Zakharra wrote:GregD wrote:For your first point: so what?
1: High Ridge already established that Star Nations can act unilaterally, no one not already his partisan is going to care that Grayson went around his back unilaterally.
2: 2 years into the cease-fire, Steadholder Harrington comes before the House of Lords, announcing that Grayson, Erewhon, and the rest of the worlds of the Alliance have negotiated a peace treaty with the Republic of Haven, said Treaty to go into effect in 6 months, or when Manticore signs, whichever comes first. She then plays a video from Queen Elizabeth saying that she's seen the terms of the treaty, finds it quite fair, and calls on Parliament to end the war with Haven. Then she reads the Treaty.
A: You really think Erewhon wouldn't sign on?
B: You really think Pritchard wouldn't agree to a fair treaty?
C: You really think the House of Lords will reject a Peace Treaty with Haven just because Grayson negotiated it?
You've got all the Crown Loyalists and Centrists supporting it. All you need are enough Independents and (people who would have become Cathy M's) New Liberals to get to a majority, and the war is over.
If Manticore stays at war because essentially every single Liberal in the Lords voted against a Peace Treaty, the Liberals would be utterly destroyed in the Commons for a generation. a Prolong generation.
Not going to happen. It passes, the war's over, all the wartime taxes are repealed, the government is forced to call an election, and after it's over all the San Martino Lords get to join.
Game over, High Ridge government.
As for your second point, go reread the beginning of War of Honor. Note how pissed Honor, and everyone else on her side, is about how long things are dragging on. Those people should have been willing to do anything they needed to do to cut short the corruption and disaster of the High Ridge government.
And Grayson negotiating a separate Peace Treaty does not spark a Manticorian Constitutional fight. The Queen "didn't do anything." This isn't the Queen's Treaty, it's Grayson's. Now, the Queen thinks it's a really good treaty, and hopes Parliament will ratify it quickly, but that's not a Constitutional problem.
Now, will anyone on the other side believe that? Of course not. Who cares? Elizabeth wants to strangle every single one of them with her own hands. Pissing them off mightily, when there's nothing they can do about it, and harming, if not completely destroying, all their plans in the bargain?
Priceless.
1. High Ridge was running in dangerous ground,m but since Manticore ran the Manticore Alliance, there was little other nations and people could do.
2. Steadholder Harrington would not have any authority to present anything to the House of Lords. It would have to be presented to the High Ridge government. As far as I know, Steadholder is not a rank that has any right to appear or present anything before the Manticoran House of Lords since it's not a Manticoran rank. If she did it as Duchess Harington, then she runs into the problem of going around the legal governments back, or doing it illegally. It's the same reasoning why Elizabeth couldn't do it. Legally the Prime Minister has to be the one to do stuff like that. The Manticore royalty is limited in what it could do and as long as High Ridge was still 'negotiating' with Haven, there was little she could do without breaking her own constitutional limitations. Hence the real possibility of provoking a constitutional crisis. A crisis that no one would know who the judges would rule for.
A. Possibly.
B. Possibly, but with severe reservations*.
C. Not a chance since it would have been done -outside- of established governmental bounds. It had to come through the High Ridge government to be legal (more or less). Honor doing an end run would be seen as the Queen and Honor (as Duchess Harrington) trying to sidestep or go beyond her constitutional boundaries. And as much as those two women might like to have done that, they respect the rule of law too much to do it, since if you bend the laws to do something like that once, you might do it again, and again and again. At what point do you say you can't bend/break the law just because it's in the way of what you want to do? It's a damned slippery slope to start down and they would have been on very thin ice if someone did that to them and they got angry and huffy about it. They did it, so they couldn't really complain if someone did it to them.
Grayson negotiating a treaty would break the Alliance because Grayson doesn't have that authority in the Alliance. High Ridge's mistakes were, if I remember right, of not informing the other members what he was doing. He just did it without consulting them. Grayson negotiating a peace treaty would be essentially doing the same thing.
It's nowhere near as easy and slamdunk as you're making it appear. There was by no means a guarantee that such a peace treaty would have sailed past the House of Lords if it had been presented for it to have succeeded, it would have had to have the government's stamp of approval.
* Her reservations would likely be that it wouldn't the official government negotiators that got the treaty. That would cast a large shadow of illegitimacy on the entire proceedings. It would be like the Secretary of the US Commerce Department bypassing the State Department to present the President with a negotiated treaty a nation the US would have been at war with; say China or Russia for some reason. It might be an option the President likes and supports, but it would not be an accepted venue to get said treaty because it didn't come through official channels, ie the State Department. That's not the function of the Commerce Department.
1: Grayson would be running in dangerous ground. But Since High Ridge has already pissed off everyone else in the Manticore Alliance, there's not a lot High Ridge can do about it.
2: Have you really forgot that Steadholder Harrington shares a body with Duchess Harrington, who most certainly can go to the Floor of the House of Lords and make a speech?
You know, a little speech that goes: "Hi folks, all of our allies have signed this Peace Treaty with Haven. We have six months to ratify it ourselves, failing which the Manticore Alliance will disappear because every single one of our Allies will be at peace with Haven."
C: Steadholder Harrington negotiated a Peace Treaty between her country (Grayson) and Haven. She shows up with the proper attestations from Grayson that she's qualified to make a Peace Treaty.
Duchess Harrington tells the House of Lords: here's a Peace Treaty. We can agree to it, or we can lose every ally we have. The Constitution and the law have both been fully honored.
Now, the only question is: will enough Liberal / Independent Lords go along to pass the Treaty? Will ANY of the people who became "New Liberals" refuse to vote for Peace? Why? Isn't that enough right there to give a victory?