Honorverse ramblings and musings

As I recall the Dreyfus Protocols were an anti dueling measure forced into the Manticoran Code Duello as a compromise. The initial Code put either combatant's life at risk.

I can see frontiersmen wanting to keep tort law simple and ...severe. Forget the lawyers, harm me and mine and you had better be willing to put your own life at risk! The entire idea of duels on Manticore was not a fashion play by aristocrats, it was a direct recourse of frontiersmen to settle their own civil disputes. Swords and other toys are for sport. Honor and the settlement of serious civil disputes are matters of life and death, not games.

PeterZ wrote:.... The entire idea of duels on Manticore was not a fashion play by aristocrats, it was a direct recourse of frontiersmen to settle their own civil disputes. ...

Viewed from that perspective, the Manticoran Dueling ground has more roots in the (romaticized) main street of Tombstone and Dodge City than it does in Paris or London.

Weird Harold wrote:

PeterZ wrote:.... The entire idea of duels on Manticore was not a fashion play by aristocrats, it was a direct recourse of frontiersmen to settle their own civil disputes. ...

Viewed from that perspective, the Manticoran Dueling ground has more roots in the (romaticized) main street of Tombstone and Dodge City than it does in Paris or London.

Pretty much. The same can be said about the settlement of civil disputes on Swallow too. Although on Swallow the template is more a Hatfield and McCoy destroy the other clan and salt their fields mindset. In either case, the penalties for civil transgressions is dire indeed.

Weird Harold wrote:

PeterZ wrote:.... The entire idea of duels on Manticore was not a fashion play by aristocrats, it was a direct recourse of frontiersmen to settle their own civil disputes. ...

Viewed from that perspective, the Manticoran Dueling ground has more roots in the (romaticized) main street of Tombstone and Dodge City than it does in Paris or London.

Duckk wrote:It has nothing to do with the aristocracy, and everything to do with the Star Kingdom being a frontier planet. Law enforcement could be hours away, so the colonists had to adopt a "fix it yourself" attitude. Eventually this evolved into a codified set of rules to ensure fairness, and the rest is history.

I won't attempt to challenge the veracity of either post. Yet some of the particulars of Manticoran dueling contain rudiments of the historical aristocratic duels of yore. Therefore, may argue against.

Ending the duel "at first blood" and "when honor is satisfied" are aristocratic ideals. Not those of a Tombstonian mentality that beckons death.

Oh, I can believe that Manticore may have been inundated with the frontiersman mentality in its infancy, when there were many non aristocratic people in its society. But the fact that some common decency was eventually forced into the original barbaric practice with the inclusion of the Dreyfus Protocol, gives cause to pause. My personal belief is that the more noble of Manticoran blood began to inject its influence and guide Manticore along a more civilized path.

After all, be I far from believing that King Roger, therefore Queen Elizabeth, is descendant from common frontier folk. Even if only in their mentality.

In fact, I am more apt to believe that the notion of "dueling it out," was instigated by the more civilized aristocracy of Manticore, because the barbaric baseborn underlings were simply taking matters into their own hands and shooting their "grievances" dead, without warning. Just like the frontiersman in the Old West before the West was won, a time when they shot you for snoring.

The aristocrats managed to sway the baseborns to adopt the duel but were unsuccessful in getting them to accept a more civilized version until later.

All according to my humble guestimation.

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More like the aristocrats were the ones that did the Hatfield/McCoy impersonation. They were the first true settlers that started out with nothing....well nothing much. The second wave immigrants came from well settled planets. I suspect those settlers argued for more civilized means of dispute resolution. Recall that those second wave settlers were the yeoman of Manticore.

In this case, the aristocrats were likely seen by the second wave immigrants as Jed Clampet and his kin lordin' over possum springs trying to act all gentrified.

Recall that those second wave settlers were the yeoman of Manticore.

The second wave was had many different social strata. Some were wealthy enough to amass holdings that equaled the first generation, and became nobles themselves. Some were like the Harrington family, successful and relatively well off, but not outrageously so. Those became yeomen. Lastly, others who had figuratively nothing but the clothes on their backs formed the backbone of the commoners.

Duckk wrote:

Recall that those second wave settlers were the yeoman of Manticore.

The second wave was had many different social strata. Some were wealthy enough to amass holdings that equaled the first generation, and became nobles themselves. Some were like the Harrington family, successful and relatively well off, but not outrageously so. Those became yeomen. Lastly, others who had figuratively nothing but the clothes on their backs formed the backbone of the commoners.

So they might have had stereotypical wanna be aristos as well as yeomen? Ok, some of the second wave truly did see the original colonists as uncouth Jed Clampets or Molly Browns.

Duckk wrote:

Recall that those second wave settlers were the yeoman of Manticore.

The second wave was had many different social strata. Some were wealthy enough to amass holdings that equaled the first generation, and became nobles themselves. Some were like the Harrington family, successful and relatively well off, but not outrageously so. Those became yeomen. Lastly, others who had figuratively nothing but the clothes on their backs formed the backbone of the commoners.

The same for the first wave colonists too. They would've had a mix of professions incomes and experiences.

Your point being? All the surviving First Shareholders became nobles to some degree under the new constitution.

Hi guys,

If you all are really interested in dueling and its Terran history [so far] you might also want to read "By the Sword" by Richard Cohen, a former British Olympic fencer, for a review NTM insights into some three millennia of dueling; from the Trojan War to the present, mainly dealing with swords, but pistol dueling is included under the whole umbrella.

It's fascinating, even for non-fencers like me.

L

Duckk wrote:Your point being? All the surviving First Shareholders became nobles to some degree under the new constitution.