filbert wrote:I recall a comment from RFC I saw somewhere (don't recall if it was in a post/youtube/podcast/in-person) where he admitted that the whole French Revolution thing was a bit of authorial misdirection and that Haven actually represented a corrupted, co-opted USA rather than revolutionary France.
http://www.davidweber.net/faqs/index/page:3/series:3Honorverse How close are the parallels between the politics in the Honorverse and our present-day politics? May 2009
This one is something of a toughie.
As I have explained, the parallels between Revolutionary France and the British Empire, on the one hand, and the Republic of Haven and the Star Kingdom of Manticore, on the other, are (deliberately) far from a perfect match. On the other hand, this question is about present-day politics, which is another kettle of fish entirely.
Basically, the People's Republic of Haven was actually the United States of America after a cynical deal had been struck between a political elite and the "machine bosses" who were able to deliver bloc votes on a dependable, reliable basis. The people who became the Legislaturalists deliberately set out to create a situation in which there would be an enormous underclass completely dependent upon the state for its support and upkeep. What had begun as a principled effort to provide the best possible life for all of the Republic's citizens under the Legislaturalists' predecessors became, in effect, a means of permanently institutionalizing graft and corruption in a way which would keep the Legislaturalists (and their descendents) in power. What we see beginning to happen in the Republic after Theisman overthrows Oscar Saint-Just and the Committee of Public Safety is a restoration of the Old Republic, under the original constitution (which happens to bear a strong relationship to that of the United States), and a regeneration of the concept of civic responsibility, personal responsibility, and honest government.
Readers are, of course, free to make their own judgments as to how this parallels the experience of the United States over the last century or so, and what it may or may not imply for the future. While they're doing that, however, they should bear in mind that although every writer's personal beliefs and politics infuse anything that that writer writes, the primary function of the Republic of Haven -- and of everything that happens in it, around it, and to it -- in the Honorverse is to provide the basis and framework for the stories I want to tell. In other words, while no writer can avoid stepping up onto a soap box, whether he wants to or not, when he starts writing military or political fiction, I am perfectly willing to subordinate my personal views on many of these questions to the strength of the storyline I'm working with.
I think that readers should also note that my personal sympathies clearly lie with the responsibility-taking moderates in both the Star Kingdom and the Republic of Haven, not to mention the Protectorate of Grayson. I beat up on the extreme left in the form of the Star Kingdom's old Liberal party; I beat up on the notion of economic redistribution (and the cynicism which can be inherent in it) in the People's Republic of Haven; I beat up on extreme conservatism and aristocratic abuses of power in the Star Kingdom's Conservative Association; and I beat up on religious reactionaries in the Protectorate of Grayson. I also try to show the plus sides of most flavors and brands of ideology and religious belief, along the way, and I'm sure that most of my readers can think of characters who cover that entire spectrum.
Honorverse How did you come up with the idea for the Honor Harrington series? May 2009
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It would, however, be a mistake to read too much parallelism into the "Honorverse." There are obvious resonances, but although there are some distinct similarities between the People's Republic of Haven and Revolutionary France (and especially between the Jacobins and the Havenite Committee of Public Safety under one Rob S. Pierre), France was never the actual template upon which the People's Republic had been imposed. Mind you, I did my very best to fling out as many red herrings as possible to convince readers that it was, because I didn't want them to see where I really meant to go with the political developments in the series. By making Haven look like Revolutionary France (hence the French names, calling the capital "Nouveau Paris," and a few other minor things of that nature), I conditioned readers who'd picked up on it and who knew their history to expect me to eventually produce the Havenite equivalent of Emperor Napoleon, when in fact I had absolutely no intention of doing anything of the sort.
In fact, one of the underlying "themes" of the novel is that the Bad Guys™ at the outset of the series never set out to become the Omnivoracity of Evil and never actually thought of themselves that way, either. Besides, I knew they weren't going to be the Bad Guys™ for the entire series, so I was going to have to "redeem" them in the readers' eyes eventually.
It would also be a mistake to regard the Star Kingdom of Manticore as simply the Kingdom of Great Britain transported into the far reaches of space. Again, there are obvious and clear resonances -- partly as a result of the template I'd used, partly as another example of my intention to focus the readers' attention on one anticipated direction while I actually went in another, and partly because I was interested in playing against the tendency to view republics as the good guys and empires or kingdoms as the bad guys. But there are actually rather more differences between the actual Kingdom of Great Britain and the Star Kingdom of Manticore than there are similarities. Elizabeth III, for example, has far more actual power than any British king since George III (at the very best), if not William and Mary. Or, for that matter, probably since Charles I. In addition, the Star Kingdom was a well-developed constitutional monarchy -- although with significant differences from its British model -- from the moment it came into existence. As a result, most of the political conflict between the various branches and organs of government has taken place in a nonmilitary, purely political arena. In other words, there's never been a Manticoran Civil War to establish where authority truly lies. Moreover, you'd have to go back to a time well before the British Reform Act of 1832 to find a British House of Lords with the sort of power that was deliberately reserved to the Manticoran House of Lords when the Star Kingdom's Constitution was written. For example, the provision that the Prime Minister must come from the House of Lords, rather than the House of Commons, and that the House of Lords is the branch of Parliament which actually holds the power of the purse, is quite different from the model which evolved in Britain following the English Civil War. So, in a functional sense, the Star Kingdom is distinctly different from Great Britain, even if a sort of vague concept of Great Britain which existed only in the minds of the Star Kingdom's Constitution writers did play a significant part in their final product.
