The Soul of Haven

Dauntless wrote:no question Mcqueen was good at being military.

as history has shown though often when military rightly used to perform a change in govenment, if the general who ran the op takes power afterwards thing rarely improve for the better.

Tom Theisman knew this which is why he made eloise president. Eloise had military skills but she was technically a civ and also knew enough about the previous republic to model her government on similar lines.

PeterZ wrote:I think that Tom made her President because she persuaded him she was a true believer in the Periacard Constitution and the Aprilists stated goal of resurrecting that document.

War of Honor wrote:But the thing which had truly astounded her was that when he offered her both the political and the military powers of the head of state, he'd meant it.

There hadn't been any strings, no reservations, no secretly retained authority. The one thing Thomas Theisman would never be was a puppet master. There'd been one, and only one, condition, and that had been that Eloise Pritchart prove to him that she was as committed as he was to the restoration of the old Constitution. Not the Constitution of the People's Republic of Haven, which had created the office of Hereditary President and legally enshrined the dynastic power of the Legislaturalists, but the Constitution of the old Republic. The Republic whose citizens had been expected to be more than mere drones and to vote. The one whose presidents and legislators had served at the will of an electorate which held them responsible for their actions.

Pritchart had felt almost awed when she realized she was in the presence of a true romantic. A man who actually believed in the rule of law, the sanctity of solemn oaths, and the inviolability of personal responsibility.

She wondered if he'd always been so divorced from reality, or if he'd become that way as his own defense mechanism as he watched the star nation of his birth go insane about him. It didn't really matter. What mattered was that he was truly and absolutely committed to the very principles for which the Aprilist Movement had come into existence... and that she was almost as hopelessly romantic, in that respect, at least, as he was.

And so, just over eighteen T-months from Oscar Saint-Just's death, Eloise Pritchart, after organizing the transition government and bringing the old Constitution back from the ash heap of history, had become the first elected president of the Republic of Haven in almost two centuries, with Thomas Theisman as her Secretary of War.

There were times when she was highly tempted to shoot him for that.

cthia wrote:I'm shocked and saddened that McQueen gets such bad press and such a bad rep. I did get the feeling that she was a hard ass, yes. But simply as a byproduct of the stink she served under. I also got the impression that Theisman and everyone else supported her. Or at least wanted to support her. Her brilliant offensive operations against the alliance earned her grudging respect not only from Pierre but from her fellow officers. As every other operation coming out of the RHN was getting handed its head. So, in effect, McQueen was saving Havenite lives.

Anyway, I'm in for a massive reread of the series after I get and complete UH. Perhaps I'll get a better feel for McQueen than I have, that's not influenced by her brilliance.

Her mother always told her "Esther, if you can't always get what you want, then make do with what you have."

She remembered that lesson when defending Trevor's Star. She couldn't get the reinforcements that she needed, so she simply went in her closet, pulled out a few mirrors, lit a cigarette and then proceeded to kick the RMN's ass with simply smoke and mirrors.

Esther didn't need straw to make bricks. LOL

feyhunde wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm shocked and saddened that McQueen gets such bad press and such a bad rep. I did get the feeling that she was a hard ass, yes. But simply as a byproduct of the stink she served under. I also got the impression that Theisman and everyone else supported her. Or at least wanted to support her. Her brilliant offensive operations against the alliance earned her grudging respect not only from Pierre but from her fellow officers. As every other operation coming out of the RHN was getting handed its head. So, in effect, McQueen was saving Havenite lives.

Anyway, I'm in for a massive reread of the series after I get and complete UH. Perhaps I'll get a better feel for McQueen than I have, that's not influenced by her brilliance.

Her mother always told her "Esther, if you can't always get what you want, then make do with what you have."

She remembered that lesson when defending Trevor's Star. She couldn't get the reinforcements that she needed, so she simply went in her closet, pulled out a few mirrors, lit a cigarette and then proceeded to kick the RMN's ass with simply smoke and mirrors.

Esther didn't need straw to make bricks. LOL

The thing of it is McQueen is just so clearly based on Napoleon we do know her ultimate direction would be Empire. Rob S. Pierre, Oscar Saint-Just, and Cordelia Ransom may not share all the traits of Robspierre, Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, and Jean-Paul Marat, but the references are clear. (Marat is slightly more obscured, as he was killed by Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday )

McQueen's 'whiff of grapeshot'bringing her to the forefront makes it abundantly clear who she's based on.

So any discussion of a hypothetical McQueen regime becomes an analysis of Bonapartist France. Her government would be one of empire, not republic.

cthia wrote:
Here's my disconnect. Wasn't the Old Republic — Pericard's Republic that Eloise and Thomas are so passionate about — a government that Esther loved as well? Before the graft and corruption set in. Didn't she also see that the problem was the disease of corruption that had gripped those in power and not the Republic itself?

Any government is only as good as its strongest link and as weak as its most corrupt.

feyhunde wrote:

cthia wrote:
Here's my disconnect. Wasn't the Old Republic — Pericard's Republic that Eloise and Thomas are so passionate about — a government that Esther loved as well? Before the graft and corruption set in. Didn't she also see that the problem was the disease of corruption that had gripped those in power and not the Republic itself?

Any government is only as good as its strongest link and as weak as its most corrupt.

I mean Napoleon was a member of the Jacobin clubs and wrote pamphlets in favor of the Republic. Napoleon justified his later overthrow of The Directory on the grounds of the corruption of the members of the Directory.

ldwechsler wrote:
It is pretty clear that years ago, RFC was still hung up on the Brit/French Revolution paradigm. That has changed.