cthia wrote:Again, I'd like to deal with the aftermath. Don't care how it happened. Why can't we proceed from there? Truly, I always wondered what would become of a superpower if it was conquered by an unsavory element, if the RHN, IAN, or RMN is conquered by the greedy League. Is there a reason we can't indulge in this particular thought experiment? Too cerebral, again?
The problem is that to tell you what the aftermath would be, we need to know what was happening that led to it. The aftermath will vary wildly otherwise.
Let me give three scenarios I can come up with right now:
Scenario One. The Manticoran Government realises it won't be able to hold the PRH back, however much they've spent in building up Project Gram. So they seek admission into the SL in a similar model as the Maya Sector, with the added advantage of a treaty of association with the Republic of Beowulf. In this scenario, there's no more monarchy and the Queen abdicates; the House of Lords becomes a Senate and the RMN becomes the Manticoran Self-Defence Force. A squadron of the wall from the BSDF and one from Battle Fleet is permanently stationed in the MBS.
I know it's not what you meant by "conquer," but it's one scenario. In it, the SKM has negotiated very good preferential treatment. It s probably got a level of influence near that of a Core System, which the SKM technological and industrial base warrants anyway. The goodies from Project Gram are still there. The men and women in the street in Landing feel no change at all.
Scenario Two. The MAlign realises that if the PRH does indeed conquer the SKM, as all models predict it will do, it will be too powerful when the eventual confrontation with the Solarian League happens. Moreover, Harris has realised the folly of the DuQuesne Plan because this agitator called Robert Stanton Pierre has been advocating for reforms, so the MAlign realises its control of the Peeps is slipping. They also implement a reverse of Case Lacoön by denying the MMM passage in League wormholes, so the SKM is pressed financially too. When ten squadrons of SD show up in the MBS ("only" 80 wallers, not 500), the RMN decides resistance is futile.
In this scenario, the RMN evacuates the Queen, the Government and takes all the prototypes from Project Gram. All the Sphinx and Gryphon-class SDs and Bellerophon-class DNs suddenly vanish and the SLN observers think that a force of DNs and SDs numbering no more than 120 is what would be expected anyway (that's still the largest Navy outside of the SLN and PN!). The Queen forms a government in exile in one of the allies or with the Andies. Some of the leading Manticoran companies feel pressure from Solarian transstellars and their corrupt administration, so they help fund a guerilla war to liberate Manticore.
Scenario Three. The one I had above: someone, not the MAlign, engineers a confrontation that causes a diplomatic incident, which escalates. And despite the diplomatic overtures by the SKM, Operation Raging Justice is launched with 500 SDs. That invasion fails and Raging Justice II is launched, which finally succeeds. At that point, the SL's image is in tatters, as they've lost three eighths of their battle fleet and their image of invincibility. They're undeniably the aggressors and are being skewered in the public opinion, led by none other than Beowulf, who as the epic told, rose up to defend the oppressed against The Monster. The SLN controls the Junction plus the Basilisk and Matapan termini, but the Gregor, Trevor's Star and Beowulf termini are closed to all traffic. That means the operation backfired spectacularly!
And to make matters worse, the MAlign realises that the conquest of Manticore is in the way of their own plans. The presence of the SLN in the Haven Sector causes the PRH to suddenly stop expanding, since Harris is no fool to pick a fight with the League. So he swallows the bitter pill and begins those economic reforms, after expunging his government of undesireables who were pushing for a continuation of the DuQuesne Plan (most of whom were MAlign agents). So the MAlign sees having no future path for growth, which makes it too small to confront the SLN when the time comes. So they side with the public opinion in condemning the current Mandarins who did launch the invasion.
What if someone in the SL with half a brain wrote the same type of memo we just read in another thread, one which emphasizes the danger in the Haven sector, and highlights the window of opportunity of ever seizing Manticore is quickly closing. Frankly, I don't know why the SL didn't fear the expanionistic Havenites winning their war with, and getting their muttons on, the MBS.
Then please write the memo or at least give us an outline of the conclusions from it. Fester did a good job in his thread. Because I don't see how the arrogant SL would ever imagine that the Havenites would become a threat. They weren't a threat then and wouldn't become one for centuries, unless there was a paradigm change (and you can't predict those). The League has the momentum on its side: it has far more members, a far bigger Navy and is adding them more every year, and peacefully. Plus their economy is actually healthy, unlike the PRH's.
In fact, such a memo is even far more likely to argue for the SL to wait until both sides are depleted and
then invade. That would have placed the invasion in 1910 or so, which changes the equation considerably.
At any rate, how are we to discuss the aftermath of a mighty navy falling to the arrogance and greed of the SL, if we don't accept that they did as a given. For the sake of conversation? We do still live in a free society, don't we? We're not North Koreans, are we? Is this particular train of thought and mind experiment only suited for an Ivy League setting?
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That has nothing to do with free speech and more about the possible outcomes. Which of the three scenarios above do you want to discuss? Or do you want me to come up with three more? I can come up with one whereby the OFS had been slowly infiltrating the SKM Government too.
