Theisman, and Chin

tlb wrote:Theisman was in complete control of Principality throughout the book until he surrendered at this point. In that capacity he fired at both Fearless and Troubadour. He did nothing to stop the Masadans at Blackbird, but there was nothing that he could do (except testify after the surrender).

And at the time the prisoners where turned over to Blackbird base his superior officer, Yu, still in system and already protesting that action. It would have been out of line for Theisman, as the junior captain, to even make a separate protest to the Masadans.

So you're right. He was in command of his ship. OTOH he had, officially, "'immigrated’ to Masada". So even though everybody knew it was BS; officially Principality was a Masadan warship and Tom was her newly immigrated Masadan captain. Hence when he fired on RMN units it was not, officially, an act of war by Haven against Manticore.


Then after Principality was lost (along with the rest of Masada's fleet) Haven's Ambassador to Masada, Ambassador the Honorable Jacob Lacy, talked of having Saladin revert to being a PSN unit (so presumably with Captain Yu returning to PSN duty) to try to bluff Manticore from conquering Masada. (Though of course that didn't come to pass)

it's mentioned in one of the early books, BOTH Theisman and Chin survived their defeats because that is when Rob Pierre (and OSJ) kicked off their coup and were looking for LEGISLATURALIST scapegoats.

Both Theisman and Chin were forever blocked from senior admiralty positions, and their seniors in both operations were Legislaturalists, so both Tom and Chin survived (and stayed in uniform) purely because the CPS were blaming the elitists.


Theisman was captured (and returned) pre-war, and then went on to make his cruiser Commodore look bad. This was also the operation that killed Helen's mother, and the Legislaturalist commodore made repeated fuckups that Theisman had to make 'recommendations' to help her make the operation a success. They returned to the post-coup CPS and the Commodore was shot and Theisman was promoted.

Chin was captured as part of the opening of the war, but may have been part of a POW prisoner exchange in those first days/weeks before Pierre did his coup, and also survived specifically for not being a Legislaturalist. But she was on OSJ's shitlist forever after that, which is why she never got another promotion until Theisman shot Saint-Just and turned over the Presidency to Pritchart.


I'll try to find the specific book quotes later

Deleted post, because I forgot to check the "Notify me" box.

Somtaaw wrote:it's mentioned in one of the early books, BOTH Theisman and Chin survived their defeats because that is when Rob Pierre (and OSJ) kicked off their coup and were looking for LEGISLATURALIST scapegoats.

Both Theisman and Chin were forever blocked from senior admiralty positions, and their seniors in both operations were Legislaturalists, so both Tom and Chin survived (and stayed in uniform) purely because the CPS were blaming the elitists.


Theisman was captured (and returned) pre-war, and then went on to make his cruiser Commodore look bad. This was also the operation that killed Helen's mother, and the Legislaturalist commodore made repeated fuckups that Theisman had to make 'recommendations' to help her make the operation a success. They returned to the post-coup CPS and the Commodore was shot and Theisman was promoted.

Chin was captured as part of the opening of the war, but may have been part of a POW prisoner exchange in those first days/weeks before Pierre did his coup, and also survived specifically for not being a Legislaturalist. But she was on OSJ's shitlist forever after that, which is why she never got another promotion until Theisman shot Saint-Just and turned over the Presidency to Pritchart.


I'll try to find the specific book quotes later

Great post that says mostly what I was going to say (however, I don't have the time to find book quotes). Thanks!

Only quote I can find for Chin is

AAC, Ch 67 wrote:Chin nodded back. Sabourin was probably the only member of her staff who could fully savor her own sense of . . . completion. She'd come a long way to reach this point. She'd survived being scapegoated by the Legislaturalists for the disaster of Hancock Station at the very start of the last war. She'd survived long, dreary years in the service of the Committee of Public Safety—never quite trusted, too valuable to simply discard, always watched by her people's commissioner. She'd even survived Saint-Just's ascension to complete power . . . and the chaos following his overthrow.

She'd been "rehabilitated" twice now. Once by Rob Pierre's lunatics, solely because she'd been scapegoated by the previous régime. And once by the new Republic, because she'd damned well done a good job protecting her assigned sector despite the psychotic sadist they'd assigned as her people's commissioner.

This time, she actually believed it was going to stick. She'd still lost a lot of ground in the seniority game. Men and women who'd been junior officers, or even enlisted personnel, when she'd already been a flag officer, were senior to her now. Thomas Theisman, for one, who'd been a commander when she'd been a rear admiral. But she was one of only a handful of people who'd made admiral under the Legislaturalists who were still alive at all, so she supposed that was something of a wash.

Bolding is my emphassis, so Genevieve Chin DEFINITELY got handed back to Haven after her surrender in Hancock, but before the war lasted too long and Pierre/Saint-Just stopped going for any prisoner transfers. That she was scapegoated by the Legislaturalist's first heavily implies she was handed back in the weeks between Hancock and Manticore officially declaring war.

It takes approximately 2 weeks to travel from Hancock to Manticore (even when Nike wasn't shot up, as per the conversation when she arrived in Hancock short 1 fusion generator), the trial itself stretched at least a few weeks (Honor had enough time to take vacations on Sphinx and see her parents before appearing in court) but let's call that a full T-month. Guilty verdict and instantly inheriting due to his father's heart attack and passing, then at least another 2-3 months for Pavel Young to be seated and then speak in favour of the war declaration, debated and put up for actual voting.

All totalled up, that puts Chin at being traded within 4-6 months of her surrender at the longest, and more likely only days/weeks after surrendering. Pierre pulled his coup over the Legislaturalists within 3 months of Hancock, and they had to have Chin back to be scapegoated before OSJ could start executing the Legislaturalists.

Somtaaw wrote:Only quote I can find for Chin is

AAC, Ch 67 wrote:Chin nodded back. Sabourin was probably the only member of her staff who could fully savor her own sense of . . . completion. She'd come a long way to reach this point. She'd survived being scapegoated by the Legislaturalists for the disaster of Hancock Station at the very start of the last war. She'd survived long, dreary years in the service of the Committee of Public Safety—never quite trusted, too valuable to simply discard, always watched by her people's commissioner. She'd even survived Saint-Just's ascension to complete power . . . and the chaos following his overthrow.

She'd been "rehabilitated" twice now. Once by Rob Pierre's lunatics, solely because she'd been scapegoated by the previous régime. And once by the new Republic, because she'd damned well done a good job protecting her assigned sector despite the psychotic sadist they'd assigned as her people's commissioner.

This time, she actually believed it was going to stick. She'd still lost a lot of ground in the seniority game. Men and women who'd been junior officers, or even enlisted personnel, when she'd already been a flag officer, were senior to her now. Thomas Theisman, for one, who'd been a commander when she'd been a rear admiral. But she was one of only a handful of people who'd made admiral under the Legislaturalists who were still alive at all, so she supposed that was something of a wash.

Bolding is my emphassis, so Genevieve Chin DEFINITELY got handed back to Haven after her surrender in Hancock, but before the war lasted too long and Pierre/Saint-Just stopped going for any prisoner transfers. That she was scapegoated by the Legislaturalist's first heavily implies she was handed back in the weeks between Hancock and Manticore officially declaring war.

It takes approximately 2 weeks to travel from Hancock to Manticore (even when Nike wasn't shot up, as per the conversation when she arrived in Hancock short 1 fusion generator), the trial itself stretched at least a few weeks (Honor had enough time to take vacations on Sphinx and see her parents before appearing in court) but let's call that a full T-month. Guilty verdict and instantly inheriting due to his father's heart attack and passing, then at least another 2-3 months for Pavel Young to be seated and then speak in favour of the war declaration, debated and put up for actual voting.

All totalled up, that puts Chin at being traded within 4-6 months of her surrender at the longest, and more likely only days/weeks after surrendering. Pierre pulled his coup over the Legislaturalists within 3 months of Hancock, and they had to have Chin back to be scapegoated before OSJ could start executing the Legislaturalists.

It is possible that Chen was scapegoated by the the Legislaturists without being in their hands - Manticore, by the Deneb accords, would have announced enemy survivors, and Haven's government could have started the blame machine going without having her in their hands (she probably would have ended up sucking a pulsar "for the good of the service" and shot herself 171 times from head to toe had she been in Havenite hands).

Theemile wrote:It is possible that Chen was scapegoated by the the Legislaturists without being in their hands - Manticore, by the Deneb accords, would have announced enemy survivors, and Haven's government could have started the blame machine going without having her in their hands (she probably would have ended up sucking a pulsar "for the good of the service" and shot herself 171 times from head to toe had she been in Havenite hands).

I suppose anything is possible, but two things against that. First, pre-CPS Haven was NOT big on shooting people who failed them. Rob Pierre's "assistant" Wallace Canning who was charged with failing the Basilisk operation and effectively kicked out of the leadership club. The Legislaturalists would make you wish you were dead instead of being publicly shamed, and it wasn't until the CPS and particularly StateSec that they'd started actually shooting you for failure and then shaming your corpse.

Second, Chin's musing included she actually survived under the CPS and her people's commissioner. Both of those could only have occurred if she'd been traded back after her surrender yet before Saint-Just came down with a terminal case of pulser darts to the head.

She surrendered as a Rear Admiral late-1905 in Hancock, the official declaration was approximately mid-1906. Chin was assigned to La Martine sector in 1909 now promoted to Vice Admiral, she remained there until the Fanatic short story set mid/late-1915 after OSJ was killed.

That means Chin was traded somewhere between 1905 and 1908, before Pierre Saint-Just and the CPS stopped agreeing to any prisoner exchanges with Manticore. Since we don't know exactly when Pierre stopped agreeing to POW exchanges, she must have been traded very early in the conflict, there's simply no other explanation.

Theemile wrote:It is possible that Chen was scapegoated by the the Legislaturists without being in their hands - Manticore, by the Deneb accords, would have announced enemy survivors, and Haven's government could have started the blame machine going without having her in their hands (she probably would have ended up sucking a pulsar "for the good of the service" and shot herself 171 times from head to toe had she been in Havenite hands).

I disagree about the likelihood that she'd have been executed if the Legislaturists got their hands on her. That wasn't normally their style.

Tossed out of your job/career, blackballed, and forced onto the dole was more their approach.

But I do agree that they could have started scapegoating her just as soon as word of her surrender came back - long before they might have gotten their hands on her.

So I don't think we can judge her arrival time based on that. Even if she'd gotten back in time to be tossed out of the navy before Pierre's coup she might well have been reinstated afterwards as that would be evidence that she wasn't a traitor to the People; like the old government and their naval command had been (claimed to be). So she could have "survived" their scapegoating in the navy by:
Arriving after they'd fallen,
arriving so close to the coup they lacked time to toss her out,
or being reinstated post-coup.

Jonathan_S wrote:So I don't think we can judge her arrival time based on that. Even if she'd gotten back in time to be tossed out of the navy before Pierre's coup she might well have been reinstated afterwards as that would be evidence that she wasn't a traitor to the People; like the old government and their naval command had been (claimed to be). So she could have "survived" their scapegoating in the navy by:
Arriving after they'd fallen,
arriving so close to the coup they lacked time to toss her out,
or being reinstated post-coup.

Indeed the last case is entirely possible. If the CPS and their admiralty judged that Parnell and his staff were at fault (and Parnell was sent to Hades for this), then reinstating Chin to prove that she did not have blame other than executing a flawed plan would be on the table. It would also help that it's the truth.

But that doesn't mean she'd get prime postings.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So I don't think we can judge her arrival time based on that. Even if she'd gotten back in time to be tossed out of the navy before Pierre's coup she might well have been reinstated afterwards as that would be evidence that she wasn't a traitor to the People; like the old government and their naval command had been (claimed to be). So she could have "survived" their scapegoating in the navy by:
Arriving after they'd fallen,
arriving so close to the coup they lacked time to toss her out,
or being reinstated post-coup.

Indeed the last case is entirely possible. If the CPS and their admiralty judged that Parnell and his staff were at fault (and Parnell was sent to Hades for this), then reinstating Chin to prove that she did not have blame other than executing a flawed plan would be on the table. It would also help that it's the truth.

But that doesn't mean she'd get prime postings.

She did get a rather prime posting though, La Martine was one of the few systems that was a net positive to the People's Republic. That made it a very prestigious positing because you're guarding one of the very few systems that genuinely believed in both working and Haven. It wasn't one of those systems that required extra fleet units to suppress unrest, Chin's fleet was there to protect the Golden Egg.

But she certainly didn't seem to be trusted with actively fighting Manticore again (directly) between her surrender in Hancock and StateSec being overthrown. Was that due to actual StateSec mistrust, or some part of her prisoner parole terms?