. As if it is an omen of what is to come.

The MAlign Bolthole is exposed for its one glaring weakness. To remain so successfully hidden in the dark for so many centuries required a sacrifice of an impractical life in a harsh uninhabitable region of space. As a result, no civilian targets live within. They are shipped in and out from another secured location. The Bolthole can now be attacked with relative impunity, without worry of collateral civilian deaths.

Except - Elizabeth and those next three successive heirs are held captive, and are therefore considered hostages, on Darius.

Thomas Theisman still dreams of peace, but this time he has his sights set on the entire galaxy at large, and he has delivered unto the Salamander his technologically brilliant golden-girls of Shannon Foraker and Sonja Hemphill, bearing gifts in the form of their latest toys and a twinkle in their eye.

Harrington and a dream team are gathered together in Manticoran space planning another unprecedented defense of the Home System. The Salamander's eyes are brown flint and her heart has gone cold. The duped Solarian League has formally dispatched a pregnant juggernaut with the latest upgrades in her direction, hellbent on another misguided mission of revenge.

Peace be still.

Honor Harrington is about to unleash — a killing machine.

News of an impending MAlign attack reaches Michelle. And on top of it, Queen Henke learns that the four who died in order that she ascend the throne are still alive, but to save them, she will seemingly have to sacrifice the unthinkable. She is teetering on the verge of losing a tough battle with the elements of her own government and there's growing rumour and talks of an impending impeachment.

No, Henke decides instead, that her Star Empire is in peril.

BUT she is still reigning Queen right now. And Gloria Michelle Samantha Evelyn Henke, is about to show the entire galaxy at large the true meaning of ... it's in the blood.

cthia wrote:But Oversteegen isn't culturally inept.

And Steadholder Owens may not like that union for other reasons, like the fact that Oversteegen has a black sheep in the family that even Oversteegen doesn't like.

Lady Deborah Fraser, Countess Fraser, was a Manticoran noblewoman and diplomat.

She was a distant cousin of Michael Oversteegen, who disliked her, believing her to lack both intelligence and integrity.

In 1919 PD, Fraser was the Manticoran Ambassador to the Republic of Erewhon. When Princess Ruth (being in fact Berry Zilwicki in disguise) was kidnapped by Masadan extremists, Countess Fraser placed the entire blame on the Erewhonese, further insulting an already angry ally. (CS1)

In that social class, a single rotten apple can cause your tree not to grow, by keeping you away from the altar.

cthia wrote:I'd also like to see the intimate POV of things falling apart in the League.

And it'd be real nice to see the POV of someone in the League finally realizing that the GA was right about the existence of the MAlign - with a little more than 'they were right.'

SharkHunter wrote:How about.... the camera POV when:

Aldona is captured, and a discussion ensues between Cachat, Palane, Zilwicki and Jeremy X about who gets to actually introduce her to the afterlife, and how much pain should be inflicted by whom in what order.

[note: it there's a treecat in the room the discussion is moot.]

cthia wrote:

roseandheather wrote:MICHAEL OVERSTEEGEN.

*politely clears throat*

Sorry.

(Not sorry.)

But Oversteegen isn't culturally inept.

And Steadholder Owens may not like that union for other reasons, like the fact that Oversteegen has a black sheep in the family that even Oversteegen doesn't like.

Lady Deborah Fraser, Countess Fraser, was a Manticoran noblewoman and diplomat.

She was a distant cousin of Michael Oversteegen, who disliked her, believing her to lack both intelligence and integrity.

In 1919 PD, Fraser was the Manticoran Ambassador to the Republic of Erewhon. When Princess Ruth (being in fact Berry Zilwicki in disguise) was kidnapped by Masadan extremists, Countess Fraser placed the entire blame on the Erewhonese, further insulting an already angry ally. (CS1)

In that social class, a single rotten apple can cause your tree not to grow, by keeping you away from the altar.