runsforcelery wrote:Rose's analysis of Dame Estelle's initial attitude towards Khumalo is pretty much spot on. She does somewhat overestimate the Baroness' attitudes towards naval officers in general, but the fact that Estelle has a niece in BuShips fifteen or twenty years after meeting Honor doesn't necessarily mean that she's known "plenty" of good officers. I will concede that by this point in her career she's known a lot more good officers than bad officers, however. On the other hand, Khumalo was a political appointee to a naval station clearly regarded as of minor and secondary importance by the same Admiralty which had sent Pavel Young to Basilisk. I think it is, therefore, fair to suggest that her initial reaction to him most definitely was affected by her view of "political naval officers" and of the disastrous consequences of command appointments made on the basis of factional political policy. She'd been there, done that, and she had the T-shirt.
She hadn't studied Terekhov's record any more closely than she'd studied the records of any other naval officers assigned to the Talbott Quadrant, particularly since she didn't know he was coming ahead of time. On the other hand, Terekhov was well known in naval circles because of his actions at Hyacinth, and if you will recall, he had quite a successful Foreign Office career before returning to active duty after the outbreak of the actual shooting war. During that time, he and Dame Estelle had been working in the same field for the same superiors.
Rose's analysis of Khumalo's perception of himself — and the perceptions of him held by others — is pretty darned accurate, as is the moment at which others realize (even before he did) that he'd "found his moment." The fact that he was a distant relative of the Queen, that his membership in the Conservative Association made him (somewhat unquestioningly) acceptable to High Ridge and Janacek, and that the Talbott Sector was generally regarded as a place which required a competent administrator but not necessarily a competent military commander had, indeed, been the primary reasons for his appointment to Talbott in the first place. Of course, as Michael Oversteegen demonstrates, the Conservative Association has its own . . . political gradients within its membership, and Janacek and High Ridge would have been quite surprised if they'd discovered exactly what Augustus Khumalo's view of their policies truly was even prior to Monica.
...that sound you just heard was me hitting the floor in a dead faint.
*grabs nearest stuffed animal, squeals into its fur and makes joyful squeaking noises whilst kicking feet like an excited three-year-old*
Yes, I am. And yes, you absolutely may! Edinburgh is a lovely city.