The Peshawar Lancers

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The Peshawar Lancers

Written by:	S.M. Stirling
Central Theme:
Synopsis:
Genre(s):	Alternate history, Steampunk, Post-apocalypse
Series:	The Peshawar Lancers
Preceded by:	Shikari in Galveston
First published:	2002

The Peshawar Lancers is a 2002 Alternate History novel by S.M. Stirling, author of the The Draka, Island in The Sea of Time and the Emberverse, The Peshawar Lancers takes place in a world where a series of comet strikes destroyed much of Western Europe and North America in 1878, the resulting long winter finishing off most of civilization in those areas. Most of the survivors that didn't become cannibal savages fled to their overseas colonies, in particular the French remnants relocated to their North African possessions and the British to India, South Africa and Australia. By the early 21st Century, the latter (at least in India) have gone native to the point of referring themselves as the Angrezi Raj.

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Tropes used in The Peshawar Lancers include:

• After the End: in the style of Rudyard Kipling.
  • The latter parts of the story concern the threat of a second impact (not that one).
• Alternate History: When "God Save the King" is replaced with "God Save the Padishah" (no, not that one), take a wild guess.
• Alternate Universe: The Sisters are mentioned to not only see the future, but different futures as well. Including a snapshot of our 21st Century.
• Anything That Moves: Queen Victoria II (reigned 1921 - 1942), based on what's mentioned of her, probably caused the term "Victorian" to mean something rather different from in OTL.
• Artistic License Chemistry:
  • One character despises guncotton because of its tendency to sweat nitroglycerin. That's dynamite, which is nitroglycerin absorbed into kiselguhr. Guncotton is pure nitrocellulose, which does not contain nitroglycerin.
  • The hydrogen in the Empire's airships is spiked with "sulfur-rich methane" to make leaks detectable. Methane contains no sulfur and is completely odorless (natural gas, a mixture of mostly methane and ethane, needs to have odorants added for this very reason).
• Big Bad: Count Ignatieff.
• The British Empire: Known in the book either as the Angrezi Raj or the New Empire, based in Delhi. Australia-New Zealand and South Africa are Viceroyalties (each having their own colonies).
  • The old British accent vanished long before. Since the "Imperial English" used (at least in India and the elite) is mentioned as a pidgin language with heavy Hindi borrowings. Australia and the Cape use more "conservative" versions closer to the Victorians.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Athelstane is an unrepentant womanizer, but also an Officer and a Gentleman.
• Colony Drop: The Fall
• Deus Sex Machina: Yasmini's only means to preserve her sanity involves some quality time with Athelstane.
• Dances and Balls: On special occasions the Angrezi would revive old pre-Fall traditions, such as the waltz. The Royal Palace in Delhi actually has a Victorian-style ballroom specifically built for this purpose, with the men dressing in "classical" attire; out of convenience, however, women still prefer the sari.
• Disney Villain Death: Count Ignatieff is stabbed by Athelstane and thrown from a zeppelin, and is described as splattering when he hits the ground.
• Eats Babies: Count Ignatieff, literally; at one point, he thinks that the food he's been given isn't nearly as tasty as "roast suckling Uzbek."
• Eldritch Abomination: the cult of Malik Nous in the remains of Russia worships one and believes bringing about the destruction of humanity will please him
• Everything Trying to Kill You: A reader could be forgiven for thinking the book is an RPG transcript; Athelstane and co. have to deal with attacks from devil-worshippers, Afghans, ninjas, Thuggee, bandits, white supremacists and air pirates!
  • And practically all of them were bribed/manipulated/set up by Count Ignatieff.
• Everything's Better with Princesses: Lampshaded by Athelstane, chatting with Sita, when he remarks that every adventure story needs a beautiful princess.
• Expy: The Kapenaar (Anglo-Afrikaner South Africans) are essentially Draka if the British managed to restrain them. With the added touch of them being the only ones left wearing Pith helmets. They're even called the "Bad boys" of the Empire by Stirling himself.
• Feudal Future: It's more of a Victorian Twenty Minutes Into the Future
  • The French are described as more or less pristine-European with some Islamic tinge (they've kept Marseilles the whole time though).
  • China and Japan are united under one throne, but very much autonomous and distinct from one another.
  • Brazil-dominated South America is filled with caudillos-of-the-month.
  • As for North America, it's the Wild West mixed with neo-barbarians (along with Mormon enclaves).
• Five-Man Band: Using the group that operates together for much of the book yields the following -
  • The Hero: Athelstane
  • The Lancer: Narayan Singh (with elements of The Big Guy)
  • The Smart Guy: David bar-Elias and Sir Manfred Warburton
  • The Big Guy: Ibrahim Khan (despite not being all that big)
  • The Chick: Yasmini
• Generation Xerox: Athelstane King and Narayan Singh, and their respective fathers, Eric and Ranjit.
• Girls Love/Les Yay: It's mentioned briefly that Cassandra once gave this a go, but was disappointed by the result. In the actual novel, Sita goes out of her way to make it look like she and Cassandra (her tutor) are having an affair. (This is quite possibly the smallest amount of Les Yay in any S.M. Stirling book.)
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Oh so very much. The Kunwar is bound by his rajadharma for the good of the Angrezi Raj.
  • With the Russian, it turns into As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Stirling can't make up his mind whether to write the Russian phonetically or as a straight transliteration. The result is a garbled mixture between the two.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sita's bodyguard and King-Emperor John.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Yasmini only comes up to Athelstane's chest.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Yasmini's precognition tells her the precise direction to point her gun and the exact moment to squeeze the trigger. She's got her eyes closed as she does.
• Incest Is Relative: The Dreamers are deliberately and forcibly inbred by their masters to ensure their talent is passed on. This includes both Brother-Sister Incest and Parental Incest. Squick.
• In Spite of a Nail: Australians, Afghans, Jews and Brazilians are implied to be more or less recognizable.
  • A number of real life figures still show up, such as L. Ron Hubbard (as an American tribal in the prequel) and Prince Charles.
  • That's Robert E. Howard, not L. Ron Hubbard.
• Prince Incognito: Henri de Vascogne turns out not to be just a random French aristocrat, but the heir to the throne. And Afghan adventurer Ibrahim Khan said his father was a ruler ... he just didn't mention Dad controls not one but twelve villages and "a strong hill-fort with a town at its feet."
  • Lampshaded in that from almost his second appearance, and increasingly more as we get to know him, it is strongly suggested not only by the author that he is, in fact, the Crown Prince of France, but that other people have noticed this as well and are keeping quiet about it. In fact, in the ultimate reveal of this, Sita berates him, not for hiding this fact from her, but for thinking that she actually didn't know less than a week after she met him!
• Mysterious Waif: Yasmini.
• Nature Abhors a Virgin: Read the rest of this page and take a wild guess as to who this trope applies to.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Somewhat averted, with Angrezi/British women having abandoned them for the sari. Frenchwomen, on the other hand, are another matter...
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Dr Ghose is a thinly-veiled Satyendra Nath Bose.
• Psychic Powers: Yasmini and her fellow Dreamers
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The King-Emperor falls into this category.
• Rebellious Princess: Sita exemplifies this trope.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Every royal character of any significance.
  • Also consider the fact that while the Angrezi (at least) are nominally a constitutional monarchy, the current royals wield much more power than Victoria ever did.
• Shout-Out: Many, given the book's status as a homage to old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure fiction. Referenced works include Flashman and Beau Geste.
  • The main character is named for Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles, and his friend Narayan Singh for a character from Mundy's Jimgrim series. Yasmini was also the name of a Femme Fatale in King... and (apparently the same woman) the Jimgrim stories.
  • Dai-Nippon is ruled by The Mikado.
• Steampunk: Aside from the obligatory airships (see below), the book features giant mechanical Babbage-style primitive computers.
  • The more old-fashioned among the Angrezi (along with some Indians) still tend to wear top hats and frock coats. French fashions meanwhile have hardly changed since the 19th Century (complete with corsets), though with a very slight desert/Islamic tinge.
• Take That: If AlternateHistory.com is to be believed, the Fall feels like an excuse for Stirling to dance on the remains of Europe and America. And you thought The Years of Rice and Salt was hard enough...
  • Said forum is also working on alternative (and more realistic) scenarios, including bits like a surviving USA and a German Holy Roman Empire in Eastern Europe.
  • scarcely more realistic, given the initial premise. The basic rule of thumb is that anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere where it snows in the winter has three to five years with killing frosts -every month of the year-, followed by a decade of lousy weather. You have to get south to where oranges grow before there aren't catastrophic crop failures for -years on end-.
• Twincest: Athelstane and Cassandra have a "close" relationship.
• Virgin Power: Yasmini. But she loses it the only way possible.
• Waif Fu: Yasmini doesn't actually beat up men much larger than her with her bare hands, but she is more than capable in combat despite being, well, waifishly small (she poses as a 12-year-old at one point). Partly because her psychic powers let her know, without looking, exactly where to point a gun and when to pull the trigger.
• Weddings for Everyone: Athelstane and Yasmini, Charles and Cassandra, Henri and Sita
• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Yasmini is a borderline example, having very pale blonde hair.
• The Wise Prince: Charles (who's implied to be the OTL Prince Charles).
• The Woobie: Yasmini was born and raised as a slave of an apocalyptic death-cult, gets dragged around India by the main villain who treats her like dirt, fully expects to start going mad and then be forcibly 'bred', and has increasingly unpleasant fainting fits and bouts of waking dreams as the story progresses. Couple that with her frequently remarked upon exotic beauty and you have the literary equivalent of a Moeblob.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Powered by Stirling-cycle engines.
  • Which are a real thing, by the way.