Travis Long & his lack of recognition

After all the hoo-hah about the release of Shadow of Victory's eARC & with A Call to Vengeance due out next year I thought I would stick my neck out by starting a new topic.

Does anybody else think that they were right to deny Travis Long his medals for both the Secouran Incident & the Battle of Manticore? Certainly in the text it is shown as the unintended consequences of Travis's familial relationship with his half brother, Baron Winterfall as well as vengefulness on the part of Carlton Locatelli against Travis. But if you read more closely into the text then there is a suggestion that they were right to deny him them as Gavin was intending to trade on it to enhance his own political reputation & with it, strengthen his own case for weakening or disbanding the Royal Manticoran Navy. (The brother of a decorated naval hero is nevertheless throwing his weight behind a campaign to prevent this hasty & unnecessary rearmament programme).

The textev is as follows:

“The Navy has denied your brother a Conspicuous Gallantry Medal,” Breakwater said. “I suppose you’ll have to drop that part from your speech now.”
“That’s all right,” Winterfall said, scrolling back to the relevant section of his upcoming speech. It would have been nice to include that tribute to his brother, a tribute which, as Breakwater had pointed out earlier, would also have subtly raised Winterfall’s own prestige.
But he could get by without it. Besides, the heroism and accomplishments of the two MPARS corvettes were more important to his side of the argument, and that was not something Locatelli and the Navy could take away.
He was deleting the reference to his brother when an odd thought abruptly hit him.
Could it be that the Navy was refusing Travis a medal because of him?
Even worse, it suddenly occurred to him that the first thing he had focused on when he had heard the news was how it would affect his own political advances.

From A Call to Arms Chapter 26 page 349 hardback edition. Italics & Bold typeface mine

Thoughts anyone?

Rincewind wrote:After all the hoo-hah about the release of Shadow of Victory's eARC & with A Call to Vengeance due out next year I thought I would stick my neck out by starting a new topic.

Does anybody else think that they were right to deny Travis Long his medals for both the Secouran Incident & the Battle of Manticore? Certainly in the text it is shown as the unintended consequences of Travis's familial relationship with his half brother, Baron Winterfall as well as vengefulness on the part of Carlton Locatelli against Travis. But if you read more closely into the text then there is a suggestion that they were right to deny him them as Gavin was intending to trade on it to enhance his own political reputation & with it, strengthen his own case for weakening or disbanding the Royal Manticoran Navy. (The brother of a decorated naval hero is nevertheless throwing his weight behind a campaign to prevent this hasty & unnecessary rearmament programme).

The textev is as follows:

“The Navy has denied your brother a Conspicuous Gallantry Medal,” Breakwater said. “I suppose you’ll have to drop that part from your speech now.”
“That’s all right,” Winterfall said, scrolling back to the relevant section of his upcoming speech. It would have been nice to include that tribute to his brother, a tribute which, as Breakwater had pointed out earlier, would also have subtly raised Winterfall’s own prestige.
But he could get by without it. Besides, the heroism and accomplishments of the two MPARS corvettes were more important to his side of the argument, and that was not something Locatelli and the Navy could take away.
He was deleting the reference to his brother when an odd thought abruptly hit him.
Could it be that the Navy was refusing Travis a medal because of him?
Even worse, it suddenly occurred to him that the first thing he had focused on when he had heard the news was how it would affect his own political advances.

From A Call to Arms Chapter 26 page 349 hardback edition. Italics & Bold typeface mine

Thoughts anyone?

Its obviously totally unjust, twice over! But clearly RFC likes that kind of thing and it will no doubt get turned around in time. Eg. A certain lowly naval officer who was very unpopular in certain high places....

martin wrote:Its obviously totally unjust, twice over! But clearly RFC likes that kind of thing and it will no doubt get turned around in time. Eg. A certain lowly naval officer who was very unpopular in certain high places....

I would agree with you that, on a personal level, it is unjust to Travis. However, looking at it from a wider political point of view of those trying to keep the RMN in existence it is necessary. Some of them know it is unjust to Travis but they feel that they have no choice. Certainly the text has pointed out Travis's tone-deafness to the wider implications of some of his actions & he seems completely oblivious to the political realities that are entangling them. It has also shown how Travis himself has been unjust in some of his opinions.

Of course it's unjust.

This serves two dramatic purposes, IMHO:

It shows Travis as rising to the "selfless warrior" ideal as things will develop (I'm pretty sure, anyway . . . no inside information here, just a semi-educated guess), and

2) It explains why nobody knows about Travis in Honor's time (duh).

Purpose #1 is the interesting one as far as I'm concerned. "You gotta do what you gotta do, no matter what" is, it seems to me, a major theme of the entire Honorverse canon.

Based off the close of the last MA book A Call to Arms, I'm guessing that Travis Long is going to go work for intelligence based the conversation that Champs has with its head, Countess Calvingdell:

She turned her tablet around so that he could see it. “But before we get into that,” she continued, tapping the tablet’s edge for emphasis, “I have a question. Tell me everything you know about this man.
“Tell me about Travis Uriah Long.”

Travis Long becomes a spy or an analyst and is thus deliberately obscured from the public eye. Therefore, he is forgotten.

It will be interesting to see what happens with him. Given the info dropped in the Shadow of Victory E-arc. It can only be good. I suspect he is going to get some powerful friends that no one expects.

ncwolf wrote:Based off the close of the last MA book A Call to Arms, I'm guessing that Travis Long is going to go work for intelligence based the conversation that Champs has with its head, Countess Calvingdell:

She turned her tablet around so that he could see it. “But before we get into that,” she continued, tapping the tablet’s edge for emphasis, “I have a question. Tell me everything you know about this man.
“Tell me about Travis Uriah Long.”

Travis Long becomes a spy or an analyst and is thus deliberately obscured from the public eye. Therefore, he is forgotten.

Rule Stickler Long as a spy? I'm not sure what game The Countess is playing, but I'm not so convinced her attention is going to be good for TUL. He nearly spiked her operations a couple of times.

WeirdlyWired wrote:
Rule Stickler Long as a spy? I'm not sure what game The Countess is playing, but I'm not so convinced her attention is going to be good for TUL. He nearly spiked her operations a couple of times.

One problem with covert ops is that they may be innocently interfered with by those who don't have need to know. Until they discover the op.

WeirdlyWired wrote:
Rule Stickler Long as a spy? I'm not sure what game The Countess is playing, but I'm not so convinced her attention is going to be good for TUL. He nearly spiked her operations a couple of times.

Otoh, does ONI even exist at this time? The Countess seems to be running an informal intelligence service, not a uniformed service.

We're entering an era where the RMN can no longer be ignorant about the foreign powers. And the Countess has been building an intelligence agency, but a uniform service has advantages. 1. It's not one person's pet project. The countess is only good while she's in government. 2. Your spies are in uniform, and thus are not technically spies. 3. gives specific intelligence that the navy cares about. We see this in many nations, but intelligence splinters due to differing demands. Naval intelligence cares more about who has ships than a landlocked power. 4. Can actually issue orders. Much easier to do intelligence if you can actually show legal orders.

In the future, ONI is going to care about the most (and be the experts in) pirates and ship capabilities of unfriendly powers.

feyhunde wrote:

WeirdlyWired wrote:
Rule Stickler Long as a spy? I'm not sure what game The Countess is playing, but I'm not so convinced her attention is going to be good for TUL. He nearly spiked her operations a couple of times.

Otoh, does ONI even exist at this time? The Countess seems to be running an informal intelligence service, not a uniformed service.

We're entering an era where the RMN can no longer be ignorant about the foreign powers. And the Countess has been building an intelligence agency, but a uniform service has advantages. 1. It's not one person's pet project. The countess is only good while she's in government. 2. Your spies are in uniform, and thus are not technically spies. 3. gives specific intelligence that the navy cares about. We see this in many nations, but intelligence splinters due to differing demands. Naval intelligence cares more about who has ships than a landlocked power. 4. Can actually issue orders. Much easier to do intelligence if you can actually show legal orders.

In the future, ONI is going to care about the most (and be the experts in) pirates and ship capabilities of unfriendly powers.

What she is doing by sending Chomps to spy on Manty personnel is more counter-intelligence, trying to find spies in your own ranks. But, yes, your point that we are early on in the spy game is well taken. Just curious over why all that happened was she lost her position as defense minister. King Michael must know what she's doing, one would assume.