Honorverse Con-Libs
Jun. 21st, 2010 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylI always thought that David Weber was stretching political credibility when he created the High Ridge Conservative-Liberal coalition in his Honorverse novels. Then reality came along and showed me that hung parliaments make for strange bedfellow. But whatever the current government does, they can hardly turn out to be as bad as Michael Janvier and his cronies, whom Weber casts as pantomime villains.
Prime Minister High Ridge is a spiderish aristocrat who is so determinedly conservative that he almost refuses to recognise that untitled commoners exist. The head of the navy is a Colonel Blimp character, so convinced of his fleet's technical superiority that he is quite happy to cut its strength, despite a recent and unresolved war with a much larger neighbour. The leader of the Liberals is portrayed as unprincipled, willing to do anything to get into government and, when the occasion calls for it, wishy-washy and prone to hand-ringing. While the Foreign Secretary, the worst of the bunch, cheerfully manipulates the peace negotiations with Haven, changing the correspondence and drawing out the war so that the government won't have to surrender its emergency powers.
Yikes!
Prime Minister High Ridge is a spiderish aristocrat who is so determinedly conservative that he almost refuses to recognise that untitled commoners exist. The head of the navy is a Colonel Blimp character, so convinced of his fleet's technical superiority that he is quite happy to cut its strength, despite a recent and unresolved war with a much larger neighbour. The leader of the Liberals is portrayed as unprincipled, willing to do anything to get into government and, when the occasion calls for it, wishy-washy and prone to hand-ringing. While the Foreign Secretary, the worst of the bunch, cheerfully manipulates the peace negotiations with Haven, changing the correspondence and drawing out the war so that the government won't have to surrender its emergency powers.
Yikes!
