Case #000: Houseman vs Harrington

I understand that honor is important, but I cannot swallow it being more important than ones life. Weighed on any scale would render the same metrics.



The sleepless night before the duel...

Hmmm... my honor is intact, but I am dead.

My honor is lost, but I am alive.

The former weighs absolutely nothing! Like weighing a feather against a one ton weight. Even if I suffer the loss of my seat in the House of Lords. I am still alive. I'll simply retire and live out the rest of my life in my luxurious chalet.

At any rate, after Admiral Courvosier died, Houseman was in charge.

Except that in Manticorian tradition, starship commanders are expected to make decisions without time to consult with home. Any decent military leader would have decided that they had to act, even if it later cost them their career. Perhaps not quite that directly though.

penny wrote:I understand that honor is important, but I cannot swallow it being more important than ones life. Weighed on any scale would render the same metrics.



The sleepless night before the duel...

Hmmm... my honor is intact, but I am dead.

My honor is lost, but I am alive.

The former weighs absolutely nothing! Like weighing a feather against a one ton weight. Even if I suffer the loss of my seat in the House of Lords. I am still alive. I'll simply retire and live out the rest of my life in my luxurious chalet.

At any rate, after Admiral Courvosier died, Houseman was in charge.

penny wrote:I understand that honor is important, but I cannot swallow it being more important than ones life. Weighed on any scale would render the same metrics.



The sleepless night before the duel...

Hmmm... my honor is intact, but I am dead.

My honor is lost, but I am alive.

Let me give you a different equation:

The certainty of losing face, influence and power, versus the possibility of doing. In the latter case, it's only a possibility. Mind you, it might be quite high, but only a possibility. Because there's a possibility that you might win.

Tankersley thought he could win. He did in fact manage to shoot first and hit Summervale in the shoulder. It wasn't enough though.

Summervale himself thought he could win. Honor was not known for her prowess with ancient firearms... yet.

And Young thought he could win... by cheating. He tried to shoot her in the back while they were walking away from each other. That he would have been jailed and ostracised was secondary if Honor was also dead.

I agree that in rational thinking, that's worse than not accepting the challenge in the first place. Game theory shows that pretty clearly. But his acceptance was not rational either.

The former weighs absolutely nothing! Like weighing a feather against a one ton weight. Even if I suffer the loss of my seat in the House of Lords. I am still alive. I'll simply retire and live out the rest of my life in my luxurious chalet..

That clearly wasn't enough for North Hollow. He could not accept retirement like that. He could not accept having been defeated by Honor in not accepting her challenge either.

penny wrote:At any rate, after Admiral Courvosier died, Houseman was in charge.

It is true that he was Admiral Courvosier’s second in command, but that is NOT true when it comes to Honor and her ships. From The Honor of the Queen:

Chapter 2 wrote:Officially, she wasn’t here expressly to support Admiral Courvosier’s mission. Instead, she was senior officer of the escort assigned to a convoy whose ultimate goal was the Casca System, twenty-two light-years beyond Yeltsin’s Star.

You are correct in thinking that Honor would have been in much more trouble, if she had hit someone who had rightfully assumed command of her and her ships.

Among the freighters she protected were four that contained equipment for Grayson, if a treaty was signed.

penny wrote:I understand that honor is important, but I cannot swallow it being more important than ones life. Weighed on any scale would render the same metrics.

The sleepless night before the duel...

Hmmm... my honor is intact, but I am dead.

My honor is lost, but I am alive.

The former weighs absolutely nothing! Like weighing a feather against a one ton weight. Even if I suffer the loss of my seat in the House of Lords. I am still alive. I'll simply retire and live out the rest of my life in my luxurious chalet.

That is an understandable point of view for anyone living today where the feeling is: if you think that I have cheated and lied to you or wronged you in any way, then you can just sue me. For us a "blot on one's escutcheon" is just a funny old saying; because most of us do not live in a society where the titled gentry were considered superior to the common herd and the nobility were even more superior. Such a class structure is similar to Alphas, Betas and Gammas of the Malign hierarchy, except that proper behavior is expected from its members to support those beliefs.

If you had been raised from birth with the belief that your ancestors were superior and had bequeathed you a family name that was honored by all. And that it was your duty to uphold that legacy, otherwise you will bring shame on all you hold dear; then you too might be willing to duel to avoid failing in the one thing that had colored your existence.

To go from being a superior being to a scorned failure, is not a fate most people could tolerate. But others might accept it, as you say.

penny wrote:I understand that honor is important, but I cannot swallow it being more important than ones life. Weighed on any scale would render the same metrics.

Because we're not in that sort of society.

But history shows plenty of societies that were that way - which is why dueling was a pretty common thing.


In those societies declining a duel was both an admission of guilt and proof of cowardice. You get ostracized.
Your friend no longer want to associate with you, you often lose your job, any political position, any local influence.

You basically have to move away to someplace nobody knows your past and start over. And that's just what society does to you, not what you've been conditioned to feel about yourself for behaving like that.


I can see that the past was a different country - and for them dueling generally wasn't something they felt they could get out of (even when they wanted to).

Also, keep in mind, part of this is that the vast majority of duels weren't fatal -- so going into one wasn't considered tantamount to a death sentence. That reenforces societies belief that you're a coward if you're not willing to face that low risk of death.


Even Pavel had some hope of surviving -- the conditions of his duel were such that Honor effectively had to render him brain-dead with just a single hit. Under the Dreyfus protocol first blood ends the duel and their emergency medicine is good enough that nothing but brain death is likely to prevent his survival. Even blowing out his heart might not do it.


That's not to say that I agree with them on dueling -- I definitely do not.
But I can see how a society can make facing a duel seem like the lesser of two evils; while indoctrinating people into believing that duels are a proper way of addressing being dishonored -- giving both carrot and stick for going through with a duel.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And Young thought he could win... by cheating. He tried to shoot her in the back while they were walking away from each other. That he would have been jailed and ostracised was secondary if Honor was also dead.

Actually, he was not thinking; just striking out blindly. From Field of Dishonor:

Chapter 32 wrote:The corner of her eye saw Castellaño, his face twisted in fury, his pulser already swinging down to fire. There could be only one penalty for Young's action, and the Master of the Field's gun hand flashed toward its target.
--- skip ---
And then Castellaño's pulser finally snarled. The burst of darts ripped through Pavel Young in a spray of blood and shredded tissue, but he was already dead, with three ten-millimeter rounds, in a group small enough to cover with a child's hand, where once his heart had been.

PS: I do not believe the equipment at the field would be sufficient to prevent brain death, once the heart was destroyed.

penny wrote:At any rate, after Admiral Courvosier died, Houseman was in charge.

Only of the negotiations of alliance with Grayson. He (and Courvosier before him) were not in charge of Ambassador Langley, nor his embassy staff and dependents, nor the other Manticorans on Grayson.

Houseman has the authority to break off negotiations once the threat to Grayson was revealed. (The Queen would have tried to have his guts for garters if he'd done so; but it was within his authority). He also had the authority to order the diplomatic mission home.

But the military escort for the freighters full of material that would go to Grayson should they agree to the alliance was not under the authority of the diplomatic mission. Honor had orders to cooperate with them as appropriate -- but her primary mission was to safeguard the freighters and to show the flag. (She may well have been more likely to go along with requests from her mentor and former superior, Courvosier, than those from Houseman -- but in neither case was the head of the diplomatic mission in her chain of command. Though, as I said, she was expected and ordered to cooperate with and assist them as much as was reasonable)


But Houseman did NOT have the authority to order all Manticorans to evacuate the Yeltsin system, nor the authority to order Honor to enforce that evacuation and then abandon the system.

Ambassador Langley had authority over his embassy staff, their dependents, and other Manticorans on Grayson. And he requested that the RMN provide security to the embassy and to the prospective treaty partners.
Honor has the authority to decide whether or not to agree to that request, as that fell under her normal military duties and was not impacted by her orders to try to support the diplomatic mission.

So when she refused to run away she was not disobeying orders because Houseman was NOT in charge -- not of that -- and could not legally give her that order. And he compounded that by threating extra-legal retribution should Honor and Langley not do as he wished.

penny wrote:If a member of any branch of the military is allowed to assault a civilian, then what we have is total anarchy. What's worse is that Houseman is a politician! A society can ill afford to have its military busting civilian heads. Or politician’s heads. And certainly not politicians who are temporarily civilian-turned diplomats! If Houseman was out of order because he broke a direct order given by the Queen, then he should have been arrested. Not assaulted. At any rate, Houseman should not have to worry about having to challenge Harrington to a duel to get justice. The court system should provide that. This case IS NOT a personal matter. As it was with Young and Paul.

Noone has been allowed to assault a civilian. Honor has been punished for her actions, and also warned that the punishment would be much more severe in case it happened again.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Who says any member of the military is allowed to assault a civilian? No one is arguing Honor had the right to do what she did. She was reprimanded for it.

Yes- you can be wrong without being career-endingly wrong.

Best example: Horace Harkness and his wrestles with Marines. Both Harkness and the Marines were not allowed to fight in public. Both had been reprimanded. But non of them had been kicked out.