NortonIDaughter wrote:runsforcelery wrote:That, however, is secondary — if not tertiary — to the fact that all the evidence she possessed told her that there was no significant difference between the Theisman-Pritchart regime and the Pierre-Saint-Just regime. Both had come to power in a violent coup, both of them had ruthlessly eliminated the group previously in power, one of them was a self-confessed terrorist/assassin, and they were currently involved in a four-way (or more) civil war, so it wasn't at all clear for quite a while that they were even going to survive.
Frankly, it didn't matter who they were or how they might differ from the preceding regime(s). I mean, literally, it did not matter, for a bunch of reasons. One was that the Havenite navy was totally out-classed against the RMN (...)
(Snipped: a lot more about the RHN vs the RMN as a military threat)
I'll accept the notion that Manticore might not have thought the new government would stand; likewise I'll accept that the treecats' new signing ability was not as advanced as I had believed for several years after the original breakthrough (and the implication that the treecats' approval would not have been enough without their "verbal" confirmation and details).
But I'm still seeing the argument framed as if a war was the only reason Elizabeth would have needed to know whether Tom and Eloise were genuine, which I just argued is far from the case.
And since the issue of the evidence of the Republic's reformed nature has been raised again, I will C&P my comment from earlier:
NortonIDaughter wrote:By the time WoH opens, Haven has already regained it's constitution, allowed member planets to leave if they so desired, and started making reparations to the internal groups who had been specifically targeted by the Legislaturalists and Committee of Public Safety (as we see in that story about Abigail's middy cruise). They've held open, fair, and free elections. And those are just the most obvious things we see on the page. Erewhon, which had also lost and suffered at the Peep's hands, looked at the Republic's actions and came to the (correct) conclusion that Haven had changed. It's clear from their eventual leak of "Operation Raging Justice" that such biased observers as Beowulf were able to see the truth as well.
Furthermore, Honor has firsthand, personal knowledge of Thomas Theisman-- and most importantly, so does Nimitz, who at this point is completely fluent in sign and able to pass on the information he obtained from Tom's mindglow-- and while there wasn't time for much sampling at Barnett, he had plenty of time to delve back in Grayson. And Warner Caslet, at the very least, can attest to his character being largely unchanged since the early days of the war. So too do Tom's actions speak for him.
That *is* evidence, and a lot of it. I would argue that letting systems peacefully leave the Republic was as un-Peeplike a thing as could be managed. And again, all of this happened before (in some cases, a year or more a least) before WoH opens.
And clearly at least one star nation that lost and suffered at Peep hands *did* consider that evidence, and find it convincing.
I think it's apparent that you and I are not going to agree on this point. You are operating on the basis of information available to you as the reader that was not available to Elizabeth acting in-universe, and your priorities are different from hers as the monarch of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. There's an awful lot going on in the Honorverse at this time, and in-universe individuals are reading it differently. My point is that from Elizabeth's perspective, it didn't matter who Eloise and Tom Theisman were. The peace negotiation process was not in her hands; it was going to work itself out in the end; until the new post-Bolthole naval units turned up, Haven was effectively powerless, and so could be deferred while she dealt with the more pressing issue of the High Ridge Government; and her responsibility was to her people, her Star Kingdom, and her Constitution, not to the Republic of Haven.
As far as Honor's view of Tom Theisman is concerned, that carried weight with Elizabeth, but not decisive weight. Elizabeth was completely confident that Honor would never lie to her and that Honor had far better insight into other people's personalities and emotions than any other human being could have. On the basis of that, she was prepared to accept the Tom had at least
been a decent and an honorable man, but she also understood how circumstances could change someone's priorities pretty drastically. Let's remember that Rob Pierre staged his coup with largely laudable ambitions. That didn't end very well. So it's probably not unreasonable for Elizabeth to assume that it's possible Tom Theisman had changed since the last time Honor saw him, and the way in which he had (reportedly) shot Saint-Just was evidence that he could have. And, again, as I have said repeatedly,
it didn't matter to her calculus at that time whether Tom Theisman was Galahad or Mordred. Negotiations were ongoing, there was no sign that they were going to go off the rails suddenly, and the military situation was secure. Diplomacy isn't about whether or not you like the other guy, or even whether or not the other guy is honest — it's about the balancing of strength and weakness, of mutual or exclusive opportunities, and about safeguarding your own position in a way that will protect your people even if the person you negotiated with is shot in the head by the next coup stager next Tuesday. Obviously if you can accurately evaluate the other side's motives, philosophy, and honesty, it's a huge multiplier for your own diplomacy's effectiveness, but at that stage of the process, none of that really mattered because it was obvious that no serious negotiations were going to take place until she got rid of High Ridge.
As for Erewhon, it had its own motives for negotiating with Haven, and they had damned little to do with the fact that any of its leaders believed Haven had changed its spots. In fact, when Haven went back to war with Manticore, Erewhon declared its neutrality because it felt pretty confident that the Pritchart administration had just flimflamed it to get critical operational information. In other words, it had done a Saint-Just from the ground up, and Erewhon had fallen for it. Erewhon negotiated with Haven not because it thought Haven was cuddly and wonderful, but because High Ridge had violated the most important fundamental of Erewhonese business and diplomacy ethics: "a deal is a deal." By negotiating individually and without even consulting its treaty partners, Manticore had broken faith with Erewhon, and Erewhon had changed sides far more in retaliation than because it thought Haven had become a bastion of light and truth.
Elizabeth knew and understood that; it's implicit in every bit of her reaction to what Erewhon had done. So the fact that Erewhon had negotiated successfully with Haven — especially when Haven would have an obvious interest in separating a Manticoran ally and just coincidentally acquiring insight into Manticoran war-fighting technology — wasn't exactly calculated to make her trust
either of them one bit.
More to the point, she had plenty of balls in the air, and this was one that she wasn't prepared to add to the fountain she was already juggling. With the benefit of hindsight and omniscient narrator perspective, it's "obvious" that if she had only done it the entire war could have been averted and no one would have been killed. That was
not obvious to her at the time and, in my opinion, it is unrealistic to call her negligent for not having done it.
Elizabeth isn't perfect, she makes mistakes, and — like Honor herself — she suffers from the vices of her virtues. She is a bulldog in attack or defense, she is fearless when she decides what she needs to do, she makes a Kodiak bear look shy and retiring if you harm someone she cares about, and she is capable of maintaining an intense focus on the problem at hand, often to the exclusion of what she has identified as secondary, less important considerations. Sometimes that turns around and bites her. That is precisely what happened here, however, and expecting Elizabeth Winton to do anything other than exactly what she
did do — or to condemn her for having
done it — is to completely overlook who and what she is.
