Oh my sweet summer child is this early days, when you can fit Honor's entire title on a single line. Here is how TvTropes lists her in their Honorverse character sheet as of the most recent novel:
Admiral of the Fleet and Captain HMS Unconquered Lady Dame Honor Stephanie "Dances On Clouds" [SPOILER]-Harrington, KGCR, MC, SG, PMV, DSO, CGM, Steadholder Harrington, Duchess Harrington, Countess [SPOILER].
So yeah. Just for kicks, here's the full title for Manticore's queen:
Elizabeth Adrienne Samantha Annette "Soul Of Steel" Winton, Grand Commander of the Order of King Roger, Grand Commander of the Order of Queen Elizabeth I, Grand Commander of the Order of the Golden Lion, Baroness of Crystal Pine, Baroness of White Sand, Countess of Tannerman, Countess of High Garnet, Grand Duchess of Basilisk, Princess Protector of the Realm, and, by God's grace and the will of Parliament, Queen Elizabeth III of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, and Empress Elizabeth I of the Star Empire of Manticore.
(The "Star Empire" bit comes much later, obviously.)
Honor Harrington has gone through the trouble of installing a 50-meter swimming pool on her Grayson estate. If this doesn't sound absurd to you, it's because I haven't mentioned that Grayson is barely a habitable planet. All of their settlements are enclosed structures because of the high concentration of metals. (Oh, and the planet's special biosphere has also created a massive imbalance in the gender ratio, something like 3 girls per boy, hence The Patriarchy.) In the previous book, Honor partnered up with an engineer named Adam Gerrick to create Grayson Sky Domes, Ltd., which has built a cryoplast dome over Harrington Steading and is looking for a second client.
Meet Honor's treecat, Nimitz. Treecats have six limbs and empathic abilities. They are not pets. (Although this isn't clear by this point in the series, they are at least as intelligent as humans.) A few years back, in book 2, Nimitz shredded a fake security detail that tried to assassinate Protector Benjamin. He's catching some rays poolside, because treecats hate getting wet.
Meet Honor's main bodyguard, Major Andrew LaFollet. Because Honor is a Grayson Steadholder, Grayson law requires her to be accompanied by (usually three) armsmen everywhere she goes. Due to Grayson's absurd metallic content, swimming is a completely lost art.
In all his thirty-three T-years* before entering Lady Harrington's service, Andrew LaFollet had never drunk or even bathed in water which hadn't been distilled and purified, and the notion of putting thousands of liters of precious water into a hole in the ground and then jumping into it was... well, "bizarre" was the kindest word which had sprung to mind when Lady Harrington had ordered her "swimming pool."
*Get used to this formulation: it means "Terran years," i.e., 365 or 366 Earth days. Everybody uses it as a standard unit of measurement, no matter how poorly it corresponds to their own planet's calendar.
Major LaFollet and the rest of the security detail begrudgingly learn how to swim, but, Graysons that they are, they're still a bit scandalized by her swimsuit.
He knew she'd made concessions. Her one-piece suit was positively dowdy by Manticoran standards*, but the corner of his mind where the most basic elements of socialization lived insisted she might as well be naked. Worse, she'd received the newest, most efficient prolong treatment in early childhood. She looked absurdly youthful, and her exotic, almond-eyed, strongly carved beauty and athletic grace threatened to provoke a highly improper response in the major. She was thirteen T-years older than he, yet she looked like someone's younger sister, and he had no business thinking of his Steadholder as the most attractive woman he knew - especially not when her soaked swimsuit clung to every supple curve.
Nobody ever said change was easy.
*Manticore has, among other things, licensed courtesans, and it is noted in a different book that a married military officer has discreetly employed their services - discreetly in the sense that he didn't go making a big show about it, not in the sense that people don't know about it, because they do - without getting any societal frowns. Meanwhile, Honor's mother is from Beowulf, which is populated by downright libertines and hedonists; Mama Harrington is unusual for remaining in a monogamous relationship.
So just like starting Benjamin and Matthews off in a greenhouse in order to score some character notes, Weber puts Honor in a swimming pool for largely the same reasons. LaFollet has some additional thoughts about some of her other activities - hang-gliding and rock climbing - and notes that those are terrifying from the perspective of someone charged with making sure that she doesn't, you know, die, but admits that she does it because she refuses to go skulk off and grow old in a corner somewhere just because life was unfair to her.
Honor and LaFollet discuss security for an upcoming event. There will be protesters; it is within a Steadholder's prerogative to arrest them (ain't no First Amendment here), but Honor isn't willing to go that far. Still, LaFollet can exclude genuine threats to the peace.
And now, I could be mistaken here, but I think this is our first real look at Honor's fractured psyche since Paul Tankersley was killed halfway through the previous book. The narration was in her head at a few points between then and now, but other people, including her best friend Michelle Henke, Admiral White Haven, and even her ultimate victim carried the bulk of the narrative. Honor was basically presented as a juggernaut, an unstoppable force of nature.
Nimitz, I mentioned, is an empath. (It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but that's where we are right now.) He is "bonded" to Honor such that she can feel his emotions - as well as the emotions of others that he picks up. There are other human-treecat links, but none anywhere near as powerful as this one. And Honor has been desperately clinging to that link for the last year or so to keep from going insane, so it has become even more powerful. So that's one thing to keep in mind.
Another is that one perverse part of Honor actually likes being vilified by the hard-liners. She saved the planet Grayson a few years back, remember, so a good chunk of the populace worships the ground she walks on. She finds the counterpoint somewhat refreshing, not unlike the conquering general of ancient Rome who had a slave placed in his chariot, whispering in his ear that he was only mortal.
As she thinks about this, she has an anxiety attack, brought on by the memories of all those who have died under her command up to this point. (It turns out that Weber's original plan was to kill Honor off in this book, and then he pushed it back to At All Costs, and then he chickened out again... I wonder if this mopey "I should have been able to save them" attitude, which very much takes a back seat after this novel, was going to play into her original death.) Nimitz helps her through it, and Andrew LaFollet reflects on the fact that Honor doesn't know that he knows she can sense emotions through Nimitz. After all, the real reason he wants to keep the protesters away is that he knows she can psychically feel their hate. (And no, she can't really just leave Nimitz behind somewhere. Their bond doesn't allow for that.)
LaFollet also intends to arrest the most serious agitators beforehand, without telling Honor, and since Nimitz isn't a telepath (ish), he figures he can get away with it. (Nimitz isn't quite a telepath, but there's no doubt based on the extent of his abilities revealed later on that he should be able to tell Honor that LaFollet is Up To Something. That he doesn't could suggest that he trusts LaFollet to do what he must to protect Honor's psyche.)
And that's that chapter, bringing us up to speed on the political situation as well as Honor's mental state. More to come.
And now, I could be mistaken here, but I think this is our first real look at Honor's fractured psyche since Paul Tankersley was killed halfway through the previous book. The narration was in her head at a few points between then and now, but other people, including her best friend Michelle Henke, Admiral White Haven, and even her ultimate victim carried the bulk of the narrative. Honor was basically presented as a juggernaut, an unstoppable force of nature.
Nimitz, I mentioned, is an empath. (It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but that's where we are right now.) He is "bonded" to Honor such that she can feel his emotions - as well as the emotions of others that he picks up. There are other human-treecat links, but none anywhere near as powerful as this one. And Honor has been desperately clinging to that link for the last year or so to keep from going insane, so it has become even more powerful. So that's one thing to keep in mind.
Another is that one perverse part of Honor actually likes being vilified by the hard-liners. She saved the planet Grayson a few years back, remember, so a good chunk of the populace worships the ground she walks on. She finds the counterpoint somewhat refreshing, not unlike the conquering general of ancient Rome who had a slave placed in his chariot, whispering in his ear that he was only mortal.
As she thinks about this, she has an anxiety attack, brought on by the memories of all those who have died under her command up to this point. (It turns out that Weber's original plan was to kill Honor off in this book, and then he pushed it back to At All Costs, and then he chickened out again... I wonder if this mopey "I should have been able to save them" attitude, which very much takes a back seat after this novel, was going to play into her original death.) Nimitz helps her through it, and Andrew LaFollet reflects on the fact that Honor doesn't know that he knows she can sense emotions through Nimitz. After all, the real reason he wants to keep the protesters away is that he knows she can psychically feel their hate. (And no, she can't really just leave Nimitz behind somewhere. Their bond doesn't allow for that.)
LaFollet also intends to arrest the most serious agitators beforehand, without telling Honor, and since Nimitz isn't a telepath (ish), he figures he can get away with it. (Nimitz isn't quite a telepath, but there's no doubt based on the extent of his abilities revealed later on that he should be able to tell Honor that LaFollet is Up To Something. That he doesn't could suggest that he trusts LaFollet to do what he must to protect Honor's psyche.)
And that's that chapter, bringing us up to speed on the political situation as well as Honor's mental state. More to come.
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