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Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options

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Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by cthia   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 11:53 am

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Woulda Shoulda Coulda


What were some of the options of Pavel Young and Steadholder Burdette?

I've included PeterZ's take on Pavel Young.

PeterZ wrote:Young was a worthless fool that hated Honor enough to die to kill her. His only chance at killing her was to cheat and to cheat in a duel was to die. He should have remained true to his cowardly nature and declined the challenge move to the Solarian League and worked to achieve killing Honor from afar. Instead he chose his most immediate opportunity to kill Honor by accepting the challenge and the option of cheating to kill her. He chose to die in the hope, forlorn as it was, to take her with him. What a fool.

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: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by cthia   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:03 pm

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I think Burdette shoulda sought a courtroom battle.

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: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by Joat42   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:10 pm

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cthia wrote:Woulda Shoulda Coulda
What were some of the options of Pavel Young and Steadholder Burdette?

I've included PeterZ's take on Pavel Young.

I think Burdette should have sought a courtroom battle.

Steadholder Burdette goal was to kill her, not discredit her. He also underestimated Honor (she was only a woman after all :roll:) which is why he went for single combat. Going after her in court wouldn't really further his agenda at all, which was to stop the reforms.

Pavel had some choices, but not one of them palatable. He could have run off to the Solarian League, but I doubt his father would have approved which meant disownment or cut off from the family fortune. Declining the challenge would probably end up with the same result, and regardless which option to avoid the duel he would bring dishonor on the family name.

I guess that accepting gave him a small chance to kill Honor.

---
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by Duckk   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:36 pm

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Pavel’s father was already dead by the time of the duel; he died because of a heart attack at the end of Pavel’s court martial.
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by tlb   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 1:13 pm

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cthia wrote:I think Burdette shoulda sought a courtroom battle.

Once presented with Edward Julian Martin's confession given to Church and Sword, his chance was slim to none of being found innocent. After blurting out in the Conclave Chamber:
I do not dispute the facts this harlot claims, nor do I regret any of my acts! I say only that I neither desired nor ordered Reverend Hanks' death, and that no man can prove against me, for I never even knew he would be present. But yes—yes, My Lords!—I did each and every other thing this foreign-born whore claims, and I would do them again—do them a thousand times again!—before I let an infidel fornicator and this traitor who calls himself Protector pollute and poison a world sacred to God!
He then had no chance at all. His only hope of surviving the charges was to kill Honor. However if he could not kill Honor, he would still have a less dishonorable death by fighting with the sword he had worked to master, than he would have had as the result of a court sentence.
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by tlb   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 1:27 pm

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Joat42 wrote:Pavel had some choices, but not one of them palatable. He could have run off to the Solarian League, but I doubt his father would have approved which meant disownment or cut off from the family fortune. Declining the challenge would probably end up with the same result, and regardless which option to avoid the duel he would bring dishonor on the family name.

I guess that accepting gave him a small chance to kill Honor.

Leaving aside the dead father, RFC has written in the FAQ why Pavel accepted:
Why did Pavel Young accept the duel? May 2009

Pavel, the political figure, had no choice. Had he not accepted, he would no longer have been a political figure... period. So, yes, he could have refused, but only at the price of giving up everything he felt he had left in life. If you'll notice, he didn't exactly cover himself in steely-nerved glory when the moment came, and that was largely because his political ambition (i.e., hunger for power) had gotten him into a situation he lacked the intestinal fortitude to face up to. And remember also that he had agreed to a protocol in which he only had to face a single shot from Honor. Yes, as the moment loomed large before him he became more and more aware of his own mortality; at the moment he actually accepted her challenge, the instinctive need to preserve his position of power (and to avoid a situation in which no one in "society" would ever so much as acknowledge his existence once again) overpowered his fear that she would be able to kill him with that one shot. In the event, his nerve snapped, leading to his ignominious demise.

As for why none of Paul's family members or HH's friends challenged Denver, there were two reasons. (1) No one knew where to find him until Georgia slipped the word to Ramirez and McKeon through an intermediary, so no one could challenge him, and (2) Would you really want to be the person who challenged and killed him instead of leaving him for Honor to deal with?

As to why he did not flee to the Solarian League: doing that would have cut himself off from his source of wealth and power. Surely some of that wealth could have transferred also, but it would leave his brother with the power and the embarrassment of a disgraced relation; since the charge made by Honor when challenging Denver was well known in society.
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by Theemile   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 1:49 pm

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Joat42 wrote:
cthia wrote:Woulda Shoulda Coulda
What were some of the options of Pavel Young and Steadholder Burdette?

I've included PeterZ's take on Pavel Young.

I think Burdette should have sought a courtroom battle.

Steadholder Burdette goal was to kill her, not discredit her. He also underestimated Honor (she was only a woman after all :roll:) which is why he went for single combat. Going after her in court wouldn't really further his agenda at all, which was to stop the reforms.

Pavel had some choices, but not one of them palatable. He could have run off to the Solarian League, but I doubt his father would have approved which meant disownment or cut off from the family fortune. Declining the challenge would probably end up with the same result, and regardless which option to avoid the duel he would bring dishonor on the family name.

I guess that accepting gave him a small chance to kill Honor.


Killing Honor was a secondary goal - Burdette was being charged in a conspiracy which killed hundreds, including the head of the church. Burdette did it to discredit the Protector, by discrediting Honor. He was given 2 choices, face a trial, which he was certain to lose, or the ancient trial by combat - in an art in which he was universally considered the 2nd best in the world at, vrs someone with less than 2 years of education and little competitive experience. Add in his cultural bias against women in combat or athletics, and the Trial looked like a sure thing.

Winning would remove Honor from the table completely, discredit the Protector and limit his power, and leave no question in anyone's mind of who actually in charge of Grayson's future, legal charges be damned.

What he didn't count on was Honor's superior physique and conditioning across the board, her honed predator's instinct, and the fact that this was not a match scored for points. Honor had killed before and knew what fancy swordsmanship for style had no place in the killing arena - and she took the first attack.
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 2:10 pm

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Duckk wrote:Pavel’s father was already dead by the time of the duel; he died because of a heart attack at the end of Pavel’s court martial.
Yep. So Pavel was already Lord North Hollow, and had access to the North Hollow blackmail files.

So his best action would have been to not hire a professional duelist to kill Paul Tankersly in a fit of petty revenge.

Yeah, its going to take a while to put the court martial behind him, but that's true whether or not he has Honor's lover killed. With his position and political leverage getting kicked out of the Navy would become mostly irrelevant in a decade or so - and he can have a long and depraved life as a blackmailing power broker. And continue to be a thorn in Honor's side in ways that won't give her justification to demand satisfaction on the dueling ground.


But once he'd agreed, hell once he'd been challenged, to the duel he had no decent options. Once he knew Honor was trying to challenge him he should have taken a vacation out of the Star Kingdom, or at least hunkered down where nobody to get to him.
Any blow-back from ducking a challenge should be far less than refusing one, especially if he can provide an acceptable fig-leaf (for example claiming ill and receiving home treatment. I'm sure he can find/blackmail a doctor to falsely corroborate that)

But he wasn't willing to step back from personal participation in the House of Lords even to eliminate the chance of running into Honor and being challenged.
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by Joat42   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 2:57 pm

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Duckk wrote:Pavel’s father was already dead by the time of the duel; he died because of a heart attack at the end of Pavel’s court martial.

Ah, that's true! Well, that kind of scuppers my reasoning. :(

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Pavel Young's and Lord Burdette's options
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Nov 06, 2020 3:00 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:But once he'd agreed, hell once he'd been challenged, to the duel he had no decent options. Once he knew Honor was trying to challenge him he should have taken a vacation out of the Star Kingdom, or at least hunkered down where nobody to get to him.
Any blow-back from ducking a challenge should be far less than refusing one, especially if he can provide an acceptable fig-leaf (for example claiming ill and receiving home treatment. I'm sure he can find/blackmail a doctor to falsely corroborate that)

But he wasn't willing to step back from personal participation in the House of Lords even to eliminate the chance of running into Honor and being challenged.


There was another option, even after (reluctantly) accepting the challenge: have Honor killed. Everyone would suspect him, but so long as no one could prove it, at worst he'd remain a discredited figure. As said above, he could make a comeback in a few years.

Coming back from death is a little more difficult.

He should have considered that after she killed Denver Summervale but before she could have issued the challenge to him. He was already hiding from her and he knew that couldn't continue.

Or was he already trying that, just not having succeeded yet? Wasn't there an attempt on her life in a restaurant, while she was telling the story of how an ancestor of hers had solved the Great Celery Theft Mystery?
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