Of course the other possibility for McQueen's continued survival is that she doesn't erroneously suspect St. Just has ordered her arrest and execution, so doesn't jump the gun. Given how little time there is left before Buttercup, she might well have not executed her coupe attempt by then, allowing her to continue as Minister of War under Pierre.drothgery wrote:I never get that far, because it's pretty nearly certain if McQueen's coup is successful, she never authorizes the assassination attempt on Elizabeth and Benjamin (she doesn't know about the plan, and would almost certainly be even more ideologically opposed to it than Pierre was if she did). Which means the Cromarty government presses the first war to Haven's surrender (which happens more quickly under McQueen because she has a much better grasp of military realities).
Because there's no High Ridge government
- the Lynx terminus is not discovered as quickly
- Manticore resolves the situation on and around Congo, almost certainly in a very different fashion than Victor Cachat & co. did (and Erewhon remains allied with Manticore)
- The Andies press their claims in Silesia openly, and some sort of reasonable resolution is reached
Now whether Pierre would authorize the assassination attempts after Buttercup kicks off is hard to say.
But even if he does, without the fig-leaf of a new Peep government I'm not sure even a High Ridge can politically survive halting the war on the brink of total victory. So even in this scenario McQueen can't militarily save them and it's unlikely to politics would work out the same way.
I just don't see any plausible way to put McQeen in charge with the resources and preconditions necessary for Thunderbolt or Beatrice.
(Maybe, maybe, a Treaty of Versailles scenario where she survives the Peep surrender and then post-war somehow a Mantie government manages to lose the peace; but that seems pretty unlikely on a couple fronts)
