Honor Harrington/Characters

Well, as a Long Runner series that indeed has Loads and Loads of Characters, it would be really nice to have at least some guide about them. It really helps that David Weber went for a right thing and have his characters nicely broken into several distinctive Cast Herds. Heavy spoilers ahead, you are warned.

Manticorans
==, ==

The title character of the series and the one of the most prodigious military and political figures of her time. Born to an upper middle class family (and coming from the literally centuries long lineage of biologists and physicians), she went for a rather nontraditional (for her clan, at least) occupation and managed to obtain a lot of fancy and important-sounding additions to her name through the effort, skill and some rather evident Author Appeal. The price she had to pay for this was, ahem, considerable. Has accumulated so much seniority since the beginning of the series that she got somewhat sidelined in the recent series of spinoffs, having became the most senior active military officer on Manticore.


 * The Ace: A rare case of The Ace being the protagonist.
 * Action Mom: As a consequence of.
 * Annoying Laugh: Honor struggles not to laugh at times because she hates the way she sounds.
 * Badass
 * Beware the Nice Ones: More like carefully controlled Heroic Sociopath tendencies. She knows of them and usually suppresses them well, but you really don't want to be the one to provoke her into loosening that grip.
 * Blessed with Suck: Due to her heritage (descended from colonists that were genetically enhanced to thrive on Sphinx, with it's somewhat-higher-than-Earth gravity and harsh climate), she has impressive strength and endurance, combined with lightning fast reflexes, at the cost of needing to consume truly ridiculous amounts of food. This becomes a problem when she is limited to what would normally be considered normal daily rations when  and nearly starves to death.
 * But Not Too Foreign: You gotta be, when your mother's full family name is Benton-Ramirez y Chou Harrington.
 * The Captain: Sadly, not any more. Well, on the paper she still is, but it's a purely ceremonial command.
 * Catch Phrase: "Let's be about it." Inherited from Captain Bachfisch and passed down to many of her subordinates.
 * Phrase Catcher: Old friends have a habit of cheerfully saying it around or directly to her.
 * Crazy Prepared: Taking lessons in Grayson-style fencing because an obscure bit of legislation grants any Grayson steadholder the option of a Trial by Combat against the Protector's degrees, with Honor acting as the Protector's champion.
 * Cultured Warrior: Her maternal uncle is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (apparently, these guys prospered in the two millennia since now), and, finding a similar tastes in his niece, supplies her with various cool stuff from his favorite XIX-XX centuries. Like books and guns.
 * Cursed with Awesome: Did you read the bit of the Blessed with Suck entry where she has to consume a lot of food to sustain herself? Well, this means that she can eat as much of anything she wants. She is known for her ability to give the Cookie Monster an inferiority complex and not add a millimeter to her waistline.
 * Also, she's resistant to regenerative medical techniques, meaning that severe injuries are permanent. Cue awesome cybernetic replacements.
 * Determinator: To Victor Cachat's level, no less.
 * : Yawata Crossing, Unusual in that it happens much later into the story than commonly seen, but then, it underscores a major change in the series' direction.
 * Doom Magnet: At the very least, she tends to draw truly psychopathic people (Pavel Young, Steadholder Burdette, Cordelia Ransom) as opponents.
 * Eagle Squadron: Aside from her Manticoran titles and ranks she is an admiral and steadholder in Grayson.
 * The Empath: Not just through the link to Nimitz -- her genetic mod had one minor tweak that sometimes let its carriers to have a weak, but pronounced empathic sense that she was able to develop thanks to her adoption bond.
 * Nimitz explains to Bright Water clan that she no longer needs him to do it; the ability is "unlocked", she just needs to improve it.
 * Even The Girls Want Her: Just ask Emily Alexander for her opinion.
 * Eyepatch of Power
 * Expy: Horatio Nelson. She even has the missing (and cybernetically replaced) eye and arm to prove it.
 * Also Horatio Hornblower In Enemy Hands and Echoes of Honor are basically a retelling of CS Forester's Flying Colours In Space.
 * Four-Star Badass: She can beat you up in hand-to-hand combat, shoot you in a duel or utterly devastate your fleet in space.
 * Genius Bruiser: For all her intellect, tactical and strategic abilities she's still VERY good when push comes to shove -- after all, being a 6'5" Heavyworlder with an 8th degree black belt in one of the most violent martial arts in the Galaxy means a lot...
 * Girliness Upgrade: In book 1, she's a buzz-cut tomboy who doubts her femininity thanks to an awkward and painful adolescence. In book 3, she starts growing out her hair until it finally reaches waist-length in book 7, starts wearing make up, and engages in her first real romantic love (with a major boost to her feminine self-esteem). She also adapts to Grayson dresses after a lifetime of wearing trousers, as Manticore fashion dictates.
 * Hollywood Cyborg: Due to her body rejecting regen, Honor is forced to take mechanical replacements for any parts she loses. Only her replacement facial nerves really fail to work/look as good as new, and her replacement eye and arm end up being a case of We Can Rebuild Him.
 * It's Personal: After the events of Mission of Honor, the war has become very personal for Honor.
 * Kindhearted Treecat Lover
 * Lady of War: As with most of the female warriors in the series -- there are few who don't possess an aura of grace and dignity.
 * Law of Inverse Fertility:
 * Mama Bear: If you got the idea to threaten anything or anybody she feels responsible for... Just don't, okay?
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Not excessively, but Meyerdahl Beta genetic mod still seems a real treasure trove of unintended, but generally beneficent abilities with only the drawback of a heavy metabolism.
 * Non-Idle Rich: Becomes a multi-billionaire by mid-series.
 * One of the Boys: How she thought of herself before finally finding love with.
 * Precision F-Strike: If Honor swears, things are really bad.
 * Rags to Riches: Her parents are both famous doctors, so she wasn't impoverished, but she goes from being a middle-class commoner to one of the wealthiest and most powerful nobles of the Star Kingdom and Grayson.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: She's now in her 60s and just stopped looking like a teenager...
 * Red Baron: Nicknamed The Salamander by the journalists for consistently being where the flames are hottest (never mind that she'd rather keep her people safe, thankyouverymuch).
 * Her people, on the other hand, call her just The Old Lady.
 * Tranquil Fury: When Honor gets angry she doesn't waste energy on things that don't kill the targets of her anger.
 * It's implied that she's inherited it from her father.
 * Cardones mentions in Honor Among Enemies that it's a bad sign when she turns calm and conversational manner while angry.
 * Try to Fit That on A Business Card: Read the title to this section, ye mighty, and DESPAIR!
 * What You Are in the Dark:
 * The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask: Much Purple Prose on the way she keeps her emotions behind a cool, professional demeanor.
 * The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask: Much Purple Prose on the way she keeps her emotions behind a cool, professional demeanor.

Introduced as Honor's Executive Officer in On Basilisk Station, he continues as a close friend and supporter throughout the series


 * Number Two: Honor's Executive Officer in the first book, often a senior subordinate or supporter afterwards.
 * The Resenter: In On Basilisk station, he has trouble working with Honor because he resents her being given command of Fearless instead of him. He gets over it by the end of the book.
 * The Resenter: In On Basilisk station, he has trouble working with Honor because he resents her being given command of Fearless instead of him. He gets over it by the end of the book.

Hamish Alexander is a renowned officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy and a member of the aristocracy. He is an excellent tactician and strategist, and also was the leading voice of the traditionalist school of military tactics in the RMN, which advocated the continuing value of conventional naval tactics in spite of the technological breakthroughs the Manties' R&D had made. During his career he has commanded Home Fleet, Sixth Fleet, and Eighth Fleet and is currently the First Lord of the Admiralty. He is married to Emily Alexander, a triplegic ex-actress and probably one of the shrewdest minds in the Kingdom. Later,

"Admiral White Haven: (speaking to Honor) But that brutal, sweaty hand-to-hand business of yours isn't my style at all. Oh no -- self-defense is your forte, not mine. If we should ever happen to encounter a mugger who somehow penetrates the protection of those three Rottweilers of yours, I'll be perfectly happy to hold your coat while you mop up the pavement with him. Heck, I'll even buy you a bonbon and a cup of hot chocolate afterward."
 * The Brigadier: The most illustrious and distinguished commander of his generation, and he went on to become Honor's mentor too.
 * The Chessmaster: Mostly in military matters. He's a decent politician, but just don't have his brother's flair.
 * Happily Married:
 * Hero of Another Story: Many of the earlier books portray him commanding larger fleet actions against the Havenites while Honor was off having her adventures in various far flung corners of the galaxy. He has even brought The Cavalry on more than one occasion.
 * Non-Action Guy: Relatively. He's seen plenty of action, it's just that, compared to insane commando feats of other characters, he did it mostly from the command deck.
 * An his favorite sport was (and is) soccer, not martial arts.


 * Officer and a Gentleman: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * : Even if Manticoran laws wouldn't allow it (which they did), they both were Grayson citizens as well.
 * Having one's brother as the Prime Minister and the Queen as a good personal friend helps deal with some of the legal snarls, as well.

== ==

Queen Elizabeth III is the current ruling monarch of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. She ascended to the throne in 1883 PD (3986 AD), seventeen years prior to the events of On Basilisk Station. Unlike many modern monarchs, the Manticoran Constitution gives her some limited actual executive power. She is often described as being both straightforward and honourable. Unfortunately, she holds grudges for so long that they die of old age; then she has them stuffed and mounted. She also has a hatred of the (People's) Republic of Haven that borders on fanaticism. Which isn't too surprising when you consider that the People's Republic was responsible for the assassination of her father.


 * Berserk Button: Haven, and justifiably so.
 * Determinator: Treecat name: "Soul of Steel." In her case, this is often portrayed as a bad thing, since her aversion to compromise and tendency towards an explosive temper are part of what
 * The High Queen: She does a good job at it despite her legendary temper.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Unfortunately, when Baron High Ridge and the Opposition cross her in the wake of, she makes the mistake of openly showing her mortal enmity towards them and throwing them into an Enemy Mine scenario against her that keeps their natural ideological differences from tearing them apart.
 * Precision F-Strike: Refers to the mess in New Tuscany caused by Solly Admiral Byng's idiocy as a "cluster fuck".
 * Revenge Before Reason: Justified or not, she is not rational when it comes to Haven. On a smaller scale, she is quoted as "holding grudges until they die of old age, then having them stuffed and mounted on the wall."
 * Rousing Speech: An epic one given to the entire Star Kingdom after, where she declares that despite their recent hardships, they will prevail, and they will be victorious in their war against
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: As noted above, the Manticoran Constitution gives the Crown rather broad powers -- although not as broad as on Grayson.
 * Royally Screwed-Up: She has her issues.
 * Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: She hates Haven with some reason but long after the regimes that provoked it are gone, and can't quite believe that Pritchart's government really wants peace. It doesn't help that the new government itself renewed hostilities when negotiations were not going anywhere, though they were not without some justification. Even there Elizabeth could have told that there was some change as the new regime at least followed The Laws and Customs of War unlike the Revolutionaries.
 * The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask: In her young years she had it hard. It explains a lot about her later somewhat hardass character.
 * The Treecats call her Soul of Steel.
 * Try to Fit That on A Business Card: With all those titles? You're going to need a bigger card.

Michelle Henke is an officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy, a titled peer of the Manticoran aristocracy and Queen Elizabeth III's first cousin through their mutual grandmother. Mike was Honor Harrington's roommate at the Saganami Naval Academy and helped her pass higher-dimensional mathematics. She was first introduced as Honor's executive officer on the battlecruiser Nike. Later, She became Countess Gold Peak when her father, Earl Gold Peak, and her older brother, Calvin, are killed during the Peep/Masadan assassination attempt on Protector Benjamin and Queen Elizabeth. Recently she was a Rear Admiral assigned to Eighth Fleet as the commander of the 81st Battlecruiser Squadron when her flagship was damaged and captured at the Battle of Solon. She was later released as President Pritchart's messenger to Queen Elizabeth. Since then she was assigned to the Talbott Quadrant where her actions have


 * Black Best Friend
 * The Captain
 * Everyone Went to School Together: her and Honor at least.
 * Justified: It is no more remarkable that her and Honor are both graduates of Saganami Island than it is that two British career military officers are both graduates of Sandhurst, and for the same reason.
 * Lady of War
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: Queen's first cousin and fifth in line to the throne.
 * They Call Me Mister Tibbs: Prefers to be called "Admiral Henke" or "ma'am" rather than her noble title or "milady".

A generally sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. The eldest son of Lord Dimitri Young, Tenth Earl of North Hollow, he is extremely arrogant due to his exalted birth, family fortune and political power, not to mention a cruel individual and a pathological womanizer who can not take "no" for an answer. He has been known to resort to violence when his sexual advances are rejected; he raped the pilot of his father's personal yacht when he was only sixteen and his actions were covered by his father. At Saganami Naval Academy he tried to do the same to Honor Harrington after she rebuffed his public advances, and she beat the holy living hell out of him. This lead to a bitter feud with Honor in which he tried to sabotage her career on numerous occasions, culminating in his attempts in On Basilisk Station to abandon her on Basilisk Station, only to have it backfire on him. Though it was public knowledge that he attempted to undermine her command at Basilisk, his father's influence was able to keep him on active service and he was later assigned to the same station as Honor. Though technically senior to her in rank, Honor's status as the Flag Captain for the squadron commanding officer put her in a position of tactical authority. When he withdrew his ship over the protests and outrage of his own crew in the face of a large Havenite task force, and against Honor's direct orders, court-martial charges which would sentence him to death were initiated. His extremely influential father managed to save him from the death penalty, but he was stripped of all rank and titles and dishonorably discharged from the Navy. Afterward, he inherited the title of Earl of North Hollow and


 * Aristocrats Are Evil: Such a posterboy of this trope, that he is one of the reasons why there were a good ten books before there was a conservative aristocrat who wasn't an utter twit. That was how sour the taste he left behind was.
 * He also highlighted the corruption of several other nobles who rose to his defense for partisan reasons.
 * Attempted Rape: Tries to do it to Honor. Regrets it big time.
 * Not as much regrets as blames Honor for it. Too pigheaded to regret anything, actually.
 * Bad Boss: Both as a captain, and even worse as an Earl.
 * Beard of Evil: Cultivates a goatee, partly to hide a double chin.
 * Blackmail: Had access to his father's dirt on a number of politicians and others. Used it to force Georgia Sakristos to be his sexual plaything and to get Baron High Ridge to back him in Lords.
 * Dirty Coward: His greatest defining trait, rivaled only by his lack of regard for other human beings.
 * Everyone Went to School Together: Honor desperately wishes he had grown up in another system, much less that he hadn't gone to school with her, but unfortunately there's only one Manticoran Naval Academy.
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He can't conceive of the notion that anyone who favors Honor isn't receiving favors from her.
 * Genre Savvy: Stupid or not, he's rather cunning in a gutter-scum sort of way; when he tries to rape Honor, he slipped Nimitz a mickey because he knew what a pissed-off treecat could do. (Of course, he didn't know what Honor could do.)
 * He is also perfectly aware that war with Haven is inevitable, and uses his influence to ensure that the declaration of war goes through while the Havenites are still reeling from their recent coup. He deliberately defies his own political party in Parliament to do this, too -- because he knows that the staggeringly large pile of political markers he will be owed for breaking the Parliamentary deadlock in the Crown Loyalists' favor on the declarations issue can be called in to indirectly help catapult him to the leadership of the political party he just broke ranks with.
 * I Surrender, Suckers: Tried to do this, but failed miserably, which lead to...
 * Karmic Death: It's always dangerous to push one's luck too far. Unfortunately (for him), he was too dumb to understand that.
 * The Neidermeyer
 * Nonuniform Uniform: His dress uniform was noticeably better tailored than others but still within regs. (This is a classic sign of the Upper Class Twit in the Honorverse, though it's subverted a couple of times by heroes who do the same.)
 * The Sociopath: Specifically described as regarding others as cardboard cutouts in his universe.
 * The Starscream: When he's forced to turn to politics, he shows signs of becoming this to Baron High Ridge.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Evil example.
 * Upper Class Twit: Much of his evilness stemmed from his truly monumental stupidity. There was a lot of deeds to which his much more intelligent Magnificent Bastards of a father and wife, or somewhat less magnificent, but still quite talented bastard of a brother would've never resorted to, if only for their potential to backfire.


 * A Father To His Men: Not in an affectionate way to say the least but he does feel an obligation to his employees.
 * Berserk Button: He detests pirates and slavers and we find out later that he is a fervent supporter of the abolitionist cause.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Daddy's Girl: One of his few soft spots is his daughter Stacy.
 * I Owe You My Life: Reconciles with Harrington after she saves his and his daughter's life.
 * Jerk With A Heart Of Gold: No question he is a Jerk. But he has redeeming qualities.
 * Merchant Prince
 * Nice To The Waiter: While he is often in a bad mood he makes a point not to take it out on servants and apologizes to them if he ever does.
 * Non Idle Rich
 * Nouveau Riche
 * Papa Wolf: Both to his daughter and his employees.
 * Uriah Gambit: Subverted. He wasn't trying to get Honor killed. He just had a nasty job he wanted done and it might as well be done by a naval officer he disliked especially as she was superbly qualified.

Part of the famous Spook Duo, Zilwicki is also a one more proof that appearances can be deceiving. A short, but extremely stocky and broad man, he's so extravagantly muscled that it's visible even when he's in uniform, with comparisons to dwarven kings routinely made in-universe. He is, nevertheless, one of the finest intelligence agents in The Empire -- and hotly contests the position of the best hacker in the series with Chief Harkness. While very serious and negative, even dour man, he somehow struck the odd friendship with Victor Cachat (even if they're technically still enemies), and is hardly seen apart from him, making their books a sort of buddy cop subseries.


 * Badass Creed: "FROM THE HIGHLANDS!"
 * Buddy Cop Show: Any book where he appears, except in his first cameo several books before he becomes a main character, -- Cachat is always somewhere near.
 * Casual Danger Dialogue: While grappling with a would-be Super Soldier, he takes the time to explain to his opponent that he has him in a hold called the Full Nelson, which has long since been outlawed in competitive wrestling tournaments, and that he is about to demonstrate why the hold was banned.
 * Cultured Warrior: He's an engineer, after all, it's on his job description.
 * When talking with Cathy for the first time, he admits that at first he got into reading the classics of literature to show up the upper class twits in Manticoran society, but later learned to appreciate them for their own merit.
 * Deus Exit Machina: An out-system mission puts him out of the way for much of Crown of Slaves.
 * Genius Bruiser: Three times Manticoran Graeco-Roman wrestling champion, able to kill a Super Soldier with bare hands (by the full nelson, technically, which amply demonstrates his strength and brawling skills). Excellent spy and best information security specialist in the series.
 * Knowledge Broker: Retired when the Second Janacek Admiralty beached him, and started private intelligence business, later moving to being full-time Audubon Ballroom spymaster due to his girlfriend's allegiances.
 * Large Ham: Despite all his dourness he still finds the time to chew the scenery properly. The scene where he delivered his Badass Creed is unforgettable.
 * Odd Couple: With Cachat, naturally.
 * Overt Operative: By this time everybody and their dog knows him . It doesn't hinder him much.
 * Papa Wolf: Don't mess with his daughters. If you do, you, and the whole organization you serve, will find a very gruesome death but only after being completely discredited, and providing ample evidence of institutionalized incompetence.
 * Violent Glaswegian: Gryphon is very similar to Scotland in this universe, and while his temper isn't very short, it's better not to test it.

James "Mac" MacGuiness is Honor's Steward (and Major Domo while on Grayson). Retired following Honor's "execution" but retook the post when Honor turned up alive (apparently without re-enlisting). Something of an honorary father figure to Honor, who regularly refers to him (like her Armsmen) as one of her "Keepers".


 * Battle Butler - More butler than battler, but he is a lifetime naval man.

Allison Harrington is a genetic surgeon and the mother of Honor Harrington, Alfred Harrington's wife. She emigrated to the Star Kingdom from the libertine planet of Beowulf, which, she felt, has started becoming too conformist and set in its liberal-nonconformist ways. Ironically, she comes from the very top of that society, as she is a scion of not one, but THREE of the most illustrious and distinguished families of Beowulf, one of the first and, arguably, most developed of original Earth colonies. Among her ancestors were numerous illustrious biomedical researchers, some of whom were even the signatories of the Cherwell convention, a famous anti-slavery treaty, which was one of the most plot-important things as of late.


 * Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Allison is certainly one of these.
 * Blithe Spirit: Enjoys shocking her more strait-laced countrymen. Let alone what happens on Grayson... She even tweaks the nose of her libertine Beowulf by being unusually conservative (she's strictly monogamous, which isn't the norm there).
 * Happily Married: For well over fifty years.
 * Hot Mom: Men want her. Women want (to be) her. Honor feels she can't compete.
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Allison is extremely short, at slightly over two thirds Honor's height. Her husband, meanwhile, is three heads taller at 6'4".
 * I Want Grandkids: To the point of saying she'll bring semen vials to her next meeting with a boyfriend of Honor's.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Closer to one hundred, biologically late twenties.
 * You Fail Your Medical Boards Forever: Allison Harrington is the size of an elementary schoolgirl and her second generation prolong lengthens her pregnancies to nearly a year. Her children have genetic modifications that significantly increase their required food intake. Despite twin pregnancies being inherently high-risk for normal size women, she nevertheless decides to gestate her unadapted children on the Death World of Grayson when the Honorverse has working artificial wombs. Somewhat justified by the fact that having children naturally is something of a honor point for the First Families on Beowulf, so, as a scion of not one but three of such families, Allison, being Beowulfan through and through, just couldn't go for the easy way, but it still feels rather irresponsible. Possibly not an issue due to further medical technology making it far safer, but that's not discussed

Honor's father, one more in the almost endless line of biologist and physician Harringtons, Alfred is a no less famous in medicine than his wife, but doesn't have the same impact on the story. A top-notch neurosurgeon, his main occupation in the series seems to be patching Honor up after her more demanding adventures and providing some domestic air for the family with his cooking.


 * Big Guy: At 194 cm he's one of the biggest characters in the series.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: It's implied that Honor's Heroic Sociopath tendencies came from his side.
 * Happily Married: You bet!
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Allison is one of the shortest characters.
 * Last of His Kind:
 * The Medic: Spent almost half a century at the Bassingford Medical Center -- the main Manticore's military hospital -- until his retirement as Surgeon Captain. He also got to patch his girl up both times she needed it.
 * Real Men Wear Pink
 * Supreme Chef: Has a friendly rivalry with a Harrington House chief cook, alternating in oner-upping each other.

Petty Officer Harkness was first introduced when Honor asked for any members of the crew who might be familiar with smuggling tricks, no questions asked. One of her older crew members, his career had stalled due to the fact that, while he is one of the best at what he does, what he does also includes smuggling goods on board ship and picking fights with marines. The latter consider his hostility to be a show of respect, not without reason. He later sorta "reforms" and gets his career back on track, becoming in essence a Scotty's staff engineer, despite still being a warrant officer -- he just happens to be a genius grav tech and one of the two best hackers in the whole franchise.


 * Almighty Janitor: Nobody ever takes him for anything more than a battered old working-class noncom, but behind the unremarkable exterior lurks the mind of a hacking genius clever enough to . This comes in extremely handy in In Enemy Hands.
 * A Father to His Men: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, only as an NCO.
 * Boisterous Bruiser: Not that he is a fan of boasting, really, but he's a cheerful enough guy to lighten the mood rather often.
 * He fulfills the role perfectly in Honor Among Enemies when he is helping Aubrey Wanderman take a level in badass.
 * Dating Catwoman: He married a Marine, when previously he had a pathological inability to walk by a Marine without starting a brawl.
 * Friendly Enemy: Him and most Marines before . They take his tendency to brawl with them to be a compliment.
 * Genius Bruiser: He's really a brilliant engineer and has an instinctive knack for all things technical, but his idea of "fun" really gets into an odds with the law, or at least the other people's teeth anyway.
 * Happily Married: Eventually, to a powerful woman who seems able to control his darker side enough to get his career moving again.
 * He still seems to be happy to stick to a specialist side, flatly refusing a commission once.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: He meets Scotty Tremaine in his role as advisor-who-knows-about-smuggling-no-questions-asked and they got along so well that he starts manipulating crew listings to ensure they are both stationed aboard the same vessel.
 * This thing goes for more than twenty years already.
 * It's no longer necessary; the Navy's Bureau of Personnel gave up on even trying to separate them. And, given that Scotty is now a Captain Of The List, and can pick whoever e damn well pleases for his personal staff, the point is even more moot.
 * There's also that promising to guarantee that Harkness would always be assigned together with Tremaine is the only way the Bureau of Personnel could get Harkness to promise to stop hacking their personnel assignment computer.
 * In Love with Your Carnage: His hookup with Sergeant Major Iris Babcock happened exactly because the chief (a top-notch brawler himself) was utterly dumbstruck by her grace and effectiveness in a fight.
 * Informed Ability: Sees surprisingly little close combat for a character who is introduced as a bruiser.
 * The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: He also isn't shown smuggling anything.
 * Of course he isn't. There are no smugglers in the Royal Manticoran Navy.
 * Interservice Rivalry: Against marines.
 * Lovable Rogue: Especially in his early smuggling, gambling, bootlegging, Marine-bashing days, you really couldn't help but cheer for the guy.
 * Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught
 * Papa Wolf: When somebody picks on a more vulnerable member of the crew, he is usually involved in straightening it out. More often by taking the v-word out of the equation than by direct action.
 * Playful Hacker: One of the top four computer wizards in the books (along with Anton Zilwicki, Ruth Winton, and Shannon Foraker).
 * Recruiting the Criminal: His introduction and arguably how he started to being reformed.
 * Sergeant Rock: Would've be a textbook example if not for his troubles with authorities early on.

A longtime Honor's student and protege, Scotty, as he is universally known, is a recurring secondary character and in many ways, a reader's stand-in. Introduced in the very first novel of the series, On Basilisk Station, as an extremely green Ensign Newbie fresh out of Saganami Island, he then followed Honor wherever she went.

""He glanced for just a moment at Horace Harkness' profile and felt an obscure, irrational flicker of reassurance. Harkness' elemental solidity, his unflappable sense of who and what he was, was like a touchstone. It was a reminder of all the challenges Tremaine had met and surmounted in the twenty T-years since he'd first set eyes on that battered, competent face, and in the wake of finding himself cast in the role of Juggernaut, Scotty Tremaine took a warm and very human comfort from it.""
 * Ace Pilot: His strongest point. Scotty excels in either piloting and managing everything that flies and is often frustrated when reassigned out of this field, like in In Enemy Hands where he's Honor's electronic warfare officer, or in Mission of Honor where he commands a heavy cruiser squadron -- he really hoped to get himself a carrier.
 * Action Survivor: He's been in the most deadly hellholes of the galaxy, seen the most terrible atrocities of his time, fought in the largest battle in Humanity's history, -- and came back alive.
 * BFG: Early in his career he showed a real obsession with the heavy firepower, being the only cadet in his class (except Marines) who qualified with plasma rifle -- a heavy squad support weapon almost as long as he's tall.
 * Bishounen: Well, when you and your best friend are called "Beauty and the Beast", and the said friend is  Horace Harkness -- it says a lot.
 * Ensign Newbie: In the first novel. He was bright and talented, but oh so green...
 * Heterosexual Life Partner: To Chief Harkness, obviously.


 * Intergenerational Friendship: Chief Harkness is thirty years older.
 * Morality Pet: It's because of him and Iris Babcock Chief Harkness "reformed" as much as he did.
 * He's also the reason that.
 * Shout-Out: Guess.
 * The Watson: In the first several books his inexperience was used as a way to cram several of Weber's infamous Infodumps into the story.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Delivered the one to Honor in Honor of the Queen when she was ready to shoot the Masadan commander on the spot, thus saving her career.

First introduced as Honor's sparring partner, Babcock is a veteran marine. Having received first-generation prolong, she appears to be in late middle age. Her unarmed combat skills put Honor to shame at first but the latter learns quickly.


 * Badass: She drop-kicks a woman who is trying to pull a rifle out of her hands, without either combatant letting go of the rifle.
 * Happily Married: Eventually
 * Hot Amazon: A classic example, her amazon-ness is what makes her hot.
 * The Squadette: Often fulfills this role, as the only named woman in a team of marines if not the only actual woman.

First appearing as a Major and the commander of the HMS Fearless' marine detachment in The Honor of the Queen. He led the assault on Blackbird Base and saved Honor from destroying her career by killing the base commander once she learned of the atrocity he'd presided over. Later, he becomes a colonel and serves again as the CO of Honor's marines on the HMS Nike and was too late to prevent. He later becomes Brigadier General of the San Martin occupation forces.

""'I only said I wouldn't kill you, ,' the colonel whispered almost lovingly. 'I never said I wouldn't hurt you.'""
 * Badass Spaniard: San Martin is one of the few worlds that doesn't speak English as its primary language. His pleasant accent is commented on a few times in narration.
 * Beware the Nice Ones


 * The Big Guy: Type 2, Gentle Giant -- except where his hatred of Haven is concerned.
 * Heavyworlder: Definitely the huge type. Only 182 cm tall, but twice as wide as most solidly built men, with arms as beefy as some people's thighs.
 * Immigrant Patriotism: Though he does have bit of skepticism about hereditary nobility.
 * Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique
 * You Killed My Father: One of many reasons to hate Haven, since his father was lost, fighting heroically to stop Haven from conquering their homeworld.

Mike's new flag lieutenant after. One of the recent wave of the non-twit sympathetic aristocratic characters like Oversteegen and Terekhov.


 * Aristocrats Are Evil: Quite averted, but knowing that a woman he was interested in strongly held this viewpoint was part of the reason he made a point of not telling her that one of his cousins is  Of course, another reason was that he found the common Aristocrat practice of name-dropping powerful relatives to be distasteful.
 * Fun with Acronyms
 * Gender Blender Nickname
 * Officer and a Gentleman
 * Redheaded Hero


 * Everything's Better with Princesses
 * Playful Hacker
 * Running Gag: Her total disinterest in history and impressive knowledge of contemporary politics always leads to amusing bloopers when she confuses historical characters (or even concepts, like chutzpah) with minor modern politicians.
 * Running Gag: Her total disinterest in history and impressive knowledge of contemporary politics always leads to amusing bloopers when she confuses historical characters (or even concepts, like chutzpah) with minor modern politicians.

9th Baron of High Ridge and leader of Manticore's Conservative Association, a coalition of Members of the House of Lords who exist as a party solely to preserve and expand the privilege of Manticore's nobility.

"If central casting had sent him to an HD producer for the role of an over-bred, cretinous aristocrat, the producer would have sent him back with a blistering note about stereotypes and typecasting."
 * Aristocrats Are Evil: Leader of a party of nobles solely out to preserve & expand their own privilege.
 * Corrupt Politician: His party's hatchetman runs everything on Blackmail, and he's not above a little skimming off the top and nepotism.
 * Head-in-The-Sand Management: Opposed the war with Haven from the beginning, the middle, the end, and all the way into the next war, largely for selfish motives but also out of genuine myopia.
 * Jerkass: He doesn't even notice the hired help, and he'll even play games with people of higher social rank to show them how much more important he is (e.g. by showing up late to make people wait on him).
 * Nice to the Waiter: Averted. He tends to ignore his lessers completely. However, he's seen enough cases of The Dog Bites Back to be complete idiot about it.
 * Obviously Evil


 * His appearance is almost entirely described in terms of negative animals traits: vulpine face, spider eyes, vulture-like appearance, etc.
 * Out-Gambitted: Thanks to an Unwitting Instigator of Doom. His gamesmanship with Haven combined with Giancola's scheming accidentally leads and himself to be out of office, later to be investigated for all the corruption in his government.
 * Poetic Justice: He makes the mistake of making an enemy of Queen Elizabeth III in about the most short-sighted, spiteful way possible in Ashes of Victory. When the political tables are finally turned in a later book, she spares no mercy in grinding him under her heel.
 * Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids: High Ridge disdains the Liberals for actually putting political ideals before pragmatism.
 * Smug Snake: Possibly the only nice thing you can say about him is that he keeps his cool.
 * Straw Character: There's pretty much nothing redeeming about him or his political views. He exists purely for the reader and the good guys to dislike and to screw up everything in his selfish, snobby wake.
 * He gets a little better in War of Honor, only because Descroix's utter cynicism makes even High Ridge blanch at times.

Descroix is the leader of Manticore's Progressive Party. She conceals a ruthless and cynical streak behind a sweet and pleasant facade.


 * Ass in Ambassador
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's described as "sweet-faced," with an "irritatingly winsome little-girl smile" and a "bright, cheerful" voice, and she takes "great pains to project the image of everyone's favorite aunt." Underneath all of that is a cynical, ruthless politician.
 * Blue Blood: Averted. She married into the nobility and doesn't have a seat in Lords, which keeps her from the premiership she wants. She'd be The Starscream if given a chance.
 * Corrupt Politician: She's pretty much in politics solely for power and money and is cynical and ruthless enough to make even Baron High Ridge appalled on two occasions:.
 * Nice to the Waiter: Averted hard. She forgets that servants are even around before starting to broach potentially self-incriminating conversations.
 * Rich Bitch
 * Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids: One of her reasons for hating Countess New Kiev and the rest of her Liberal allies. Descroix is so devoid of principled stances that the beliefs of the Progressive Party are effectively All There in the Manual.
 * She believes her own party's social programs are purely vote-buying measures.
 * She calls Harrington's anti-slavery operation a "quixotic crusade" despite the party's opposition to slavery.
 * Despite party opposition to imperialism, she's eager to accept the Talbot Cluster and.
 * We Have Reserves: The least troubled member of the Conservative, Liberal, Progressive alliance by potential troop losses in war due to her own personal hatred of the military.
 * Despite party opposition to imperialism, she's eager to accept the Talbot Cluster and.
 * We Have Reserves: The least troubled member of the Conservative, Liberal, Progressive alliance by potential troop losses in war due to her own personal hatred of the military.

Countess New Kiev is the leader of Manticore's Liberal Party, and is infamous for a "holier-than-thou" moral certainty behind her beliefs.

"It wasn't that she didn't understand political necessity when it looked her right in the eye, but she sometimes found pursing that necessity . . . distasteful. Then again, she often looked troubled. Which has never prevented her from pursing it anyway, he reminded himself cynically."
 * Actual Pacifist: She's horrified at the possibility of due to the potential loss of life.
 * Principles Zealot: Catherine Montaigne says that she had so much conviction in the nobility of her purpose that she believed it justified whatever tool she used in pursuit of it.
 * Slave Liberation: One of her Party's principles that she strongly believes in. Which is why High Ridge has to keep her away from efforts to whitewash the Manpower Incident.
 * Sleazy Politician: A Baron High Ridge notes:


 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: Unlike her political allies, Marisa's conscience is regularly troubled by their actions.

Admiral Janacek was a member of the Conservative Association and who was put in charge of the Navy by the Cromarty government when the Conservatives were still allied with them in the first two books. His time as First Lord is largely characterized by political nepotism and horrific mismanagement. He has a legendary, mutual hatred for Earl White Haven.


 * Bad Boss: Spiteful, arrogant, and willing to bury people's careers for not delivering results he wants.
 * Believing Their Own Lies: Pretty much believes all the negative propaganda about Honor Harrington being a hot-headed, blood-thirsty, maniac even in spite of acknowledging evidence against it.
 * He also goes out of his way to appoint yes-men to the Office of Naval Intelligence, who would never dare tell him that things abroad aren't how he thinks they are.
 * Desk Jockey
 * Idiot Ball: Pretty much a living Idiot Ball for the Navy. The only single decision traced to him that does anything good for Manticore is to station Honor Harrington . And even that an accidental good move, born solely out of spite and political enmity.
 * Nepotism: He benches all his political rivals (i.e. every single talented Admiral in the Navy) and promotes based on political gamesmanship instead of merit.
 * Politically-Incorrect Villain: He sneers at the Graysons as "religious zealot neobarbs" and poisons relations with other alliance members by shutting down joint intelligence and R&D programs.
 * Pride: His most self-destructive trait, especially when White Haven or the Graysons are involved.
 * The Resenter: Towards White Haven.
 * The Resenter: Towards White Haven.

Another aristocratic officer, and, as mentioned above, one of the very few non-stupid and generally competent conservatives in the series. He's the distant nephew of the Baron High Ridge, whom he resembles greatly, but, being an accomplished man by himself, utterly despises that branch of the family as useless self-important toads who do nothing except protecting that self-importance.

""...I will just take the opportunity t' tell you, since I don't believe I've ever done it before at one of our family gatherin's - not precisely, I mean - just how brainless you are, Deborah. Truly brainless. Not simply stupid. Bar-ain-less. As in: brains of a carrot....""
 * Aristocrats Are Evil: Averted. First likable member of the Conservative Alliance, despite believing in their goals of preserving the aristocratic privilege, thanks to a sense of noblesse oblige and a sense of integrity lacking in all other examples seen to date.
 * Berserk Button: Aristocrats in positions of power acting like high-handed morons and ignoring their duties. The verbal double broadside he levels at one of his own cousins in Crown of Slaves is a thing of beauty.

""At least, Sir, the uniform of the Queen of Manticore has never been sold t' the service of whoremasters, murderers, pedophiles, sadists, and perverts. I suppose, however, that those of you who choose t' serve in the navy of Mesa feel comfortable amid such company.""
 * Cultured Badass: The only man to defeat four Solarian C As in combat at once, the best system defense CO in the RMN, and he can discuss history, philosophy and politics with Web Du Havel intelligently.
 * The Captain: How he's introduced.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Expy: He's Robert E. Lee
 * Funetik Aksent: Do you = d'you, to = t', [verb]ing = [verb]in'. Partially an affectation that he enjoys using to twit people around him, like Mike Henke.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal: Gives an absolutely brilliant one to the Mesan Navy commander in Crown of Slaves.


 * The Strategist: While he normally serves as The Captain, he is also widely regarded as the best system-defence CO in the RMN.
 * Uncanny Family Resemblance: Greatly resembles his relative Baron High Ridge, but they could not be more different otherwise.
 * Unexplained Accent: His drawling accent is described as an "upper-crust" accent possessed by certain strata of the Manticoran aristocracy, but we've never seen any other character with the same accent despite having seen two relatives of his and an entire faction of overbred nobles.
 * Upper Class Twit: Subverted-- and no, that's not supposed to be Averted. He has every established marker of a Manticoran Upper Class Twit except actually being a twit.

An officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy, served a stint in the Foreign Office before returning to service in the First Havenite-Manticoran War. Terekhov spent some time as a POW before being released following a prisoner exchange with the Republic of Haven. Once cleared for duty he was assigned the HMS Hexapuma and sent to the Talbott Cluster as it was being annexed into the Star Kingdom. In the course of his duties, he came across a plan to take over the Lynx Junction terminus. Using what ships he could scrounge up in a hurry, Terekhov headed right for the source and stopped the plan in its tracks.

""And honesty compels me to add that neither I nor any other Manticoran officer have conspired with genetic slavers, pirates, terrorists, and mass murderers to commit acts of war on the sovereign territories of at least two independent star nations. Your government has done precisely that. My responsibility to see to it that those unprovoked and murderous assaults end now overrides any responsibility I may have towards your personnel.""
 * A Father to His Men
 * Badass Beard: Wears a neatly trimmed beard presumably a-la Abraham Lincoln.
 * Blond Guys Are Evil: Completely and utterly averted, though he does possess quite a ruthless side.
 * The Captain: Though promoted to Commodore following the Battle of Monica.
 * Culture Chop Suey: An apparent Russian-Latvian in a very British-flavoured society of the fifth millennium...
 * The Determinator: Nothing will stop him once he's decided on what course of action to take.
 * Do a Barrel Roll: During the Battle of Hyacinth
 * Happily Married
 * Officer and a Gentleman: He is of some minor aristocratic descent, and is implied to be quite a wealthy man, but aside from couple offhand mentions that has no impact on the plot.
 * Phenotype Stereotype: A very image of the stereotypical Northern European -- a blond blue-eyed guy.
 * His wife Sybil as well -- she appears to be a "Red Irish".
 * Revenge Before Reason: Terekhov struggles with this when faced with renegade Peep ships.
 * Shell-Shocked Veteran: Upon returning to Manticoran service, there were concerns if he was ready to be back in command because of this.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal:


 * Spanner in the Works: OFS's carefully laid plans fell apart because the Hexapuma happened to run across the same ship twice under different names.
 * More specifically, because a midshipman on watch was bored and picked that ship at random for a closer analysis.
 * Survivor Guilt

Station commander of the Talbott Cluster, later Talbott Quadrant. Initially put there primarily for political reasons during the High Ridge Government days, Khumalo spent much of his time once the Grantville government came in wondering when he'd be removed from his position. Instead, he distinguished himself by going to the aid of Aivars Terekhov without hesitation, to the surprise of many (and possibly himself).


 * Character Development: Starts out as "a station commander who isn't precisely noted for his brilliant and insightful command style" but starts to come into his own as a confident, competent leader following events at Monica.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Khumalo might lack true brilliance, but he well enough compensated for that by his quiet competence, sound judgement and inborn integrity, which in the end makes him quite a successful commander.

Another career diplomat in Manticoran service, Baroness Medusa (then just Dame Estelle Matsuko) served as a Special Commissioner for the natives' rights in the very first book of the series, On Basilisk Station, for which she was apparently made a peer, and, supposedly, in other diplomatic roles during the 14-years stretch between OBS and the Shadow Of Saganami. There she was a special envoy of the Crown representing the Manticore's interests during the Talbott Cluster Constitutional Convention that developed the terms and conditions of Talbott's annexation into the Star Kingdom. Later on, when that long-winged and complicated process finally ended, she was made the first Governor of the newly formed Talbott Quadrant of the Star Empire of Manticore.


 * As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Matsuko is a real Japanese female given name, but doesn't really work as a surname.
 * Cool Old Lady
 * Reasonable Authority Figure

Anton Zilwicki's daughter. She was assigned to Hexapuma for her midshipwoman cruise, getting caught up in the Talbott Quadrant's events. Now Sir Aivars's flag lieutenant.


 * Early-Bird Cameo: Briefly mentioned in The Short Victorious War when
 * Ensign Newbie
 * Waif Fu: She's been studying martial arts since she was a young girl, and once, when she was twelve, she killed a couple of would-be rapists with her bare hands.
 * Waif Fu: She's been studying martial arts since she was a young girl, and once, when she was twelve, she killed a couple of would-be rapists with her bare hands.

A character introduced when Eric Flint became co-author of the series with David Weber and not too incidentally is said to be Flint's author avatar. Frequently accused of being a God Mode Sue by the fandom, he still does manage to be a fairly balanced character. In the books he is described as being very young and very cute on more then one occasion. He is widely known as being the Republic's best operative and is something of an idealist despite his capacity for unrestrained ruthlessness.


 * Anti-Hero: Although you'd never guess it if you meet him out of action.
 * Badass: Up to the Boring Invincible Hero levels, but he's interesting enough as of himself to mitigate it.
 * Beware the Nice Ones
 * Bishonen: Which only helps, as enemies often tend to underestimate him.
 * Other novels describe him as "plain" or even "square-faced", though. But then again, maybe he just started to mature: he's about 35 and (with prolong) should look 16 as per our experience.
 * Cultured Warrior: the result of an apprenticeship under Kevin Usher. Kevin taught him not only the trade, but gave a Nuveau Paris' slumboy a good taste -- after all, Usher's one of the few people that still remember Casablanca two thousand years from now.
 * Determinator: The sheer amount of guts Cachat happened to have shouldn't be able to fit into his frame.
 * Dissonant Serenity: He literally has no emotions when "on", which makes him even more horrific to many.
 * Enemy Mine: His major strong point. He's able to coopt just about everybody to his case.
 * Guile Hero
 * Indy Ploy: Quick thinking saved his operations (and his hide) more than once...
 * Manipulative Bastard
 * Odd Couple: One part of the Spook Duo.
 * The Spartan Way: In Crown of Slaves he claims to have the fourth highest pain threshold recorded at StateSec Academy. In other words his training included being tortured.
 * The Unfettered: There's simply nothing to stop him if you happened to provoke his anger. Ever.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Somehow able to remain one despite everything said above.
 * He is loyal enough that his boss trusts him to go Undercover As Lovers with his own wife in Crown of Slaves(partly to do the job they are sent on and partly to make sure she was ignored in the event of another coup back home).
 * What Could Have Been: Word of God is that the original plan when Honor was to die in At All Costs was her son and daughter would of taken up the fight, with Raoul fulfilling most of Victor's functions.

Currently the head of the Republican Navy and the Republic's Secretary of War. When first introduced The Honor of the Queen he was a Peep destroyer skipper but even then he scared Honor because of his tactical and strategic abilities, willingness to make sacrifices, loyalty to the Republic and the fact that missiles from his warship  Due to his competence and seemingly apolitical stance he quickly rose through the ranks of the People's Navy, only to eventually.


 * Ascended Extra: Seriously, he was small time when he first appeared. Who would have guessed?
 * Badass
 * The Captain: Later became The Strategist.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Cincinnatus: Played with. He did not retire after the revolution, but he's perfectly content to stick just to the military side of things.
 * Drowning My Sorrows: When he realizes that he's going to have to hand over Honor Harrington to Cordelia Ransom. This would have destroyed him when Ransom dropped by his office if he didn't have some kind of stimulant/purging inhaler handy.
 * Early-Bird Cameo: He shows up in the second book, Honor Of The Queen, as a Destroyer skipper detached to the Masadan Navy as an adviser during their brief war with Grayson and in a two-scene role in The Short Victorious War as flag captain of a commerce raiding squadron He doesn't turn up again until the fifth book, Flag In Exile, where he is once again taking part in an attack on Grayson. He begins to take a bigger part in the story from then on.
 * Foreshadowing: Was described in In Enemy Hands as a Brutus. In Roman history, there are two particularly famous men from the Brutus family - one who overthrew the last of Rome's kings and established the Republic, and one who turned against his friend Julius Caesar when the latter was close to overthrowing the Republic and becoming a dictator.
 * Genre Savvy: After several books of the Manticorans being blind to the possibility that Mesan sleeper-agents have been responsible for various recent assassinations around the galaxy, he is the one to lay fresh eyes on the situation and deduce that this was the most likely cause for
 * My Country, Right or Wrong: No matter how bad things got with the Committee, no matter how much worse the war went, Theisman never considered defecting to the Manties as some of his fellow officers had. Of course, once the opportunity presented itself, he proceeded to make his country right, by overthrowing the Committee and reinstating the Constitution.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the process of trying desperately to argue in favor of obeying The Laws and Customs of War to Cordelia Ransom, he accidentally gave her an idea for how to organize a system to centrally process and disappear "inconvenient" POWs without letting the Navy have any chance to keep them out of State Sec's hands.
 * He also accidentally encourages her to read the Accords and find out a way to legally strip them of all their protections.
 * Officer and a Gentleman: The moment when he first appeared as a major character was a sign of a significant shift in the portrayal of the Peeps.
 * Parental Abandonment: He grew up in an orphanage, being a result of accidental teenage pregnancy. It actually had an impact on the plot -- his resultant detachedness from other people made him be seen so apolitical.
 * Conveniently an Orphan: It also kept his unknown parents' lives from being held over him.
 * Quit Your Whining: Delivers one of these to Honor after she begins lamenting her unavoidable role in
 * Reverse Psychology: How he typically convinced his Peoples' Commissioner to sign off on his continuous aversions of Honor Before Reason: By convincing him that he fully intended to valiantly sacrifice himself (and his men, and his Peoples' Commissioner) against superior Manticoran forces in the name of the Revolution. Every time, his Peoples' Commissioner manages to convince him otherwise. The commissioner gradually becomes Genre Savvy about it and just rolls with it before being recruited by the Admiral outright.
 * The Rival: The closest thing Honor ever had.
 * The Strategist: As of now. He acquired too much seniority and too many achievements to be The Captain.
 * Worthy Opponent: See his treecat name, Dreams of Peace

Robert Stanton Pierre used to be a Dolist manager -- a politician capable of delivering the votes of millions of franchised Dolists to whatever candidate he chooses -- in the People's Republic. Eventually he came to view the Republic as heading on the road to destruction unless massive reforms were made. Seeking to change the system he allied himself with the terrorist group called the Citizens' Rights Union and a senior Internal Security bureaucrat by the name of Oscar Saint-Just. Together they staged a coup and Pierre appointed himself Chairman of a Committee of Public Safety, thereby making him the de facto ruler of Haven. Faced with a costly war with Manticore, the resentment of a military that he had purged during said coup and a violent and unruly populace spurred by Cordelia Ransom's propaganda, he ended up doing nothing but implementing some long-term fiscal reforms.


 * Big Bad (of the second set of books)
 * Expy: Apart from his namesake, Pierre is the very picture of Joseph Stalin, although without the latter's paranoid streak.
 * I Did What I Had to Do: Arguably he meant well, but didn't see any other way in the circumstances.
 * Knight Templar: Like Saint-Just, a Totalitarian Utilitarian, willing to accept evil means to bring about good goals.
 * Maximilien Robespierre
 * Meaningful Name: It's Horatio Hornblower in space and he's Maximilien Robespierre
 * Morality Pet: About the only thing keeping Saint-Just from coming off as a completely dispassionate sociopath is his genuine friendship with and respect for Pierre.
 * Only Sane Man: Compared to Ransom's mad-dog zealotry and Saint-Just's homicidal, self-fulfilling paranoia, he's the biggest voice of restraint on the committee and the one most likely to rule against purging another character.
 * Steven Ulysses Perhero: He is usually referred to as Rob S. Pierre, a none too coincidental resemblance to Maximilien Robespierre.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: He actually fixed the Haven economy with his reforms and playing to the patriotism of the people during the war. Later Haven leaders acknowledge this for all the blood and death he caused.

Cordelia Ransom was originally a leading member of the terrorist group called the Citizens' Rights Union. Later she joined forces with Rob S. Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just and proceeded to overthrow Haven's Legislaturalist government. Afterwards, Pierre made her the Secretary for Public Information. This gave Ransom control of the People's Republic media and censorship apparatus. Though a skilled propagandist and an expert on managing the people's emotions, both Pierre and Saint-Just distrusted her because of her extremely radical opinions about politics and economics. Her rhetoric had a definite resemblance to hard-core Communist propaganda, and, as Admiral Thomas Theisman noted, she believed her own propaganda.


 * And Your Little Dog, Too: Cordelia planned to kill Nimitz just to hurt Honor (and provoke her companions).
 * Ax Crazy: This becomes evident a few paragraphs after she is introduced.
 * Believing Their Own Lies: And several characters are shocked and horrified to realize this about her.
 * Blood Knight: It is pretty obvious that Cordelia Ransom enjoys her job, which often includes destroying people, way too much.
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Theisman thinks she literally could not understand Tourville's attempt to do the decent thing for Honor's people as anything other than a disloyal bid for power against the State.
 * Evil Is Hammy: Her love of public theater is why she handles propaganda for the Peeps.
 * Expecting Someone Taller: Theisman thinks this of her when they first meet. Because, as propaganda minister, she orders the camera people to always shoot her so that she appears taller than she is.
 * Expy: She bears a remarkable resemblance-in opinions and actions if not in gender-to Jean-Paul Marat, an important figure in the French Revolution.
 * Or to Leon Trotsky, whom she resembles even more, and hadn't  seen to it earlier, would inevitably face the same end, as both Pierre and Saint-Just were starting to find her dangerous.
 * For the Evulz: Even her allies notice that she enjoys the act of tearing things down far more than building something to replace them.
 * From Nobody to Nightmare: She started as a Dolist, became a terrorist, and then the most monstrous and scary member of a three-headed dictatorship.
 * Knight Templar: Of The Fundamentalist, Principles Zealot variety.
 * Icy Blue Eyes: When she's not filed with fanatical fervor, her eyes are consistently this.
 * The Laws and Customs of War: She disdains the Deneb Accords as an obsolete agreement by aristocrats and plutocrats that is inimical to the people's struggle to annihilate their class enemies in total war and is only barely talked down from publicly refuting them -- but not from flouting them in secret.
 * However, after researching them, she finds a way to use two loopholes in the Accords to legally strip Honor and her fellow officers of their protection by invoking a Chekhov's Gun from the first book and provoking her and her fellow captives to resist an attack not on their persons nor for means of escape.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Not only is "Ransom" a pretty bad name, but her personal transport is the PNS Tepes, named after the infamously brutal Romanian Count and inspiration for Dracula and crewed entirely by State Sec goons, with extra brig space and extra space for landing assault troopers.
 * Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her dog-kicking behavior in In Enemy Hands is the last straw for half a dozen major Havenite naval officers and their political watchdogs, who begin conspiring to take down the CPS. They succeed.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Oscar Saint-Just's blue.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Unlike Pritchart's Aprilists, Ransom's faction of the CRU eagerly hit civilian targets, and she became the major force behind inciting the bloodlust of the Mob after the CPS took power. (And was responsible for purging most of the other Aprilists for insufficient revolutionary ardor.)

A senior bureaucrat in the pre-Revolution Legislaturalists' Government Internal Security department, Saint-Just sided with Pierre and Ransom in their coup that overthrew it, and later seen to the amalgamation of all Haven's security services into one unified organization, State Security, which gave us the name for the State Sec trope. Competent and responsible, but ruthless to the point of viciousness, and, as the events progressed, increasingly paranoid, Saint-Just was arguably the most dangerous among the trio of the Committee of Public Safety's senior members. When Ransom and Pierre's deaths left him in charge of Haven, he instituted increasingly broad and brutal purges,. This again proved him to be a lousy judge of character, as one of his genuinely (if unwittingly) good deeds was the promotion of Victor Cachat (Saint-Just was personally fond of young Cachat, whom he had seen as his perfect tool), who, ironically, was one of the major players in the plot that overthrew the Committee.

""Funny. I was surprised Ransom was so much shorter than her HD imagery, and her Saint-Just is, almost as short as she was. Is there some sort of overcompensation for small size going on here?""
 * Big Bad: Almost rose to the post, but didn't quite reach it.
 * Blue Oni Red Oni: Blue to Cordelia Ransom's Red. On the issue of McQueen, red to Rob S. Pierre's blue.
 * The Chessmaster: The best one among the three, as evidenced by having the longest lifespan.
 * Expecting Someone Taller: Complete with callback to the last time Theisman thought it.


 * Expy: Is the namesake of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, a historical figure from the French Revolution and close confidante of Rob S. Pierre's namesake, Maximilien Robespierre.
 * Also closely resembles some depictions of Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's security chief, and his dynamics with Pierre closely matched respective Stalin-Beria relationship, although in this case it was the Saint-Just who was the paranoid one. Another difference was that Beria stopped the purges that were getting out of hand, not started them as Saint-Just did.
 * Manipulative Bastard: See The Chessmaster above.
 * Oh Crap: His reaction when the fecal matter collided with the rotary air displacer due to.
 * Puss in Boots: He's the technician who implements Pierre's decisions.
 * Steven Ulysses Perhero: a quick look at any history book will provide you with the name of Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, known more commonly as Saint-Just (a misnomer if there ever was one). An ally of Robespierre, he served with him on the Committee of Public Safety, becoming heavily involved in the Reign of Terror.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: He acted for exactly the same reasons Pierre did, and he really had every reason to.
 * Knight Templar: A Totalitarian Utilitarian with flawed means.

An expert tactical officer and considered by some to be one of the scariest characters in the whole universe. When introduced, she was serving under Warner Caslet and was gaining a reputation as a "tac witch" for her technological and tactical prowess. She also refused to regard the technological disparity between the People's Republic and Manticore with the same 'depressed' attitude that many of the People's Navy did. Foraker looked at it as more of a challenge of her and her navy's skills, and appeared to love the 'thrill' of it. She saved Honor's treecat Nimitz from being killed by State Security and noticed scanner evidence of small craft. With the connivance of Tourville, the scan evidence was erased. During Thomas Theisman's coup, ; her reaction at the time was merely "Oops". After the fall of the People's Republic, she was rapidly promoted to Vice Admiral, and was assigned to direct research and development at the 'black' development yard (codenamed Project Bolthole) of the Republic of Haven.


 * Adorkable
 * Badass Adorable: Do not mistake her cheerful and absent-minded disposition for weakness. You won't even know who blew you out of space.
 * Break the Cutie: Not that badly broken, but after the events at Cerberus, the Genius Ditz personality went into deep freeze until the People's Republic went down, since she'd started viewing the political situation as a tactical one. This worried Tourville.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Genius Ditz. Techno nerd. And let's not forget, Haven's premier Strategist.
 * She also had a tendency to refer to her superiors as "Sir" instead of "Citizen ", which would normally be considered a grave violation of regulations in the Peoples' Navy after the Committee took power. The Political Officer assigned to her ship always managed to find himself distracted by something else when she did it, so she was never reprimanded.
 * Genius Ditz: She manages to lose her wristcom twice a week when out at Bolthole.
 * Hot Scientist
 * Not So Harmless: If only her Political Officers knew how much they should worry if she got serious.
 * The Smart Girl
 * The Strategist: State Sec found this out the hard way.
 * Wham! Line: "Oops!"
 * Wrench Wench: On a large scale!

A Havenite commander who rises to prominence using a 'whiff of grapeshot' to put down a revolt even more destructive than the Committee of Public Safety. Nicknamed Citizen Admiral Cluster Bomb.


 * The Chessmaster: Manages to set up independent, cell-structured conspiracies in preparation of a coup.
 * Doorstopper: Most of her subplot was cut out of Ashes of Victory to stop it from turning into one of these (not that it helped much). It later saw light as a standalone novella.
 * Expy: It's Horatio Hornblower In Space, so you obviously need a Napoleon Expy
 * For an added twist,.
 * Godzilla Threshold: During the Leveller revolt, she was the only officer to take action to save the committee after the rebels took out State Sec and used nukes within Noveau Paris. Her response? Orbital kinetic strikes and cluster bombing a mob, resulting in millions of casualties -- for which she's largely seen as a hero by the people, despite her new nickname.
 * Nom De Guerre: "Admiral Clusterbomb", after her method of stopping the Levelers from overthrowing the committee.
 * Off the Rails:  is a sign the plot just stopped being Horatio Hornblower In Space.
 * Properly Paranoid: McQueen's Political Officer, Erasmus Fontein, was specifically picked because he was good at the Obfuscating Stupidity needed to lower her guard. It works to the extent that she's fooled into thinking he's an idiot, but she still manages to treat him seriously enough to sneak conspiracies completely under his nose.
 * Red Herring: Up until, people thought they knew where the plot was going...
 * The Starscream: McQueen is well-known for her ambition. Ironically, she gets put in a position to do something with it because she didn't take an earlier opportunity during the Leveller revolt to finish what the rebels started.

Perhaps even more of a Harrington counterpart than Theisman. While Honor and Theisman only went directly up against each other relatively early in their careers, and both times Theisman was subordinate to someone else, Tourville and Harrington have gone toe to toe several times, and they alternate who's the winner.


 * Beleaguered Assistant: Everard Honeker, his Political Officer, is supposed to be his superior but mentally compares himself to someone "towed bodily along by the cheerful, clumsy eagerness of the Great Dane or Saint Bernard he was supposedly walking." He also wonders, "why [does] he feel like a harassed scout master besieged by an entire troop of ten-year-olds? It wasn't supposed to be like this."
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: As part of his affected Military Maverick persona. He smokes cigars constantly.
 * Cigar Chomper: Subverted. He hates the things, but it's part of his public persona.
 * Expy: Named for 17th-century French Admiral Anne Hilarion de Costentin, comte de Tourville.
 * In-Series Nickname: Saint-Just calls him Citizen Admiral Cowboy.
 * Military Maverick: He deliberately cultivated a flamboyant reputation early in his career (as much as such a thing was possible in the People's Republic). He came to regret it somewhat, when he got stuck having to keep up with some of his affected mannerisms (such as smoking cigars.)
 * Honeker thinks he belongs "on a holystoned wooden quarter-deck with a cutlass and a brace of flintlock pistols in his belt, bellowing orders over the roar of a cannon."
 * And Tourville admits to himself that the persona is only a Flanderization of his real, hard-charging personality. He really is gung-ho, though not an idiot about it.
 * Obfuscating Stupidity: For years he deliberately cultivated a reputation of being just competent enough to keep his rank of Captain, and later Rear Admiral, without being competent enough to be seen as a threat by his superiors, or being promoted to a rank where he wouldn't be able to avoid being shot by State Sec.

First elected president of the Republic of Haven following the Committee of Public Safety's regime. She was originally an Aprilist, one of the many rebel groups opposing the Legislaturists, after losing her sister to street violence. When the Committee of Public Safety came into power, she became one of State Sec's People's Commissioners, playing watchdog to Javier Giscard. The two appeared highly antagonistic to each other in public, but were in fact in a romantic relationship. When, Pritchart became acting head of state and later elected President. Has worked tirelessly to find a way to end the conflict between her nation and Manticore. She prefers to do so peacefully, but if peace isn't an option she won't hesitate use force. Very much a counterpart to Queen Elizabeth.


 * Beneath the Mask
 * Dating Catwoman: With Giscard, when she was his Political Officer.
 * Dead Little Sister: The death of Eloise's sister Estelle was a major point in her life.
 * Eyes Never Lie: Pritchart is one of the few exceptions to this trope in the series and is able to keep up her facade as a cold, fanatical agent of State Sec without anyone ever suspecting it.
 * Eyes of Gold: "Topaz" eyes.
 * Feed the Mole: As the head of State Sec's spies on a vessel, she's in a perfect place to do this, though she's well aware that there's always the possibility of spies she doesn't know about.
 * God Save Us From the Queen: When she's manipulated into resuming hostilities with Manticore.
 * Jerkass Facade: How she hides her and Giscard's relationship and, later, true loyalties under the Committee of Public Safety's regime.
 * The Political Officer: To Giscard.
 * Red Baron: Known as Brigade Commander Delta in her terrorist days.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: The reason she got to the position she did, both under the CPS and the Republic, was because she and her Aprilists adhered to this religiously and never threatened civilian lives. The CPS co-opted her to keep her from becoming a rival,  made her President because she actually believed in the Republican ideals he fought for.
 * Secret Relationship: With Javier Giscard.
 * Tranquil Fury: Giancola misreads her apparent calm very badly.
 * White-Haired Pretty Girl: Her hair is described as "platinum," and she's regularly described as being beautiful.

A recurring Havenite officer. In Honor Among Enemies he comes to the assistance of a beleaguered merchantman only to find that  Eventually he gets caught up in


 * : Twice.
 * The Fettered: His strong sense of honor and right and wrong are a pretty big liability to him in the People's Navy.
 * Gone Horribly Right: The aforementioned events of Honor Among Enemies.
 * Honor Before Reason: Caslet sends his single ship into a 3:1 battle against pirates to save a Manty merchant ship, even though he's supposed to be capturing said ship and even though it's a Heroic Sacrifice at best. He knows this is unreasonable, but he, his whole crew, and even his Political Officer are proud to get the chance to do something right.
 * Insane Troll Logic: In order to convince his Political Officer to go along with the above he points out that their orders are very specific about the need to capture Manty merchants and that since the pirates aren't going to leave the Manty alone the only way to follow their orders is to kill the pirates and then capture the ship themselves.
 * My Country, Right or Wrong: Despite how terrible the Committee for Public Safety is, he seems himself as a son of Haven first and foremost.
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished


 * A Father to His Men: Inspired great loyalty amongst his troops and does his best to get them out alive when their ship is taken over, which engenders respect
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: tries to act as an Officer and a Gentleman even while operating alongside a group of Complete Monsters and does everything he can to ensure that prisoners are taken alive. After he discovers what happens to them, he does what he can to (ineffectually) protect them from the Masadans wrath.

A Maya Sector governor under the Office of Frontier Security (at least on paper), Oravil Barregos is a major player in the Wages of Sin spinoff series, now in its second novel, Torch of Freedom. An extremely shrewd and ambitious politician, he is totally dissatisfied with the way OFS runs its pocket fiefdoms, and, seeing ahead the inevitable outcome for the League, does his best to prepare himself and his sector to it. He's not above personal gain, though: the best way, as he sees it, was to carve the Maya Sector as his personal little kingdom.


 * The Chessmaster
 * The Strategist
 * Utopia Justifies the Means:
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: His ultimate goal is to spare Maya Sector from the shockwave of crumbling League, but he's not above some, ahem, questionable means. Including outright assassinations.

The main associate of governor Barregos and a military man in the duo that rules Maya Sector, he is the iron hand in the Barregos' velvet glove. A commander of the Frontier Fleet detachment tasked with the local protection, he provides the means to turns the governor's schemes into reality, as well as devising those of his own. He's just as ambitious as Barregos, and no less willing to do what he has to do. As it is, he comes out as a rather ambivalent character: he's both extremely ambitious and ruthless, not above some dirty tricks, but in the same time responsible and noble, having his standards and being ready to protect his convictions.


 * And Your Little Dog, Too: On one occasion in Crown of Slaves it tells in his backstory that when he is ordered to purge a city to satisfy the spite of a corrupt official he personally kills a cat in the process. Thereby making the dubious point that if he is going to help in a war crime, at least he was not so cowardly as to think squeamishness somehow absolved him.
 * Anti-Hero: After a round of Character Development.
 * The Brigadier: One of the few genuinely competent Solly officers in the series.
 * The Captain: He was it until not so long ago.
 * The Cavalry: Riding to the rescue of.
 * Character Development: From somewhat less than savory, if likable, secondary character, to the genuine (if still somewhat less than savory) hero.
 * The Chessmaster
 * The Determinator: As it happened, to the Harrington level, no less.
 * Real Men Wear Pink: For his main hobby is... cooking. And he's very good at it.
 * War Is Hell: Which he realizes after the conclusion of his very first naval battle, against
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: And we really mean "well intentioned" here, because he even got to prove his intentions.

A Battle Fleet officer assigned to the Office of Operational Analysis. One of the few who has taken Manticore's technological advances seriously.

""You are so going to get all of us killed.""
 * Cassandra Truth: One of the few Solly officers who realises that the SLN is badly behind the times. Of course, almost no one believes him.
 * Properly Paranoid: He's one of the first non-suborned Solarians to realize . Anyone he explains his reasoning to quickly finds himself or herself wishing for a large helping of Brain Bleach.


 * Surrounded by Idiots
 * Zero-Approval Gambit: al-Fanudahi knows that his constant pointing out of Manticore's greater capabilities is going to inevitably cost him his career. Especially as the Solarian Navy suffers more defeats and he's in prime "I told you so" position. But by the time that happens, all the information will be out there and his successor will be better placed to help strategize based on it.

Officially, he is a high-level bureaucrat who works for the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In reality, the arrangement is actually the other way around, and his "boss" does well to keep that in mind. While he considers himself something of a chessmaster, he freely admits that he lacks any expertise in military or economic matters. As a result of this, he only begins to grasp the depth of the situation involving the Solarian League and the Manticoran Empire after things have begun to spin badly out of control. He harbors a theory that the so-called "Mesan Alignment" is just a conspiracy theory cooked up by the Republic of Haven to get the Manties to shoot at someone else for a change.


 * Almighty Janitor: While he is admittedly a high ranking bureaucrat on paper, his actual power and authority vastly outstrips that of any of his superiors in the government, and this is essentially an open secret even amongst other governments such as the Star Empire of Manticore. Of course, none of his power is supported by the League's Constitution, but most people stopped paying attention to that centuries ago.
 * Embarrassing Nickname: He is not amused when he and his fellow Permanent Senior Undersecretaries are dubbed "The Five Mandarins" in Audrey O'Hanrahan's investigative news reports.
 * Got Me Doing It: He later catches himself using the "Mandarins" moniker in his own internal monologues, much to his chagrin.
 * Ironic Name: His given name a Russian variant of the late-Latin name "Innocent", which means exactly what it seems.
 * Under a certain angle he might indeed been viewed as innocent — a proverbial babe in the woods, used by Alignment as their unwitting pawn.
 * The Man Behind the Man: By the end of A Rising Thunder, any of the men who he is officially behind are blatantly ignored by pretty much everyone.
 * Xanatos Sucker: Has thus far failed to realize that he is just another pawn in the Mesan Alignment's chess game.

One of the few honest investigative reporters in the Solarian League, O'Hanrahan also happens to be one of the only one of those who has a very large audience in the League, and as such, she has become quite the thorn in the side of the Mandarins during the political and military crisis between the Solarian League and the Star Empire of Manticore.


 * Intrepid Reporter: Famously so. She is one of the few widely-viewed reporters in the League who tries to cover both sides in the League's disputes with the Manticorans. A Mesan agent takes advantage of this to leak information to her that will lead to further decay in the relations between the Manties and Sollies.
 * Spanner in the Works: For the Solarian League's more sinister plots, due to her willingness to dig up and reveal secrets about what they are secretly up to.
 * Spanner in the Works: For the Solarian League's more sinister plots, due to her willingness to dig up and reveal secrets about what they are secretly up to.

Albrecht Detweiler is the current CEO of Manpower Incorporated, which just happens to be the galaxy largest supplier of genetically engineered slaves. He was genetically engineered and trained from birth to lead the corporation and the entire planet of Mesa. He is also the de facto leader of the Solarian League (or at least a fairly large chunk of it); not to mention he probably has his hands in the domestic and foreign affairs of several other star nations. Unbeknownst to most people, Manpower and slavetrade are only a cover for Detweiler's real plans


 * Affably Evil: Judging from his appearances so far, Detweiler appears to be a genuinely caring husband and father
 * Big Bad: Although the extent of his badness was revealed only recently.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Which sounds almost as the Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking compared to everything else he did.
 * Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A very loving family man. He takes it rather personally when one of his sons is almost killed in the Green Pines attack.
 * Evil Counterpart: Mesa is this to Beowulf. In many respect he's Honor's counterpart as the scion of their star line of designer babies and geneticists while Honor is the scion of the Beowulf line of geneticists.
 * Designer Baby
 * Galactic Conqueror: This is what he wants to be real bad.
 * Generation Xerox: Combined with Designer Babies above. To what extent, you ask? Albrecht's sons don't merely fill the next several ranks below him before you get to a high ranking Mesan NOT named Detweiler. The don't just happen to "coincidentally" look exactly like him. What's really impressive is that their names are Benjamin, Collin, Daniel, Everett, Franklin, and Gervais. Subtle...
 * Add to that the fact that they're not actually his sons. They are his clones.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Actually, the modus operandi for the as a whole.
 * The Man Behind the Man: Detweiler has had a hand in just about every major event in the books.
 * Pet the Dog: He is a very loving family man, and very much appears to be A Father to His Men. Which of course, serves to further highlight what a Complete Monster he is the rest of the time.
 * Tranquil Fury: Whenever he tips back his chair and relaxes, that's a sign that he's "quietly, icily, dangerously furious about something."
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: The stated goal of the Detweiler family, leading back to Leonard Detweiler, the founder of Mesa, is to share Mesa's advances in human genetic engineering with the rest of humanity . Their methods leave something to be desired, however.
 * You Have Failed Me...: Subverted. Pretty much any encounter with him from an underling's perspective has them very, very afraid of displeasing him for this reason. This is odd because he always acts as a Reasonable Authority Figure, who doesn't punish people for failures that were beyond their control.
 * If you look more closely, you will note that all of those incidents are the first time a particular subordinate has had to report a glaring failure to Detwiler in person. You Have Failed Me... is distressingly common in the lower tiers of Mesa's command structure, and the unlucky subordinates are judging Detwiler's probable reaction by what they're used to. Every single person in Detwiler's personal staff who's actually been there a while is entirely matter-of-fact about bringing failure to him, because they've gotten to know him well enough to understand that he'll only kill you if you try to lie to him.

A member of the Manpower Incorporated Board of Directors and one of Detweiler's operatives. She has been behind the multiple attempts by Mesa to destabilize Manticore's annexation of the Talbott Cluster. This has included supplying arms to militant groups opposing the annexation, trying to get the star nation of Monica to start a war with Manticore over the annexation, and generally trying to create a situation where the Office of Frontier Security could move in and seize control of Talbott.


 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: A must for any Mesan worth her salt.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Ensign Newbie: In a way. She's fairly big in the outwardly visible Mesan hierarchy, but was fully brought into the Onion only recently.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Referred to (tongue-in-cheek) by a Manticoran officer as a "Man Eating Blonde". Somewhat to her detriment as it makes it much easier for the Manticorans to connect the dots when various compromised plotters end up giving very distinctively similar descriptions of their handler.
 * The Man Behind the Man: Most of Manticore's enemies in the Talbott Cluster were taking orders from her, or at least receiving assistance from her.
 * Pet the Dog: To a minor extent. She's a huge fan of Manticoran classical music.

Another scion of Mesan star genetic lines, Bardasano was up-and-rising member of the and one of its senior security specialists. In fact, she was responsible for much of the Mesan espionage and behind-the-scene operations, where she was usually partnered with Aldona Anisimovna, another senior Mesan executive. But where Anisimovna was a planner and manipulator, Bardasano was an enforcer, and she rather loved her job. In the end, however, she tasted enough of her own medicine when.


 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: See above.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: The whole story with, if only from a purely practical standpoint.
 * Psycho for Hire
 * Tattooed Crook: Subverted. She's heavily tattooed and pierced, which is common for members of Mesa's "young lodges." However, this is a deliberately flamboyant blind intended to convince the rest of the galaxy that Mesa is populated entirely by hedonists and useless drones.
 * Technicolor Eyes: Silver.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill:

A mid-level Mesan security operative, who was coming from a less-tweaked genetic lines (but still an Alpha). He was, however, high enough on the ladder and effective enough to be  one of Bardasano's henchmen. He was a chief of security in the scientific center


 * Even Evil Has Standards: His reaction upon hearing Herlander Simões' story.
 * : One of the greatest dangers for any self-respecting security man is
 * Heel Realisation: See above.
 * Worthy Opponent: A rare Mesan example. At least.
 * Worthy Opponent: A rare Mesan example. At least.
 * Worthy Opponent: A rare Mesan example. At least.

Mesan hyperphysicist introduced in the Torch Of Freedom. A supremely talented scientist, he was perfectly content with his research and his family, until this nice little world was shattered by the outside force. Namely, a decision of Long Range Planning Board, the supreme Mesan policymaking authority, to cull his daughter as a failed experiment. This started a downward spiral leading to him having a nervous breakdown, Heel Realization and finally deciding to defect.


 * Defector From Decadence: Decided to defect to Manticore to somewhat make up for.
 * Happily Married: He was until his daughter was selected for culling, but his crusade against the LRPB and his unending grief finally cost him his marriage.
 * Heel Realisation: He didn't like what he saw around, when he finally looked.
 * Papa Wolf: When he knew that his daughter is to be taken from him he did everything he could to get her back. Unfortunately, with the rather predictable results.
 * The Professor: A near-textbook example.
 * It was mainly Simões who came up with the streak-drive -- the new-gen hyperdrive that allowed speeds almost twice as great as any other design. And now he works for
 * There Are No Therapists: There are, but he just knows too much to let anyone of them even to his general vicinity.

Benjamin Mayhew IX is the hereditary head of state of the Protectorate of Grayson and the liege lord of the planet's feudal system of government. Educated in the Solarian League (at Harvard University no less) he is often portrayed as an extremely intelligent and shrewd politician. During his reign he advocated for and later successfully reformed and liberalized Grayson society and oversaw the modernization of its industrial base. He also entered into a military alliance with the Star Kingdom of Manticore against the People's Republic of Haven. He is based very heavily on Japan's Meiji Emperor and Grayson in turn is based largely on Meiji-era Japan.


 * Author Avatar: Speculated to be Weber's one.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Benjamin is an accomplished horticulturalist in his spare time, and often used his greenhouses (with their respective climate) to disturb and pressure friend and foe alike.
 * The Chessmaster: He turned the whole conclave of nobles who usurped the power from his ancestors centuries before around the finger through the sheer force of intellect. And a little help from his friends.
 * Expy: He bears too many similarities with the Emperor Meiji of Japan for it to be a coincidence.
 * Happily Married: As per Grayson custom, he has more than one wife (Katherine and Elaine). They appear to get on swimmingly.
 * Praetorian Guard: In addition to his personal Armsmen (which all Steadholders on Grayson have), beginning in Ashes of Victory he has, effectively a Praetorian  .
 * Real Men Wear Pink: Fellow Graysons don't always consider his love for horticulture to be the manliest of hobbies.
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: Grayson Constitution makes the Protector a sort of fully empowered hereditary President.
 * Screw the Rules, I Make Them: At one point, it is suggested that it will take time to convince the Keys to send reinforcements to Manticore. He angrily replies that he is the Protector and the fleet will go wherever he tells them to. He's right.
 * Not quite this trope because the rules actually do say that he has that authority. Borders on it because while the law says he does, tradition says he doesn't, and Grayson is currently undergoing a political reformation wherein the letter of the law is being enforced again after generations of it not being.

Andrew LaFollet is the head of Harrington Steadholder's Guard and Honor Harrington's personal armsmen. He is a close friend of Honor and for the longest time he was her personal bodyguard. Now, though, he has  Do not harm Honor when you are in his presence if you wish to remain intact. It is a Very Bad Idea. As of Mission Of Honor


 * Battle Butler: Not exactly, for Honor has a butler and it's another man entirely, but close enough.
 * Badass Normal: He's nothing special, in fact, and really is much weaker in fight than his patron. But it doesn't make him any less effective as bodyguard.
 * Weaker in a hand-to-hand fight. In a gunfight, LaFollet is so fast and accurate that Honor Harrington, the woman who contemptuously destroyed the fastest gunman-for-hire in Manticorean space in a duel, has twice been struck dumb by just how horrifically lethal LaFollet is when the pulser darts start flying.
 * During the POW escape at the end of In Enemy Hands, LaFollet finds it necessary to do a suicidal charge down a hallway full of Peeps armed with automatic weapons, while armed only with a shotgun. By the time he reaches the other end, him and Honor are the only two living things left in the corridor. And there isn't a single scratch on him. And Honor wasn't even armed (that is, LaFollet had killed everything in his path single-handed).
 * Bling of War: Not to the extremes, but the uniform of the Harrington Guard (personally designed by Honor herself), with its striking green-on-green color, is rather distinct.
 * Bodyguard Crush: Unrequited, sadly, but he learned to cope.
 * Cool Old Guy: Relatively. He's about 20 years younger than Honor, but when Grayson allied itself with Manticore he was already too old for prolong, so in 1922 p.d. he looks like he could be her father.
 * Colonel Badass: Pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * Nothing Up My Sleeve: Kept a small pulser up his left sleeve in Field of Dishonor.
 * Old Retainer
 * Nothing Up My Sleeve: Kept a small pulser up his left sleeve in Field of Dishonor.
 * Old Retainer

Another of Honor's ever-present Grayson bodyguards, Jamie is characterised for being quiet yet persistent when things get difficult.


 * Beware the Nice Ones: He shocks himself with this, when he and Honor are both captured and he believes himself unable to prevent her execution. Instead he finds himself resolving to wait until he can kill enough of their captors to force them to kill him.
 * The Stoic: Often observed to be in pain, never complains, never lets it slow him down.
 * The Stoic: Often observed to be in pain, never complains, never lets it slow him down.

Howard Clinkscales was a Grayson soldier and security official. During his lifetime he served three Protectors, Benjamin IX being the last of these three. Prior to the Mayhew Restoration he was in command of Palace Security at the Protector's Palace. Later, after Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX ascended to the Protectorship, he served as the minister of security. Despite being initially opposed to having any role other than mother and wife or maid in Grayson society he eventually changed his mind and became a close friend and confidant of Honor Harrington. He served as her first regent, and came to regard her as a daughter.


 * Cool Old Guy: Frigging 92 (which is impressive per se for a pre-prolong Grayson) in At All Costs, when he -- and all those years were full of one awesome feat after another.
 * Heel Face Turn: He was downright vicious in Honor of the Queen initially, until Honor proved her badassitude. He then got the point and warmed up to her.
 * Retired Badass

The inventor of the sky domes which become commonplace across Grayson after the alliance with Manticore results in new materials becoming available.


 * Awesomeness By Analysis: Tracks down and identifies a child-killer using nothing but a schematic of a half-built structure and a video of how it was damaged. The differences between how the damage affected it and how the damage should have affected it allowed him to identify the role the killer had played in constructing the building and how he'd caused the damage to happen. Lord Clinkscales had thought it was impossible, but once they knew which equipment the saboteur had handled they had fingerprints.
 * Precision F-Strike: Swears twice ever, both times referring to the saboteur.
 * Precision F-Strike: Swears twice ever, both times referring to the saboteur.

Nimitz, named after American Admiral Chester Nimitz, or, to use his Treecat name, Laughs Brightly, is Honor's treecat (or she's his human), has an empathic link with her and appears in every book that she does.


 * Berserk Button: Anyone trying to harm his human is going to get a faceful of claws.
 * That's a generic Berserk Button for his entire species. Anyone who seriously thinks about harming a treecat's human in their presence will find themselves facing a small furry buzzsaw.
 * Bond Creatures
 * Deadpan Snarker: Ever since he learned to sign. Note that there was already very little doubt about it, as his sarcastic sense of humor was well known since the very beginning of the series. (Even before his adoption, his name among his fellow treecats was "Laughs Brightly".)
 * His nickname among his friends is "Stinker."
 * As in "Ain't I a..."
 * The Empath
 * Eye Scream: His quickest method to neutralize enemies given that he is relatively small but fast with enamel claws. In the second book he does almost as much as Honor to fend a large group of attacking assassins- perhaps more, given that he was the first to realize their intentions.
 * Genius Cripple: He is telepathically mute to his own kind, from injuries sustained from a State Sec rifle butt, but helped develop 'cat sign language to compensate.
 * Intelligent Gerbil: Doesn't quite fit here but is closer than any of the other Alien tropes.
 * Killer Rabbit: Really applies to the entire species. Seven of their eight ends are pointy.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Like most of his kind, he's fast and, being a Heavyworlder, strong for his size.
 * Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Treecats have "true-hands", "hand-paws", and "true-feet", so they have four arms. And they use them too.
 * Obfuscating Stupidity: Most humans aren't aware of just how intelligent treecats actually are. The cats are more than happy to be underestimated. Officially they were rated as an .83 on the in universe sentience scale, close to dolphins and above chimps. Later in the series their strategy finally starts shifting as they decide it would be useful to spread out from Sphinx so as to not lose the species if something happens to the planet.
 * Properly Paranoid: He and his mate Samantha convince the Treecats that they need to start spreading out to other worlds, because the kind of firepower the humans throw at each other could easily wipe out all life on Sphinx unintentionally.
 * Red Oni to Honor's Blue
 * Right-Hand-Cat: Except of course that Honor is a hero, not a villain.
 * Super Empowering: Honor can receive empathic impressions from those around her through Nimitz and her connection to him later aided her in learning to use her own weak but existing telempathic sense.
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Celery, but that's a species trait. It's mostly because they just find it so damn tasty, though the presence of a "telepathy vitamin" doesn't hurt.

Samantha is the only treecat known who is both a Memory Singer (a 'cat who can receive and transmit complete experiences to other treecats, like a living first-person-view encyclopedia) and is capable of forming an Adoption Bond with humans. She gave up her prestigious status as a Memory Singer among her own kind for the sake of finding a human to adopt. She's also "married to" (mated with) Nimitz.

She originally adopted Harold Tschu, but Tschu was killed in Honor Among Enemies while defending a merchant fleet from Havenite batlecruisers. The loss would have driven her to suicide, in not for her prior mating to Nimitz. Since then, she's adopted.

A Memory Singer of the Black Rock Clan, and the

A prominent businessman and politician from the planet Rembrandt, one of the more affluent and developed Talbott worlds, and the creator of the Rembrandt Trade Union -- a main intergovernmental association in the Talbott Cluster before its annexation. He first conceived it in an attempt to creating an entity too large and valuable for the Office of Frontier Security to simply gobble up, thus protecting the Cluster from the exploitation it usually involves. To this end, he did his best to extort the best financial advantages he could out of the non-RTU planets to secure the Union's positions. With the discovery of the Lynx Terminus, however, van Dort saw the once in a lifetime opportunity to protect the entire cluster, and spearheaded the annexation of the Talbott Cluster into the Star Kingdom of Manticore, after which he in effect became Dame Estelle's plenipotentiary and chief negotiator.


 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Was this as part of his Well Intentioned Extremism.
 * I Did What I Had to Do
 * Hero with Bad Publicity: A lot of it earned, true, but van Dort's generated some hard feelings among others due to the actions of the Trade Union.
 * The Man Behind the Man: He often preferred not to influence the things directly from a position of power, but either manipulate events behind the stage, or take a hands-on approach.
 * Mayfly-December Romance: With his wife Suzanne. He, as a son of a wealthy merchant, was able to travel to the League with one of his family's ships to undergo prolong treatment. Unfortunately, when he first met his would-be wife, she was already too old for this, thus making their life expectancies, well, different.
 * This earned him a lifelong resentment from Montana's Stephen Westman, who, being 14 at the time, had a huge crush on Suzanne (she was his best friend's Cool Big Sis) and felt that van Dost somehow "betrayed" her by that.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: Was willing to gobble up other star systems' economies in order to save as many other systems as he could from the machinations of the OFS. Dropped it the moment annexation into Manticore became an option to save the very systems he had been extorting.

Former politician from Kornati in the Split System. Turned terrorist upon the vote for annexiation by the Star Kingdom, founded the Freedom Alliance of Kornati (FAK), and starts blowing up stuff and people. LOTS of stuff and people.


 * Expy: She reminds people In-Universe of Cordelia Ransom.
 * Faking the Dead: Set it up, waited about three weeks and then started an "I'm Back" bombing series.
 * Hidden in Plain Sight: Hides in a small apartment in the lower class parts of town as a young widow. She even gets Unemployment/Social Security compensation!
 * I Did What I Had to Do: Her justification. She does it all for Kornati.
 * It Got Worse: Averted. But just think what she could have done with a thousand tons of modern military weapons.
 * Thankfully RMMC put a kibosh on that idea.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: She bombs malls, post offices and what else.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Her point of view at least.

Rich rancher from Montana. Like Nordbrandt he objects to the annexation, but that's where all the similarity ends. Unlike Nordbrandt and her FAK, his Montana Independence Movement (MIM) go to great lengths to not take lives.


 * Double Standard: Like most Montanans has those. This means the Manticoran women (see below) get to keep their clothes. He even apologizes to them!
 * Fighting Your Friend: Trevor Bannister, the Chief Marshal of Montana, is his best friend.
 * Friendly Enemy: They tend to keep their civility even then.
 * Gentleman Freedom Fighter: An image he consciously tries to build up.
 * Honor Before Reason
 * Karma Houdini: Granted that he went well out of his way to avoid hurting anybody, the man still formed and organized a domestic terrorist group, dealt with illegal arms traffickers, caused over a billion credits' worth of property damage, and crashed his planet's financial networks by blowing up the local Federal Reserve bank. Not only does he not serve so much as a single day in jail, he doesn't even seem to have suffered socially from this; his business is still prosperous, he still gets customers, and his old friends (including the planetary chief of police who arrested him in the first place) still remain his friends.
 * In fairness to Westman, his first reaction on being offered a full amnesty in return for him disbanding his group was to volunteer to take the full penalty for his crimes and go to jail. He only changed his mind when it was pointed out that this would also leave all of his followers stuck in jail too, because the amnesty offer was a global take-it-or-leave-it.
 * Also, the actual damage he did to the planetary financial system was minimal; he didn't touch the off-site backups.
 * Naked People Trapped Outside: His first act is to surprise a survey team from Manticore in the wild, take their tent, their clothes (sans the women) and points them to the nearest City.
 * Precocious Crush: Implied hat he had one for Suzanne Bannister, Trevor's elder sister and wife of Bernardus van Dort. He did not take the prolong thing well.
 * One of the main (subconscious) reasons he opposes annexation is that van Dort is its main proponent. Westman resents him just on too many levels -- including both his cutthroat business tactics during his stint as RTU's chief, and blaming him for Suzanne's fate.
 * He was fourteen at the time. Hardly all that precocious.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Averted. He accepts he will have to take lives at some point, but he is disgusted at what Nordbrandt is doing.
 * The Wild West: Less of the Cowboy and Indians version, more of the Rancher and Cattle western. Montana's Stetson, really.
 * Never Hurt an Innocent: He's prepared to fight with the marshals and the military. But he would turn himself and his men in if he hurt an innocent in the process.
 * Never Hurt an Innocent: He's prepared to fight with the marshals and the military. But he would turn himself and his men in if he hurt an innocent in the process.

President of Kornati. Sent herself as a representative to the Constitutional Convention to "preserve the local traditions and freedoms" of the systems seeking admission in the Star Kingdom of Manticore.


 * Permanent Elected Official: Not personally, but her prime goal is to preserve the oligarchic structures on Kornati.
 * God Save Us From the Queen: Gets impeached for her actions. From inside her own party.

Berry was born on the streets (or, more correctly, tunnels) of Old Chicago, but was saved (together with her younger brother Lars) by Helen Zilwicki during the course of the "Manpower Incident" and then adopted by her father Anton. Later becomes  after the events of the Crown of Slaves.


 * : Became while still in her teens.
 * Bi the Way: Rather obviously attracted to men...and Thandi Palane.
 * Happily Adopted
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: She's not really all that tiny (well, she's fairly petite, due to her often starving childhood, but nowhere near Allison Harrington levels), it's just that her boyfriend Hugh Arai is positively enormous, being a former Mesan heavy labor slave.
 * The Pollyanna: Has one of the best claims to a bad past, but remains genuinely cheerful.
 * Straight Woman: Berry has a remarkable ability to never lose her cool whatever happens around and remains a voice of reason in her constantly squabbling team.
 * Street Urchin
 * Street Urchin

Jeremy X is an escaped Manpower genetic slave and leader of the Audubon Ballroom, the most notorious band of anti-slavery terrorists/freedom fighters around. Later becomes.


 * A Father to His Men: In many cases -- almost literally. He raised a lot of other escapees, including Hugh Arai.
 * Heroic Sociopath
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold
 * Large Ham: Manpower Inc. bred and trained him to be an entertainer - specifically, a court jester. It shows in his hand-eye coordination and his tendency to chew scenery whenever he gets the chance. His first appearance begins with him somersaulting out of a hidden bookcase (in front of an audience of only two, both friendly) and just gets hammier from there.
 * Monster Clown: He basically looks just like a bastard lovechild of the Joker and the Punisher.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters

Well, the one simple fact that she's Victor Cachat's girlfriend should say volumes about the girl. A Marine officer in Roszak's squadron, she was the one who usually was on the business end of Barregos and Roszak's schemes. That is, until she finally got too disgusted by their latest gambit, and decided to retire. Fortunately, in the process of that gambit, she got hooked with Cachat and joined the bandwagon as Torch's most senior uniformed officer.


 * Action Girl
 * Aggressive-Submissive: As Victor muses, "Dominating her had been like a mortal dominating a goddess, a feat possible only because the goddess herself willed it."
 * The Brigadier
 * Conveniently-Common Kink: SUDDENLY happened to be into S&M, just like Cachat...
 * Er, was * Cachat* established to be into that beforehand either?
 * His other self -- certainly.
 * Even the Girls Want Her: Berry lusts after her on sight; sadly, Thandi's straight.
 * Lady of War
 * Space Marine: Quite literally -- she was a Solarian Marine before.
 * Super Soldier: See above. People of Ndebele were both genetically engineered, and environmentally conditioned to be tough as nails. Too bad that they came under the OFS umbrella.
 * Super Soldier: See above. People of Ndebele were both genetically engineered, and environmentally conditioned to be tough as nails. Too bad that they came under the OFS umbrella.

Considered the founder of the Modern Manticorian Military. He was in command of the RMN forces that were sent to the Silesian Confederacy to battle pirates who harassed Manticoran shipping in the area. After a battle causing extreme damage to both his fleets and the pirate fleets he split the ships up to escort the captured and stranded merchants he came for back home. His own Battlecruiser was alone when a fleet of 6 pirate vessels sprang a trap. He rammed his battlecruiser at the ships from smallest to largest as each ship destroyed meant another merchant ship would escape. The Saganami Tradition is named after his efforts.


 * Famed in Story: There is a reason that Manticore's Military Academy and three of their most advanced classes of star cruisers are named for him.
 * Foreshadowing: His last message to the Queen of Manticore mentioned that the pirate fleet they engaged had been equipped with Solarian-built warships and had Mesan backing.
 * Heroic Sacrifice
 * You Shall Not Pass: Took on a pirate fleet at something approaching six to one odds to cover the escape of a Manticoran convoy.

Founder of the Harrington Clan, came to Sphinx at the age of 11 with her parents. Managed to discover Treecats by catching one stealing Celery. Managed to then become the first human to be adopted and spent the rest of her life working on Treecat issues. Her story is told in the Young Adult sub-series starting with A Beautiful Friendship.


 * Determinator
 * Heavyworlder:
 * Knife Nut: Takes on a Hexapuma with a high-tech knife that nearly turns it into a Pentapuma by almost amputating a leg. This is the origin of her Treecat name, which she never learned, as the cats had no way of telling her about it at the time (Death Fang is the Treecat term for Hexapumas).
 * Little Miss Badass

Renegade Beowulfan who decided that it was easier to modify people to fit planets than try to terraform the planet and founded the Mesan Alignment. Ancestor of Albrecht (and his clone-sons).

Mercenary and founder of the Andermani Empire, author of the military treatise Sternenkrieg.


 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Believed himself to be the reincarnation of Frederick the Great and changed the court language of the planet from Chinese to German. It was specifically lampshaded in text that between his military genius and his being an instrumental figure in saving the planet from an ecological disaster, 'his subjects would have been willing to put up with even more insane behavior than even this'.