Amaroq wrote:
A nice little moment of recognition by Elizabeth with respect to Honor from SFtS.Elizabeth Winton realized something emotionally that she'd long since recognized intellectually. Something Honor's analysis of any possible confrontation with the Solarian League had driven home in this very room only three T-weeks earlier.
Honor Alexander-Harrington had become the closest thing Elizabeth III had to a true peer. Admiral, Countess, Duchess, and Steadholder, the third ranking member of the Star Empire's peerage, a ruling head of state in her own right, and someone who had been born to none of those titles and identities. Someone who had won them. Who'd paid for them in the cold, hard cash of combat, in the loss of people for whom she cared deeply, in all the thousands of deaths—enemy and friend alike—she had taken onto her own conscience in the service of Elizabeth's kingdom, and in her own blood. Someone who had received many of those titles and honors from Elizabeth's own hands because she damned well deserved them.
And that peer—the person, Elizabeth realized now, whose absolute integrity and whose judgment on every other question she most trusted—disagreed with her on this one.
I love this passage Amaroq. I often internalize that if there was a freakish disaster — for instance, something caused by a Mesan planetary strike which wiped out Elizabeth and all legal successors to the throne — then Honor Harrington would become Queen of Manticore.
Some exotic cream in that coffee.
)