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[[David Drake]]'s RCN (Republic of Cinnabar Navy) series is loosely based off the 18th century British navy, complete with spaceships that travel through hyperspace using sails. However, the sails are handled fairly realistically: stripping a ship's sails with a plasma cannon is a quick and easy way to keep it from escaping into hyperspace, the sails need to be furled and stowed before entering an atmosphere, and when deployed, interfere with the ship's realspace maneuvering and combat.
In the same way that ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' is ''[[Horatio Hornblower|Hornblower]]''/Nelson IN SPACE, the ''RCN'' books are
From the author's note from "''The Way to Glory''", third book in the series: "The general political background of the RCN series is that of Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, with admixtures of late-Republican Rome. (There's a surprising degree of congruence between British and Roman society in those periods.)"
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* The "''RCN''" series is the nomenclature Drake uses, for Republic of Cinnabar Navy.
The books so far, as of mid-2022:
* ''With the Lightnings'' (1999).
* ''Lt. Leary, Commanding'' (2000).
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* ''The Road of Danger'' (2012)
* ''The Sea Without a Shore'' (2014)
* ''Death's Bright Day'' (2016)
* ''Though Hell Should Bar the Way'' (2018)
* ''To Clear Away the Shadows'' (2019) - Leary and Mundy do not appear in this novel
Drake has also written a few RCN short stories. "Cadet Cruise" is about Daniel Leary before he met Adele Mundy, and the viewpoint (but not ''title'') character of "Midshipman" is Ellie Woetjans, again prior to the events of ''With the Lightnings'' when she became part of Leary's crew. Both can be found in the Baen Free Library at baen.com.
Not to be confused with the East Coast [http://www.rcn.com cable television/telephone/internet provider] based in Princeton, NJ, or the [[Canucks With Chinooks|Royal Canadian Navy]].
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* [[A Man Is Not a Virgin]]: Daniel is stated to be good enough at seducing women that he could make his living at it. More recently he has settled down with Miranda Dorst.▼
* [[Always Save the Girl|Always Save The Friend]]: Adele will do '''anything''' to rescue Daniel.
* [[American Customary Measurements]]: In the foreword of the first book, Drake explicitly states he has Cinnabar using imperial measurements, while the Alliance uses metric ones, to help differentiate the two polities. He repeats this in ''every'' book, emphasizing that he actually believes humanity three thousand years or so from now (if it survives that long) will have replaced both of those measurement systems.
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** Porra's exiled mistress in ''What Distant Deeps'' also has a personal servant whose real duty (everyone knows) is to keep an eye on her. She and Tovera spend a great deal of time ensuring each has a clean shot at the other if necessary.
* [[Because You Were Nice to Me]]: Lieutenant Mon was a capable but unlucky officer, who came to be regarded as [[The Jinx|a jinx]]. Daniel Leary gave him a position as his second in command, and later a job managing a shipyard of which Daniel is part owner -- and gave Mon a share of the ownership, too. Mon's loyalty to Daniel is '''absolute''' -- and the shipyard does very, '''very''' well under his management. Either he was only unlucky aboard ship, or Daniel Leary somehow negates Mon's bad luck....
* [[Becoming the Mask]]: As of ''In The Stormy Red Sky'' Adele believes this may be happening to Tovera.
** In ''The Sea Without a Shore'' Tovera reports hearing that somebody tried to push Leary around and "hadn't been pleased with the result." Adele notices Tovera seems genuinely proud that Daniel kicked ass (yet again).
* [[Briefcase Blaster]]: Tovera.
* [[The Captain]]: Daniel Leary
* [[Casanova]]: Daniel Leary's favorite form of entertainment in port,
* [[Changing of the Guard]]: ''Though Hell Should Bar the Way'' '''included''' Daniel, Adele, etc., but the viewpoint character was new: Roy Olfetrie, a distant cousin of Daniel's wife Miranda. Daniel gave him a chance after Roy had to leave RCN training in disgrace that wasn't his fault. In addition, an entry on Drake's website indicates that ''To Clear Away the Shadows'', due out in mid-2019, will focus on the crew of an entirely different RCN ship. That entry makes no reference to Leary and Mundy '''at all'''.
* [[Death Seeker]]: Adele Mundy ... [[Improbable Aiming Skills|unfortunately she sucks at dying.]]
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: Tovera {{spoiler|castrates an enemy}} who was excessively, insultingly physical about searching Adele.
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** There's mention in ''With the Lightnings'' of a "Terran trade commissioner on Cinnabar at the time of the Three Circles Conspiracy" fifteen years past, indicating Earth was still (or again) economically significant at that time. "Earth-That-Was" below makes clear why that can't be true.
* [[Earth-That-Was]]: Earth was all but destroyed by kinetic bombardment (two thousand years ago, according to one reference), the very continents rearranged unrecognizably.
* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Guarantor Porra is a brutal dictator, but Tovera says that while he might order children tortured as a matter of policy, he'd be disgusted to learn one of his officials was torturing children simply for sexual kicks. Disgusted enough to have the man tracked down and executed, no matter how competent at his duties the fellow was.
* [[Everything Is an iPod In The Future]]: Adele's most cherished possession is her handheld computer. She is never found without both that and her dueling pistol. And the first is [[Hollywood Hacking|more lethal]]
* [[Fantastic Racism]]: "Men whose idea of patriotism was that anyone not from Cinnabar was a [[Fantastic Slurs|wog]] with no honor and no rights." The members of the RCN feel that way about pretty much anyone not in the RCN, and not a few in it. This attitude shows up on Earth in the [[Aubrey-Maturin]] series, which RCN is based on, and is apparently [[Truth in Television]].
* [[Foil]]: Adele is an introverted bookworm who's friends with the extrovert Daniel. Also, the ''extremely'' co-dependent Tovera mirrors the independent Hogg.
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* [[Kid with the Leash]]: Adele with Tovera. Adele keeps her around partially as a reminder that [[Bad Dreams]] are far from the worst possible consequence of her chosen lifestyle.
* [[Magnetic Hero]]: Let the word get out that Captain Leary is recruiting. Watch people who've shipped with him before come running to sign up. This includes a few who're rich enough from previous missions that they need never work again. "Six needs me...."
▲* [[A Man Is Not a Virgin]]: Daniel is stated to be good enough at seducing women that he could make his living at it. More recently he has settled down with Miranda Dorst.
* [[Mythology Gag]]: A brief reference in ''In the Stormy Red Sky'' to a medicinal plant known as "bluebrights" and grown on the planet Melpomene. The chronologically first ''[[
* [[Nice Girl]]: Miranda Dorst, eventually Miranda Leary. A measure of '''how''' nice is that Tovera will escort her into Adele's presence without the sort of paranoid precautions she applies to most people. Being nice definitely doesn't make her a pushover, either. When she comes along with the sailors to help Leary escape an ambush, she looks around to see if there's still anyone who needs clobbering with her hockey stick before she goes to Daniel and hugs him.
* [[Noble Savage]]: Believed by Adele's mother. Averted by the savage cultures encountered in the series.
* [[No Kill Like Overkill]]: Actually, they were just playing it safe in case one of the others missed, but one hostage-taker got shot through the lungs by Hogg -- the slug penetrated a brick wall '''before''' it hit the guy's torso<ref>Yes, Hogg was [[Improbable Aiming Skills|aiming without a direct line of sight]], based on what a spy camera showed him of the fellow's position. And yes, with his first and only shot he scored a hit that would've been fatal all by itself.</ref> -- shot twice in the side of the head by Adele, and shot three times in the other side of the head by Tovera. And then Daniel [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|tackled him.]]
* [[Not So Different]]: Adele has the "particularly unpleasant" realization in ''The Sea Without a Shore'' that, if faced with a situation much like the conspiracy that got her family killed, she would advise crushing it in exactly the way Corder Leary ended that one -- with mass killings. Elaborating on that, she thinks if Daniel had been running the Republic, he '''wouldn't''' have ordered the massacre ... at most he might have looked the other way while "his advisor, Lady Mundy," [[I Did What I Had to Do|gave those orders]].
**In ''With the Lightnings'', both the backstory of both Daniel and Adele tells how they remember the Three Circles Conspiracy as children huddling in fear.
**In ''With the Lightnings'' both the Alliance and the Cinnabarans look down on the Kostramans for being provincial and militarily incompetent.
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* [[People's Republic of Tyranny]]: The bad guys mostly come from the "[[Star Control|Alliance of Free Stars]]."
* [[Psycho Sidekick]]: Adele's servant Tovera. Also Daniel's servant Hogg. Fortunately, they get along well.
* [[Punch Clock Hero]]: Daniel fights because being in the RCN is his job. Adele fights because Daniel is
* [[Put Their Heads Together]]: Done by Daniel in ''When the Tide Rises''; Adele found it a "remarkable reminder" of his strength.
* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: The series' [[True Companions]] consist of a playboy military hero who is the disowned son of the most powerful politician on Cinnabar, a [[Badass Bookworm|lethal librarian/spy]] who is sole survivor of a disgraced family massacred on orders of the aforementioned politician, a sociopathic former agent of Cinnabar's main enemy, and Leary's [[Parental Substitute|surrogate father]] who uses [[Obfuscating Stupidity]] so people don't realize the hick peasant is the deadliest person in the room (if any of the other three aren't there).
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** Characters occasionally referred to "God," singular, up until somewhere in ''When the Tide Rises'', after which they seem to always speak of "the Gods."
** ''In the Stormy Red Sky'' gives the Alliance dictator's name as "Jorge Porra". In ''What Distant Deeps'', however, Porra's former mistress speaks of him as "Guillaume." Possibly this is just '''her''' name for him.
** Adele's sister Agatha was ten when she died. Except that ''The Sea Without a Shore'' says she was eight. The means of her death varies from book to book, too: either she was strangled to death and then her head cut off, or the beheading was what killed her, '''or''' she died by being stabbed.
** Adele learned librarianship at the intellectual center of the Alliance on the planet Bryce. Or Blythe, depending on which book you read.
** See also Early Installment Weirdness above.
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* [[True Companions]]: Leary notes to himself in ''What Distant Deeps'' that he, Adele, Tovera, and Hogg have become a weird kind of family.
** Later, Leary offers that even if Adele were killed, there'd still be a place for Tovera with him and Hogg. Tovera giggles, saying, "You think I'm a dangerous insect." Daniel tells her his ''gun'' is dangerous, but he doesn't think it'll randomly kill him or anyone that's his, and he doesn't think she would either. (He doesn't deny the "insect" part, because he won't lie to her.) Tovera thanks him, but says she'd still rather seek death in a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]. The conversation is kind of heartwarming, in a twisted way.
* [[We ARE Struggling Together]]: The different clans and cliques of the
* [[When She Smiles]]: It's not explicitly tied to her smile, but Miranda Dorst, who's normally just "a girl who drew a man's eyes at least once," becomes "oddly beautiful" when in Daniel's company.
** While Daniel's smile isn't described as ''changing'' his looks, the first book notes that it's such a naturally warm expression that when he smiles at something he's thinking, strangers on the street smile back.
* [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]] RCNVerse gun barrels are made of ''iridium''. And shoot osmium bullets. Both metals are rarer and more expensive than platinum in [[Real Life]].
* [[Worthy Opponent]]: In ''The Far Side of the Stars'', Daniel happens to meet an Alliance officer at a funeral they're attending during an armistice. He distinctly remembers that at least one decoration the man wears is '''not''' given for political nepotism.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:Military and Warfare Literature]]
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