UH SPOILERS Harrington family history

Smithcentral wrote:Just a quick thought on Treecats beisociopathic didn’t we see one in the Fire Season. Sorry can’t remember the details and I’m away so I can’t look in my copy of the book.

We didn't see one, but we heard about one.

OK, here's my question: when did the Harringtons break from the Alignment? Given the timeline, it's practically guaranteed that at least Richard and Marjorie were involved - otherwise, there would barely have been a Harrington line. What I honestly can't see is Stephanie herself joining the Alignment. I could picture Richard and Marjorie agonizing over it, but every time they seriously think about it near Stephanie, Lionheart gets his hackles up. If they did tell her, the result would have been horrific: Stephanie would have refused, and as Richard resigns himself to effectively ordering a hit on his own daughter, Lionheart tears out his throat.

I suppose it is possible that they did tell her, she refused, and they chose their daughter over the Alignment. But if so, I wonder if there's a memory song of that conversation lurking in the mental records of the Bright Water Clan. One they never fully understood. But at some point, a Bright Water memory singer who has learned English enough to understand it replays the song... and realizes what it means.

Regardless, I do hope this means that we'll see a Harrington in House of Shadows.

Meshakhad wrote:OK, here's my question: when did the Harringtons break from the Alignment?

I don't think alpha-line Mesans are necessarily members of the Mesan Alignment. I suspect that the Alignment was tracking the Harrington alpha-line genome with perhaps a notion of bringing them - or some of them - into the Alignment at some point, but I think the textev (see the Crown of Slaves series in particular) is clear. Operation Houdini broke up families, for example.

Peregrinator wrote:

Meshakhad wrote:OK, here's my question: when did the Harringtons break from the Alignment?

I don't think alpha-line Mesans are necessarily members of the Mesan Alignment. I suspect that the Alignment was tracking the Harrington alpha-line genome with perhaps a notion of bringing them - or some of them - into the Alignment at some point, but I think the textev (see the Crown of Slaves series in particular) is clear. Operation Houdini broke up families, for example.

The text closely implies that the Harringtons were originally part of the Alignment, but got "lost" because they had a generation where there were no suitable candidates to join the Alignment. This wasn't a unique occurence, although given the timeframe it may have been one of the first. In some other cases, the Alignment was able to keep monitoring the lost line and recruit someone later, but they weren't able to do that with the Harringtons, largely because at the time, Manticore was at the edge of settled space (and the Alignment's resources at the time probably weren't as great). As I mentioned above, my guess is that Stephanie Harrington was the "unsuitable candidate".

Peregrinator wrote:

Meshakhad wrote:OK, here's my question: when did the Harringtons break from the Alignment?

I don't think alpha-line Mesans are necessarily members of the Mesan Alignment. I suspect that the Alignment was tracking the Harrington alpha-line genome with perhaps a notion of bringing them - or some of them - into the Alignment at some point, but I think the textev (see the Crown of Slaves series in particular) is clear. Operation Houdini broke up families, for example.

I believe the Harrington genome was hidden in the Meyerdahl Beta mods. In AAC Allyson discusses the Harringtons of Sphynx almost invariably placing 2 standard deviations above the mean in intelence tests or better. She mentioned some small number of individuals below that mark. Even those outliers placed above 1 standard deviation. None of the Hartingtons was average or below average.

The way she described this suggests this was very unusual, even for the Beta mods. That argues it wasn't the standard Beta mod. I wonder if Allyson knows her husband and children are adapted Betas or even something else entirely?

In any case my suspicion is that Richard and Marjorie may well have known they were part of a new genetic mod in a line of genies. They weren't part of anything more secret than that. They were the GMA of the current Honorverse. Their parents or perhaps just Richard's parents might well have known. Having emigrated, however, they were lost to the MAlign given the length of time space travel took without the WHJ.

This is one of those go to the wiki and look at the timeline posts. So if what I say here turns out wrong, I would welcome the correction.

So...

The Detweiler conjecture not withstanding, it is unlikely that any of the Harringtons were ever alphas or betas.

Stephanie Harrington was born on Meyerdahl in 1509. Detweiler moved his Detweiler Consortium to Mesa in 1460. Figure a bare minimum of 30 years difference in the ages of Stephanie and her parents allowing for family planning due to education and getting established factors. That places Richard and Marjorie's birthdate at about 1480 plus or minus. Since IIRC Richard and Marjorie were also genies, that would push back whoever received the Meyerdahl mods back another generation, unless they were the originals which doesn't strike me as likely.

Could the Detweiler Consortium have been involved in the work that established the Meyerdahl b modification either on folks who were anticipating going to Meyerdahl or perhaps on Meyerdahl itself? Yes. But unless alphas and betas were at that point merely book keeping designations to establish who received what modification which does not seem unreasonable, there were no "Alpha" lines at that point. The whole thing would have been embryonic. And if Detweiler was involved, it would have been prior to the move to Mesa.

So were the Harringtons alignment members? No. There would have been no alignment at that point. They were simply folks who received heavy world modifications to allow them to live comfortably on the world of their choice. They (or somebody) would have paid for the modification. That the modification is "b" would imply that it is an upgraded version from the "a" or the original, making it the latest and greatest available at the moment.

I think that it is useful to remember that what we know of Mesa and the Alignment at the time of Honor Harrington has evolved over time. As we reflect upon all of this, it can be very misleading to impose the mores, culture and stages of development of one time frame upon another. That is a mistake that we see constantly being made in real life.

Don

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Just visited the Buckley site and reviewed the timeline.

The Solarian League was founded in 925 P.D. The Final War was officially over in 943 P.D. George Benton spent his last 25 years cleaning up the FW mess as well as founding the SL. That suggests George Benton and Leonard Detweiller worked on the cleanup between the 915's and 950 P.D. Mesa would have been founded approximately 975 P.D.

That means the MAlign would have begun sometime after 1,000 P.D. This would give the eugenicists 500 years to begin their work before Stephanie was born. I suspect that the early MAlign held values consistent with those held by the present day Good Mesan Alignment. That means there is a good chance that Stephanie and her parents were at least superficially part of the general uplift and were aware of it. One further suspects that the prospect of joining a star nation unsullied by the post Final War anti-genie bigotry would have been very attractive to Richard and Marjorie. This would have been especially true if they were superficially part of the Good Mesan Alignment of their day.

I would agree with a prior poster that Stephanie and her adoption by a treecat would have made approaching her later by the MAlign a bit ....risky. Especially if the MAlign got their hands on a treecat or two. The Harringtons continued adoption would probably preclude trying to recruit any of them.

This last bit opens a truly interesting direction for speculation. Suppose the regular adoptions of the Harringtons by treecats have created a process where certain mental qualities were selected for? That's 500 years of natural selection choosing increasingly more telempathic people. We see the best example in Beauty and the Beast, where Alfred enables a human to human bond. He immediately resonated with someone who also had that characteristic in Allyson. Now we know Honor has a full blown empathic abilities with humans and slight telepathic abilities with treecats. We will soon discover just how much more Raoul will have gained in the next book.

Poor kid! Wanna bet the MAlign sicks an Alpha Line vamp on him to get a child?

PeterZ wrote:
This last bit opens a truly interesting direction for speculation. Suppose the regular adoptions of the Harringtons by treecats have created a process where certain mental qualities were selected for? That's 500 years of natural selection choosing increasingly more telempathic people. We see the best example in Beauty and the Beast, where Alfred enables a human to human bond. He immediately resonated with someone who also had that characteristic in Allyson. Now we know Honor has a full blown empathic abilities with humans and slight telepathic abilities with treecats. We will soon discover just how much more Raoul will have gained in the next book.

Poor kid! Wanna bet the MAlign sicks an Alpha Line vamp on him to get a child?

Peter, I agree with your analysis, except for the italicised part. And that is just a minor quibble. What that process is is not natural selection or natural breeding, but selective breeding. which is its own form of genetic engineering also called animal breeding, where breeding pairs are selected for specific traits.

pappilon wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
This last bit opens a truly interesting direction for speculation. Suppose the regular adoptions of the Harringtons by treecats have created a process where certain mental qualities were selected for? That's 500 years of natural selection choosing increasingly more telempathic people. We see the best example in Beauty and the Beast, where Alfred enables a human to human bond. He immediately resonated with someone who also had that characteristic in Allyson. Now we know Honor has a full blown empathic abilities with humans and slight telepathic abilities with treecats. We will soon discover just how much more Raoul will have gained in the next book.

Poor kid! Wanna bet the MAlign sicks an Alpha Line vamp on him to get a child?

Peter, I agree with your analysis, except for the italicised part. And that is just a minor quibble. What that process is is not natural selection or natural breeding, but selective breeding. which is its own form of genetic engineering also called animal breeding, where breeding pairs are selected for specific traits.

The only quibble I have is that the selection is natural in that it is not planned, but developed as a process of natural selection by the individuals choosing their mates. They make their choices based on their preferences and those preferences advantage the naturally telempathic.

PeterZ wrote:Just visited the Buckley site and reviewed the timeline.

The Solarian League was founded in 925 P.D. The Final War was officially over in 943 P.D. George Benton spent his last 25 years cleaning up the FW mess as well as founding the SL. That suggests George Benton and Leonard Detweiller worked on the cleanup between the 915's and 950 P.D. Mesa would have been founded approximately 975 P.D.

That means the MAlign would have begun sometime after 1,000 P.D. This would give the eugenicists 500 years to begin their work before Stephanie was born. I suspect that the early MAlign held values consistent with those held by the present day Good Mesan Alignment. That means there is a good chance that Stephanie and her parents were at least superficially part of the general uplift and were aware of it. One further suspects that the prospect of joining a star nation unsullied by the post Final War anti-genie bigotry would have been very attractive to Richard and Marjorie. This would have been especially true if they were superficially part of the Good Mesan Alignment of their day.

I would agree with a prior poster that Stephanie and her adoption by a treecat would have made approaching her later by the MAlign a bit ....risky. Especially if the MAlign got their hands on a treecat or two. The Harringtons continued adoption would probably preclude trying to recruit any of them.

This last bit opens a truly interesting direction for speculation. Suppose the regular adoptions of the Harringtons by treecats have created a process where certain mental qualities were selected for? That's 500 years of natural selection choosing increasingly more telempathic people. We see the best example in Beauty and the Beast, where Alfred enables a human to human bond. He immediately resonated with someone who also had that characteristic in Allyson. Now we know Honor has a full blown empathic abilities with humans and slight telepathic abilities with treecats. We will soon discover just how much more Raoul will have gained in the next book.

Poor kid! Wanna bet the MAlign sicks an Alpha Line vamp on him to get a child?

I think there are a couple of problems with this. Your notion of Detweiler working with Benton seems a bit improbable. We do know, or at least the Wiki asserts, that the Detweiler Consortium moved to Mesa in 1460. I think there is textev that says that it was Leneord (sp) who arranged that move. There was no prolong at that point, so Benton and Detweiler would have been in seperate eras, roughly three plus centuries apart.

And, of course, that means that the Alignment has to be dated in Detweiler's era, or perhaps by his descendants afterwards. My suspicion is the later, but I don't have a peg to hang that hat on.

Don

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