cthia wrote:I penned it as the exact opposite upstream. It was a kidnapping with a contingency plan to kill. Take her alive if you can, kill her if you can't.
Understood and agreed. Clearly a decapitation strike has some value, so
if they have a motive for a kidnapping and manage to get close enough, a valid fallback plan would be indeed to assassinate her.
The problem I have is that "if."
She is more valuable to the MA alive. Again, Alphas are smarter than the average bear. They see the real value in such a highly valued commodity as Beth. She is unarguably the most valuable person in the Honorverse. Why waste such a valuable commodity.
But you still continue to treat them as average. They are not.
No, I don't. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am ascribing to them intelligence and the ability to think rationally on the pros and cons of kidnapping the Empress. And in my conclusion, the cons outweigh the pros by an incredibly large margin.
I'm not going to rehash the discussion, but I will say what that conclusion was. Kidnapping can have three outcomes: hostage is rescued, hostage is freed by captors or hostage dies by the hands of the captors. The first has no upside for the captors; the third is a consolation prize and definitely not the main objective, because an assassination is easier than a kidnapping. That left the negotiation of what each side gave up, and the way I understood it, the outcome was that neither side would trust the other to keep their word, which meant that it was unenforceable anyway.
The Alignment attempted to assassinate Queen Berry on principle. Although it could have been to eliminate a champion and refuge for slaves which could be argued as a political slant. But I don't think it had much at all to do with politics. Their other assassinations were to eliminate loose ends.
It wasn't on principle. That was a decapitation strike on the Kingdom of Torch, which was a risk on two factors: it hosted the Audubon Ballroom fighters and gave them legitimacy with a
de jure military force, and it was occupying the Congo System, which we know to be the terminus of a warp bridge that connects to The Twins, which connects to Felix. And Operation Rat Poison wasn't targetting Queen Berry alone: the entire leadership of Torch was the target.
But why kill the MVP in the Honorverse if you can capture her and then pimp her out to help right the train that went off the rails by buying yourself some time forcing a treaty.
Replied above: both parties were sure the other side was going to break said treaty, with little downside when doing so. Therefore, the value of that treaty is the same as the value of a blank sheet of paper. I'm not going to rehash the arguments that led to this conclusion, I'm stating that was the conclusion and you've failed to convince me otherwise. And therefore, since the value of the operation is negligible, zero, or even negative, it would make no sense to launch it in the first place.
On the contrary, I think that only a bumbling idiot like Ransom would choose to use such a valuable captured commodity as roadkill.
That is certainly true, because it incensed the population in two systems. It would have been better to keep her alive but off the board, as a demoralising effect. So the MAlign kidnapping Beth but
not offering to return her until their work was done elsewhere could have some value. I'd need to think about it.