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The Soul of Haven

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Re: The Soul of Haven
Post by cthia   » Sun Jun 24, 2018 2:40 pm

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Thanks for the light shed on the darkness, RFC. Although I'm not sure I can thank you for dispelling everything as a reader I lived to hate about Haven. Finding out that Haven, Pericard's Republic anyways, was altruistic at its core is shocking. It does explain why Pritchart and Theisman so intimately longed for the return of their Republic. It fingers the source of that passion. Theirs was a government worth being passionate about. And dying for.

Previously, I really couldn't see the impetus behind the measure of their passion until your last few posts. I mean, it wasn't like their government made them feel it was worthy, the kind of confirmation as Honor needed from Elizabeth, to know she was worth it. That she was deserving.

Some dark areas remain. How did the Legislaturalists not see the error in their game plan? After finding themselves in power, how were they so easily manipulated into steering the course that they chose, becoming expansionist and conquistadors, when all they had to do was to settle daughter colonies and spread the wealth to that end. Then they could have chosen to strangle a much healthier Republic? Sounds like they shot themselves in the foot when they didn't have to.

An aside. Is the wealth that was stolen by the corrupt entities for so long recoverable after they were politically decapitated? A question I am also interested in as it applies to the Mandarins. What a fortune there must be collectively amassed after centuries of corruption.

Seize it!

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: The Soul of Haven
Post by roseandheather   » Sun Jun 24, 2018 3:14 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:
Had it not been for the collapse of Péricard's constitution, the Republic of Haven never would have become expansionist even in the Andermani sense of the word.

The Legislaturalists built a corrupt political edifice to guarantee their own and their families' continued domination of their society. The Havenite social safety net — or, rather, a Havenite safety net — was in place long before the hereditary power of the Legislaturalist class was institutionalized. The process by which that was converted into a mechanism of control was the point one of my characters was getting at when he said the Republic had died in its sleep, murdered by people with the best of intentions in the name of enforced equality of outcomes. In essence, the Legislaturalists were in the position of the candidate who actually did run in an election in the US by promising that everyone would enjoy "an above average income." They secured their control by promising continually bigger and better social programs to the increasingly larger percentage of the population which had been excluded from the opportunities which produced superior outcomes for them and their families. And at the same time that they promised those bigger and better programs, they insisted that in a just society — which, of course, their society was — there was no inequality in education, intelligence, starting economic or social position, or even just plain the luck of the draw. More than that, they insisted that anyone who argued that there was such a thing as natural inequality even between individuals, shorn of any group context, was an evil "enemy of the people."

At the same time they were taking that position in public, in private, they were busy monopolizing control of the Havenite economy. A stupendous portion of the total economy was controlled directly by Legislaturalists or their allies, and the corrupt nature of the bargain at the top of the power pyramid permeated all of its other levels, as well. The fish rotted from its head, creating a situation in which the system promised equal access to health services, education, law enforcement, and politics, but in fact delivered nothing but inequality and demanded graft and kickbacks at every level before it made those things available to non-Legislaturalists. Rob Pierre's fury at the system sprang not simply from the death of his son, but because he remembered a time when it had come far closer to making good on those promises. It was the inevitable tendency for those who style themselves "the vanguard" of any movement to monopolize power, control, opportunity, and wealth for the benefit of the members of their own group which pushed the "Athens of the stars" into the exact opposite of what it had been created to be and had, for centuries, actually been.

The Legislaturalists didn't find themselves in a position to enact their bargain overnight. There were trendlines in the Republic which did, in fact, originate from the best of intentions in a society which truly did have the technological and economic resources to ensure that none of its citizens lived in want. Efforts to act upon those intentions had negative as well as positive consequences, because the one law no one can repeal is that of unintended consequences. The negative consequences, however, were fully repairable and fully recoverable before the Legislaturalists got behind them and pushed in the name of personal power. Without that action on the Legislaturalists' part, the Republic of Haven would have had no more cause to expand forcibly than 21st century Sweden would have to invade the United States of America.

Absent the Legislaturalists' manipulation of the situation, the Republic of Haven would almost certainly have going on doing precisely what it had been doing for centuries — and precisely what the Alignment feared it would continue to do — which was to grow as a political entity through the establishment of daughter colonies and the voluntary association of neighboring star systems and to grow in terms of a military threat (to the Alignment's long-term ambitions, not to the SKM or its neighbors) through exactly the sorts of contacts and relationships you can see in the Manticore Ascendant novels. That was the threat the inner onion needed to eliminate, and it did it by encouraging the Legislaturalists' ambitions and putting its covert weight behind policies designed to further cripple and destroy the domestic strength of the People's Republic, on the one hand, and to totally discredit Haven as a counterweight to the Renaissance Factor when the time came for the Solarian League to implode. It was less the direct military threat of the PRN that caused the inner onion worries than it was the ideological threat of Péricard's Republic. It was the risk that star nations seeking security in a galaxy gone mad would turn to an essentially (and demonstrably) benevolent interstellar power which had already created the largest extra-Solarian League political union and mutual defense network in existence. Haven had to be delegitimized just as thoroughly as the League was busy delegitimizing itself through Frontier Security and the Protectorate System.

The Legislaturalists were a homegrown phenomenon; the virulence and destructiveness of their policies, however, received several hefty kicks from the Alignment. They were a tool ready to the Alignment's hand when the time came to gut Haven, and the Alignment used it well. There are no guarantees that the Legislaturalists wouldn't have done precisely what they did do even without Alignment encouragement and manipulation. What we do know is that the Alignment did encourage and manipulate them and that they became conquistadors and eventually found themselves in direct confrontation with the Star Kingdom of Manticore. I will guarantee you, however, that no one in Nouveau Paris (outside the ranks of any Mesan operatives, at least) had any idea where the People's Republic was headed when the Legislaturalists first set out to "game the system" in the name of political power.


::soaks up this information like a flower soaking up the sun::
~*~


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: The Soul of Haven
Post by ywing14   » Sun Jun 24, 2018 7:07 pm

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That's one of the things I enjoy about the Ascendant Novels. They show a time before Haven became the Peeps. Though I wish we RFC would tell what happened to Wallace Canning since he was instrumental in the destruction of the Legislaturists.
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Re: The Soul of Haven
Post by Robert_A_Woodward   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 1:11 am

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ywing14 wrote:That's one of the things I enjoy about the Ascendant Novels. They show a time before Haven became the Peeps. Though I wish we RFC would tell what happened to Wallace Canning since he was instrumental in the destruction of the Legislaturists.


I suspect that he is dead. In Chapter 4 of _Ashes of Victory_, Pierre reflects that only 4 members remained of the original 87 members of the Committee of Public Safety (all 4 were named, Canning wasn't one of them). He also noted that it had a loss rate of well over 200 percent (I think this means that over 175 members of the CPS had been killed since _A Short Victorious War_).
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Re: The Soul of Haven
Post by ywing14   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:03 am

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Robert_A_Woodward wrote:
ywing14 wrote:That's one of the things I enjoy about the Ascendant Novels. They show a time before Haven became the Peeps. Though I wish we RFC would tell what happened to Wallace Canning since he was instrumental in the destruction of the Legislaturists.


I suspect that he is dead. In Chapter 4 of _Ashes of Victory_, Pierre reflects that only 4 members remained of the original 87 members of the Committee of Public Safety (all 4 were named, Canning wasn't one of them). He also noted that it had a loss rate of well over 200 percent (I think this means that over 175 members of the CPS had been killed since _A Short Victorious War_).


Agreed, that's how I interpreted that section of Ashes of Victory as well. I just found him to be an interesting character.
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Re: The Soul of Haven
Post by cthia   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:34 am

cthia
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My fellow forumites. Please don't begrudge me a bit of a commercial break...

This discussion has made me think of Esther McQueen. I always think of Esther when I think of the Peeps. Do forgive me, but I can't help but wonder what she would have accomplished with Haven in the place of Eloise. How would she have fared in restoring the fervor of the Old Republic?

Anyway, I was really fond of the girl and I respected her skills as well as the Peeps respected Honor's. I simply adore the way she spanked Hamish's ass at Trevor's Star with piecemeal support and no respect. She wielded what little ships she had like a sharp edged sword...

This is what you get, for phucking around with Peeps. Go home to your mother! LOL

Darn I wish Esther had lived.

.
Last edited by cthia on Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:46 am, edited 3 times in total.

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: The Soul of Haven
Post by ywing14   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:40 am

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cthia wrote:My fellow dorumites. Please don't begrudge me a bit of a commercial break...

This discussion has made me think of Esther McQueen. I always think of Esther when I think of the Peeps. Do forgive me, but I can't help but wonder what she would have accomplished with Haven in the place of Eloise. How would she have fared in restoring the fervor of the Old Republic?

Anyway, I was really fond of the girl and I respected her skills as well as the Peeps respected Honor's. I simply adore the way she spanked Hamish's ass at Trevor's Star with piecemeal support and no respect. She wielded what little ships she had like a sharp edged sword...

This is what you get, for phucking around with Peeps. Go home to your mother! :lol:

Darn I wish Esther had lived.


One of the bonuses would probably have been getting rid of commissioners so the navy would have seen more competent commanders. I give her a lot of credit, she almost saw Operation Buttercup coming. If she could have waited a little but longer she could have been the one taking out the committee instead of theisman.
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Re: The Soul of Haven
Post by Eagleeye   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 7:24 am

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ywing14 wrote:
cthia wrote:My fellow dorumites. Please don't begrudge me a bit of a commercial break...

This discussion has made me think of Esther McQueen. I always think of Esther when I think of the Peeps. Do forgive me, but I can't help but wonder what she would have accomplished with Haven in the place of Eloise. How would she have fared in restoring the fervor of the Old Republic?

Anyway, I was really fond of the girl and I respected her skills as well as the Peeps respected Honor's. I simply adore the way she spanked Hamish's ass at Trevor's Star with piecemeal support and no respect. She wielded what little ships she had like a sharp edged sword...

This is what you get, for phucking around with Peeps. Go home to your mother! :lol:

Darn I wish Esther had lived.


One of the bonuses would probably have been getting rid of commissioners so the navy would have seen more competent commanders. I give her a lot of credit, she almost saw Operation Buttercup coming. If she could have waited a little but longer she could have been the one taking out the committee instead of theisman.


True. But I wonder what kind of government she would've installed. Somehow I don't see her as a staunch Republican, but more like the leader of a military dictatorship.
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Re: The Soul of Haven
Post by cthia   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:17 am

cthia
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ywing14 wrote:
cthia wrote:My fellow dorumites. Please don't begrudge me a bit of a commercial break...

This discussion has made me think of Esther McQueen. I always think of Esther when I think of the Peeps. Do forgive me, but I can't help but wonder what she would have accomplished with Haven in the place of Eloise. How would she have fared in restoring the fervor of the Old Republic?

Anyway, I was really fond of the girl and I respected her skills as well as the Peeps respected Honor's. I simply adore the way she spanked Hamish's ass at Trevor's Star with piecemeal support and no respect. She wielded what little ships she had like a sharp edged sword...

This is what you get, for phucking around with Peeps. Go home to your mother! :lol:

Darn I wish Esther had lived.


One of the bonuses would probably have been getting rid of commissioners so the navy would have seen more competent commanders. I give her a lot of credit, she almost saw Operation Buttercup coming. If she could have waited a little but longer she could have been the one taking out the committee instead of theisman.
Eagleeye wrote:True. But I wonder what kind of government she would've installed. Somehow I don't see her as a staunch Republican, but more like the leader of a military dictatorship.


You may have a point there. It certainly gels with my thoughts that there wouldn't have been a trip to the Manticore Binary system in Haven One, unless it would have been surrender demands.

She may have gone for a truce with what she faced, but I wonder if she would have pledged to assist.

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: The Soul of Haven
Post by DrakBibliophile   » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:10 am

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Yep, IMO Esther McQueen would have attempted to make herself Empress McQueen. ;)

Eagleeye wrote:
ywing14 wrote:


One of the bonuses would probably have been getting rid of commissioners so the navy would have seen more competent commanders. I give her a lot of credit, she almost saw Operation Buttercup coming. If she could have waited a little but longer she could have been the one taking out the committee instead of theisman.


True. But I wonder what kind of government she would've installed. Somehow I don't see her as a staunch Republican, but more like the leader of a military dictatorship.
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