Honor Harrington's Aristocratic Style

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:On Basilisk Station.

That would have been a bad time to say anything, since he was her superior officer. The most she could do was to don her white beret before it was appropriate.

PS: She did give a tongue lashing when she challenged him, from Field of Dishonor:

Chapter 30 wrote:The bitch. The puking, baseborn bitch! Who the hell did she think she was to hound him this way?! Why, his family could have bought and sold hers a dozen times over before she started rolling in her fucking prize money! She was nothing, just one more yeoman slut, and a deeply hidden part of him hated her most of all for the contempt he'd seen in her eyes the first day they ever met. She'd been a fuzzy-haired, homely, stupid commoner, yet she'd dared to look at him without awe, without fear. With contempt.

-- skip --

"My Lords and Ladies, there is among you a man who has conspired at murder rather than face his enemies himself. A would-be rapist, a coward, and a man who hired a paid duelist to kill another. A man who sent armed thugs into a public restaurant only two days ago to murder someone else and failed in his purpose by the narrowest margin." The spell was beginning to fray. Peers began to rise, their voices starting to sound in protest, but her soprano cut through the stir like a knife, and her eyes were fixed on Pavel Young.

"My Lords and Ladies, I accuse Pavel Young, Earl North Hollow, of murder and attempted murder. I accuse him of the callous and unforgivable abuse of power, of cowardice in the face of the enemy, of attempted rape, and of being unfit not simply for the high office he holds but for life itself. I call him coward and scum, beneath the contempt of honest and upright subjects of this Kingdom, whose honor is profaned by his mere presence among them, and I challenge him, before you all, to meet me upon the field of honor, there to pay once and for all for his acts!"

penny wrote:How can someone with an aversion to titles join the navy? Rank is a title. And she picked up rank like a kid picks up candy off the floor. Somebody should have told her. "Honor, if you dislike titles, you never should have joined the navy."

As a matter of fact, she relied on her title when she was on Hades. Someone had to push her, but on Hades she donned her Grayson uniform because it outranked, Stiles was it?

Somebody also should have told her, "Honor, you are in the navy and you don't like titles? You can't have your cake and eat it too."

penny wrote:OMG! I almost forgot about that passage! I had been looking for it! Because she finally admits the attempted rape!

Thanks tlb! And you are right, that is a tongue lashing, and in front of an audience of his peers!

penny wrote:How can someone with an aversion to titles join the navy? Rank is a title. And she picked up rank like a kid picks up candy off the floor. Somebody should have told her. "Honor, if you dislike titles, you never should have joined the navy."

As a matter of fact, she relied on her title when she was on Hades. Someone had to push her, but on Hades she donned her Grayson uniform because it outranked, Stiles was it?

Somebody also should have told her, "Honor, you are in the navy and you don't like titles? You can't have your cake and eat it too."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:There's case law in the US about this, actually. I don't know how to search the Internet to get the actual facts out, but it goes more or less like this from memory: this person got arrested by a police officer for some crime, but then he sued the police officer back that "Officer" was a title (or whatever was the title in case) and therefore that person had forfeited their US citizenship and thus could not have legally arrested him. Needless to say, this got thrown out and the ruling was that the rank was not a title of nobility.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:How can someone with an aversion to titles join the navy? Rank is a title. And she picked up rank like a kid picks up candy off the floor. Somebody should have told her. "Honor, if you dislike titles, you never should have joined the navy."

As a matter of fact, she relied on her title when she was on Hades. Someone had to push her, but on Hades she donned her Grayson uniform because it outranked, Stiles was it?

Somebody also should have told her, "Honor, you are in the navy and you don't like titles? You can't have your cake and eat it too."

Yes, the Navy has ranks and so does coup de vitesse, where she holds a black belt; but those are earned through skill and effort (ignoring time in grade for the Navy) and are generally not something just handed out by birth. Both of her parents are Doctors, so she is quite familiar with the concept of working hard and earning a title by merit. Although she is not a Gryphon Highlander, it has been mentioned that the yeomanry of Sphinx probably also had an aversion to many of the titled nincompoops.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:How can someone with an aversion to titles join the navy? Rank is a title. And she picked up rank like a kid picks up candy off the floor. Somebody should have told her. "Honor, if you dislike titles, you never should have joined the navy."

As a matter of fact, she relied on her title when she was on Hades. Someone had to push her, but on Hades she donned her Grayson uniform because it outranked, Stiles was it?

Somebody also should have told her, "Honor, you are in the navy and you don't like titles? You can't have your cake and eat it too."

Military ranks are not titles any more than a civilian sector's job posting. A CEO is not a title awarded, nor is Chief Surgeon or Junior Surgeon or Software Engineer. They are far more regimented (a word that comes from the military), but they are still awarded based on promotion from past performance, and taken away based on offences.

There's case law in the US about this, actually. I don't know how to search the Internet to get the actual facts out, but it goes more or less like this from memory: this person got arrested by a police officer for some crime, but then he sued the police officer back that "Officer" was a title (or whatever was the title in case) and therefore that person had forfeited their US citizenship and thus could not have legally arrested him. Needless to say, this got thrown out and the ruling was that the rank was not a title of nobility.

What baffles me is the distinction between officer and enlisted. Originally, this was an aristocracy thing, with officers being aristocrats while enlisted were commoners. One may argue that officers have better education and thus have the skills necessary to perform the necessary decisions when the time comes. But in a highly modern and well-educated system like Manticore, everyone would have similar starting education, especially at the age when they enlist or go to Saganami Island. And besides, aren't we told that the Navy is run by the Chiefs and the Chiefs teach the newly-minted Ensigns?

penny wrote:I understand that Honor would not want to be given a title by birth, or without earning it. But she has a problem accepting titles even when it is earned. Well earned even.

Military rank should be as much a title as any title that is part of an aristocracy. Perhaps not as important, but certainly as real.

penny wrote:But if one considers that Honor may have felt that some of the awards were earned on the backs and sacrifices of her crew, then it seems downright tawdry and dirty to accept a medal made of blood. Since Honor is so learned, I wouldn't be surprised if her aversion has lots to do with the blood diamonds she may have read about in the history of Old Earth.

Wikipedia wrote:Blood are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, terrorism, or a warlord's activity.

Chapter 6 wrote:"I'm afraid I can't agree with you, Your Grace," Honor said firmly. Henke squirmed in her chair, holding herself in it by main force of will, but Honor ignored her to concentrate on the Prime Minister.

"The PMV is awarded for valor above and beyond the call of duty," she continued, "and nothing I did was beyond the call of duty." Cromarty's eyes widened in disbelief, but she went on calmly. "It's the duty of any Queen's Officer to escape, if possible. It's the duty of any officer to encourage, coordinate, and lead the efforts of any of her subordinates to escape from the enemy in time of war. And it's the duty of any commanding officer to lead her personnel in combat. More than that, I should also point out that I, personally, had very little to lose in attempting to escape from Hell. I'd been sentenced to death. For me, that made whether or not to risk my life in an attempt to escape a rather simple decision."

"Dame Honor—!" Cromarty began, but she shook her head again.

"If you want to reward people who truly demonstrated valor above and beyond the call of duty, you ought to be giving any medals to Horace Harkness," she said flatly. "Unlike myself, he faced only incarceration, not execution, when we reached Hell, and he knew it. But he also chose, entirely without orders, to pretend to defect. He knowingly risked virtually certain execution if he was caught in order to break into the central computers of Cordelia Ransom's flagship, arrange all the critical details of our escape to the planetary surface, and completely destroy Tepes to cover our escape. I submit to you, Your Grace, that if you and Her Majesty want to award a PMV to anyone, Harkness is the most deserving individual you could possibly find."

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:But if one considers that Honor may have felt that some of the awards were earned on the backs and sacrifices of her crew, then it seems downright tawdry and dirty to accept a medal made of blood. Since Honor is so learned, I wouldn't be surprised if her aversion has lots to do with the blood diamonds she may have read about in the history of Old Earth.

Wikipedia wrote:Blood are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, terrorism, or a warlord's activity.

Only her enemies have accused her of trading lives for honors. Still, whether or not she knew the history, it might be that concept which caused her to emphatically reject one award that Manticore wished to bestow after her escape from Cerebes: the Parliamentary Medal of Valor. From Ashes of Victory:

Chapter 6 wrote:"I'm afraid I can't agree with you, Your Grace," Honor said firmly. Henke squirmed in her chair, holding herself in it by main force of will, but Honor ignored her to concentrate on the Prime Minister.

"The PMV is awarded for valor above and beyond the call of duty," she continued, "and nothing I did was beyond the call of duty." Cromarty's eyes widened in disbelief, but she went on calmly. "It's the duty of any Queen's Officer to escape, if possible. It's the duty of any officer to encourage, coordinate, and lead the efforts of any of her subordinates to escape from the enemy in time of war. And it's the duty of any commanding officer to lead her personnel in combat. More than that, I should also point out that I, personally, had very little to lose in attempting to escape from Hell. I'd been sentenced to death. For me, that made whether or not to risk my life in an attempt to escape a rather simple decision."

"Dame Honor—!" Cromarty began, but she shook her head again.

"If you want to reward people who truly demonstrated valor above and beyond the call of duty, you ought to be giving any medals to Horace Harkness," she said flatly. "Unlike myself, he faced only incarceration, not execution, when we reached Hell, and he knew it. But he also chose, entirely without orders, to pretend to defect. He knowingly risked virtually certain execution if he was caught in order to break into the central computers of Cordelia Ransom's flagship, arrange all the critical details of our escape to the planetary surface, and completely destroy Tepes to cover our escape. I submit to you, Your Grace, that if you and Her Majesty want to award a PMV to anyone, Harkness is the most deserving individual you could possibly find."

However she was forced to receive the PMV from the High Ridge government after saving the Queen and the Protector from a Masadan assassination attempt sponsored by Haven. The previous threat to resign, would have been welcomed by the new Prime Minister.